STOCK MARKET WATCH, Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Source: du

STOCK MARKET WATCH, Tuesday, July 26, 2011

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Euro, Yen, Loonie, Silver and Gold

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Handy Links - Market Data and News:Economic Calendar    Marketwatch Data    Bloomberg Economic News    Yahoo! Finance    Google Finance    Bank Tracker    
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Handy Links - Government Issues:
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Handy Links - Videos:
The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class    Charlie Rose talks with Roubini    Charlie Rose talks with Krugman
    William Black: This Economic Disaster    Bill Moyers with Kevin Drum and David Corn

Bush Administration Officials Convicted = 2
Names: David Safavian, James Fondren
Dishonorable Mention: former House majority leader, Tom DeLay

Bush Administration Officials Charged = 1
Name(s): Richard Lopez Razo

Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 = 12

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http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/koLlSatnyNI6_iLIj7rEJQ--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9Zml0O3E9ODU7dz05NTA-/

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This thread contains opinions and observations. Individuals may post their experiences, inferences and opinions on this thread. However, it should not be construed as advice. It is unethical (and probably illegal) for financial recommendations to be given here.

Read more: du

Jul 26 09:00 Case-Shiller 20-city Index May -4.2% -4.4% -3.96%
Jul 26 10:00 Consumer Confidence Jul 55.0 56.0 58.5
Jul 26 10:00 New Home Sales Jun 300K 320K 319K

Read more: http://www.briefing.com/investor/calendars/economic/#ixzz1TD3VeVTI

7/26/11 Home Prices in 20 U.S. Cities Fell 4.5% in Year

Home prices in 20 U.S. cities dropped in the year ended May by the most in 18 months, adding to evidence the housing market is struggling.

The S&P/Case-Shiller index of property values in 20 cities fell 4.5 percent from May 2010, the group said today in New York. The decline matched the median forecast of 32 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

A pipeline of foreclosures and uneven demand will keep prices from rising this year, discouraging new-home construction and delaying a rebound in housing. Shrinking home equity and an unemployment rate at 9.2 percent are weighing on consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the economy.

“Home prices have yet to find a bottom,” said John Herrmann, senior fixed-income strategist at State Street Global Markets LLC in Boston. “Buyers are incredibly cautious. They are concerned about the unemployment rate. There is uncertainty about the economic outlook.”

more...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-26/home-prices-in-20-u-s-cities-fell-4-5-in-year-to-may-case-shiller-says.html

SINGAPORE – Oil prices rose to near $100 a barrel Tuesday in Asia, boosted by a weaker dollar as talks among U.S. leaders made little progress ahead of next week's deadline to raise the government debt limit.

Benchmark oil for September delivery was up 42 cents to $99.62 a barrel at late afternoon Singapore time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Crude lost 67 cents to settle at $99.20 on Monday.

In London, Brent crude gained 14 cents to $118.08 per barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.

Republican and Democratic leaders rejected each others' government spending and debt proposals Monday as an Aug. 2 deadline looms for Congress to raise the government's $14.3 trillion debt limit.

http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/oil_prices

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bp-shares-drop-after-earnings-miss-expectations-2011-07-26

LONDON (MarketWatch) — BP PLC faced fresh scrutiny from investors Tuesday after quarterly earnings beat last year’s level but came in below expectations following a big drop in oil and gas production.

BP /quotes/zigman/247026 BP +1.23% /quotes/zigman/210014 UK:BP -2.40% posted a 12% rise in adjusted profit for the second quarter as it benefited from higher crude prices and better refining margins. But oil and gas production fell a whopping 11% compared with the 2010 quarter due in part to anemic output in the Gulf of Mexico and unexpected maintenance in the North Sea and Angola.

BP shares fell 2.5% in London morning trading, the biggest drop in the FTSE 100 /quotes/zigman/3173262 UK:UKX +0.06% . Analysts also had pointed questions on the slow resumption of BP activities in the Gulf of Mexico, its growth strategy after the demise of a major proposed deal in Russia and the effectiveness of much-touted safety upgrades following a recent fire in the North Sea that has further crimped output.

U.S. stock-index futures were little changed as Baidu Inc. and Broadcom Corp. released better-than- estimated forecasts, offsetting ongoing wrangling between lawmakers over plans to raise the federal debt limit.

Baidu, the owner of China’s most popular Internet-search engine, and Broadcom, the supplier of communications chips for Apple Inc.’s mobile devices, soared more than 6 percent. Netflix Inc. tumbled 9.6 percent after the mail-order and online film- rental service’s forecasts missed analysts’ projections.

Futures on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index expiring in September slipped less than 0.1 percent to 1,332.4 at 10:17 a.m. in London. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures fell 7 points, or 0.1 percent, to 12,543.

“Earnings continued to be strong in the U.S.,” Jim Reid, a global strategist at Deutsche Bank AG in London, wrote in an e-mail to clients. “The latest developments on the U.S. debt ceiling talks seem to have moved to centre stage in terms of being the macro driver this week. President Obama’s address overnight offered little news other than another confirmation that a bipartisan agreement is not closer to being agreed.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-26/u-s-stock-futures-are-little-changed-baidu-broadcom-gain-on-forecasts.html

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/e-coli-have-rights-too-republicans-say-2011-06-24

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Americans are fed up with the nanny state telling them how much salmonella they can get with their arsenic burger.

That’s what a shocking new Rasmussen Reports poll says. By a two-to-one margin, Americans say reducing the federal deficit is more important than inspecting the food supply. Read about Rasmussen’s poll.

Why is the result shocking? Because 57% of the people are more fearful of the imaginary dangers of our public debt than they are of the very real dangers of food poisoning.

The Centers for Disease Control estimates that about 48 million Americans come down with some sort of food-borne illness each year, with 128,000 requiring hospitalization and 3,000 requiring an undertaker. Any estimates of how many people get sick or die each year from our federal deficit? See the CDC’s estimates here.

The question posed by my friend Scott Rasmussen is a dumb one anyway: “What is more important -- increasing safety inspections for food sold in the United States or reducing the federal budget deficit?” Can’t we have both? That’s like saying, which is more important: your lungs, or your heart?

Good friend of ours is in recovery for food poisoning, suspected salmonella from hamburger at very chi-chi upscale restaurant.

but crazy people are driving this train.

Crazy Train:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67ER3SsLQY8

by the train.

"I'm afraid she's a bit tied up at the moment, but I have a feeling we'll be running into her shortly."
— Khallos from TimeSplitters


From: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChainedToARailway


(For those whose early childhood development was a bit later: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dudley_Do-Right)

and she only had eyes for the horse....more proof of intelligence

Took Statistics instead of doctoring/spinning the results, this might not be an issue.

Statistics is for those reality-based policy wonks.

that the 'top' 2% should pay... 2% of taxes. :crazy:

I guess there's high-cost private insurance for that, if you qualify.

Some big-business funeral home shares have been booming in recent years (scandals apart), have they not?

http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/01/news/economy/_morgue/index.htm

Inside the Wayne County morgue in midtown Detroit, 67 bodies are piled up, unclaimed, in the freezing temperatures. Neither the families nor the county can afford to bury the corpses. So they stack up inside the freezer....


Here's another:

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.9b2d6ae8d634ee22da626f6b21eb0527.131&show_article=1

Bodies left unclaimed, cadavers stacked high in morgues and burial rates tumbling as loved ones cut funeral costs: the crippling recession is even haunting the dead across the United States.
In Los Angeles, the local coroner's office has witnessed an unprecedented spike in the number of corpses unclaimed by families who cannot afford the costs of a burial or cremation.

"The reason we are hearing from the families is the economic downturn," Los Angeles County Coroner's chief investigator Craig Harvey told AFP. "They tell us they don't have the means to afford funerals."

In the past 12 months, the coroner's office, which is responsible for handling bodies from homicides and suspicious deaths, carried out 36 percent more cremations than the previous year, jumping to 712 from 525. At the Los Angeles County morgue meanwhile, the cremation figure rose by 25 percent.

More: Unclaimed corpses raise body counts

A hospital in Greensboro has seen unclaimed bodies stack up because family members can't afford to pay burial costs.

WGHP-TV reported the morgue at Moses Cone Hospital has had 39 bodies go unclaimed by family members this year. That's up from 15 in 2008 and 26 last year.

Hospital pathology director Theresa O'Laughlin says some families just lack the money for burial expenses that often mount into thousands of dollars. Other bodies are claimed after families collect a paycheck or tax refund.

Guilford County will pay for a bare-bones burial if the family can't, at least until the local government runs out of money.

Special cases: http://www.vba.va.gov/bln/21/Topics/Indigent/index.htm

Oh look - would these services be discontinued too for austerity's sake?

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These stories are not current, but the situation that has given rise to them continues unabated.

No joke at all.

He and Jim Cramer were joking about those who could't afford to go to college, "grandma in the snow" and how the president was out of reality last night b/c things are rosy and not as he painted the picture. I wrote CNBC this message:

Shame on your Squawk Box team this am, especially Jim Cramer et. al. speaking about the president's speech on the economy last night. "Grandma in the snow" is no joke, despite what these jokers think. They sit on high with their college education and high paying jobs, while millions can't afford to go to college, and cannot get jobs---that's why we have 10% unemployment, remember, jokers? I can't take these guys seriously anymore. They should lose their jobs for these insensitive, out-of-reality comments, or at least be assigned to a location far from their cushy offices to report on poverty in America. Maybe then they'll start experiencing what the rest of America is going through, instead of squawking to propagandize for the top 2% of income earners.

http://blogs.ajc.com/news-to-me/2011/07/25/technology-helping-cemeteries-spring-to-life/?cxntlid=cmg_cntnt_rss

Technology helping cemeteries spring to life
11:07 am July 25, 2011, by George Mathis


Tombstones haven’t advanced much since someone figured out how to carve granite with a sharp pointy thing.
But technology has a way of eventually improving — or destroying — everything.

