http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/06/11/trade-group-sues-to-block-seattles-arbitrary-minimum-wage-hike/


Reuters) – A trade group sued the city of Seattle on Wednesday, seeking to block a sharp hike in the minimum wage to $15 an hour over the next seven years on the grounds that it unfairly favors small businesses over larger employers and franchises.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Seattle by the Washington, D.C.- based International Franchise Association on behalf of five franchisees, claiming violations of the commerce, equal protection and supremacy clauses of the U.S. Constitution.

“The city’s minimum wage statute arbitrarily and illegally discriminates against franchisees and significantly increases their labor costs in ways that will harm their businesses, employees, consumers and Seattle’s economy,” IFA president Steve Caldeira said in a statement.

“We hope the court will block the ordinance to save jobs and prevent Seattle from unfairly singling out one type of business – a franchise – for punitive treatment,” Caldeira said.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WORLD_MARKETS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-06-12-04-53-26

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Asian stock markets fell for a second day Thursday and European shares drifted as a dimmer outlook for global growth this year gave investors a reason to lock in recent gains.

The World Bank cut its 2014 growth forecast Tuesday to 2.8 percent from the 3.2 percent it predicted in January, citing a harsh American winter and the tensions in Ukraine. That is still faster than 2013 growth of 2.4 percent but it means a delay in economic recovery.

The reduced forecast was the first major negative news about the global recovery in recent weeks after a series of upbeat economic reports boosted investor confidence.

Britain's FTSE 100 was 0.1 percent lower at 6,834.58. Germany's DAX was up 0.1 percent to 9,957.79 and France's CAC 40 added 0.2 percent to 4,564.37. Wall Street was set for a tepid start, with Dow Jones and S&P 500 futures each up 0.1 percent.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_BRITAIN_FOREIGN_EXCHANGE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-06-12-05-46-13

LONDON (AP) -- UK Treasury chief George Osborne is set to propose new criminal sanctions covering foreign exchange markets that a number of banks are alleged to have manipulated.

Osborne is set to use his annual speech on the state of the British economy Thursday to promise new regulation to protect the integrity of London as a financial center.

In excerpts released ahead of the speech, he pledged to deal with abuses, "tackle the unacceptable behavior of the few and ensure that markets are fair for the many who depend on them."

The decision comes amid a global scandal over the alleged manipulation of foreign exchange markets. Regulators in Europe and the U.S. are investigating a number of banks, and Citigroup and Barclays are among the institutions who have suspended traders.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_FRANCE_US_BANK?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-06-12-04-19-36


PARIS (AP) -- A top executive at French bank BNP Paribas is leaving the company amid a trans-Atlantic dispute over a potential multi-billion-dollar U.S. fine for the bank's activities in Iran, Sudan and Cuba.

The bank said Thursday that Chief Operating Officer Georges Chodron de Courcel will retire in September. He is 64, and his term was to finish in 2016. The bank did not explain the reason for his departure.

French and U.S. media reports have said that U.S. banking regulators sought the departure of Chodron de Courcel and other executives as part of an investigation into BNP Paribas. The probe focuses on the bank's currency transactions through its New York office for clients in Iran, Sudan and Cuba in violation of U.S. trade sanctions.

The case has angered French authorities.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_CHINA_STARTUP_BOOM?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-06-11-22-53-44

BEIJING (AP) -- Nils Pihl has spent 18 months building what he calls cutting-edge software to crunch "really big data sets." But instead of going to Silicon Valley, the 27-year-old Swede and his four colleagues have been working on his invention from a small apartment overlooking smoggy northwest Beijing.

In typical startup fashion, they've raised hundreds of thousands of dollars after countless pitch meetings and were racing to prepare their product for launch. Their investors are in Beijing as well as the U.S.

China might seem an odd choice for young tech entrepreneurs. Instead of innovation and risk taking, the country is more associated with state domination of the economy, rampant intellectual property theft and heavy duty government censorship of social media.

Perceptions, however, are changing. The high profile success of Jack Ma's e-commerce company Alibaba, which is planning a giant initial public offering in the U.S. this year, has drawn attention to how the former startup outmaneuvered eBay in China to become the world's biggest online bazaar. More recently, use of smartphones and the mobile Internet has grown explosively, creating new opportunities for e-commerce and other tech ventures.

