DJIA goosed 195 points, 50 of those in the last 45 minutes of trading...it's madness, madness, I say!

Last edited Fri Oct 31, 2014, 06:19 PM - Edit history (1)

The Archdruid Report


... the political struggles that pit the elites of a failing civilization against the proto-warlords of the nascent dark age reflect deeper shifts in the economic sphere—the economics of decline and fall need to be understood in order to make sense of the trajectory ahead of us. One of the more useful ways of understanding that trajectory was traced out some years ago by Joseph Tainter in his book The Collapse of Complex Societies...Tainter begins with the law of diminishing returns: the rule, applicable to an astonishingly broad range of human affairs, that the more you invest—in any sense—in any one project, the smaller the additional return is on each unit of additional investment. The point at which this starts to take effect is called the point of diminishing returns. Off past that point is a far more threatening landmark, the point of zero marginal return: the point, that is, when additional investment costs as much as the benefit it yields. Beyond that lies the territory of negative returns, where further investment yields less than it costs, and the gap grows wider with each additional increment. The attempt to achieve infinite economic growth on a finite planet makes a fine example of the law of diminishing returns in action. Given the necessary preconditions—a point we’ll discuss in more detail a bit later in this post—economic growth in its early stages produces benefits well in excess of its costs. Once the point of diminishing returns is past, though, further growth brings less and less benefit in any but a purely abstract, financial sense; broader measures of well-being fail to keep up with the expansion of the economy, and eventually the point of zero marginal return arrives and further rounds of growth actively make things worse.

Mainstream economists these days shove these increments of what John Ruskin used to call “illth”—yes, that’s the opposite of wealth—into the category of “externalities,” where they are generally ignored by everyone who doesn’t have to deal with them in person. If growth continues far enough, though, the production of illth overwhelms the production of wealth, and we end up more or less where we are today, where the benefits from continued growth are outweighed by the increasingly ghastly impact of the social, economic, and environmental “externalities” driven by growth itself. As The Limits to Growth pointed out all those years ago, that’s the nature of our predicament: the costs of growth rise faster than the benefits and eventually force the industrial economy to its knees. Tainter’s insight was that the same rules can be applied to social complexity. When a society begins to add layers of social complexity—for example, expanding the reach of the division of labor, setting up hierarchies to centralize decision-making, and so on—the initial rounds pay off substantially in terms of additional wealth and the capacity to deal with challenges from other societies and the natural world. Here again, though, there’s a point of diminishing returns, after which additional investments in social complexity yield less and less in the way of benefits, and there’s a point of zero marginal return, after which each additional increment of complexity subtracts from the wealth and resilience of the society.

There’s a mordant irony to what happens next. Societies in crisis reliably respond by doing what they know how to do. In the case of complex societies, what they know how to amounts to adding on new layers of complexity—after all, that’s what’s worked in the past... If too much complexity is at the root of the problems besetting a society, though, what happens when its leaders keep adding even more complexity to solve those problems?...Here in America, certainly, we’ve long since passed the point at which additional investments in complexity yield any benefit at all, but the manufacture of further complexity goes on apace, unhindered by the mere fact that it’s making a galaxy of bad problems worse. Do I need to cite the US health care system, which is currently collapsing under the sheer weight of the baroque superstructure of corporate and government bureaucracies heaped on top of what was once the simple process of paying a visit to the doctor? We can describe this process as intermediation—the insertion of a variety of intermediate persons, professions, and institutions between the producer and the consumer of any given good or service. It’s a standard feature of social complexity, and tends to blossom in the latter years of every civilization, as part of the piling up of complexity on complexity that Tainter discussed. There’s an interesting parallel between the process of intermediation and the process of ecological succession. Just as an ecosystem, as it moves from one sere (successional stage) to the next, tends to produce ever more elaborate food webs linking the plants whose photosynthesis starts the process with the consumers of detritus at its end, the rise of social complexity in a civilization tends to produce ever more elaborate patterns of intermediation between producers and consumers. Contemporary industrial civilization has taken intermediation to an extreme not reached by any previous civilization, and there’s a reason for that. White’s Law, one of the fundamental rules of human ecology, states that economic development is a function of energy per capita. The jackpot of cheap concentrated energy that industrial civilization obtained from fossil fuels threw that equation into overdrive, and economic development is simply another name for complexity. The US health care system, again, is one example out of many; as the American economy expanded metastatically over the course of the 20th century, an immense army of medical administrators, laboratory staff, specialists, insurance agents, government officials, and other functionaries inserted themselves into the notional space between physician and patient, turning what was once an ordinary face to face business transaction into a bureaucratic nightmare reminiscent of Franz Kafka’s The Castle.

In one way or another, that’s been the fate of every kind of economic activity in modern industrial society. Pick an economic sector, any economic sector, and the producers and consumers of the goods and services involved in any given transaction are hugely outnumbered by the people who earn a living from that transaction in some other way—by administering, financing, scheduling, regulating, taxing, approving, overseeing, facilitating, supplying, or in some other manner getting in there and grabbing a piece of the action. Take the natural tendency for social complexity to increase over time, and put it to work in a society that’s surfing a gargantuan tsunami of cheap energy, in which most work is done by machines powered by fossil fuels and not by human hands and minds, and that’s pretty much what you can expect to get...

...I show an example of this having already happened in the U.S. to my classes when I demonstrate the shortcomings of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a measure of economic health. One of my slides places a bar graph of U.S. GDP next to a bar representing the total of all the negative externalities as calculated by the people who put together the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI). The externalities are much taller, so the result is negative. People are actually worse off. Only the positive externalities (all of the free services done by friends and family, for example) that also contribute to the GPI allow the economy to be positive at all.

Also, while the GDP per capita has gone up and up since World War II, the GPI per capita has been stagnant since the mid 1970s. It seems that we hit the point of diminishing returns 40 years ago....

WELL, SOMETHING HAPPENED IN THE MID 1970'S....I'D CALL IT 1% ELITIST THEFT CRANKED INTO HIGH GEAR. THAT WAS THE POINT AT WHICH THINGS STARTED TO GET COMPLEX FOR NO GOOD REASON...EXCEPT TO RUN A CON GAME.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/31/pregnancy-discrimination-supreme-court_n_6078416.html?utm_hp_ref=business&ir=Business

When Peggy Young became pregnant in 2006, she had every intention of continuing to work delivering packages for UPS in Maryland. At the urging of the company's occupational health manager, Young visited her doctor to obtain a note detailing any work restrictions she might need. Her doctor recommended that she not lift more than 20 pounds for the first 20 weeks of her pregnancy.

Based on the doctor's note, UPS placed Young on unpaid leave, an all too common experience for women nationwide. Although UPS often put workers with other conditions on light duty, it told Young that such accommodations wouldn't apply to an "off-the-job" condition such as her pregnancy. Not only would she lose her income, she would have to suddenly switch to her husband's health insurance plan, changing the hospitals at which she could potentially give birth.

"I wanted to work," Young told The Huffington Post. "I all but begged for them to let me work."

The unborn child Young was carrying in 2006 is now a 7-year-old girl named Trinity. Young no longer works for UPS, but she's still fighting the shipping giant for denying her accommodations while she was pregnant. Young sued UPS alleging discrimination, and her case, Young v. UPS, is now before the Supreme Court, with oral arguments expected in December.

If the policy enforced on Young in 2006 doesn't seem particularly enlightened, UPS itself would seem to agree. In a memo sent to employees this week, the company announced that it will begin offering light duty to pregnant workers on Jan. 1, the Washington Post reported Wednesday. The turnaround puts UPS in the peculiar position of defending before the Supreme Court a policy that it is already walking away from...

Vampire Squid



In the low-oxygen environment 300 to 3,000 meters below the sea’s surface lurks Vampyroteuthis infernalis, or “the vampire squid from hell”. Despite its fearsome name, it’s neither a vampire nor a squid. In 2012, researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute discovered that the small cephalopod lives off marine snow, or particles of detritus (dead bodies, poop and snot) that float to the bottom of the ocean. The name comes from its dark red body and glowing eye spots, which give it a fearsome appearance. The animal is also well adapted for life in the shadows. In addition to its eight webbed arms, two long filaments extend out behind it sensing and capturing food. The filaments may also serve to detect larger predators, but since there’s not a lot to eat down there, the vampire squid is mostly free to mosey along as it pleases.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/seven-vampires-arent-bats-bela-lugosi-180953188/?utm_source=feedburner&no-ist


SHOWING THAT VAMPIRE SQUID IS NOT AN ACCURATE NAME FOR GOLDMAN SACHS...A MUCH BETTER EXAMPLE WOULD BE THE LAMPREY EEL, FAMED FOR DESTROYING THE GREAT LAKES FISH POPULATIONS....SEE LINK FOR DETAILS.

The Koch bros. are somewhere looking for rum.

and the Dimon's in the rough.

Trick or treat!

In spite of ghastly conditions: wind, rain verging on snow, and the dark, we had trick-or-treaters tonight. I never did carve the pumpkin, but managed dinner.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/opinion/paul-krugman-apologizing-to-japan.html

For almost two decades, Japan has been held up as a cautionary tale, an object lesson on how not to run an advanced economy. After all, the island nation is the rising superpower that stumbled. One day, it seemed, it was on the road to high-tech domination of the world economy; the next it was suffering from seemingly endless stagnation and deflation. And Western economists were scathing in their criticisms of Japanese policy.

I was one of those critics; Ben Bernanke, who went on to become chairman of the Federal Reserve, was another. And these days, I often find myself thinking that we ought to apologize.

Now, I’m not saying that our economic analysis was wrong. The paper I published in 1998 about Japan’s “liquidity trap,” or the paper Mr. Bernanke published in 2000 urging Japanese policy makers to show “Rooseveltian resolve” in confronting their problems, have aged fairly well. In fact, in some ways they look more relevant than ever now that much of the West has fallen into a prolonged slump very similar to Japan’s experience.

The point, however, is that the West has, in fact, fallen into a slump similar to Japan’s — but worse. And that wasn’t supposed to happen. In the 1990s, we assumed that if the United States or Western Europe found themselves facing anything like Japan’s problems, we would respond much more effectively than the Japanese had. But we didn’t, even though we had Japan’s experience to guide us. On the contrary, Western policies since 2008 have been so inadequate if not actively counterproductive that Japan’s failings seem minor in comparison. And Western workers have experienced a level of suffering that Japan has managed to avoid...

ACTUALLY, THE JAPANESE WORKERS ARE JUST AS BAD OFF AS WE ARE, IF NOT WORSE. THEY JUST DON'T GET AS MUCH PRESS, NOR COMPLAIN AS PUBLICLY.