QR codes, those black and white boxes of computerized gibberish on almost everything that can be scanned with smartphones, are now popping up in cemeteries.

Scanning a code takes taphophiles to a website that details the life and times of the dearly departed. The trend may be catching on...

for a no frills cremation with the ashes presented in a cardboard box. Paupers no longer get shoved into holes in the ground. Cemetery real estate is just too valuable and funeral directors have gotten enough bad law passed that nobody can get planted in random state or federal land out in the desert.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/india-hikes-key-rate-more-than-expected-2011-07-26

MUMBAI (MarketWatch) — The Reserve Bank of India on Tuesday hiked its key lending interest rate by a larger-than-expected half percentage point to 8%, as it tries to tame what it says are mostly demand-led inflation pressures.

The move marked the 11th time the central bank has hiked interest rates since March 2010.

The RBI also lifted its forecast for benchmark wholesale inflation by the end of March 2012 to 7%, up from 6% previously. However, it maintained its forecast for growth of 8% in the current fiscal year.

“Considering the overall growth-inflation scenario, we determined that it is necessary to persevere with the anti-inflationary stance,” RBI governor Duvvuri Subbarao said in the central bank’s quarterly policy review.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/pox-on-dollar-euro-makes-swissie-good-as-gold-2011-07-26?dist=markets

FRANKFURT (MarketWatch) — Call it a race to the bottom, an ugly-dog contest or a pox on both their houses, but the battle between the dollar and the euro for the title of world’s most troubled currency shows no sign of letting up.

Right now, the dollar is back in the spotlight as politicians proceed with a high-stakes game of chicken over the U.S. government’s debt limit.

As the White House and lawmakers work against an Aug. 2 deadline, the threat of a default or a downgrade of the government’s AAA credit rating grows. Read the latest in the U.S. debt drama.

But it’s not all rainbows and puppies in the euro zone either, even after last week’s agreement on a second bailout for Greece.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903591104576469251850943630.html?ru=MKTW&mod=MKTW

FRANKFURT—Germany's Deutsche Bank AG Tuesday reported a 3.3% increase in net profit for the second quarter as revenue from its newly bolstered private banking business offset a slowdown in its main trading businesses caused by the euro-zone debt crisis.

Net profit was €1.20 billion ($1.73 billion), compared with €1.16 billion a year earlier and just shy of analyst expectations of €1.24 billion. Revenue from corporate and investment banking, which traditionally contributes the biggest portion of Deutsche Bank's profit, increased to €4.9 billion from €4.7 billion in the second quarter of 2010.

LONDON (MarketWatch) — ... The Stoxx Europe 600 index XX:SXXP -0.29% fell 0.4% to 270.33 in morning trading. U.S. markets dropped on Monday amid continued worries about the debt ceiling, but ended the day above the session’s lows.

...

Shares in UBS CH:UBSN -1.66% UBS -2.75% dropped 2% after the group said its second-quarter profit nearly halved due to the strong Swiss franc, falling client volumes and lower trading income. UBS said it will slash costs and cut jobs to offset the weakness.

Other bank stocks edged mostly higher, led by a 1.6% gain for Deutsche Bank AG DE:DBK -0.99% DB -0.29% after the group reported a slight rise in profit and set out the succession plan for its CEO.

...

Oil giant BP PLC UK:BP -2.20% dropped 2.5% in London after its earnings missed market expectations on lower production volumes.

/... http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bp-ubs-lead-european-stocks-lower-2011-07-26?siteid=yhoof

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4936043

See live USDX chart here: http://www.fxstreet.com/rates-charts/usdollar-index/?version=0 (only the default (java) format works for me. Check time scale & period options - can update by the minute).

I made a killing (relative to my account) during and after the Big O's speech last night. Whats your strategy for dealing with politically driven news and reaction cycles?

I've just been generally long CHF, CAD, AUD, SGD and EUR, oh, and some Yen, (holding almost zero USD) for some time now. With some gold and silver at the base.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/special-factors-blamed-for-slow-growth-2326129.html

Britain's economy slowed between April and June after new figures today showed the UK grew by 0.2% in the quarter.

The figure is lower than the 0.5% seen in the first quarter, but the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the figures this time were heavily influenced by one-off factors such as the royal wedding, Olympic ticket sales, record warm weather in April and the Japanese tsunami.

The ONS estimated the impact of these effects knocked as much as 0.5% off the GDP figure, which otherwise may have shown growth of 0.7%.


:eyes:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/steve-richards/steve-richards-he-can-call-it-what-he-wants-but-osborne-needs-a-plan-b-2325993.html

Amidst numerous famous U-turns the Coalition clings to a supposedly unyielding economic policy. As far as the NHS is concerned, or indeed the future of Rupert Murdoch, there are Plan Bs and perhaps Plan Cs. For the economy there is only George Osborne's Plan A. There appears to be no alternative. On several fronts a degree of flexibility is applied. As far as the economy is concerned the Chancellor is not for turning.

There are two explanations for the contrast between expedient flakiness in relation to public service reform and flaky resolution when it comes to a fragile economy. The first is that having taken such a big radical step on the economy last summer further, more striking, bigger leaps for public services proved to be too much. There is something in this. Osborne is known to have been one of the most concerned about the impact of the original NHS reforms.

The second explanation is more convincing. There are already some signs that the Coalition is moving away from its rigid embrace of Plan A. Its slightly bewildered expediency in other areas applies to the economy too. Osborne will never admit to this. Too much now depends on him showing that he sticks with his Plan and that it will deliver. But the Business Secretary, Vince Cable, has already spoken of a Plan A Minus and Chris Huhne, the other Liberal Democrat economist in the Cabinet, has pointed out that ifwaters prove to be choppy, a ship changes course. A flatlining economy a year after Osborne's so-called emergency Budget meets the definition of choppy waters.

Oddly, in the one area where the two parties remain genuinely united, there are already signs of change. Senior Liberal Democrats remain as committed to the deficit reduction strategy as they were last summer. Cable made this clear in his BBC interview on Sunday. And yet some of the targets agreed in the chaotically rushed comprehensive spending review last summer will not be met. The reform of the reforms to the NHS, which is still far from complete, will involve the employment of more bureaucrats to manage a transition that seeks to please left-of-centre Liberal Democrats and the ideologues that shaped the original proposals. Ken Clarke's U-turn on sentencing means that some of his savings, much hailed last summer until parts of the media recognised the policy implications, no longer apply. Then there are the costs of Britain's involvement in Libya, another much-lauded initiative at the time and now draining resources without getting very far in practical terms. There are many examples. It is much harder to cut public spending than announce the intention to do so.

http://www.truth-out.org/talmud-and-greek-debt/1311432754

There are two ways to look at Greece’s majestically unsustainable sovereign-debt mountain. There is, first, a pragmatic and short-term perspective, which focuses on ensuring some form of orderly restructuring (possibly for other vulnerable European states as well) without bringing down the eurozone. And there is a “moral” perspective, which focuses on the nature of debt and on the long-term economic consequences of failing to honor it...Neither perspective is wrong; on the contrary, the problem is how to reconcile them. Indeed, failure to do so appears to explain why the official response to the Greek debt crisis has been so inadequate. In these circumstances, the Talmud, the ancient repository of Jewish legal commentary – and one of the oldest sources of human thought on morality and economic activity – might hold the key. An oft-quoted passage provides a fresh, if not exactly new, perspective on Greece’s debt and the best way to address it.

The passage concerns sales, divorces, and offerings, and specifies that these acts are legally valid only if a person performs them voluntarily. Nevertheless, under certain circumstances, courts may force an individual until he says that he is, indeed, willing. The verse says, literally, “We (the court) force him until he says that he wants to do it willingly.” So, “in divorces (if the man refuses to grant it), we exercise force on him until he says ‘I want to do it voluntarily.’” Similarly, if a court forces a person to sell his property, the sale is valid because it is considered to have been carried out voluntarily. Understanding this apparent contradiction sheds light on the controversy surrounding the question of private bondholders’ involvement in the Greek rescue package. It is argued that, to avoid a default, private creditors should agree to shoulder part of the cost of the bailout. But how does one impose a financial loss on bondholders without it being classified by credit-rating agencies as a default? The prevailing answer is that one coerces bondholders to accept the deal “voluntarily.”...Individuals know fundamentally what is good for them and for society, but they are often hesitant to act accordingly, owing to fear, embarrassment, or, very often, the belief that their actions will not be worthwhile if others do not follow in their footsteps.

The court, according to this view, provides the coordinating mechanism, eliminating free riders and forcing all parties to an outcome that makes everybody better off. Thus, individual decisions, though extracted under pressure, become, when assessing the outcome, truly voluntary. Seen in this light, unilateral schemes, such as the original German proposal (forcing maturities on Greek debt to be voluntarily extended for several years) are only voluntary under the ruthless interpretation. In initiatives of this sort, agreement is obtained reluctantly and pressure could provoke harsh responses. Rating agencies are right in considering them a “selective” default that is bound to result in contagion – and, eventually, in widespread debt restructuring...The alternative is to seek a cooperative resolution, consistent with the benign interpretation of “forced willingness.” This can be achieved by adopting some features of the model used in Eastern Europe, known as the “Vienna Initiative.” Some of the current proposal to deal “voluntarily” with the Greek debt goes some way in this direction. But the initiative is insufficient, because the three pillars of the Vienna model are basically missing.