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-27796628

The economic crisis in Europe and North America led to more than 10,000 extra suicides, according to figures from UK researchers.

A study, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, showed "suicides have risen markedly".

The research group said some deaths may have been avoidable as some countries showed no increase in suicide rate.

Campaign groups said the findings showed how important good mental health services were.

The study by the University of Oxford and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine analysed data from 24 EU countries, the US and Canada.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27807049

China has announced new measures aimed at bolstering its economic growth.

These include plans to build railways, roads and airports along the Yangtze River - which connects China's less developed inland provinces to Shanghai.

Meanwhile, China's central bank said it will encourage banks to lend more to exporters to boost shipments.

The moves, the latest in a series of steps taken in recent weeks, come amid concerns over a slowdown in China's economy - the world's second-largest

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27791749

The UK jobs market continued to improve in the three months to April, although the rate of wage increases slowed sharply, official figures show.

The number of people out of work fell by 161,000 to 2.16 million, bringing the unemployment rate down to 6.6%.

The number of people in work rose by a record 345,000, to 30.5 million, most of which are in full-time employment.

But the quarterly rate of earnings growth, including bonuses, slowed to 0.7% from 1.9% the previous month.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/06/11/david_brat_thinks_economics_is_a_sham.html

David Brat, the obscure college professor and Tea Party favorite who unseated House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in last night’s giant election shocker, thinks mainstream economics is a bit of a lie. This might seem odd, given that the man is himself an economist at Randolph-Macon College. But in 2005, he produced a long, apparently unpublished reader on the history and philosophy of economic thought (which Vox turned up last night). It argues, essentially, that the field suffers from a mass delusion of scientific impartiality.

And it’s a pretty good read, if you’re into dense philosophy talk. Brat earned a master’s degree in divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary; like many students of religion, he’s deeply interested in epistemology—the study of how we know what we know that underpins so much of philosophy and ethics. Economists, Brat argues, are essentially kidding themselves (or at least the public) about the soundness of the field’s epistemological foundations. Where most practitioners will tell you that they try to derive truths about the world by working from data and empirical observations, like natural scientists, Brat says their methods are actually grounded in unexamined moral and philosophical assumptions—especially utilitarianism, which generally holds that our goal should be to do the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people.

Here’s a nice summary, from the start of the reader:

While I will try not to preach any particular ethics, I do have an agenda. This agenda is to illustrate, by the internal logic of economics alone, that the dominant methodology in economics is in serious question, if not dead. However, I and the people who have helped me to write this book, view these problems within the context of a much longer history than do most economists. Western Philosophy has been around for 3000+ years. Western Theology is nearly the same age. These are the old dogs on the block. By comparison, the field of Economics is a very very young puppy. So while many economists are very nervous about the methodological problems in their field, the theologian and philosopher are very used to seeing their fields collapse every few hundred years. Perhaps this knowledge and wisdom can be brought to bear on the economic transformation which is under way.
Of course, it’s easy to find people who argue that economics isn’t really a science. What’s interesting is that it’s not clear whether Brat thinks science is even “science.” He devotes a good deal of the reader to the collapse of philosophical “positivism,” which, again, is the idea that we can only draw knowledge from observed experience.

but I'll bet we would quibble on specific details....

http://www.thenation.com/article/180190/former-managers-allege-pervasive-inventory-fraud-walmart-how-deep-does-rot-go

In 2012, Erica Davidson, a Walmart veteran and store manager, took on the daunting task of turning around a struggling store on the outskirts of Greensboro, North Carolina. The store had run through its share of managers, Davidson said, and she viewed it as the sort of challenge that could make or break a person’s career.

Davidson said that one of her primary tasks was to reduce the troubled store’s high rate of “shrinkage”—defined as the value of goods that are stolen or otherwise lost—to levels deemed acceptable by the company’s senior managers for the region. As a result of fierce competition, profit margins in retail can be razor thin, making shrinkage a potent—sometimes critical—factor in profitability.