YOU SEE IT IN THE SUICIDE RATES:

JAPAN: 21.3 SUICIDES PER 100,000

USA: 12 SUICIDES PER 100,000

OF COURSE, THESE ARE "OFFICIAL" NUMBERS...SO WHO KNOWS WHAT THEY REALLY ARE..

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/04/japan-suicide-rate-still-_n_831430.html

The number of Japanese who committed suicide declined last year, but remained above 30,000 for the 13th straight year with a sharp jump in deaths by those citing grim job prospects, a government report said Thursday.

Japan has for years had one of the world's highest suicide rates.

In all, 31,690 people killed themselves last year, a 3.5 percent decrease from the year before. Many cited depression, economic hardships and job-related concerns, according to the annual report by the National Police Agency.

The number of people who committed suicide indicating "failure to get jobs" rose to 424, up 20 percent from the year before and more than doubling from 180 in 2007, the report said. About one-third were in their 20s, including new graduates seeking jobs.

The results underscore the tough reality for student job seekers as companies cut back on hiring amid a lengthy economic slump.

A record one-third of university students graduating this month have not found jobs, a separate government survey said in January....

http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2014/10/detroit_experiences_fiery_ange.html



In neighborhoods across Detroit, the intense orange glow of burning houses pierced the black sky Thursday night and Friday morning. A blaze at 3140 E. Kirby erupted just before 11:30 p.m. engulfing three homes and sending huge plumes of gray and black smoke twisting into the night. Ash and embers fell from above. Minutes later, less than five blocks away, another large fire enveloped two apparently vacant houses at Mount Elliot and East Warren.

Over 3,000 people were still logged into the Detroit Fire Department online dispatch feed at 2 a.m. Friday listening to fire activity across the city. Dispatch and firefighters receiving the runs remained busy well into the morning.

"McDougall and East Ferry, request for box alarm," the dispatcher said as a new fire erupted at 2:36 a.m.

Photographers from well beyond Detroit descend on the city each Oct. 30 hoping to capture dramatic fire images on what is known as Devils' Night -- Angels' Night to those trying to change its malicious reputation. Although there hasn't been an official count, Motor City Muckraker, a Detroit news website operated by reporter Steve Neavling, recorded at least 36 fires between midnight Wednesday and Friday morning, fewer than in previous years, according to Neavling. Motor City Muckraker is mapping all fires and offering live updates.

Mayor Mike Duggan's office said there were 28 fires, seven suspicious, Wednesday.

Twenty-six is the average number of fires per night in the city Fire Commissioner Edsel Jenkins estimated when speaking to MLive Detroit last week. At the peak of Devils' Night activity in the 1980s, the number of reported arson fires were in the hundreds through the three-day period, from Oct. 29 through the morning of Nov. 1. City officials reported 95 fires at the end of the three-day period in 2013, compared to 93 in 2012 and 94 in 2011. There were 169 in 2010 and 119 in 2009.

GIVEN THE PLANS TO STEAL THE HOUSING OUT FROM UNDER THE PEOPLE....WELL, IT'S ONE WAY TO DEPRIVE THE PROFITEERS...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/31/us-italy-banks-bankofitaly-idUSKBN0IK0Z120141031?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews

Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena (BMPS.MI) and Carige CRCI.MI will make up the capital shortfalls revealed in the ECB stress tests through private sector financing, Italian Economy Minister Pier Carlo Padoan said on Friday.

"The remaining capital needs of our banking system will be filled through the mobilization of private resources," Padoan said in a speech at a conference in Rome.

He made no comment on the status of repayments of existing state aid offered to Monte dei Paschi in a previous bailout. But the comments dampen prospects of outright new state aid being offered to the two banks, which were among the biggest losers in the European Central Bank's health check of the sector.

Monte dei Paschi was left with a shortfall of 2.1 billion euros, while Carige had a gap of 814 million euros...

http://www.alternet.org/economy/why-do-banks-want-our-deposits-hint-its-not-make-loans?akid=12414.227380.445PqG&rd=1&src=newsletter1025015&t=26

Many authorities have said it: banks do not lend their deposits. They create the money they lend on their books.


All of which leaves us to wonder: If banks do not lend their depositors’ money, why are they always scrambling to get it? Banks advertise to attract depositors, and they pay interest on the funds. What good are our deposits to the bank? The answer is that while banks do not need the deposits to create loans, they do need to balance their books; and attracting customer deposits is usually the cheapest way to do it.

Reckoning with the Fed

Ever since the Federal Reserve Act was passed in 1913, banks have been required to clear their outgoing checks through the Fed or another clearinghouse. Banks keep reserves in reserve accounts at the Fed for this purpose, and they usually hold the minimum required reserve. When the loan of Bank A becomes a check that goes into Bank B, the Federal Reserve debits Bank A’s reserve account and credits Bank B’s. If Bank A’s account goes in the red at the end of the day, the Fed automatically treats this as an overdraft and lends the bank the money. Bank A then must clear the overdraft.

Attracting customer deposits, called “retail deposits,” is a cheap way to do it. But if the bank lacks retail deposits, it can borrow in the money markets, typically the Fed funds market where banks sell their “excess reserves” to other banks. These purchased deposits are called “wholesale deposits.”

Note that excess reserves will always be available somewhere, since the reserves that just left Bank A will have gone into some other bank. The exception is when customers withdraw cash, but that happens only rarely as compared to all the electronic money flying back and forth every day in the banking system.

Borrowing from the Fed funds market is pretty inexpensive – a mere 0.25% interest yearly for overnight loans. But it’s still more expensive than borrowing from the bank’s own depositors.

MORE BANKING ARCANA AT LINK

and those were dial phones and mechanical typewriters. I've gotten blistered fingers from having to make a ton of calls and I could never manage the typewriters and flunked typing, nobody knew a 14 year old kid could and did have arthritis.

I miss the smell of burning leaves but the smell of roasting green chile around here makes up for it, even if it does make me hungry at the same time.

Dia de los Muertos is a big deal here and out on the Pueblo reservations. I've been invited out to the reservations and have always regretted not being able to go due to work. Sugar skulls are sold in the markets in the heavily Mexican immigrant areas of town, meaning about a five minute drive from me. It's really a nice holiday, sort of like a yearly Irish wake with drinking and remembrance and music along with the sugar skulls and masses of marigolds.

One hopes the custom will survive television and increasing poverty in a country that does not care about its people.

10/31/14 Japan: QE As Morphine For A Terminal Patient
by Ilargi at The Automatic Earth

You can jot down Halloween 2014 in your calendar, and it’s unfortunately too tragic to make proper use of the irony involved, as the day Japan committed suicide. The sun is no longer rising. Not that the vital signs weren’t bad before, indeed it might not have survived regardless, but this lethal blow announced today is still quite the statement.

That financial markets interpret it as a reason to cheer and party and make lots of dough is yet one more proof of how shallow and single-minded the people operating in these markets are, lacking all insight in historical context, longer term consequences, wars and politics, and the human mind.

Because the ‘QE as morphine’ concept introduced today by the megalomaniac Shinzo Abe and his central bank raving mad puppets will change the world in ways that make financial gain less than even an afterthought, except perhaps for those of us who cannot see beyond today, or beyond the one single lonely dimension money is of any use in.

If and when a country resorts to having it central bank buy up – the equivalent of – all sovereign bonds it issues, the snake truly eats its tail, and not in a metaphorical sense. Japan eats it children, most of them as yet unborn, to keep its rapidly ageing population contented and in relative wealth, because the alternative would cost Tokyo’s financial-political power cabal their jobs and heads.

Japan’s problem is, and has been for many years, twofold: first, the Japanese people lost the spending power to keep the domestic real economy growing some 20 years ago and never got it back, and second, a whole slew of successive governments refused to restructure the debts in the financial sector, and instead put those debts on the public tally.

The negative growth announced today in US consumer spending should be a warning sign, as should similar numbers that have come from across Europe for a while now, a sign that we need to think about how to run our societies and economies without everlasting growth, and without the ever more failing and ever more costly policies aimed at constructing and maintaining that growth.

However, the worse the policies are for the real economy and the people who depend on it for survival, the more money the financial markets, and the banks, make. It truly is QE as morphine, and Japan has shown us today that morphine can alleviate pain, but it is also in the end the ultimate killer.

It may already be too late, but we can still make the effort to not fall into the same trap Japan has fallen in. Which in essence is simply trying to recreate a past world that is long gone, by applying measures that ‘wise men’ say are sure to bring back the past, and then more.

We must look at ourselves and wonder why we want more. And realize that if we don’t take that look, and we continue on our present path, we will all end up like Japan, guaranteeing that our quest for more will leave us with less, much less. We cannot build our world with credit, we need to work in order to build it. And we cannot borrow our way into growth, nor do we need to grow.

Halloween 2014. A day we could have learned something.

http://www.theautomaticearth.com/japan-qe-as-morphine-for-a-terminal-patient/

#t=8

Now that I have a portion of my mind back, my memory should improve, if there's anything worth remembering that happens henceforth.

It's amazing what a refusal to destroy oneself does for a body. I don't miss my crazy clients or the paper route, and I don't have to eat as much, since I'm not compensating for so many things being so stressful...

With the Dow hitting new highs, I don't suppose any would....

Hey! I resemble that remark!



http://vimeo.com/11944419

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/31/us-fed-usa-reverserepos-idUSKBN0IK23C20141031?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews

The U.S. Federal Reserve awarded $186.28 billion in fixed-rate reverse repurchase agreements on Friday, the highest amount in more than four weeks, due to strong investor demand for ultra short-dated, risk-free assets at month-end. The central bank has been testing them as a tool to drain cash from the financial system to achieve their interest rate target when it decides to tighten monetary policy.

At Friday's operation, the Fed paid 72 bidders including Wall Street firms, money market funds and mortgage finance agencies an interest rate of 0.05 percent for them to borrow its Treasuries holdings until Monday.

This was the highest amount of fixed-rate reverse repos, commonly referred as RRPs, the Fed awarded since the $212.48 billion to 53 bidders on Oct. 1.

On Thursday, the Fed awarded $142.24 billion RRPs to 47 bidders at an interest rate of 0.05 percent.

http://www.alternet.org/education/looking-escape-high-cost-college-these-7-countries-will-educate-you-free?akid=12426.227380.BkH8-S&rd=1&src=newsletter1025408&t=4

And you wouldn't even have to learn a new language!...Students just have to be willing to leave the country:

1. Brazil: Brazil's universities charge registration fees, Noack notes, but they do not require regular tuition. Many of them also offer courses in English.

2. Germany: Germany has 900 programs in English, and is eager to attract foreign students to tuition-free universities due to the country's shortage of skilled workers.