The first pillar of that model is simultaneous involvement all parties – the sovereign, bondholders and their governments, the European Central Bank, and international organizations – in designing the scheme from the start. The second ingredient is proper incentives to participate, including direct financing from bondholders’ governments, using the resources that today finance the transfer of Greek debt from private to official hands. The third component is the exercise of suasion on bondholders to achieve maximum participation, obtain binding pre-commitments, and eliminate free riders....Since this scheme would imply losses for bondholders, substantial official muscle and peer pressure is needed. But gaining time for a more orderly resolution, mitigating contagion, and reducing the size of an eventual write-down do indeed add up to a superior outcome. Therefore, under this model – and despite the initial pressure – the behavior of bondholders could be considered truly voluntary. And, while rating agencies might still regard a Vienna-type outcome as a default, the Talmudic sages show us why a more thoughtful classification is required.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/07/moodys-downgrades-greece-three-notches-more.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

Oh, this is beginning to feel like the crisis all over again in at least two respects: news events taking place on the weekend (well at least from the US perspective) and multiple wobblies happening at the same time.

Frankly, Greece should have been rated junk long before it was relegated to that terrain (note this Moody’s downgrade just takes Greece further into speculative territory, from Caa1 to Ca, which is a degree of refinement that many might deem to be irrelevant). And I’m told by a former ratings agency employee that the agencies have absolutely no methodology for rating countries (although given how well their methodologies worked in structured credit, this shortcoming probably means less than it ought to). ..

And the weight of such long experience.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0002_0_01521.html

Basically, Jewish law did not recognize the concept whereby personal rights or obligations (whether arising from contract or from a liability for damages in tort) could be legally assigned, either by the creditor or the debtor, to one who was not a party to the obligation itself. This was because a debt was considered intangible and therefore incapable of legal transfer (Rashi, Git. 13b; R. Gershom, BB 147b; Tos. to Ket. 55b). It was compared to the case of an object that was not yet in existence (davar she-lo ba la-olam) which also could not be transferred (see Tos. to BK 36b).

The development of commerce and its increasingly sophisticated requirements made it necessary however to overcome this difficulty in the law, and the assignment of debts, whether verbal or by deed, is already mentioned in the tannaitic period (Tosef., BM 4:3, et al.). Two principal methods of assignment were invented: (1) a form of novation, whereby an existing debt was canceled and an identical, but new debt created between the debtor and the creditor's assignee – all three parties consenting; and (2) a formula whereby the creditor appointed an agent to recover a debt on his behalf, but empowered the agent to retain the proceeds for himself. From these two methods were developed the two legal forms of assignment of debts dealt with in the Talmud, namely Ma'amad Sheloshtan (lit. "a meeting of the three") and Mekhirat Shetarot ("sale of bonds"). In addition, there was the Shi'buda de Rabbi Natan a process of legal execution entrusted to the court....(read more)

(enough for several lifetimes of study).

Recorded. Thanks.

is (culturally) looking for, as far as I can see from the first 59/1518 pages I've scanned so far.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/07/geithner-obama-sellout.html

This post first appeared on 6 November 2009 on Credit Writedowns as “The less optimistic view of Treasury’s handling of the crisis“.

The Obama Administration is captured. To understand why it has acted as it has, one doesn’t have to take the view that its efforts to save the banking industry were a deliberate attempt to line bankers’ pockets by transferring money from taxpayers to the banking industry. One need merely read the last post I wrote on this topic.

In their wildly optimistic view, the banking industry is solvent and always has been. All that was needed to ‘solve’ than banking crisis was a lot of liquidity, government backstops and, most importantly, time. This blinkered view sees a looting of taxpayer money to bailout the banking industry as necessary to save banks whose credit is the ‘lifeblood of our economy.’

They are wrong. The banks did not need to bailed out. The banking industry industry needed to made solvent again. There is a big difference between those two sentences (banks versus banking industry and liquidity versus solvency) that goes to the core of the captured and politically damaging world view we have seen on display by the Obama Administration...

http://www.alternet.org/economy/151767/the_reason_ceos_make_350_times_more_money_than_their_workers_--_and_why_that%27s_terrible_for_the_economy

July 25, 2011 |

In 1991, well-known compensation consultant Graef S. Crystal published In Search of Excess: The Overcompensation of American Executives in response to an explosion in executive pay that occurred in the US in the 1970s and 1980s. How, Crystal asked, did it make any economic sense for the CEOs in his sample of 200 large US corporations to be making 130 times the pay of the average American worker? And why were they making about seven times the compensation of their CEO counterparts at Japanese companies, many of which were out-competing their US rivals?

Yet the surge in top executive pay that Crystal observed 20 years ago pales in comparison to the volcanic eruption that has occurred since then. In the mid-2000s, top executive pay in the United States was about three times higher in real terms than the levels of the early 1990s. And the ratio of the average compensation of the CEOs of the largest corporations to that of the average worker climbed as high as 525:1 in 2000 before declining to what has become the “new normal” of about 350:1 in 2010. The gains from exercising stock options represent both the largest and most variable component of top executive pay, giving CEOs, CFOs, and other top dogs a huge interest in allocating corporate resources in ways that jack up their companies’ stock prices — most notably through stock buybacks that can run into billions of dollars per year.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/07/did-sheila-bair-save-the-us-from-complete-financial-meltdown.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

When a moderate (meaning anachronistic) Republican proves to be a more tough minded regulator than Democrats, it serves as yet another proof of how far the county has moved to the right. Bair, in a long “exit interview” with Joe Nocera, says a number of things that would have been regarded as commonsensical and obvious in the 1980s, yet have a whiff of radicalism about them in our era of finance uber alles. For instance: Bear should have been allowed to fail, TBTF banks are a menace (well, she doesn’t say that, but makes it clear she regards them as repugnant), bank bondholders should take their lumps.

Bair was alert to the dangers of subprime, having recognized how dangerous it could be in the early 2000s (when a smaller version of the market blew up, taking homeowners along with it), and was not a believer of the Paulson/Bernanke party line that subprime would be “contained”. She long championed mortgage mods as better for lenders, borrowers, and the economy, and has fought an uphill battle with the Administration on that front. With the IndyMac failure, which put the subprime lender/servicer in the FDIC’s lap, she pushed hard to develop a template for how to do them, which then was ignored by the Administration (they did HAMP instead, an embarrassment which she refused from the outset to endorse).

The piece serves as an indictment of the banking industry toadies in the officialdom, namely the Treasury, Fed, and OCC. One priceless quote:

They would bring me in after they’d made their decision on what needed to be done, and without giving me any information they would say, ‘You have to do this or the system will go down.’ If I heard that once, I heard it a thousand times. ‘Citi is systemic, you have to do this.’ No analysis, no meaningful discussion...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/magazine/sheila-bairs-exit-interview.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all

...Most European countries quickly adopted Basel II. In the United States, the Federal Reserve was strongly in favor of doing so, too, as was the O.C.C. But the F.D.I.C., fearing that lower capital requirements and the self-selection of risk models would increase the risk of bank failures, opposed Basel II. This meshed perfectly with Bair’s own instincts, and once she arrived at the F.D.I.C., she became the standard-bearer in opposing the new rules. The Fed, in particular, pushed her to sign on; it didn’t need the F.D.I.C.’s approval, but it is politically important for all the regulators to be aligned when instituting such an important change. Instead, Bair conceded, “we dragged it out and dragged it out.” She dragged it out so long, in fact, that the financial crisis arrived before Basel II was ever implemented in the United States.

Foot-dragging is not the sort of bureaucratic tactic that draws praise or even much notice. But I’ve long believed that her opposition to Basel II has been a hugely underappreciated factor in helping to save the financial system when the crisis came. The European banks, lacking adequate capital, were crushed by the financial crisis. Big banks in places like Ireland and Iceland collapsed. Germany doled out hundreds of billions of dollars to shore up its banks. Even today, banks in Europe are in far worse shape than they are in the U.S. American banks didn’t have enough capital, either, but they had a lot more than their European counterparts, and for all their ongoing problems, they are much healthier institutions today....

http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2011/07/sec-charges-jpm-with-rigging-muni-bond.html

Such serious charges of bribery and corruption that are settled with fines and no admission of guilt despite overwhelming evidence often initiated by the States, is a merely the cost of doing business when one is occasionally discovered in an ongoing confidence game.

This global financial cartel robs billions from the public on a regular basis across a wide range of financial and commodity markets.

The fines are paid, a highly compensated individual takes the nominal 'punishment' while keeping the proceeds, the politicians and regulators are paid, and the fraud continues on.

As Bloomberg TV snarkily observed today, the $238 million dollar fine represents less than ONE day's take for JPM, only six hours work in the markets. The stock was up on news of the favorable settlement.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/opinion/26nocera.html

Last Wednesday, nearly lost in the furor over Rupert-gate and the debt ceiling crisis, came the surprising news that the Federal Reserve has issued a cease-and-desist order against a Too-Big-to-Fail bank. The bank was Wells Fargo, which was also fined $85 million and ordered to compensate customers it had unfairly — indeed, illegally — taken advantage of during the subprime bubble.

What made the news surprising, of course, was that the Federal Reserve has rarely, if ever, taken action against a bank for making predatory loans. Alan Greenspan, the former Fed chairman, didn’t believe in regulation and turned a blind eye to subprime abuses. His successor, Ben Bernanke, is not the ideologue that Greenspan is, but, as an institution, the Fed prefers to coddle banks rather than punish them. That the Fed would crack down on Wells Fargo would seem to suggest a long-overdue awakening.

Yet, for anyone still hoping for justice in the wake of the financial crisis, the news was hardly encouraging. First, the Fed did not force Wells Fargo to admit guilt — and even let the company issue a press release blaming its wrongdoing on a “relatively small group.” The $85 million fine was a joke; in just the last quarter, Wells Fargo’s revenues exceeded $20 billion. And compensating borrowers isn’t going to hurt much either. By my calculation, it won’t top $20 million.