Prior to her arrival, Davidson said, the Greensboro store could see annual shrinkage losses as high as $2 million or more—a sizable hit to its bottom line. There had even been talk of closing the store altogether, she recalled.

For years, Walmart’s senior management in North Carolina had been waging a war on shrinkage, Davidson said; it had become a central priority of the company’s local leadership and a source of constant strain for store managers. Though the unrelenting pressure weighed on her, Davidson said she became an asset in Walmart’s battle against shrinkage—so much so that, in 2011, the North Carolina regional team named her a “subject matter expert” on reducing shrinkage and would send her to meetings in the Walmart regional office in Charlotte. There, she recalled, she would train district managers on her practices in the presence of the company’s most senior officers for the state.

and doing other homely tasks, but the Weekend approacheth!

We have Friday the 13th, or Father's Day, or whatever you suggest as a theme.

What shall it be, Weekenders?

I'll know more at 2 PM

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-12/jobless-claims-in-u-s-increased-4-000-last-week-to-317-000.html

Applications for unemployment benefits in the U.S. rose to 317,000 last week, holding below this year’s average and signaling sustained progress in the labor market.

Jobless claims climbed by 4,000 in the week ended June 7, a Labor Department report showed today in Washington. The median forecast of 52 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for 310,000. Claims have averaged around 324,000 so far in 2014.

Faster sales over time would make it easier for those employers whose headcounts are lean to step up hiring. While payroll gains are on pace for their best year since 1999, stronger wage growth is needed to help provide a bigger push for the consumer spending that accounts for almost 70 percent of the economy.

“Workforces are generally pretty thin,” Guy Berger, U.S. economist at RBS Securities Inc. in Stamford, Connecticut, said before the report. “Lower claims, all things being equal, are going to lead to better payroll growth.”

6/9/14 Last Time this happened, The Financial Crisis Broke Out

There comes a time when risk just disappears, when nothing can go wrong, when there are no dark clouds on the horizon. Stocks rise to record after record. The crappiest junk bonds are priced as if they were safe investments. Inflation is excluded from the calculus. Even the mere possibility of default has been banished from considerations. And investors no longer demand to be compensated for any of it. They close their eyes and hold their nose and grab what they can.

These are times of exuberance, of record low volatility and supreme complacency, when retirees invest their life savings in bond funds stuffed with junk to get a little extra yield; when the ratings agencies finally can get busy again doing what they do best: stamping triple-A ratings on sliced and diced junk; when formerly toxic instruments that helped take down the financial system are once again desirable “assets”; times when otherwise rational people turn into blind automatons.

The Fed has a measure for it: the Financial Stress Index, issued by the St. Louis Fed. And according to the index, all this craziness, created by the Fed’s policies, is simply a sign of low “financial stress.” The data series goes back to 1993. The index is intended to be at zero, on average. Higher financial stress would show up as a positive number, lower financial stress as a negative number. And in the latest reporting week, ended May 30, the index fell to -1.281, the lowest in its history.

The previous record low occurred in February 2007 at -1.268. A very unpropitious moment. The housing bubble was already imploding, but at the time, “the froth” was just coming off; it was “plateauing” before the next surge. Stocks were still going up on a relentless escalator. Merger Mondays were thrilling CNBC talking heads. Mega-LBOs were greeted with media hoopla even as leverage in the system skyrocketed. And malodorous fumes were already emanating from cracks that had appeared in the foundations of banks and other financial institutions.

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It isn’t that low financial stress caused the Financial Crisis. It’s that low financial stress incited decision makers – from homebuyers to bank CEOs – to make wilfully reckless decisions that can only be made and funded when there is money for everything, and when this crap can be unloaded no questions asked. It happened in 2007, and it’s happening now again.
more...
http://www.testosteronepit.com/home/2014/6/9/last-time-this-happened-the-financial-crisis-broke-out.html

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-12/u-s-stock-futures-are-little-changed-before-retail-sales.html

U.S. stock-index futures were little changed, following a two-day decline in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, as investors assessed data showing retail sales climbed less than forecast in May while jobless claims rose.

Hewlett-Packard Co. gained 1.4 percent after Goldman Sachs Group Inc. raised its rating on the personal-computer maker. Tibco Software Inc. advanced 5.2 percent after shareholder Praesidium Investment Management said it will actively engage with the company’s board.