3. Finland: Finland doesn't have tuition fees but the government does warn foreigners that they have to cover living expenses. Imagine going to college and only worrying about room and board.

4. France: France does charge tuition – but normally around 200 dollars at public universities. A far cry from what you'd pay in the United States, even in a state school.

5. Norway: Norwegian students, including foreigners studying in the country, do not have to pay any college tuition. Be forewarned, however, of the harsh winters and high cost of living.

6. Slovenia: If Eastern Europe is more your thing, Noack notes that Slovenia has 150 English-language programs, and only charges a registration fee – no tuition.

7. Sweden: Sweden, a country which has so successfully solved so many of its social problems that there are now U.S. Sitcoms about the glories of moving there, has over 300 English-language programs. Although college there is free, cost of living may be pricey for foreigners.

By Thomas C. Frohlich | 24/7 Wall St. – Fri, 12 Sep, 2014 1:52 AM EDT

According to data recently released by the Organization for Co-operation and Development (OECD), more than half of Russian adults held tertiary degrees in 2012 -- the equivalent of college degree in the United States -- more than in any other country reviewed. Meanwhile, less than 4% of Chinese adults had tertiary qualifications in 2012, less than in any other country. 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the 10 countries with the highest proportion of adults holding a college degree.

The most educated populations tend to be in countries where tertiary education spending is among the highest. Tertiary education spending in six of the most educated countries was higher than the OECD average of $13,957. Spending on tertiary education in the U.S., for example, was $26,021 per student, by far the most in the world.

Despite the value of investing in education, there are exceptions. Korea and the Russian Federation both spent less than $10,000 on tertiary education per student in 2011, considerably lower than the OECD average. Yet, they still have among the most educated populations.

Qualifications do not always translate into stronger skills. While only 1 in 4 of U.S. college graduates reach the top-end of literacy skill, more than 35% reach that level in Finland, Japan, and the Netherlands. As Schleicher explained, “We typically describe people by their formal qualifications, but this data suggests that the skill value of formal qualifications vary considerably across countries.”

Complete story at - https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/most-educated-countries-world-135700294.html

They certainly picked some strange photos to illustrate this story...

10) Ireland
9) New Zealand
8) UK
7) Australia
6) Korea (South, of course)
5) USA
4) Israel
3) Japan
2) Canada
1) Russia

Kool-Aid. Every hear of drinking the Kool-Aid?

Good morning, Matt. It's a cold one, out there. Won't be long before we are blanketed in snow at this rate...a little early, but not unprecedented.

Anti-Russian sanctions have backfired on the Old World’s tourist industry.

Far fewer Russians go to Europe on holiday these days. On some destinations, tourist flow has slumped between 20% and 50% against 2013. Experts see two reasons for this: reluctance to put up with outbreaks of Russophobic sentiment and the ruble’s slump against the euro.

Europeans are ringing the alarm. Dwindling tourist flows from Russia is a heavy blow to Western economies because Russians have firmly held the leading place in the EU’s tourist industry for the past few years.

In 2014, anti-Russian sanctions by the EU prompted Russian holiday-makers to set their eyes on Turkey and Egypt while Europe suffered a “catastrophic setback,” says spokeswoman for the Russian Tourist Industry Union Irina Tyurina. In a bid to lure back Russian vacationers, European tour operators have had to resort to unprecedented dumping offers.

According to the European Tour Operators Association (ETOA), Britain’s tour industry will lose about £50 million (about $50 million) in 2014. Finland, which last year was in the top 10 countries most popular with Russian tourists, this year has slumped to the 13th place.

Complete story at - http://russia-insider.com/en/politics_business_society/2014/10/24/04-54-07pm/more_sanctions_backfire_european_tourism_bruised

September and October are favored months for major market collapses, but the markets pulled through (though it did get a bit scary at times). But hey, there's always room for new traditions to be created. Maybe November will be the new October?

they don't want the herd to stampede. but seriously, what is the point of it all? Keeping paper assets from realizing their true worth?

I have no idea when it will all collapse...but I'm sure the Saudi oil play ticked off a lot of people.

According to one opinion I've read, it was the Saudis cheapening oil that collapsed the USSR, when the bills couldn't be paid any more. And this is their second attempt at it.

I think, however, that it won't work this time. Two reasons:

1. Russians can and do learn from experience, unlike the US government, which is unteachable. The US government always learns the wrong way to do something, and sticks to it like revealed dogma...

2. So Russia went and found new customers: China, India, and the like, who might even pay in gold, and so avoid (and sink) the petro-dollar trap, but certainly the yuan can become the new reserve currency.

At this point, anything that destroys and removes the 1% Idiocracy is fine with me. It no longer matters if we are reduced to peasants by our government, or by outside forces. What matters is revolution.

I think the 1% were warned by Greenspan on Wednesday that the bubble is getting ready to burst, in effect, to cash out of the markets. If the wealthy have all the money, what do they care if we peasants suffer. Well, not until the peasants revolt, but that likely won't happen for a long time.

"Asked whether he regrets not doing more with Fed policy to stop the financial-market bubbles that preceded the crisis, Mr. Greenspan said “no.” He observed that history shows central banks can only prick bubbles at great economic cost. “It’s only by bringing the economy down can you burst the bubble,” and that was a step he wasn’t willing to take while helming the Fed … "

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1116&pid=60186

The Saudi oil war against Russia, Iran and the US — Pepe Escobar

Saudi Arabia has unleashed an economic war against selected oil producers. The strategy masks the House of Saud’s real agenda. But will it work?

Rosneft Vice President Mikhail Leontyev; “Prices can be manipulative…Saudi Arabia has begun making big discounts on oil. This is political manipulation, and Saudi Arabia is being manipulated, which could end badly.”

A correction is in order; the Saudis are not being manipulated. What the House of Saud is launching is “Tomahawks of spin,” insisting they’re OK with oil at $90 a barrel; also at $80 for the next two years; and even at $50 to $60 for Asian and North American clients.

The fact is Brent crude had already fallen to below $90 a barrel because China – and Asia as a whole – was already slowing down economically, although to a lesser degree compared to the West. Production, though, remained high – especially by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait - even with very little Libyan and Syrian oil on the market and with Iran forced to cut exports by a million barrels a day because of the US economic war, a.k.a. sanctions.

The House of Saud is applying a highly predatory pricing strategy, which boils down to reducing market share of its competitors, in the middle- to long-term. At least in theory, this could make life miserable for a lot of players – from the US (energy development, fracking and deepwater drilling become unprofitable) to producers of heavy, sour crude such as Iran and Venezuela. Yet the key target, make no mistake, is Russia.

A strategy that simultaneously hurts Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Ecuador and Russia cannot escape the temptation of being regarded as an “Empire of Chaos” power play, as in Washington cutting a deal with Riyadh. A deal would imply bombing ISIS/ISIL/Daesh leader Caliph Ibrahim is just a prelude to bombing Bashar al-Assad’s forces; in exchange, the Saudis squeeze oil prices to hurt the enemies of the “Empire of Chaos.”

Yet it’s way more complicated than that.

Complete story at - http://rt.com/op-edge/196148-saudiarabia-oil-russia-economic-confrontation/

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/01/us-ukraine-crisis-merkel-putin-idUSKBN0IK15620141101?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Russian President Vladimir Putin on the phone that Sunday's planned elections in eastern Ukraine were illegitimate and would not be recognized by European leaders, a Berlin government spokesman said on Friday. Merkel and Putin held a joint telephone conversation with French President Francois Hollande and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Merkel's spokesman Georg Streiter said at a government news conference. He said in the call there were diverging opinions on Sunday's "so-called elections" in the self-proclaimed people's republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

"Merkel and Hollande underlined that there can only be a ballot in line with Ukrainian law," he said, adding that the vote would violate an agreement endorsed by Russia and further complicate efforts to end the crisis in eastern Ukraine.

"The German government will not recognize these illegitimate elections," Merkel's spokesman said. European leaders were united on this issue and had agreed on this at a summit last week in Brussels.

...A 12-point protocol, issued after talks in early September in the Belarussian capital of Minsk involving Russia, Ukraine, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe and separatist leaders, foresees the holding of "early local elections" in the east in accordance with Ukrainian legislation. The Ukrainian leadership sees this as part of efforts to de-centralize power in the east to give people there greater say in running their own affairs - a strategy aimed at blunting calls for autonomy. It wants to hold these elections in December.

U.S. CAUTIONS RUSSIA OVER TROOPS

In Washington, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council said the United States would not recognize any results from the vote.

"We also caution Russia against using any such illegitimate vote as a pretext to insert additional troops and military equipment into Ukraine, particularly in light of recent indications that the Russian military is moving forces back to the border along separatist-controlled areas of eastern Ukraine," spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan added in a statement.

Sunday's separatist poll is aimed at electing leaders and a parliament in a self-proclaimed autonomous republic. Though Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said last Tuesday that Moscow would recognize the results of the rebel vote, the Kremlin made no mention of the ballot in its account of the four-way phone-in on Friday.

"The Russian side speaks out in favor of establishing a sustainable dialogue between the central Ukrainian authorities and the representatives of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions which, beyond any doubt, would contribute to an overall stabilization of the situation," it said in a statement.

Poroshenko on his website said that he, Merkel and Hollande had expressed a "clear, general position" not to recognize Sunday's election and had "called on Russia also not to recognize these elections".

Speaking to a group of Western journalists on Friday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin denounced "totally fake, unlawful elections with people trying to elect so-called presidents of Donetsk and Luhansk and a so-called parliament."

"Russia must discourage the terrorists from carrying out these elections … it will be yet another step towards a ‘frozen conflict’ which is what we have to prevent there," he said.

He said Kiev was committed to elections of local officials in the east with which a plan for de-centralization could be worked out. "But they should be clear local elections according to Ukrainian legislation," Klimkin said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-31/marion-energy-files-bankruptcy-owing-more-than-100-million-1-.html?cmpid=yhoo

Natural gas exploration company Marion Energy Inc., based in McKinney, Texas, sought bankruptcy protection to prevent the appointment of a receiver and a forced liquidation. The company blamed its financial woes on heavy snowfall and severe winter cold, as well as equipment problems and unexpected delays. It listed assets and debt of more than $100 million each in Chapter 11 documents filed today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Salt Lake City.

Marion began negotiating a forbearance agreement with creditor Castlelake LP to gain time to obtain new financing. The forbearance period agreed to by the investment fund runs through today, according to court papers. Castlelake has refused to grant further forbearance, according to court papers.

“Marion filed this Chapter 11 case to prevent Castlelake from appointing a receiver and forcing an uneconomic liquidation of Marion’s assets using a 60-day sale process,” Jeffrey Clarke, a director, said in court papers.