Most upsetting of all, the settlement raises the question that just won’t go away: Why can’t the federal government prosecute financial wrongdoers? I realize that the Federal Reserve can’t bring a criminal case (and, to be fair, there are statutory limits on how big a fine it can levy). But the Justice Department certainly can. Yet ever since it lost an early case against two Bear Stearns fund managers in 2009, it has gone after only the smallest of small fry: individual borrowers, brokers and appraisers who lack the means to do much more than plead guilty...

MUCH MORE AT LINK

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/business/the-unemployed-somehow-became-invisible.html?ref=business

Fourteen million, in round numbers — that is how many Americans are now officially out of work. Word came Friday (JULY 3) from the Labor Department that, despite all the optimistic talk of an economic recovery, unemployment is going up, not down. The jobless rate rose to 9.2 percent in June. What gives? And where, if anywhere, is the outrage? The United States is in the grips of its gravest jobs crisis since Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House. Lose your job, and it will take roughly nine months to find a new one. That is off the charts. Many Americans have simply given up. But unless you’re one of those unhappy 14 million, you might not even notice the problem. The budget deficit, not jobs, has been dominating the conversation in Washington. Unlike the hard-pressed in, say, Greece or Spain, the jobless in America seem, well, subdued. The old fire has gone out.

In some ways, this boils down to math, both economic and political. Yes, 9.2 percent of the American work force is unemployed — but 90.8 percent of it is working. To elected officials, the unemployed are a relatively small constituency. And with apologies to Karl Marx, the workers of the world, particularly the unemployed, are also no longer uniting. Nor are they voting — or at least not as much as people with jobs. In 2010, some 46 percent of working Americans who were eligible to vote did so, compared with 35 percent of the unemployed, according to Michael McDonald, a political scientist at George Mason University. There was a similar turnout gap in the 2008 election...No wonder policy makers don’t fear unemployed Americans. The jobless are, politically speaking, more or less invisible.

It wasn’t always so. During the Great Depression, riots erupted on the bread lines. Even in the 1980s and 1990s, angry workers descended on Washington by the busload. “There used to be a sense that unemployment was rich soil for radicalization and revolt,” says Nelson Lichtenstein, a professor of labor history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “That was a motif in American history for a long time, but we don’t seem to have that anymore.”...“There’s an illusion that grass-roots activity just begins spontaneously, that people get mad and suddenly say, ‘I’m not going to take it anymore!’ ” says Michael Kazin, a historian at Georgetown University. “But that’s not how it happens.” Intellectuals used to play a big role in organizing labor. In the 1930s, Communists and socialists were a major force. Later, labor unions stepped in. But today’s unions are not set up to serve the unemployed; they generally organize around workplaces, after all...Just ask Rick McHugh, who worked in Michigan as an employment lawyer for the United Automobile Workers from the 1980s through the 1990s. He represented workers who were appealing denials of unemployment insurance benefits. The union footed the bill for people he represented who were not, and had never been, U.A.W. members. Today, however, many unions are fighting for their own survival. They no longer provide such support for nonmembers. “They just don’t have the staff and the resources to support these programs and the recipients like they used to,” says Mr. McHugh, now a staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project. Workers have also become suburbanized. Back in the 1960s or even the 1980s, the unemployed organized around welfare or unemployment offices. It was a fertile environment: people were anxious and tired and waiting for hours in line. “We stood outside of these offices, with their huge lines, and passed out leaflets that said things like: ‘If you’re upset about what’s happening to you, come to this meeting at this church basement in two weeks. We’ll get together and do something about this,’ ” recalls Barney Oursler, a longtime community organizer and co-founder of the Mon Valley Unemployed Committee in the early 1980s. “The response just made your heart get big. ‘Oh, my God,’ they’d say, ‘I thought I was alone.’ ”

The Mon Valley Unemployed Committee, which is based in Pittsburgh, helped organize workers in 26 cities across five states, simply by hanging around outside unemployment offices and harnessing the frustration...Today, though, many unemployment offices have closed. Jobless benefits are often handled by phone or online rather than in person. An unemployment call center near Mr. Oursler, for instance, now sits behind two sets of locked doors and frosted windows...In other countries, workers have mobilized online. Unions here, too, have reached out on the Web. They include groups like Working America (the community affiliate of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.) and UCubed (created by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers).

http://www.truth-out.org/there-are-jobs-those-who-want-them-not/1311273270

The New York Times on Wednesday featured another Casey Mulligan episode of "There Is No Unemployment." Mulligan's argument is that if we look at employment rates for the older population we see that they have actually risen in the downturn even as employment for people ages 25-55 plummeted. Mulligan interprets this as evidence that highly motivated older workers are able to find jobs, and if younger workers were equally motivated they would find jobs too.

This is an interesting story. The rise in employment rates of older workers is a striking story in this downturn and one that I and others have often noted. However, there are other possible interpretations...Older workers almost by definition will have more experience than their younger counterparts. Employers tend to fire less experienced workers with less job tenure first. (Just as they tend to fire less-educated workers first.) This could lead to the pattern of lower employment rates among younger workers that we are seeing without having any direct relationship to the commitment of workers to the labor force.

There is a simple way to try to test this story. We can look at patterns in wage growth since the downturn. If Mulligan's story is right then we might expect to see the wages of older workers rise less rapidly than for younger workers. (These are nominal wages.) The idea is that the desperate older workers are willing to take big pay cuts to keep or get a job, while the young whipersnappers would rather lounge around on the couch watching TV. The chart below shows the change in median weekly earnings between 2007 and the average of last four quarters (2010:3-2011:2) for men and women between the ages of 25-54, 55-64, and over age 65.



Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.

As can be seen, median weekly earnings rose slightly more rapidly for the both men and women in the 55-64 age cohort than in the 25-54 group. They rose much more rapidly for the over-65 age group. There is not much evidence here of older workers who are desperately looking for jobs and willing to make whatever sacrifice is necessary. In other words, this is consistent with the demand side story, in which employers dump their younger workers first while holding on to older workers, so that there are no jobs for the under-55 set...It is the same story as with more highly educated workers. College-educated workers saw less of a fall in employment than less educated workers. However, this does not mean that less-educated workers could find jobs if they really want them, nor that there are even jobs for every college educated worker who wants them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/business/help-wanted-ads-exclude-the-long-term-jobless.html?_r=1&ref=business

The unemployed need not apply.

....an information technology operations analyst... said a recruiter had told her that despite her skill set she would be a “hard sell” because she had been out of work for more than six months.

Legal experts say that the practice probably does not violate discrimination laws because unemployment is not a protected status, like age or race. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently held a hearing, though, on whether discriminating against the jobless might be illegal because it disproportionately hurts older people and blacks.

The practice is common enough that New Jersey recently passed a law outlawing job ads that bar unemployed workers from applying. New York and Michigan are considering the idea, and similar legislation has been introduced in Congress. The National Employment Law Project, a nonprofit organization that studies the labor market and helps the unemployed apply for benefits, has been reviewing the issue, and last week issued a report that has nudged more politicians to condemn these ads.

Given that the average duration of unemployment today is nine months — a record high — limiting a search to the “recently employed,” much less the currently employed, disqualifies millions.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903461104576460272550902038.html

...Land prices are way up and so are bank deposits, as high corn and soybean prices mean local farmers are making the most money in their lives. At Sloan Implement, which sells John Deere tractors, "This could be our best year ever," says chief executive Tom Sloan.

An exception to the boom is the local office of the U.S. Agriculture Department, the dispensary of federal payments to farmers from an array of arcane programs with names like "loan deficiency" and "milk income loss." On a recent afternoon, the parking lot in front of the squat brick building behind a Chinese restaurant was nearly empty.

The reason: Payments from America's primary farm-subsidy program, dating from the 1930s, have stopped here. Grain prices are far too high to trigger payouts under the program's "price support" formula. The market, in other words, has done what decades of political wrangling couldn't: slash farm subsidies.

Though the subsidy payments always ebbed and flowed with crop prices, many economists are convinced that what is happening now is different. A fundamental upward shift in crop prices is creating the real possibility that Midwestern farmers won't ever again qualify for the primary form of farm subsidy....


THIS TIME IT'S DIFFERENT, EH? WHERE HAVE I HEARD THAT BEFORE? IS THIS WHAT MURDOCH SELLS AS THE DRUG OF CHOICE?

I'M NOT GOING TO TELL WHAT I THINK THEY HAVE IN COMMON, BECAUSE I DON'T WANT TO BE TOMBSTONED...

http://www.truth-out.org/what-do-obama-gang-six-and-paul-ryan-have-common/1311350379

What do Obama, the "Gang of Six" and House radical Teapublican, Paul Ryan, all have in common? They've all proposed a $4 trillion deficit reduction package. Does anyone think that is pure coincidence?

(AND WHAT DO THEY PLAN TO DO WITH THAT $4 TRILLION, ONE MAY ASK, IF SUSPICION IS IN ONE'S NATURE?)

...The Obama-Gang of Six package also closely resembles the original proposals of the Simpson-Bowles Commission made public last November. Obama has always been comfortable with much of their recommendations. The Gang of Six's original proposals were worked out last December, in an attempt to legislatively operationalize the Bowles-Simpson recommendations in the Senate. But the Gang did not press forward with their proposals while the House radicals were preoccupied with cutting the 2011 budget last spring by $38 billion.

It is likely the intent was to wait until after the debt ceiling was raised to reintroduce the Gang's proposals. But events became telescoped with the House radicals' intent on provoking a near default by playing chicken with the debt ceiling, and both Biden and Obama failing to get a deal with Boehner-McConnell last week.