Futures on the S&P 500 (SPX) expiring in June fell less than 0.1 percent to 1,942.6 at 8:30 a.m. in New York, erasing an earlier advance following the data. Dow Jones Industrial Average contracts slid 11 points, or 0.1 percent, to 16,844.

“The U.S. economy is still outperforming the rest of the developed world,” Nicola Marinelli, who helps oversee about $190 million at Sturgeon Capital Ltd. in London, said by telephone. “Most economists see between 3 to 3.5 percent growth in the second quarter and that’s good. It’s something you’re seeing in the unemployment and labor figures.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-12/asian-stocks-retreat-from-six-year-high-as-kiwi-advances.html

Oil climbed to an eight-month high on concern fighting in Iraq will disrupt supplies. U.S. equity-index futures remained little changed after retail sales missed estimates, platinum fell as a South African union agreed to a wage deal and New Zealand’s dollar strengthened.

West Texas Intermediate oil rose 1.8 percent to $106.30 a barrel by 8:38 a.m. in New York. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index gained 0.1 percent and Standard & Poor’s 500 Index futures slipped less than 0.1 percent. The kiwi advanced at least 0.9 percent against 31 major peers after the Reserve Bank of New Zealand raised interest rates. Platinum dropped 2.2 percent. Turkey’s lira climbed after a report that Islamist militants will release hostages from its Mosul consulate in Iraq.

An al-Qaeda offshoot extended control over northern areas of Iraq while the Energy Information Administration said yesterday U.S. crude stockpiles fell for a second week. American retail sales rose less than forecast in May while jobless claims increased last week, reports showed today after data earlier indicated a pick-up in industrial production in the euro area.

“The Iraq development is the main driver for oil prices today and increases nervousness over the security of supply from the country,” Carsten Fritsch, an analyst at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt, said by phone today. The possibility of U.S. intervention in Iraq “is another sign of how desperate the situation is and how weak the government has become,” he said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-12/americans-see-nation-on-wrong-track-as-own-goals-closer.html

Americans sense that their lives are getting better at home and at work. It’s when they tune into the news that they grow increasingly uneasy.

Fifty-five percent of people say they are moving closer to realizing their hopes for their own careers and finances, yet only 26 percent say the country is headed in the right direction, according to a Bloomberg National Poll.

The discontent places a further burden on Democratic congressional candidates, who already are fighting a historical trend in which the president’s party usually loses seats in midterm elections. While Americans say their own finances are improving, they aren’t giving President Barack Obama credit.

“It’s as though Americans are living in an increasingly comfortable bubble, watching a world that appears to be increasingly troublesome,” said J. Ann Selzer, co-founder of Selzer & Co., which conducted the June 6-9 poll for Bloomberg.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-12/debt-risk-shifting-to-investors-as-bank-regulations-bite.html

Vilified for worsening the financial crisis, the credit derivatives market is undergoing a structural shift as money managers take on risk shunned by banks after regulators forced lenders to shrink their dealings.

Investors now account for more than 25 percent of the $19.9 trillion market, up from 20 percent a year ago, according to the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. They issued a net $132 billion of contracts insuring against losses on bonds as of June 6, the data show. This time last year they were net buyers of $15 billion of insurance.

While rules introduced after the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. to limit systemic risk have succeeded in cutting bank exposure to the opaque derivatives market, they haven’t reduced risk taking at less regulated institutions. U.S. lawmakers are considering also naming large asset managers systemically important enough for Federal Reserve oversight.

“Risk taking has moved away from investment banks to the non-bank market makers, which have full freedom to lose their capital if they get it wrong,” said Frederic Ponzo, managing partner at financial consultancy Greyspark Partners in London, which advises banks. “If that build-up of counterparty risk is not accounted for and managed, you may move the problem out of banks to somewhere just as systemically important.”

She's in excellent health for a cat her age, or any age, so that's good.

The vet asked me if I wanted to see the teeth. No, thanks, doc!

Glad you're cat is doing well!

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2014/06/10-biggest-ceo-pay-raises/

enlightening...