The company needs time to complete a refinancing with a new lender to “preserve its going-concern value,” Clarke said. Marion owes $34.4 million under the credit agreement with Castlelake. Additionally, the lender alleges that it is owed about $17.6 million as a “make-whole” premium in the event the loan is paid early, Clarke said.

Marion’s primary assets are Clear Creek Field, a producing gas field located in Utah’s Uinta Basin, and Helper Field, a currently unproductive field located near Helper, Utah.

WELL, PRICES ARE DEPRESSED, BUT WINTER HAS BEGUN FOR SURE....CAN THEY MAKE IT UP ON VOLUME?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/01/opinion/deceptions-of-the-fbi.html?_r=0

If your Internet service goes down and you call a technician, can you be certain that the person who arrives at your door is actually there to restore service? What if he is a law enforcement agent in disguise who has disabled the service so he can enter your home to look around for evidence of a crime? Americans should not have to worry about scenarios like this, but F.B.I. agents used this ruse during a gambling investigation in Las Vegas in July. Most disturbing of all, the Justice Department is now defending the agents’ actions in court.

During the 2014 World Cup, the agents suspected that an illegal gambling ring was operating out of several hotel rooms at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, but they apparently did not have enough evidence to get a court-issued warrant. So they enlisted the hotel’s assistance in shutting off the Internet to those rooms, prompting the rooms’ occupants to call for help. Undercover agents disguised as repairmen appeared at the door, and the occupants let them in. While pretending to fix the service, the agents saw men watching soccer matches and looking at betting odds on their computers.

There is nothing illegal about visiting sports-betting websites, but the agents relied primarily on that evidence to get their search warrant. What they failed to tell the judge was that they had turned off the Internet service themselves. Of course, law enforcement authorities regularly rely on sting operations and other deceptive tactics, and courts usually allow them if the authorities reasonably believe they will find evidence of a crime. Without that suspicion, the Constitution prohibits warrantless searches of peoples’ residences, including hotel rooms. The authorities can jump that hurdle if a home’s occupant consents to let them enter, as when an undercover officer is invited into a home to buy drugs.

The Las Vegas case fails on both counts, according to a lawyer for the defendants. Although one of the defendants in the case, Wei Seng Phua, a Malaysian citizen, had been arrested in Macau earlier this year for running an illegal sports-gambling business, the agents did not have probable cause to believe anything illegal was happening in two of the rooms they searched. And a federal prosecutor had initially warned the agents not to use trickery because of the “consent issue.” In fact, a previous ruse by the agents had failed when a person in one of the rooms refused to let them in.

............................................................................

In a separate case out of Seattle, F.B.I. agents pretended to be journalists in a 2007 investigation of high school bomb threats, according to documents recently uncovered by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Agents there concocted a fake online news article by The Associated Press about the threats. They sent a link to the Myspace page of a student they suspected of making the threats, and when he opened the link, it downloaded malware that enabled the agents to track him down and arrest him. The A.P. is rightly outraged and has protested the F.B.I.’s misappropriation of its name as undermining “the most fundamental component of a free press — its independence.”

The F.B.I. has a history of pushing the limits that protect Americans’ civil liberties. And it has continued to broaden agents’ investigative powers in troubling ways. The deceptive tactics used in Las Vegas and Seattle, if not prohibited by the agency or blocked by courts, risk opening the door to constitutional abuses on a much wider scale.

Dow weekly gain best in nearly two years

https://secure.marketwatch.com/story/us-stocks-futures-point-to-wall-street-rally-after-boj-surprise-2014-10-31

The U.S. stock market rallied on Friday, sending the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average into record territory, after a surprise stimulus plan from the Bank of Japan was announced.

Some analysts noted that the recovery from the recent pullback, which sent the S&P 500 down nearly 8% early this month, was the second fastest recovery since 2010. The main benchmarks finished the week and the month higher.

The measures announced by Japan appeared to encourage investors, who have been looking for regions like Europe and Asia to take further steps toward boosting flagging growth, as the Federal Reserve wraps its own stimulus program...

LET'S SEE: FEAR, GREED, AND FUNNY MONEY FROM QE4EVER....

https://secure.marketwatch.com/story/the-3-things-that-make-the-stock-market-tick-2014-10-31

What is the secret of the stock market? How come it goes up and up and up — and then, sometimes, goes down and down and down? It’s a simple question, but one — as a result — that gets asked so rarely. And it gets asked very rarely indeed at times when the stock market is booming and no one wants to ask any awkward questions at all... like now....Some people, who subscribe to a cult known as Modern Portfolio Theory, think it’s magic. The market goes up “10% a year on average,” or “6% a year above inflation,” they say. No reason. It just does. These folks view the stock market with a charming, naive, unquestioning awe. Others point to the role of dividends. Others seem to think it’s a symbol of national pride, like the U.S. Olympics squad. Still others mutter darkly about conspiracies, the Federal Reserve, and “the Goldman Sachs.” Maybe they all have a point. But economics professors Daniel Greenwald and Sydney Ludvigson from New York University, and Martin Lattau from U.C. Berkeley, offer a different perspective.

After studying the movements of the stock market going back to 1952 they found that nearly all of it can be explained empirically — in other words, by observation, not merely by theory — by three uncorrelated factors....And together they explain the great mysteries and secrets of the stock market:

The first is the overall productivity of the economy. Short-term variations don’t matter, only the long-term trends in total factor productivity — the degree to which the economy makes use of labor, capital, resources and so on — make a difference.

The second is the degree to which national output ends up in the pockets of either workers, on one hand, or investors on the other.

And the third, quite simply, is fear — or “risk aversion” in the technical parlance.

That’s it. Changes in these three factors explain 85% of the stock market’s movements over the past 70 or so years — the modern era. That’s quite something. But where this really gets interesting is where they look at the past 35 years. In the early 1980s Wall Street began a boom which, arguably, hasn’t ended yet. Many investors have come to believe that this is the normal order of things and that it will continue indefinitely. The standard rationale on Wall Street is that this has been caused by rising productivity...Not so, respond the professors. The trend in productivity has actually been going backwards. And indeed this is one of the disturbing, under-reported facts about the U.S. economy. Government data show that “real,” inflation-adjusted gross domestic product has been growing more slowly than we usually admit. In the 2000s it rose by 1.6% a year — half the rate of the 1950s, ‘70s or ‘80s, and more like one-third the rate of the 1940s and 1960s.

The real driver of the stock market boom? Lost ground by workers. The share of the economy going into the pockets of workers has been declining for decades, and especially since the early 1980s. Profits as a share of GDP are now near record levels. Great for investors, of course. Companies pay out dividends, buy back stock, or spend the money taking over disruptive startups in Silicon Valley. The professors argue that this one factor accounts for most of the stock market’s real gains for the past 35 years. For investors this offers a double-edged sword. On the one hand, maybe it means we should all buy more stocks, even at today’s elevated levels, because the stock market basically hedges against declining wages. On the other hand, it suggests that the stock market boom, which has taken the Dow Jones above 17,000 and the S&P 500 above 2,000, may be built upon sand. If labor can lose ground, it can, presumably, claim it back in due course.

The professors calculate that simple fear or risk aversion accounts for 75% of the short-term variations of the stock market. That’s it. In other words, in the short term it’s all about emotion. (Warren Buffett likes to say much the same thing, and he has the billions to suggest he knows what he’s talking about.) To put the idea another way: Buy when people are fearful, and sell when people are cheerful. Maybe it isn’t magic after all.

Nakd Capitalism

Yves here. There’s one thing to add to Richter’s useful recap of what the supposedly sparkling 3Q GDP results mean for those of us who live in the real economy. The GDP deflator fell from 2.1% in the second quarter to 1.3% this quarter, so some of the rosiness of the results was due to the swing in the deflator.

By Wolf Richter, a San Francisco based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and author, with extensive international work experience. Originally published at Wolf Street.

For individual Americans, economic “growth” means the opposite.

That the economy grew at a “faster than expected” annual rate of 3.5% in the third quarter has been touted as a sign that now – finally, after years of false promises – it is reaching that ever elusive “escape velocity.” But instantly, people with keen eyes began to quibble with it.

One big factor was military spending, which spiked 16%, the fasted since Q2 2009. This rate is based on the increase from the second quarter that is then annualized, assuming that spending wound continue at this rate for a year. This type of quarter-to-quarter annualized rate is volatile. For example, it plunged 20% in Q4 2012, jumped 17% in Q2 2009, and 18% in Q3 2008. Spikes and plunges often run in sequence (chart).

In reality…. According to data from the US Treasury, the Department of Defense spent $149 billion in Q3, which was actually down a smidgen from the $150 billion it spent in Q3 2013. This lets out a lot of hot air. That spike was likely a fluke, much like other spikes and plunges before it, and much of it may well be undone in Q4.

The other two big factors in that “faster than expected” growth of GDP were inventories, which ballooned and will eventually have to be whittled back down, and exports.

The surges in these three categories caused JPMorgan to cut its Q4 GDP growth forecast to 2.5% from 3.0%. “All three of these categories tend to be associated with payback the following quarter,” explained chief US economist Michael Feroli. And the crux of the economy, the consumer? “Still plodding along in a steady, but unspectacular, manner….”

Whether or not that annualized quarterly rate of 3.5% was a mirage – year over year, the economy grew by just 2.3%.

A growth rate barely above 2% is exactly where the US economy has been for the last five years! Nothing has changed. For a recovery by US standards, it’s a very crummy growth rate, and far from the escape velocity that Wall Street hype artists have predicted for years in their justification for the ceaselessly skyrocketing stock market.

But it gets worse. The population in the US has been growing too. And the economic pie has to be divvied up among more people. So the pie has to grow faster than the population or else, on an individual basis, that growing overall economy, gets cut into smaller slices of the pie.

GDP adjusted for inflation as well as population growth produces real per-capita GDP. It is the sort of economic growth that people actually experience. Doug Short at Advisor Perspectives has been tracking this measure for years (here is his update and methodology). And it paints a gloomier picture.

Before the financial crisis, real per-capita GDP peaked in Q4 2007. Then it fell 5.5% to bottom out in Q2 2009. Since then, it has been working its way back up. In 2013, it surpassed its pre-crisis peak. Now, it is up a measly 2.3% from where it was nearly seven years ago! And it remains far below the long-term trend (red line):




On this per-capita basis, the economy grew only 1.7% from Q3 last year. That’s less than half the annualized quarterly rate that has been bandied about all day.

It doesn’t even include the fact that the fruits of this economy have been very unequally distributed over those seven years, with the gains concentrated at the very tippy-top of the heap of humanity that makes up America. For the rest, this economy has been a tough slog.

And then, of course, it gets even worse.