So, now we see the real plan once again emerging. All the House radical, Tea Party huff and puff has been mostly theater, from the beginning up to the latest version of "cut, cap and balance" nonsense. That's been just playing to the audience at home. But all the radical theater did conveniently provide excellent "crazy right-wing" cover to Simpson-Bowles-Obama-Gang of Six proposals now, once again, coming to the fore. It has made the draconian cuts that are about to drive through Congress appear rational and reasonable.

In the end, however, the $4 trillion mostly spending cuts will devastate the economy. And when combined with the other three still unresolved mini-crises preventing sustained recovery of the US economy - i.e. jobs, housing-foreclosures-fiscal crisis of local government - will all but ensure a double-dip recession on the horizon.
Creative Commons License

This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

BUT I DIDN'T COPY IT ALL, SO GO TO LINK

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-26/republican-leaders-voted-for-drivers-of-u-s-debt-they-now-blame-on-obama.html

snip

“In Washington, more spending and more debt is business as usual,” the Republican leader from Ohio said in a televised address yesterday amid debate over the U.S. debt. “I’ve got news for Washington - those days are over.”

Yet the speaker, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell all voted for major drivers of the nation’s debt during the past decade: Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts and Medicare prescription drug benefits. They also voted for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, that rescued financial institutions and the auto industry.

snip

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have cost almost $1.3 trillion since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, according to a March 29 analysis by the Congressional Research Service. Operations in Iraq have cost $806 billion, and in Afghanistan $444 billion. The analysis shows the government has spent an additional $29 billion for enhanced security on militia bases and $6 billion remains unallocated.
.......
Even Bloomfart is calling them out...hmmmm

It makes rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic look sane, humanitarian, and productive.

(cf. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4935392 )

I don't get this, since I discovered how to tune in to MSNBC last night (early hours of the morning for me) via internet, and heard the President clearly requesting people to express support for what he called his 'balanced proposal' including new revenue to be obtained by 'closing loopholes' and other 'tax breaks' for the likes of hedge fund managers and such...

Can anyone here please explain?

But, no way to stabilise 'markets' (cf. today's 'toon).

A reminder, again: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Ghost%20Dog/462

"And with this fourth series one enters the heart of the contagion process that will trigger the US federal debt bomb. Because, first, in creating a global media and financial environment ultra-sensitive to the issues of government indebtedness, Wall Street and the City have revealed the unsustainable size of US, British and Japanese government deficits (20). This has even forced the rating agencies, faithful watchdogs of the two financial centres, to engage in a mad race to downgrade countries’ ratings. It is for this reason that the United States now finds itself under the threat of a downgrade, as we had anticipated, even though it seemed unthinkable to most experts only a few months ago. At the same time, the United Kingdom, France, Japan... also find themselves in the rating agencies’ crosshairs (21).

Remember that these agencies have never forecast anything of importance (neither subprime, nor the global crisis, nor the Greek crisis, nor the Arab Spring, ...). If they downgrade willy nilly today it’s because they have been caught at their own game (22). It’s no longer possible to downgrade A without affecting B’s rating if B is no better off. The "assumptions" on the fact that it’s impossible for any particular state to default on its debt have not withstood three years of crisis: this is where Wall Street and the City have fallen into the trap which threatens all aspiring sorcerers’ apprentices. They have not seen it would be impossible for them to control the hysteria kept up over Greek debt. So today it’s the US Congress, with the bitter debate on the debt ceiling and massive budget cuts, that the consequences of the misleading articles in recent months about Greece and the Eurozone enlarge. Once again, our team can only stress that if history has any sense, it’s certainly a sense of irony. "

completely insane, corrupt, or just flat out incompetent or some combination thereof. That is the only logical conclusion.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/07/canary-in-the-treasury-coal-mine-chicago-merc-increases-collateral-haircuts-for-treasuries-and-foreign-sovereign-debt.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

Either the Merc (more formally, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange) wasn’t on the distribution list or it decided not to play ball. It announced an increase in haircuts on Treasury and agency securities today (meaning Treasuries and agencies are now given less credit than before when posted as collateral). But it increased haircuts even more on foreign sovereign debt. This will force players who have been using any of these assets as collateral that are also pretty fully leveraged to either cut their positions or put up more cash or other collateral. But note the concern stated is “market volatility” rather than creditworthiness per se (hat tip reader Robert M, from Clusterstock):



Translation: AAA CDOs went from 2-4% haircuts, which meant they were seen as super duper good paper, to 95% haircuts, which means they are worthless as collateral.

Notice also that even Treasury haircuts rose during the crisis, so widening haircuts in roiled markets is normal. Nevertheless, this change is a sign that some parties are already starting to trim their sails as a precaution against rough weather.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904772304576466360844147694.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection

Some lawmakers and financial firms are resisting rules being written to implement last year's Dodd-Frank law that could require banks to set aside more collateral when they make certain trades in the derivatives market.

The law requires that much of the collateral be held in cash or high-quality government securities, such as Treasury bonds. But some critics claim such a requirement could steer more money into U.S. securities just when many investors are getting nervous about the nation's debt load.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/07/marshall-auerback-worse-than-hoover.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

It’s actually a bit over the top and unfair to compare Barack Obama with Herbert Hoover – unfair that is, to the memory of Herbert Hoover. The received image of the latter is the dour, technocrat who looked on with indifference while the country went to pieces. This is actually an exaggeration. As Kevin Baker convincingly argued in his Harper’s Magazine piece, “Barack Hoover Obama”, President Hoover did try to organize national, voluntary efforts to hire the unemployed, provide charity, and sought to create a private banking pool. When these efforts collapsed or fell short, he started a dozen Home Loan Discount Banks to help individuals refinance their mortgages and save their homes. Indeed, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which became famous for its exploits under FDR and Jesse Jones, was actually created by Hoover. Often tarred with the liquidationist philosophy of his Treasury Secretary, the establishment of the RFC was, as Baker suggested, “a direct rebuttal to Andrew Mellon’s prescription of creative destruction. Rather than liquidating banks, railroads, and agricultural cooperatives, the RFC would lend them money to stay afloat.”...Hoover’s tragedy lay in the fact that whilst he recognized the deficiencies of the prevailing neo-classical laissez-faire nostrums of his day, he could not ultimately break with them and accept that the economic tenets which he had grown up with were deficient in terms of dealing with the huge unemployment challenges posed by the Great Depression. By contrast, Roosevelt was himself instinctively a fiscal conservative throughout much of the early stages of his political career (and campaigned as a gold standard man during the election of 1932), but ultimately had the vision (or, at least, excellent political instincts) to recognize the need to cut himself off from the dogma of the past and try something new in a persistent spirit of experimentation. Not everything FDR did worked, but his lack of rigid ideology and his bold spirit of economic experimentation ultimately did much to reduce the scourge of unemployment, even though such policies brought him into significant conflict with the economic royalists of his day.

Barack Obama’s style of governing largely reflects an acceptance of the status quo. His “economic experts” also reflects this preference. As Baker argued, “it’s as if, after winning election in 1932, FDR had brought Andrew Mellon back to the Treasury.”...To the extent that he displays any kind of radicalism, it is to roll back the frontiers of the New Deal and Great Society, in effect gutting the Democratic Party of its core social legacy. This assertion will no doubt inflame the diminishing Obama supporters, who insist the president would never cut Social Security or Medicare, that he’s merely been exploring every possible route to a deal with the GOP. But the evidence increasingly suggests otherwise...In other words, Obama has been on about this since the inception of his Presidency. Recall that it was Barack Obama, NOT the GOP, who first raised the issue of cutting entitlements via the Simpson-Bowles Commission. The President has also parroted the line of most Wall Street economists as he has persistently characterized our budget deficits and government spending as “fiscally unsustainable” without ever seeking to define what that meant. One of his earliest pledges was to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term, in effect paying no heed to the economic context when he made that ridiculous assertion.

In essence, the debt ceiling dispute is not forcing a compromise on this President, but is instead is viewed by him as a golden opportunity to do what he’s always wanted to do. That also explains why he won’t ask for a clean vote on the debt ceiling, why he has ignored the coin seignorage option, and why he has persistently avoided the gambit of challenging its constitutionality via the 14th amendment, even though his Democrat predecessor has already suggested that this is precisely what he would do: Bill Clinton asserted last week that he would use the constitutional option to raise the debt ceiling and dare Congress to stop him...It also explains why President Obama remains infatuated by bigger and bigger “grand bargains”, which seem to take us further away from averting the immediate economic catastrophe potentially at hand, which is to say national default. The Administration, then, is not going for a bipartisan compromise, but going for broke on something which the President apparent holds sacrosanct. In reality, true compromise would start with the notion of a clean vote on the debt ceiling or, at the very least, a minimal series of spending cuts that would avert the immediate risk of a default, whilst creating less deflationary pressures...

SO MUCH MORE--TODAY'S MUST READ

http://www.discourse.net/2011/07/shorter-obama-speech-july-25-2011.html

“Since nothing else has worked, I’m going to try some mild populism tonight, but I’m still prepared to meet the GOP 90% of the way and enact Hoover-like policies in a recession.”

(Shorter Speaker of the House John Boehner: “Get stuffed.”)

http://amoleintheground.blogspot.com/2011/07/debt-ceiling-poker.html


...The Republicans finally caved as I knew they'd have to. Mitch McConnell, under extreme pressure, I'm sure, from his billionaire controllers, offered a plan that would have handed off the tough decision-making to Obama, correctly noting in a media interview that the Republicans have a lot more to lose over this battle than the Democrats. It's always been clear to me that the Dems are holding ALL the cards in this matter and the Republicans basically none. The only problem is: Obama can't play poker worth shit! In a gaffe worthy of George Bush II, he even dared them to "call my bluff." Sorry, Barack, you call the other guy's bluff, you don't invite him to call yours. You want him to believe you are NOT bluffing. Sheesh, what a hopeless fool the President I voted for is turning out to be. Also, when the other player folds, you don't entice him to stay in the game by adding more money to the pot. The game is up for the Republicans, but they know how to bluff and our President is clueless. Don't dare them to call YOUR bluff -- call THEIRS, you idiot!

At this point, the adults in the Democratic Party need to convince their boy wonder to go play a few rounds of golf and leave the Republican diehards to the hardened veterans. Surely someone in the Party (maybe Biden?) understands poker well enough to realize the other side has lost and all that's needed is a show of cards...In short, what needs to be done is for the Democrats in the Senate to present a plain vanilla bill that simply raises the debt limit and NOTHING more. No more wheeling, no more dealing, no more offers hoping for counter-offers that are never ever offered. In other words all the Dems need do is invite their opponents to show their hand. Are they or are they not willing to raise the debt limit? That's ALL that's needed, just that one simple bill. It should have no trouble passing in the Senate, since the Dems have the majority and no Republican in his right mind would dare risk being held responsible for economic catastrophe by filibustering....Once the bill is passed it's handed over to the House, which will be a moment of truth for the Tea Party. As I see it, there's no question as to the outcome. They will fold.

Wonderful, you say? Not really. Because the Democrats are in total disarray. It's unlikely any of them can see clearly enough to offer up the simplest and most effective solution. After all their failed attempts they will most likely go down to the wire with one lame offer after another, which is exactly what their opponents expect. Holding NO cards at all, the Republicans will continue to bluff, offering nothing in return ever. If the Democrats then hold out, and they might, the "disaster" will be upon us. Checks won't get mailed, the markets will tumble and -- just as with the TARP -- congress will have "second thoughts," the Democrats will act "responsibly" (what a laugh) and totally capitulate to all Republican demands. At that point, the debt limit will get raised. And that will be the death of the Democratic Party.

So long, suckers.

COMMENTARY BY DEMETER--I THINK WHAT'S HAPPENING IS OBAMA IS PLAYING "LET'S MAKE A DEAL". HE THINKS HE'S MONTY HALL, WHEN HE COMES OFF LIKE A BAD IMITATION OF MONTY PYTHON. TOO BAD EVERYONE ELSE IS PLAYING FOR KEEPS. AFTER ALL, OBAMA COMES OUT OF THE OPRAH WINFREY CULTURE....

http://www.theonion.com/articles/congress-continues-debate-over-whether-or-not-nati,20977/

UNLIKE EVERYTHING ELSE POSTED TODAY, THIS IS FROM THE ONION, AND WAS INTENDED TO BE FUNNY

Members of the U.S. Congress reported Wednesday they were continuing to carefully debate the issue of whether or not they should allow the country to descend into a roiling economic meltdown of historically dire proportions.

"It is a question that, I think, is worthy of serious consideration: Should we take steps to avoid a crippling, decades-long depression that would lead to disastrous consequences on a worldwide scale? Or should we not do that?" asked House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), adding that arguments could be made for both sides, and that the debate over ensuring America’s financial solvency versus allowing the nation to default on its debt—which would torpedo stock markets, cause mortgage and interests rates to skyrocket, and decimate the value of the U.S. dollar—is “certainly a conversation worth having.”

"Obviously, we don't want to rush to consensus on whether it is or isn't a good idea to save the American economy and all our respective livelihoods from certain peril until we've examined this thorny dilemma from every angle. And if we’re still discussing this matter on Aug. 2, well, then, so be it.”

At press time, President Obama said he personally believed the country should not be economically ruined.

http://my.firedoglake.com/phoenix/2011/07/24/even-larry-tribe-now-agrees-fourteenth-amendment-is-a-viable-option-so-why-wont-obama-use-it/

IT'S THAT NTH DIMENSIONAL CHESS THING....OTHERWISE KNOWN AS THE CON, THE STING, THE GREAT GAME...


....Could it be it’s because he’s been planning to attack Social Security and Medicare — and whatever else is left of the New Deal and the Great Society — all along?

It sure looks like it.....If President Obama and his remaining supporters don’t like those words, all they have to do to make Glenn Greenwald eat them is to invoke the Fourteenth Amendment. And please, stop saying it’s not possible — you all said that using reconciliation to pass the Baucus-WellPoint health care bill with a public option wasn’t possible either, until Martha Coakley forced your collective hands by losing a nineteen-point lead largely because she was forced to embrace the public-option-less, anti-choice Baucus bill.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/07/massachusetts-attorney-general-signals-likelihood-of-nixing-50-state-mortgage-settlement.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

...Let’s briefly cover an important development in the US mortgage saga. I’m told that the Department of Justice is putting the thumbscrews on state attorneys general to sign a mortgage settlement deal this week (how exactly the DoJ can pressure state officials is beyond me, since the Feds typically ignore state investigations until they look like they are about to be end run, but hopefully readers can enlighten me). New York and Delaware, as we already indicated, are out via having launched their own investigations, as is Nevada (ground zero of the mortgage mess) and likely California. We’ve been told Arizona was out a while ago, but haven’t gotten confirmation that that is still true.

We are also told the banks are pressing (as we predicted) for a very broad release, and the announcement today from Martha Coakley, the Massachusetts state AG, strongly suggests she is another dissenter. Per Bloomberg:



“Conduct related to MERS,” from what I can tell (and I did a fair bit of checking) does not mean the banks are on the hook for MERS in a direct manner. MERS is not a shell company, even though its corporate governance was particularly unorthodox, to put it politely. A past efforts to pierce its corporate veil failed and corporate veil-piercing has not succeeded in the past save for closely-held companies. It would be an uphill battle with questionable returns, since running a private mortgage registry per se is not illegal. Even though there is a potential elephant in the room, whether local recording fees not paid thanks to the use of MERS can somehow be clawed back, that liability might not sit with the undercapitlized MERS. It most likely rests with the poor chump investors rather than the banks.

What Coakley likely means is bank liability for foreclosures that relied on MERS as part of chain of title. When creates chain of title problems, that means problems for the servicers. But that liability does not result from MERS. Rather, it is liability they created all on their own by having relied on a defective registration/transfer.

http://blogs.forbes.com/robertlenzner/2011/07/25/the-400-richest-americans-pay-an-18-tax-rate/?partner=yahoofeed

The 400 richest Americans used to pay 30% of their income on the average to Uncle Sam. Today, they pay 18% on the average, according to Steve Rattner, a Wall Street financier, who just presented these figures on Mornings With Joe,MSNBC.

The main reason for the drop in their tax rate of some 40% is the tax cuts by George Bush in 2003, taking the rate paid on dividends and capital gains down to 15%. This reduction in the investment class’s taxes powered the bull market in stocks from the fall of 2003 until the fall of 2007.

Shockingly, the plan to raise the debt ceiling collects nothing from the wealthiest Americans to reduce our budget deficit. The Republican right wing holds the Obama White House hostage. It’s a sad day for the principle of sharing the pain equitably.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/25/opinion/25krugman.html?ref=opinion

At the time of writing, President Obama’s hoped-for “Grand Bargain” with Republicans is apparently dead. And I say good riddance. I’m no more eager than other rational people (a category that fails to include many Congressional Republicans) to see what happens if the debt limit isn’t raised. But what the president was offering to the G.O.P., especially on Medicare, was a very bad deal for America....Specifically, according to many reports, the president offered both means-testing of Medicare benefits and a rise in the age of Medicare eligibility. The first would be bad policy; the second would be terrible policy. And it would almost surely be terrible politics, too.

The crucial thing to remember, when we talk about Medicare, is that our goal isn’t, or at least shouldn’t be, defined in terms of some arbitrary number. Our goal should be, instead, to give Americans the health care they need at a price the country can afford. And throwing Americans in their mid-60s off Medicare moves us away from that goal, not toward it. For Medicare, with all its flaws, works better than private insurance. It has less bureaucracy and, hence, lower administrative costs than private insurers. It has been more successful in controlling costs. While Medicare expenses per beneficiary have soared over the past 40 years, they’ve risen significantly less than private insurance premiums. And since Medicare-type systems in other advanced countries have much lower costs than the uniquely privatized U.S. system, there’s good reason to believe that Medicare reform can do a lot to control costs in the future.

In that case, you may ask, why didn’t the 2010 health care reform simply extend Medicare to cover everyone? The answer, of course, is political realism. Most health reformers I know would have supported Medicare for all if they had considered it politically feasible. But given the power of the insurance lobby and the knee-jerk opposition of many politicians to any expansion of government, they settled for what they thought they could actually get: near-universal coverage through a system of regulation and subsidies...It is, however, one thing to accept a second-best system insuring those who currently lack coverage. Throwing millions of Americans off Medicare and pushing them into the arms of private insurers is another story.

*********

So why is the president embracing these bad policy ideas? In a forthcoming article in The New York Review of Books, the veteran journalist Elizabeth Drew suggests that members of the White House political team saw the 2010 election as a referendum on government spending and that they believe that cutting spending is the way to win next year. If so, I would respectfully suggest that they are out of their minds. Remember death panels? The G.O.P.’s most potent political weapon last year — the weapon that caused a large swing in the votes of older Americans — was the claim that Mr. Obama was cutting Medicare. Why give Republicans a chance to do it all over again? Of course, it’s possible that the reason the president is offering to undermine Medicare is that he genuinely believes that this would be a good idea. And that possibility, I have to say, is what really scares me.