The deflator used in the GDP calculations to come up with an inflation-adjusted growth rate is the Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE) index. But the PCE index is usually lower than the already dubious CPI. The only time since the financial crisis when PCE was higher than CPI was in 2010. In the latest reading, core PCE (without food and energy) was 1.47%, while core CPI came in at 1.73%. Same inflation, different numbers.

The difference each month may not be huge, but it’s cumulative, and over the years, it adds up. This chart by Doug Short (here is his latest update) shows the diverging paths of PCE (blue line) and CPI (red line) – and the game that those who’re using PCE are playing with us:





Since PCE is used to adjust GDP for inflation, “real” economic growth has been systematically overstated by understating inflation. If GDP had been deflated over the years with CPI, instead of PCE, that measly 2.3% growth of per-capita GDP since 2007, as crummy as it may appear, would likely be negative. And that explains why so many people – struggling with soaring rents, medical expenses, college costs, etc. – find that their slice of the economic pie has been shrinking since the financial crisis.

And this is the economy that has been stimulated since 2008 by the Fed’s relentless zero-interest-rate policy and $3.5 trillion in QE, on top of an additional $8.8 trillion in federal government debt. More “stimulus” can hardly be imagined. It makes otherwise sane people walk off in an uncertain direction, muttering to themselves and shaking their heads uncontrollably.

So, right in line, the essential ingredient in a thriving housing market is skidding inexorably in America. Read… The American Dream Going Bust – in One Chart

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/unknown-election-outcome-stocks-big-230953453.html

- A handful of toss-up U.S. Senate races next week could hold the key to whether the stock market glides through the year-end in a typical post-midterm election rally or gets hit with a fresh bout of volatility. U.S. investors appear less concerned with whether Republicans take control of the Senate, as expected, or Democrats hang on to their majority by a slim margin. They just want to know - come Wednesday morning - the actual outcome.

"If we have a really uncertain situation, where the Senate is divided and candidates are threatening recounts, that's really not good," said Robbert van Batenburg, director of market strategy at Newedge USA LLC in New York.

In two southern matchups - Louisiana and Georgia - polls show the races are too tight to call, raising the potential for run-off elections that could delay for weeks knowing who will control Congress' upper chamber. Louisiana's run-off election is scheduled for Dec. 6. In the market's worst-case scenario, the majority party may not be known until after Jan. 6, when Georgia will hold its run-off election if no Senate candidate wins at least 50 percent of the vote on Nov. 4.

Such an outcome, while considered unlikely, nevertheless rekindles uncomfortable memories for some of the 2000 presidential election, when George W. Bush's victory over Al Gore was not confirmed for more than a month after Election Day. That uncertainty contributed to a spike of almost 11.2 percent in the CBOE Volatility index (.VIX) and a 7.6 percent drop in the S&P 500 (.SPX) from Election Day through the Electoral College vote in late December that certified the outcome...

AH, YES, THERE'S ALWAYS THE FLORIDA PLAN FOR BACK-UP...STEAL IT IN THE COUNTING.

Wasn't there a diatribe about "Amusing Ourselves to Death"?



READ IT HERE: PDF FILE (THERE ARE SEVERAL ON THE INTERNET)

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCYQFjAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Flibcom.org%2Ffiles%2FNeil%2520Postman%2520-%2520Amusing%2520Ourselves%2520to%2520Death.pdf&ei=odFUVPDqIJKtyATil4KQCQ&usg=AFQjCNFtmncWmSLVBWbjmrhMHw3bs0JwoQ&bvm=bv.78677474,d.aWw

" Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, whose public was oppressed by their addiction to amusement, than by Orwell's work, where they were oppressed by state control. "

CENTURIONS AND CIRCUSES! JUST NO BREAD....WHICH MAY BE THE ONLY THING THAT ENDS THIS TRAP...

http://www.businessinsider.com/china-misses-october-pmi-2014-10

China's manufacturing PMI missed expectations, coming in at 50.8 rather than 51.1.

This is also down from September's read of 51.2.

Remember that any number lower than 50 in this metric suggests a contracting economy.

So this is bad.

What people watching the China slow down have been hoping for is some consistancy here.

In August PMI got walloped along with a whole host of other economic indicators. That was a warning to the government that China's economic landing was getting rough, and so they responded with some capital injections — nothing major — to keep cash moving through the economy as demand slowed.

In September, numbers came in a little rosier. There was a bit of a sigh of relief.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/china-misses-october-pmi-2014-10#ixzz3HosP2TDs

This is no way to Enlightenment. Any official number should be wholly disregarded, especially when it paints an unbelievably rosy picture that doesn't match the reality.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO MATT TAIBBI WHEN HE JOINED THE BRAVE NEW WORLD?

YVES DISHES THE DIRT! AND IT IS DIRTY DIRT...CUBIC YARDS OF DIRT

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/10/slugfest-taibbi-exodus-first-look-fails-address-editorial-meddling-doubts.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

GO READ FOR AN INSIDE LOOK ON THE FACE OF INTERNET JOURNALISM AND OLD-FASHIONED MEGALOMANIA

And it seems he's still up to something here...

Omidyar-funded candidate takes seat in new Ukraine parliament | PandoDaily

Ukraine just held its first post-revolution parliamentary elections, and amid all of the oligarchs, EU enthusiasts, neo-Nazis, nepotism babies, and death squad commanders, there is one newly-elected parliamentarian’s name that stands out for her connection to Silicon Valley: Svitlana Zalishchuk, from the billionaire president’s Poroshenko Bloc party.

Zalishchuk was given a choice spot on the president’s party list, at number 18, ensuring her a seat in the new Rada. And she owes her rise to power to another oligarch besides Ukraine’s president — Pierre Omidyar, whose funding with USAID helped topple the previous government. Zalishchuk’s pro-Maidan revolution outfits were directly funded by Omidyar.

Earlier this year, Pando exposed how eBay billionaire and Intercept publisher Pierre Omidyar co-funded with USAID Zalishchuk’s web of nongovernmental organizations — New Citizen, Chesno, Center UA. According to the Financial Times, New Citizen, which received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Omidyar, “played a big role in getting the [Maidan] protest up and running” in November 2013. Omidyar Network’s website features Zalishchuk’s photograph on its page describing its investment in New Citizen. Zalishchuk was brought into the NGOs by her longtime mentor, Oleh Rybachuk, a former deputy prime minster who led the last failed effort to integrate Ukraine into the EU and NATO.

Zalishchuk’s photos also grace the Poroshenko Bloc’s website and twitter feed, as she emerged as one of the presidential party’s leading spokespersons. The Poroshenko Bloc is named after Ukraine’s pro-Western president, Petro Poroshenko, a billionaire with a lock on Ukraine’s confectionary industry, as well as owning a national TV station and other prized assets. He came to power this year thanks to the revolution originally organized by Zalishchuk’s Omidyar-funded NGOs, and has rewarded her with a seat in the Rada.

The president’s party tasked Zalushchik with publicly selling the highly controversial new “lustration law” — essentially a legalized witch-hunt law first proposed by the neo-fascist Svoboda Party earlier this year, and subsequently denounced by Ukraine’s prosecutor general and by Human Rights Watch, which described a draft of the law as “arbitrary and overly broad and fail(s) to respect human rights principles,” warning it “may set the stage for unlawful mass arbitrary political exclusion.”

Complete story at - http://pando.com/2014/10/30/omidyar-funded-candidate-takes-seat-in-new-ukraine-parliament/

Such behavior went out with William Randolph Hearst.

Now THERE'S a topic for the future!!

http://www.businessinsider.com/new-threat-to-argentina-is-acceleration-2014-10

After a whipsaw summer that included the close of a decade-long lawsuit, a technical default, the most dramatic of political theatrics, and a contempt ruling from a US court — things have been relatively silent out of Argentina.

But some rumblings out of Wall Street indicate that there could be a change afoot. One word — "acceleration" — threatens to force an end to the stalemate between Buenos Aires and its creditors that has been in place since the country went into default this summer.

Acceleration is the nuclear option. It is the ultimate expression of the collective belief that Argentina will not pay bondholders. With acceleration, all bondholders call in their entire debt immediately. In its fullest expression, that amount in the tens of billions of dollars — far greater than what Argentina, with only $28 billion in its central bank reserves, can pay.

The country went into default this summer for refusing to pay a group of holdout bondholders led by Paul Singer of Elliott Management. For years the holdouts insisted on being paid 100 cents on the dollar for Argentine bonds dating back to the country's 2001 default. They argued that all bondholders, regardless of whether they had accepted a haircut on their debt, should be paid equally. That argument won, but Argentina did not care.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/new-threat-to-argentina-is-acceleration-2014-10#ixzz3HoxrtZDR

So I'm wondering if this 'acceleration' process might put Argentina on a fast track to BRICS membership, or at least as an associate member.

Not necessarily because they're up there with the big 5 yet, but because they're either up and coming, BRICS wants more allies, or just to spite Uncle Sam.

Indonesia and Turkey have been mentioned as candidates for full membership of the BRICS, while Egypt, Argentina, Iran, Nigeria, Syria and most recently Bangladesh have expressed interest in joining BRICS.

I have tried, in my capacity as liaison for the social committee, to set up various social events in the condo community: a candidate meet-and-greet, a "social" community-generated newsletter where people can put their birthday greetings, classified ads, poetry, etc., and the Board (which is ONLY in charge of the community's finances and legal issues) has shot those both down.

I intend to ask the fascists if they would like to take over the social committee, rename it "The Anti-Social Committee" and never meet, since the answer is always NO.

IMO, the BRICS as the anti-West, anti-US/UK, is just what the social forces for good needed. Argentina could do a lot worse. The parasitism of the USA 1% Elite must stop.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/11/michael-hudson-europe-to-pay-for-the-whole-mess-in-ukraine.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

Yves here. This discussion with Michael Hudson on RT focuses on the real meaning of the Ukraine-Russia gas deal. One point that Hudson makes that readers might doubt is that Russia loves the US sanctions. I’m not sure “love” is the right word, but there is reason to think they aren’t working out as the US had hoped. First, they’ve greatly increased Putin’s popularity. Even the intelligentsia in Moscow, who were hostile to him, have largely rallied to his side in the face of foreign bullying. Second, the Western press may be overstating the amount of damage done to the economy by the sanctions. Arguably the biggest negative is the fall in the price of oil, which came about growth in Europe and China slowing, and the Saudis announcing that they’d allow the price to reset at a much lower level than most analysts anticipated. But the ruble has been falling, which blunts that effect, but increases the drain on FX reserves as Russia tries to keep it falling too far and will increase inflation. Third, the sanctions have allowed Russia to engage in protection of domestic industries as a retaliatory measure, for instance, blocking many food imports from Europe.

Now all good well-indoctrinated neoliberals will say, “Trade protectionism merely allows domestic producers to become inefficient and uncompetitive.” It’s not so simple. Development economists are increasingly of the view that trade restrictions can help smaller economies develop domestic businesses to the point where they can compete in international markets, while if they foreign firms in, they’ll find it nearly impossible to build any local champions.

A colleague who does business in Russia but has no deep loyalties there, says he sees no signs of negative impact of the sanctions in Moscow (he describes it as now looking like any post World War II European capital). This is confirmed by recent surveys in Russia, so the lack of meaningful impact on Russian citizens isn’t an artifact of his seeing only the better parts of Moscow. Note that the latest EU forecasts anticipate very weak growth this year and next, as opposed to outright recession.

This visitor describes how the sanctions are helping Russian businesses. One of his friends has the Papa Johns franchise. They used to get their cheese from the Netherlands, but those supplies were cut off by the Russian sanctions against Europe. So they had to buy cheese domestically. It was cheaper but not as good. So he is working with the local farmers and cheese-makers to bring the cheese up to the standard of the cheese he used to import. So he expects to eventually have cheese that is lower cost than what he brought in and of comparable quality. And if he succeeded, the cheesemakers will be more competitive in Europe when the sanctions are relaxed.

The shorter version of this story is that Russia has a large enough domestic market and enough resources that unlike Iran, it may be closer to being able to function as an autarky when its imports and exports are restricted. The open question is whether it can go through the pain of a reset, with some serious and painful short-term dislocations, and escape the slow strangulation that the US claims it has imposed.

Now to the RT interview, with the transcript below.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_UBS_CONNECTICUT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-10-31-21-20-17

STAMFORD, Conn. (AP) -- Gov. Dannel P. Malloy says financial services giant UBS has committed to remaining in Connecticut through 2021.

The Democrat announced Friday that UBS and the state have amended their partnership agreement. It provided UBS with a $20 million loan that was fully forgivable if the company maintained 2,000 jobs for five years. Under the amended arrangement, the same $20 million loan will be forgiven, but the percentage of forgiveness will be based on the number of jobs retained annually, through 2021.

Economic Development Commissioner Catherine Smith said if the number of jobs declines, a portion of the loan must be repaid. She called the new formula "a win-win proposition."

Malloy recently cast doubt that UBS, with offices in Stamford, would keep the 2,000 jobs through the end of 2016.

nope....it was a Democrat--Malloy was his name...doubling down on a bad bet, governor?

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CHEAP_GASOLINE_THINGS_TO_KNOW_2ND_LD_WRITETHRU?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-10-31-15-08-04

NEW YORK (AP) -- The sight is so surprising that Americans are sharing photos of it, along with all those cute Halloween costumes, sweeping vistas and special meals: The gas station sign, with a price of $2-something a gallon.

"It's stunning what's happening here," says Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service. "I'm a little bit shocked."

The national average price of gasoline has fallen 33 cents in October, landing Friday at $3.00, according to AAA. Kloza said the average will fall under $3 by early Saturday morning for the first time in four years.

When the national average crossed above $3 a gallon in December of 2010, drivers weren't sure they'd ever see $2.99 again. Global demand for oil and gasoline was rising as people in developing countries bought cars by the tens of millions and turmoil was brewing in the oil-rich Middle East.

Now demand isn't rising as fast as expected, drillers have learned to tap vast new sources of oil, particularly in the U.S., and crude continues to flow out of the Middle East.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_EARNS_BIG_OIL?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-10-31-13-12-15

NEW YORK (AP) -- Falling oil prices hardly seem to be bothering the two biggest U.S. oil companies, but things could get tougher in the coming months.

Exxon and Chevron leaned on strong performances from their refining operations to increase profits in the third quarter despite plummeting global oil prices.

"These companies can hold up in weaker markets," said Brian Youngberg, an analyst at Edward Jones, about Exxon and Chevron. "Refining and chemicals can benefit from lower oil prices."

The global price of oil fell 18 percent from the beginning of the quarter to the end, and it cost both companies. Revenue slipped at Exxon by 4 percent and at Chevron by 8 percent.

http://go.bloomberg.com/market-now/2014/10/31/central-banks-answer-markets-prayers/

It’s the party that just keeps going: the first batch of guests leave, the next ones arrive. Just as the U.S. Federal Reserve winds down its asset purchases, the Bank of Japan expands its own program. World stock markets, rejoice!

For a while anyway. So far, quantitative easing, the policy of national bond purchases has arguably succeeded in perking up the economy, almost certainly succeeded in helping along the stock market and (this is key) certainly not led to the out-of-control inflation that critics predicted. Bloomberg Businessweek’s Peter Coy answers some of the folks who were sure bond buying would lead to economic catastrophe and still won’t admit they’re wrong.

That said, don’t get too comfortable. Central bank asset purchases dramatically lower bond returns and effectively push money into the stock market. When they end, the flow of money reverses.

The idea is to do it slowly and gradually and not cause a panic. So far the Fed is succeeding. However, over the long run pulling out of the stimulus without scaring the markets is a tough difficult maneuver to pull off (and stock market returns aren’t necessarily the central bank’s concern. The Bank of Japan pulled out of its last stimulus program, in 2006, fairly smoothly. But as the chart below shows, it was the prelude to three years of market declines.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-31/kuroda-s-easing-in-japan-seen-adding-to-pressure-on-korea-s-lee.html

The Bank of Japan’s surprise decision to ease monetary policy further may increase pressure on South Korea’s central bank to cut its benchmark interest rate again.

The yen’s tumble after BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda boosted unprecedented stimulus yesterday will help make some Japanese products cheaper in export markets. That adds to competitive pressure for South Korea that could prompt action from Bank of Korea Governor Lee Ju Yeol, say economists.

“If the yen continues to weaken, this will pose further downside risks to Korea’s exports,” Ronald Man of HSBC Holdings Plc in Hong Kong wrote in a note. “Lower export growth will weaken Korea’s economic outlook and, in turn, markets have naturally priced-in a higher probability of a rate cut.”

The yen dropped 2.2 percent against the dollar at 7:02 p.m. yesterday in Tokyo to trade near a six-year low. The Korean won fell 1.2 percent against its U.S. counterpart yesterday, it’s biggest drop in 16 months, amid speculation authorities in Seoul will move to weaken the currency.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/profit-most-reliable-dividend-payers-111412924.html

FREE ADVICE FOR RETIREMENT INVESTING....AND YOU KNOW WHAT THAT'S WORTH!

would be so piss poor -- i would have put a couple of bucks in dividends.

not that i have a bunch of money.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-31/boe-sets-4-05-bank-leverage-rule-in-push-to-ensure-stability.html


Barclays Plc (BARC) led banks higher in London trading, soaring the most in more than 18 months, after the Bank of England set a minimum regulatory ratio at a lower-than-expected level and gave firms until 2019 to comply.

Britain’s biggest banks will face a basic leverage ratio of 4.05 percent, which could rise to 4.95 percent if needed to cool excess credit or balance-sheet growth, the BOE, led by Governor Mark Carney, said today. Analysts at Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN) had estimated the ratio could have been set as high as 7.5 percent.

“It is absolutely at the lower end of people’s expectations,” said Chirantan Barua, a banking analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein Ltd. in London. “This is probably the most bank-friendly regulation we have seen. That’s both in terms of the levels of capital set and in terms of time the banks have been given to beef up capital.”

Barclays climbed 8.2 percent, the most since February 2013, to 240.8 pence. Lloyds Banking Group Plc (LLOY) advanced 2.6 percent to 77.13 pence.

THE EU IS SHAKING DOWN ITS MEMBERSHIP'S BANKS FOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO A "BAILOUT FUND"

I EXPECT THE ONLY NATION'S BANKS THAT WILL BENEFIT FROM IT WILL BE GERMAN...BUT I AM SUSPICIOUS OF MERKEL AND SCHAUBLE AND ALL THAT CREW...

AND THE BANKSTERS ARE NOT HAPPY, OF COURSE

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/01/us-bnp-paribas-eu-idUSKBN0IL2VP20141101?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews

French banks should pay only 10 billion euros ($12.5 billion) of the 16 billion they are being asked to contribute to a proposed EU bailout fund, BNP Paribas chief executive Jean-Laurent Bonnafé said in an interview in Le Figaro on Saturday. The size of contributions to the 55-billion-euro fund should be decided "as a function of their risk profile", he was quoted as saying, noting that European Central Bank stress tests showed France had "one of the most solid" banking sectors in Europe.

"Following this criterion, our financing contribution to the fund should be around 10 billion euros, whereas we would currently be asked for 16 billion," the chief executive said. "This gap is exorbitant."

BNP, France's largest bank, this week said it returned to net profit in the third quarter, rebounding from an $8.9 billion U.S. settlement in June for violating sanctions against Sudan, Cuba and Iran over a 10-year period up to 2012. Under the terms of the settlement, BNP must also clear all dollar transactions in New York and use correspondent banks throughout 2015 for oil- and gas-related business.

BNP will "work with five international banks" on dollar clearing, Bonnafé told Le Figaro, without specifying which ones. "All that will be operational by the end of the year."

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-31/citigroup-legal-costs-jump-as-currency-probes-accelerate.html

Citigroup Inc. (C) revealed that it’s facing a U.S. criminal probe into the bank’s foreign-exchange business and took a $600 million legal charge that forced it to restate third-quarter results.

The bank is cooperating with criminal and antitrust investigations by the Justice Department as well as inquiries by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and regulators in Britain and Switzerland, the New York-based company said yesterday in a regulatory filing.

Citigroup increased its legal reserves after discussions with the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority led the company to expect to pay $300 million to $400 million to settle the regulator’s investigation into currency-benchmark manipulation, said a person briefed on the talks who asked not to be identified because the negotiations are private.

The increase in third-quarter legal costs, on top of the $951 million disclosed earlier this month, “resulted from rapidly evolving regulatory inquiries and investigations, including very recent communications with certain regulatory agencies related to previously disclosed matters,” the company said in a separate statement.

http://wolfstreet.com/2014/10/29/the-american-dream-gone-bust/

The quintessential ingredient in the stew that makes up a thriving housing market has been evaporating in America. And a recent phenomenon has taken over: private equity firms, REITs, and other Wall-Street funded institutional investors have plowed the nearly free money the Fed has graciously made available to them since 2008 into tens of thousands of vacant single-family homes to rent them out. And an apartment building boom has offered alternatives too.

Since the Fed has done its handiwork, institutional investors have driven up home prices and pushed them out of reach for many first-time buyers, and these potential first-time buyers are now renting homes from investors instead. Given the high home prices, in many cases it may be a better deal. And apartments are often centrally located, rather than in some distant suburb, cutting transportation time and expenses, and allowing people to live where the urban excitement is. Millennials have figured it out too, as America is gradually converting to a country of renters.