SEE? WHEN THE GOP TELLS THE TRUTH, WE DON'T BELIEVE THEM...HOW DID THEY KNOW? AND HOW WOULD WE KNOW?

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/aug/18/what-were-they-thinking/

AT THIS LATE DATE, I DON'T THINK IT EVEN MATTERS, ANY MORE...

http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2011/07/80_chance_jefferson_county_to.html

SEE ALSO:

Jefferson County in Alabama May Vote to File Largest Bankruptcy July 28

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-24/jefferson-county-in-alabama-may-vote-to-file-largest-bankruptcy-july-28.html

7/26/11 Jefferson County Retains Klee Tuchin For Upcoming Chapter 9 Legal Advice

As anyone who follows the restructuring process (and religiously reads debtwire) will tell you, the first sign of smoke is when a creditor retain legal bankruptcy counsel, promptly followed by financial, which in turn, or at least 95% of the time, leads to a dropping off of bankruptcy docs at the local bankruptcy court, or Southern New York. And where there's smoke, there's Alabama fire. According to blog al.com, the Jefferson County Commission has just retained the services (at $975/hour) of Ken Klee, of LA-based Klee Tuchin, best known for advising Orange County on its Chapter 9 filing back in 1994.

And with this the probability that Jefferson County will conclude that the time to file its own Chapter 9 in two days, is virtually a certainty (and sorry, no bankruptcy lawyer will advise his clients not to file for bankruptcy. Hourly retainer, remember?). And with the US debt situation still unlikely to be resolved within 48 hours, the last thing the market needs is to worry not only what known on effects this mega-municipal bankruptcy case will end up generating, but who else will file after. That said, we are confident the market will surge even more as it digests these news. Why? Two words: Bernanke Put.

The bigger concern: how many other broke municipalities will be following the events in Jefferson only to decide that Chapter 9 is really the best option. While so far the muni default tsunami has not materialized is it possible it was merely waiting for the proper lit match? The Alabama fiasco sure looks like it could fit the bill.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/jefferson-county-retains-klee-tuchin-upcoming-chapter-9-legal-advice

MAYBE, BUT THEY HAD LOTS OF ACCOMPLICES...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8658334/Europes-ideologues-took-the-whole-world-to-the-brink-of-disaster.html

Dr Merkel denies that Germany has crossed the line towards shared fiscal destiny. Berlin retains a veto on use of the EFSF. "As I understand it, a transfer union would be automotic subsidies," she said.

To the extent that Germany does have a meaningful veto, then the deal agreed on Thursday will inevitably be tested by markets. Investors will want to know whether she can secure Bundestag approval for the colossal sums needed to make the EFSF credible. Mrs Merkel cannot have it both ways.

(Link above). EU 'structural' policy has always transferred infrastructure and social policy investment funds from the richer towards the poorer regions of the EU, aiming to achieve a common level. This has always been accepted as one of the goals of the, first 'Community', now 'Union'.

Visceral Eurosceptics and simple 'little Englanders' such as Evans-Pritchard may continue to be surprised... On the other hand, such people have often complained that the EU project is little more than a German 'invasion' of the rest of Europe by economic means. Their message is inconsistent. They can't have it both ways. And UK is out, anyway.

Hallucinatory.

And so true.

http://www.amazon.com/Wrong-Box-VHS-John-Mills/dp/630280051X

The Wrong Box (1966) is a British comedy film made by Salamander Film Productions and distributed by Columbia Pictures. It was produced and directed by Bryan Forbes from a screenplay by Larry Gelbart and Burt Shevelove, based on the novel by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne.

The cast includes a number of Britain's leading actors and comic actors of the time, including John Mills, Ralph Richardson, Michael Caine, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Peter Sellers, Irene Handl and Tony Hancock.

Plot

Two elderly brothers Masterman (John Mills) and Joseph Finsbury (Ralph Richardson) are the last surviving members of a tontine, an investment scheme set up many years before, in which the last surviving member stands to receive a fortune. Masterman is attended by his medical student grandson, Michael (Michael Caine), while his greedy cousins Morris (Peter Cook) and John (Dudley Moore) do their best to keep their annoying uncle Joseph alive. Masterman, who hasn't talked to his despised brother in many years, summons Joseph to his "deathbed", intending to kill him so that Michael can get the money.

On the train trip to London, Joseph escapes from his minders, entering a compartment and boring the sole occupant with a litany of trivial facts (something he does with everyone he encounters). The other man later turns out to be the "Bournemouth Strangler". Joseph later leaves to smoke a cigarette leaving his coat behind, which the strangler puts on. The train then crashes head-on into another one coming the other way. In the confusion, Morris and John find the strangler's mutilated body and mistakenly believe it is that of their uncle.

Morris decides to try to hide this long enough for Masterman to pass away. Morris and John put the body in a barrel and have it shipped to their London home, next door to Masterman's residence. However, it is delivered to the Masterman house. Joseph makes his way to London on his own and visits his brother; they quarrel.

Meanwhile, Michael meets and falls in love with Joseph's ward, Julia (Nanette Newman). (Cousin John, the ornithologist and collector, has already found himself infatuated by her -- as he is by all women -- when he discovers himself with her, "alone at last -- in a room full of eggs.") Things become complicated when Michael discovers the contents of the barrel and, after learning of the dispute between Masterman and Joseph from family butler Peacock (Wilfrid Lawson), assumes that his grandfather has killed his brother. Various misunderstandings and antics result.

the Intwennyforty mob, and the Tontine Townships...

No Smoking, though (except...).

It's 10 am and not even 80F yet! Have a good day, just to spite them all, folks!

thank you demeter for all your postings

what a fascinating collection of links and side commentary you provide
for those of us who are trying to keep even slightly informed you and everyone on this thread continue to be an amazing resource

thank you so very much

You are quite welcome....we are all here to learn. Sharing the work makes it faster.

Currently at $403.

Possible response to the agreement on the new "largest Apple Store" at Grand Central Terminal in NYC?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x305811

Now weep.

... I used to love them...now, I just think gone - all gone, it's all gone. However, one keeps on working in whatever small way one can - hope or no. If only because the alternative is hedonistic nihilism - which, now I think of it, may be the salient characterization of "the market." There - I made my drear post pertinent.

will at least slow down the process.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-26/simon-property-raises-forecast-as-ffo-gains-20-on-higher-mall-occupancies.html

Simon Property Group, (SPG) the largest U.S. shopping-mall owner, raised its forecast for funds from operations after second-quarter results beat analyst estimates on higher rents and occupancies.

Funds from operations, which gauges a property company’s ability to generate cash, climbed to $583 million, or $1.65 a share, in the second quarter, from $487.7 million, or $1.38, a year earlier, the Indianapolis-based real estate investment trust said today in a statement. Analysts expected FFO of $1.58 a share, the average of 18 estimates in a Bloomberg survey.

The company is among regional mall landlords increasing rents as their tenants’ sales rise. Consumer spending, excluding automobiles, gas stations and restaurants, increased 5.5 percent in June from a year earlier, the National Retail Federation said on July 14. That was the 12th straight month of gains.

“The consumer, actually, I feel a little bit better about,” David Simon, Simon’s chairman and chief executive officer, said today in a conference call with analysts.




:shrug:

:shrug:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-26/gold-holds-near-record-as-obama-says-default-would-trigger-economic-crisis.html

Gold futures rose for the third straight session as the prolonged U.S. debt stalemate boosts demand for the precious metal as a haven.

The dollar fell against a basket of six major currencies and U.S. equities declined as lawmakers offered competing plans on raising the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling. Gold has jumped 7.8 percent this month amid fiscal woes in the U.S. and Europe.

“The flight-to-quality money is reasserting itself into gold,” Adam Klopfenstein, a senior strategist at Lind-Waldock, a broker in Chicago, said in a telephone interview. “The budget problems are persistent, and people want to own gold during this calamity.”

Gold futures for December delivery rose $4.90, or 0.3 percent, to settle at $1,619.30 an ounce at 1:48 p.m. on the Comex in New York. Earlier, the price fluctuated between gains and losses. The August contract reached a record $1,624.30 yesterday.

(OVER the old debt limit of 14.294-trillion dollars by 49-billion dollars. Good day.)
Tired, but, closer to the finish.
(Debt under Obama seems to jump up big then drop slowly maybe up a little and down a little for days--repeat.)
= Held by the Public + Intragovernmental(FICA)
= 9,748,189,073,389.64 + 4,594,684,906,653.27
UP 804,035,241.16 + DOWN 815,000,194.53

Source: Debt to the penny:
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np

THINKING IN BILLIONS: Think 3 or 4 dollars per billion in a 313-Million person America.
If every American, man, woman and child puts in $3.20 THAT'S 1B$, and $3,199.97 makes 1T$.
A family of three: Mom, Dad, Child: $9.60, ABOUT TEN BUCKS for a 1B$ federal program.
I hope that is clear. However, I'd suggest using $3 per 1B$ to underestimate it.
Use $4 per 1B$ to overestimate the cost when thinking: Is the federal program worth it?
Aid to Dependant Children: 2B$/yr =$8/yr(a movie a year) Family of 3: $24/yr(an hour of bowling)

PERSONALIZED DEBT:
Every 12 seconds we net gain another American, so at the end of the workday of the report, there should be 312,502,592 people in America.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html ON 10/04/2010 04:37 -> 310,403,677
Currently, each of these Americans owe $45,896.82.
A family of three owes $137,690.45. (And that is IN ADDITION to their mortgage.)

ANALYSIS:
There were 20 reports in the last 30 days.
The average for the last 20 reports is -81,332,676.66.
The average for the last 30 days would be -54,221,784.44.