So in its inexorable manner, homeownership has continued to slide in the third quarter, according to the Commerce Department. Seasonally adjusted, the rate dropped to 64.3% from 64.7 in the prior quarter. It was the lowest rate since Q4 1994 (not seasonally adjusted, the rate dropped to 64.4%, the lowest since Q1 1995).

This is what that relentless slide looks like:


US-quarterly-homeownership-rates-1995-2014

Homeownership since 2008 dropped across all age groups. But the largest drops occurred in the youngest age groups. In the under-35 age group, where first-time buyers are typically concentrated, home ownership has plunged from 41.3% in 2008 to 36.0%; and in the 35-44 age group, from 66.7% to 59.1%, with a drop of over a full percentage point just in the last quarter – by far the steepest.

Homeownership, however, didn’t peak at the end of the last housing bubble just before the financial crisis, but in 2004 when it reached 69.2%. Already during the housing bubble, speculative buying drove prices beyond the reach of many potential buyers who were still clinging by their fingernails to the status of the American middle class … unless lenders pushed them into liar loans, a convenient solution many lenders perfected to an art.

It was during these early stages of the housing bubble that the concept of “home” transitioned from a place where people lived and thrived or fought with each other and dealt with onerous expenses and responsibilities to a highly leveraged asset for speculators inebriated with optimism, an asset to be flipped willy-nilly and laddered ad infinitum with endless amounts of cheaply borrowed money. And for some, including the Fed it seems, that has become the next American dream.

Despite low and skidding homeownership rates, home prices have been skyrocketing in recent years, and new home prices have reached ever more unaffordable all-time highs. Housing Bubble 2 came into full bloom, but now it too popped. Mess ensues. Read… New Home Prices Plunge the Worst EVER (in One Ugly Chart)

COMMENTS AT LINK ARE ALSO READ-WORTHY

and then praise of Hillary. How many children's lives have been damaged by DLC/Third Way policies?

Too many, to be sure, and not just in this country, either. You want I should change the video?

EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW, THAT THE MSM WON'T TELL YOU....

EXTRA: ABOUT THOSE KURDS AND THEIR WOMEN WARRIORS...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/10/31/isis-the-useful-enemy/

LONG READ, VERY USEFUL

I GOT NEWS FOR THE WSJ--THERE'S DEFLATION A LOT CLOSER TO HOME, TOO.

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/10/31/deflation-hit-more-eurozone-products-in-october/

The pickup in the eurozone’s annual rate of inflation in October may ease some immediate pressure on the European Central Bank to provide more stimulus.

But the rise in the headline rate to 0.4% from 0.3% doesn’t tell the whole story. Looked at another way, prices of a larger array of goods were lower than a year earlier.

Energy accounts for 10.8% of the eurozone inflation basket, and energy prices have been lower than in the same month a year earlier since July. Unprocessed food makes up another 7.5% of the basket, and prices have also been falling in recent months. In September, that left 18.3% of the basket in deflation, or a situation in which prices were lower than a year earlier.

The big change in October was that prices of non-energy industrial goods were lower than in the same month of 2013. That’s a relatively rare event: It happened in June of this year, but before that, you have to go back to February 2010 to find the last year-to-year decline...

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-10-31/in-liberia-ebola-survivors-find-they-have-superpowers

Yesterday, Dr. Darin Portnoy, a family physician from the Bronx, completed his first rounds—60 patients, five of them children—in an Ebola ward of a treatment center in Paynesville, about 250 miles southeast of Monrovia, Liberia. He’s been impressed from the start by the efficiency of the clinic, but what struck him the most was watching as an Ebola survivor, a man he describes as looking a little like Mike Tyson, scooped up an 11-year-old boy in the infectious stages of the disease, carried him to a washbasin, and gave him a sponge bath, before carefully returning him to his cot.

Survivors, Portnoy says, are playing an increasing role in caring for the sick and the effort outside the wards to halt the epidemic. Ebola survivors are immune to the virus for as long as three months. This means they can risk getting close to those with symptoms, and even touch them—something that’s especially helpful with children, a number of whom are separated from their families. “It’s kind of like a superpower,” Portnoy says of the survivor’s immunity. “Even those who are not fully recovered, but that you can tell are going to clear the virus, they’ll help other patients before they’ve finished convalescing,” he adds.

ALL THAT SUFFERING, AND NOT EVEN LIFE-LONG IMMUNITY? THE WORLD IS SO SCREWED.

http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/10/fcc-reportedly-close-to-reclassifying-isps-as-common-carriers/

"Hybrid" approach wouldn't prevent all Internet fast lane deals....BUT IT'S BETTER THAN NOTHING!

The head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is reportedly close to proposing a "hybrid approach" to network neutrality in which Internet service providers would be partially reclassified as common carriers, letting the commission take a harder stance against Internet fast lane deals.

However, the proposal would not completely outlaw deals in which Web services pay for faster access to consumers.

As reported Thursday by The Wall Street Journal, the broadband service that ISPs offer to consumers would be maintained as a lightly regulated information service. But the FCC would reclassify the service that ISPs offer at the other end of the network to content providers who deliver data over Internet providers' pipes. This would be a common carrier service subject to utility-style regulation under Title II of the Communications Act.

"People close to the chairman" say that Chairman Tom Wheeler is "close to settling on a hybrid approach," the Journal wrote, continuing:


In May 2014, the Mozilla Foundation proposed a similar approach in a filing with the FCC that Ars reported on at the time. Later that month, the FCC voted for a plan that would not have reclassified ISPs and did not ban fast lane agreements. But the vote was tentative, allowing the FCC to change its mind after gathering public comments.

The proposal Wheeler is considering now "would leave the door open for broadband providers to offer specialized services for, say, videogamers or online video providers, which require a particularly large amount of bandwidth," the Journal wrote. "The proposal would also allow the commission to explore usage-based pricing at some point, in which consumers are charged based on how much data they use and companies are able to subsidize traffic to their websites or applications."

While not banning prioritization, the plan would "shift the burden" to ISPs to prove that deals benefit consumers and give FCC officials stronger legal authority to block anti-competitive arrangements. Free Press, a consumer advocacy group, said the latest "Frankenstein proposal" won't protect Internet users, and that "any rules that don’t clearly restore the agency’s authority and prevent specialized fast lanes and paid prioritization aren’t real net neutrality.”...Verizon, which sued to overturn the FCC's previous net neutrality rules, claimed Thursday that any use of Title II in broadband, even a hybrid approach, would not stand up in court. TechDirt was quick to point out that Verizon embraces Title II in other cases in order to get special treatment from the government.

BEST WISHES, M'AM!

https://news.vice.com/article/mike-browns-mom-is-taking-her-sons-case-to-the-un-in-geneva

Lesley McSpadden, the mother of the 18-year-old boy whose death at the hands of a Ferguson police officer in August sparked weeks of protests, is going to Geneva, Switzerland next month to speak about her son and other victims of police brutality in front of the United Nations.

Mike Brown's killing is still under investigation by federal officials, while a local grand jury tasked with deciding whether to charge officer Darren Wilson for his death is supposed to make an announcement any day — with few in Ferguson believing that an indictment is (INCLUDED).

But with little faith in the justice her son will receive, McSpadden, accompanied by one of the family's lawyers and a handful of local activists and human rights advocates, is taking her son's case — and that of other victims of racial profiling and police violence — straight to the UN Committee Against Torture, the body tasked with preventing torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment and punishment around the world.

The trip — which was recently made public by organizers and promoted under the tagline "Ferguson to Geneva" — is meant to make a case, to as wide an audience as possible, that both Brown's killing and the militarized police response to protesters demanding justice for him, are a matter of human rights.

"It's actually covered by article one of the convention against torture," Justin Hansford, a law professor at Saint Louis University and co-author of a brief to the UN body filed by Brown's family and local activists, told VICE News. "When the government has all the guns, all the force, and when they can kill people with impunity and without fear of being found guilty of a crime, that's a classic example of state violence."

"You see this in dictatorships and regimes where they do this to their own citizens and they get away with it," he added.

Hansford compared Brown's killing to that of Emmet Till in the 1950s — a pivotal moment behind the civil rights movement of the following years.

"The murder of Michael Brown was a fresh cut in an old wound in the sense that it played on the legacy of lynching, when black people's bodies were on display for people as a form of intimidation," Hansford said, referring to Brown's body, which laid on the streets for more than four hours.

Brown's death, he added, "wasn't just a violation of people's civil rights, it was a violation of their human rights."

MORE

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-30/17-objects-banned-from-brisbanes-g20-summit/5057354

For a few days in November next year, it will be illegal for people to carry certain household objects such as eggs and glass jars in central Brisbane or Cairns - unless they have a "lawful excuse".

This is because Queensland has passed a law setting out dozens of "prohibited items" that no-one will be allowed to carry in "security areas" during the G20 Summit.

In Brisbane, G20's designated security zone will include an area stretching north-south from Bowen Hills to South Brisbane, and extending west to Lang Park and east to Kangaroo Point.

Here are 17 of the prohibited items. Anyone carrying them could face a fine of up to $5,500.

1. The obvious stuff: Weapons, knives, antique firearms, replica firearms and explosives are all out. Smoke bombs too.

2. Shanghais, slingshots, swords and spearguns

3. Blowpipes

4. Handcuffs and whips

5. Bows and arrows

6. Eggs: Prohibited: "Projectiles, including, for example, stones, ball bearings or eggs." Also banned: glass jars and tin cans.

7. Big signs Banned: "A placard or banner to which a timber, metal or plastic pole is attached or a banner more than 100cm high by 200cm wide."

8. Dangerous animals Prohibited: "A reptile, insect or other animal capable of causing physical harm if released in close proximity to a person."

9. 'A thing capable of being used to climb a barrier' Also: "A thing capable of being used to construct a stage, platform, tripod or tower or a structure similar to a stage, platform, tripod or tower, other than a camera tripod".

10. Loud noises "A thing capable of emitting a sound loud enough to disrupt part of the G20 meeting, including, for example, a horn or a hand-held marine warning device." And: "A thing capable of emitting a sound that can distress or upset a dog or horse."

11. Non-weapons that could hurt someone "A thing that is not a weapon but is capable of being used to cause harm to a person."

12. Camouflage paint Banned: "A thing capable of disguising or concealing the identity of a person including camouflage paint or cream, a mask or a balaclava, but not including headwear, worn by a member of a religious group, of a type customarily worn by members of the group."

13. Flotation devices Also: "A manually operated surf ski or surfboard, kayak, boat or canoe."

14. Lasers "A laser pointer" and "a laser device capable of being shone onto an aircraft or of projecting an image".

15. Kites "A kite or other device suspended by airflow and controlled by a string or cord attached to it."

16. Remote-control cars - and drones "A remotely controlled device, including a vehicle or a model of a vehicle, including, for example, any of the following operated by remote control: a toy car; a model plane; a drone or unmanned aerial vehicle."

17. Fake ID "A thing purporting to be a Commonwealth accreditation or access approval, that is not genuine." And: "A thing purporting to be an identity card for an appointed person or a police officer, that is not genuine"

What's not banned?

Surprisingly, given the security record at international political events in Australia, fake beards are not specifically outlawed.

What if I have a good reason to carry one of these things?

People can possess "prohibited items" if they have a "lawful excuse". Some examples of lawful excuses outlined in the legislation include:

a family using knives to consume food at a barbecue at South Bank Parkland;

a child playing with a radio controlled toy car in the yard of the place where the child lives in a security area;

a person who purchases a longbow from a sports store in a security area and then carries the longbow in a case to the person's vehicle to take it home.

And some examples it gives where there's no lawful excuse:

a person operating an electronically controlled model plane in a way that it may enter a restricted area;

a person discharging a blood-coloured liquid from a pressurised water pistol into a restricted area;

a person who walks through the Queen Street Mall with an exposed longbow with the intention of firing arrows into the Brisbane River.

I DON'T KNOW IF THIS LIST IS COMPLETE---SO WHAT ABOUT BALLOONS, FULL OF EBOLA VIRUS?

plus all that other housekeeping stuff.

See you later tonight!

I'm going to bed, to stay there until the sun rises. Such luxury!

"Ancient Music" by the American poet Ezra Pound (Lustra, 1913–1915):

Winter is icumen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm,
Raineth drop and staineth slop,
And how the wind doth ramm!
Sing: Goddamm.
Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,
An ague hath my ham.
Freezeth river, turneth liver,
Damm you; Sing: Goddamm.
Goddamm, Goddamm, 'tis why I am, Goddamm,
So 'gainst the winter's balm.
Sing goddamm, damm, sing goddamm,
Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM.

http://www.businessinsider.com/we-bought-homeland-security-30000-worth-of-starbucks-last-year-2014-10

One of the cool things about being an employee of the federal government is the chance that you might get issued a super special taxpayer funded purchase card.

These cards allow you to spend the governments money on “micropurchases”–that is, things that cost under $3000–without disclosing any of that to the public.

(Oh, to live in a world where anything under $3000 is considered a micro purchase, right?)

This year alone, federal employees have spent about $20 billion on said “micro purchases.” Previous investigations into this practice have found that this money has often been spent on personal expenses, like haircuts, iPods, movie tickets dating site memberships and many other things that we really shouldn’t be paying for.



Read more: http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/230445/we-bought-homeland-security-30000-worth-of-starbucks-last-year/#ixzz3HuaU74dU

Constant vigilance!

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-middle-class-cant-afford-to-live-in-liberal-cities-2014-11

But San Francisco's problem is bigger than San Francisco. Across the country, rich, dense cities are struggling with affordable housing, to the considerable anguish of their middle class families.

Among the 100 largest U.S. metros, 63 percent of homes are "within reach" for a middle-class family, according to Trulia. But among the 20 richest U.S. metros, just 47 percent of homes are affordable, including a national low of 14 percent in San Francisco. The firm defined "within reach" as a for-sale home with a total monthly payment (including mortgage and taxes) less than 31 percent of the metro's median household income.

If you line up the country's 100 richest metros from 1 to 100, household affordability falls as household income rises, even after you consider that middle class families in richer cities have more income. [The graph below considers only the 25 richest US metros to keep city names moderately legible within the computer screen.]



Read more: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/why-are-liberal-cities-so-unaffordable/382045/#ixzz3Hug4RU9e

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_MIDTERM_ELECTIONS_ASIA_TRADE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-11-02-04-26-32

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Big Republican gains on Election Day would be a blow to much of President Barack Obama's agenda, but one stymied item on his to-do list might get a fresh chance to move forward: trade. That could breathe life into Asia-Pacific trade talks essential to his efforts to deepen engagement in the region.

Obama needs special authority, known as fast track, to negotiate trade deals that Congress can accept or reject, but cannot change. It would smooth the way for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is under discussion with 11 nations, and help advance separate negotiations with the 28-member European Union.

Fast-track legislation was introduced in January but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., would not allow a vote. Many Democrats fear that opening markets to countries with lower wages and standards will cost American jobs. Republicans tend to be more supportive, seeing more trade as benefiting the economy.

With Republicans favored to take control of the Senate and expand their House majority, trade could become a rare point of agreement between a Republican Congress and the White House.

Yet obstacles would remain.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_JAPAN_TOO_LOW_INFLATION?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-11-01-09-01-33

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In explaining its surprise move Friday to inject more stimulus into the financial system, the Bank of Japan cited one main factor: Prices that are too low.

Japanese central bankers worry that prices are starting to flat-line, especially amid tumbling crude oil costs and lackluster consumer demand. The BOJ warned that without action, Japan could find itself slipping back into the same "deflationary mindset" that has hampered the world's third-largest economy for much of the last two decades.

Extremely low inflation might seem like a healthy quality for an economy. Stagnant prices certainly feel better than the double-digit inflation that bedeviled the United States in the 1970s. But excessively low inflation can be just as destructive for an economy as runaway price increases.

The BOJ and other major central banks regard 2 percent as a healthy long-term inflation target. The latest data for Japan showed that a gauge of core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, fell shy of even 1 percent.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-30/shale-boom-redraws-oil-routes-as-alaskans-ship-to-korea.html

For signs of how the U.S. shale boom is transforming the global flow of oil, look halfway across the world at South Korea.

The Asian nation, which relies on the Middle East for about 86 percent of its oil imports, is benefiting as new output from Texas to North Dakota displaces the crudes that fed U.S. refineries for decades. South Korea received this month a shipment of Alaskan oil for the first time in at least eight years and may buy more, the importing company said. The country was one of the first to receive a cargo of the ultralight U.S. oil known as condensate after export rules were eased.

The U.S. shale revolution has driven oil output to the highest in more than three decades, reducing America’s need for overseas purchases and sinking global prices into a bear market. South Korea is seeking to reduce its dependence on Middle East crude just as OPEC’s biggest members discount supplies to protect market share and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. predicts the group is losing influence.

“The import burden for the U.S. has come down over the last few years,” Virendra Chauhan, a London-based analyst at Energy Aspects Ltd., said by phone Oct. 29. “A lot more crudes have become available to flow east into countries such as Korea.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-01/argentina-says-it-received-bids-for-2-23-billion-in-4g-auction.html

Argentina received bids totaling $2.23 billion in an auction of 4G mobile-phone airwaves, a move that will double the country’s capacity for wireless calls and Internet access while boosting dwindling foreign reserves.

The local units of Telefonica SA (TEF), Telecom Argentina SA and America Movil SAB (AMXL), which each hold about a third of the nation’s mobile-phone market, all vied yesterday for a share of two 4G frequency bands and for 22 percent of already-existing 3G spectrum. They’ll compete against a new fourth operator, Arlink SA, a unit of media conglomerate Grupo Uno, owned by Daniel Vila and Jose Luis Manzano. The starting bid for 10 segments of the spectrum was $1.97 billion, the Communication Secretary’s office said in an e-mailed statement.

The winning bids will be announced in mid-November, the government has said.

“This is very important, not only because it’s been guaranteed that a fair price was paid for a natural, limited and, in some cases, scarce resource such as the spectrum but also because the investments the companies will have to make in infrastructure are about $2 billion, which will contribute to foreign currency sustainability in the future,” the Communications Secretary’s office said in the statement.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-31/consumer-spending-in-u-s-unexpectedly-drops-as-incomes-cool.html

The drop in fuel prices couldn’t have come at a better time for the U.S. economy.

Consumer spending unexpectedly dropped 0.2 percent in September, weaker than any economist projected in a Bloomberg survey, after rising 0.5 percent in August, according to Commerce Department data issued today in Washington. The report also showed incomes rose at a slower pace last month.

“This is a little blip, a bit of payback, but all the numbers are pointing to solid growth between now and the end of the year,” said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist of IHS Inc. in Lexington, Massachusetts, who is among the top-ranked forecasters of consumer spending over the past two years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. “There are a variety of factors that are playing into it. Better finances for consumers, very good jobs growth and you’ve got more money in consumers’ pockets because of lower gasoline prices.”

The lowest costs at the gas pump in four years and the biggest payroll gains in more than a decade are projected to lift buying power and household purchases heading into the holiday-shopping season. Other reports today showed consumer confidence jumped this month to a seven-year high and manufacturing in the Chicago area picked up, bolstering prospects for a rebound.

11/2/14 via Sprout Money Blog
What has been expected for quite a while has now officially happened. The Federal Reserve stated that it would stop intervening on the market where it has been buying treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities like there was no tomorrow anymore. The program started at a rate of $45B per month but was upscaled rather fast to $85B per month before being gradually scaled back since the beginning of this year.
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But wait, let’s not get carried away by the so-called ‘End of Quantitative Easing’ and have a closer look at this MBS purchase program. The Fed’s announcement to stop purchasing additional Mortgage-Backed Securities was just talking about NEW investments paid for by freshly printed money. It is the central bank’s intention to continue to reinvest the returns on its $1.7 trillion dollar Mortgage-Backed Securities portfolio back in the market in the foreseeable future.
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The real ‘credibility test’ for the Federal Reserve will no longer be in the official Quantitative Easing numbers but in the size of the balance sheet. We dare to bet the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve won’t shrink at all in the near future, and we expect the total balance sheet to remain at extremely elevated levels for the foreseeable future. The official Quantitative Easing has ended, but the Federal Reserve isn’t stopping its interventions as the MBS purchases will continue at the same pace. It only wants you to believe it did.

charts at link
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-02/newsflash-fed-isnt-stopping-qe

http://blog.wfupress.wfu.edu/2014/10/31/a-final-song-for-samhain/

v. Samhain

(from “Ó Riada’s Farewell”)

Sing a song
for the mistress
of the bones

the player
on the black keys
the darker harmonies

light jig
of shoe buckles
on a coffin lid

***

pale glint
of the wrecker’s lantern
on a jagged cliff

across the ceaseless
glitter of the spume:
a seagull’s creak

the damp haired
seaweed stained sorceress
marshlight of defeat

***

chill of winter
a slowly failing fire
faltering desire

Darkness of Darkness
we meet on our way
in loneliness

Blind Carolan
Blind Raferty
Blind Tadgh

Posted Sept 05 2013

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