There were 252 reports in 365 days of FY2007 averaging 1.99B$ per report, 1.37B$/day.
There were 253 reports in 366 days of FY2008 averaging 4.02B$ per report, 2.78B$/day.
There were 75 reports in 112 days of GWB's part of FY2009 averaging 8.03B$ per report, 5.38B$/day.
There were 174 reports in 253 days of Obama's part of FY2009 averaging 7.33B$ per report, 5.07B$/day so far.
There were 249 reports in 365 days of FY2009 averaging 7.57B$ per report, 5.16B$/day.
There were 251 reports in 365 days of FY2010 averaging 6.58B$ per report, 4.53B$/day.
There were 200 reports in 295 days of FY2011 averaging 3.91B$ per report, 2.65B$/day.
Above line should be okay

PROJECTION:
There are 548 days remaining in this Obama 1st term.
By that time the debt could be between 14.3 and 17.2T$.
It could be higher. It could be lower.

HISTORICAL:
President's term begins and ends on Jan 20.
(Guess who might want to hide the Reagan Bush years. Jan 20 data is missing before 1993.)
01/20/1993 _4,188,092,107,183.60 WJC Inaugural
01/22/2001 _5,728,195,796,181.57 WJC (UP 1,540,103,688,997.97)
01/20/2009 10,626,877,048,913.08 GWB (UP 4,898,681,252,731.43)
07/22/2011 14,342,873,980,042.91 BHO (UP 3,715,996,931,129.83 so far since Obama took office.)

FISCAL YEAR DEBT CHANGE, Sep 30 prior year to Sep 30 named year:
(One "* " for each 40B$ reached)
FY1994 +0,281,261,026,873.94 ------------* * * * * * * WJC
FY1995 +0,281,232,990,696.07 ------------* * * * * * * WJC
FY1996 +0,250,828,038,426.34 ------------* * * * * * WJC
FY1997 +0,188,335,072,261.61 ------------* * * * WJC
FY1998 +0,113,046,997,500.28 ------------* * WJC
FY1999 +0,130,077,892,735.81 ------------* * * WJC
FY2000 +0,017,907,308,253.43 ------------WJC
FY2001 +0,133,285,202,313.20 ------------* * * C&B
01-WJC +0,053,598,528,417.78 ------------* WJC 31% of FY, 40% of FY-Debt
01-GWB +0,079,686,673,895.42 ------------* GWB 69% of FY, 60% of FY-Debt
FY2002 +0,420,772,553,397.10 ------------* * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2003 +0,554,995,097,146.46 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2004 +0,595,821,633,586.70 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2005 +0,553,656,965,393.18 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2006 +0,574,264,237,491.73 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2007 +0,500,679,473,047.25 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2008 +1,017,071,524,649.92 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2009 +1,885,104,106,599.30 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * B&O
09GWB +0,602,152,152,000.60 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB 31% of FY, 32% of FY-Debt
09-BHO +1,282,951,954,598.70 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * BHO 69% of FY, 68% of FY-Debt
FY2010 +1,651,794,027,380.00 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * BHO
FY2011 +0,781,250,949,151.20 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * BHO
Endof11 +0,966,632,530,305.72 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * BHO

LAST FIFTEEN REPORTS OF ADDITIONS TO PUBLIC DEBT(NOT FICA):
06/29/2011 +007,017,747,779.06 ------------*********
06/30/2011 +003,977,538,029.63 ------------*********
07/06/2011 +006,618,560,773.63 ------------********* Wed
07/07/2011 +001,077,509,146.64 ------------*********
07/08/2011 -000,834,469,945.40 ---
07/11/2011 -004,122,303,723.36 -- Mon
07/12/2011 -003,634,448,925.47 --
07/13/2011 +010,692,053,599.69 ------------**********
07/14/2011 -001,516,331,672.50 --
07/15/2011 +003,100,504,281.51 ------------*********
07/18/2011 +000,238,790,593.83 ------------******** Mon
07/19/2011 +000,061,099,321.97 ------------*******
07/20/2011 -000,246,591,087.61 ---
07/21/2011 -006,272,699,061.03 --
07/22/2011 +000,804,035,241.16 ------------********

16,960,994,351.75 Total of 15 above reports.

Heavy borrowing seems to start after 09/18/2008 while Bush was in power JUST BEFORE fiscal year end.
Bush admin borrowed $962,245,245,654.01 in those last 124 days in office crossing two fiscal years.
$360,093,093,653.42 in last 12 days of FY2008, and $602,152,152,000.59 in subsequent 112 days before leaving office.

For a prettier and more explanatory view of our nation's debt:
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
DUer primer on National debt

(Debt to the penny keeps changing. Stuff is missing. Best to keep our own history.) LAST REPORT:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4934630&mesg_id=4934939

(OVER the old debt limit of 14.294-trillion dollars by 49-billion dollars. Good day.)
A shower is a wonderful thing.
(Debt under Obama seems to jump up big then drop slowly maybe up a little and down a little for days--repeat.)
= Held by the Public + Intragovernmental(FICA)
= 9,747,197,103,331.70 + 4,595,643,979,717.97
DOWN 991,970,057.94 + UP 959,073,064.70

Source: Debt to the penny:
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np

THINKING IN BILLIONS: Think 3 or 4 dollars per billion in a 313-Million person America.
If every American, man, woman and child puts in $3.20 THAT'S 1B$, and $3,199.75 makes 1T$.
A family of three: Mom, Dad, Child: $9.60, ABOUT TEN BUCKS for a 1B$ federal program.
I hope that is clear. However, I'd suggest using $3 per 1B$ to underestimate it.
Use $4 per 1B$ to overestimate the cost when thinking: Is the federal program worth it?
Aid to Dependant Children: 2B$/yr =$8/yr(a movie a year) Family of 3: $24/yr(an hour of bowling)

PERSONALIZED DEBT:
Every 12 seconds we net gain another American, so at the end of the workday of the report, there should be 312,524,192 people in America.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html ON 10/04/2010 04:37 -> 310,403,677
Currently, each of these Americans owe $45,893.54.
A family of three owes $137,680.62. (And that is IN ADDITION to their mortgage.)

ANALYSIS:
There were 19 reports in the last 30 to 31 days.
The average for the last 19 reports is -86,879,372.79.
The average for the last 30 days would be -55,023,602.77.
The average for the last 31 days would be -53,248,647.84.
There were 252 reports in 365 days of FY2007 averaging 1.99B$ per report, 1.37B$/day.
There were 253 reports in 366 days of FY2008 averaging 4.02B$ per report, 2.78B$/day.
There were 75 reports in 112 days of GWB's part of FY2009 averaging 8.03B$ per report, 5.38B$/day.
There were 174 reports in 253 days of Obama's part of FY2009 averaging 7.33B$ per report, 5.07B$/day so far.
There were 249 reports in 365 days of FY2009 averaging 7.57B$ per report, 5.16B$/day.
There were 251 reports in 365 days of FY2010 averaging 6.58B$ per report, 4.53B$/day.
There were 201 reports in 298 days of FY2011 averaging 3.89B$ per report, 2.62B$/day.
Above line should be okay

PROJECTION:
There are 545 days remaining in this Obama 1st term.
By that time the debt could be between 14.3 and 17.2T$.
It could be higher. It could be lower.

HISTORICAL:
President's term begins and ends on Jan 20.
(Guess who might want to hide the Reagan Bush years. Jan 20 data is missing before 1993.)
01/20/1993 _4,188,092,107,183.60 WJC Inaugural
01/22/2001 _5,728,195,796,181.57 WJC (UP 1,540,103,688,997.97)
01/20/2009 10,626,877,048,913.08 GWB (UP 4,898,681,252,731.43)
07/25/2011 14,342,841,083,049.67 BHO (UP 3,715,964,034,136.59 so far since Obama took office.)

FISCAL YEAR DEBT CHANGE, Sep 30 prior year to Sep 30 named year:
(One "* " for each 40B$ reached)
FY1994 +0,281,261,026,873.94 ------------* * * * * * * WJC
FY1995 +0,281,232,990,696.07 ------------* * * * * * * WJC
FY1996 +0,250,828,038,426.34 ------------* * * * * * WJC
FY1997 +0,188,335,072,261.61 ------------* * * * WJC
FY1998 +0,113,046,997,500.28 ------------* * WJC
FY1999 +0,130,077,892,735.81 ------------* * * WJC
FY2000 +0,017,907,308,253.43 ------------WJC
FY2001 +0,133,285,202,313.20 ------------* * * C&B
01-WJC +0,053,598,528,417.78 ------------* WJC 31% of FY, 40% of FY-Debt
01-GWB +0,079,686,673,895.42 ------------* GWB 69% of FY, 60% of FY-Debt
FY2002 +0,420,772,553,397.10 ------------* * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2003 +0,554,995,097,146.46 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2004 +0,595,821,633,586.70 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2005 +0,553,656,965,393.18 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2006 +0,574,264,237,491.73 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2007 +0,500,679,473,047.25 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2008 +1,017,071,524,649.92 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB
FY2009 +1,885,104,106,599.30 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * B&O
09GWB +0,602,152,152,000.60 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * GWB 31% of FY, 32% of FY-Debt
09-BHO +1,282,951,954,598.70 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * BHO 69% of FY, 68% of FY-Debt
FY2010 +1,651,794,027,380.00 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * BHO
FY2011 +0,781,218,052,157.90 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * BHO
Endof11 +0,956,861,037,039.04 ------------* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * BHO

LAST FIFTEEN REPORTS OF ADDITIONS TO PUBLIC DEBT(NOT FICA):
06/30/2011 +003,977,538,029.63 ------------*********
07/06/2011 +006,618,560,773.63 ------------********* Wed
07/07/2011 +001,077,509,146.64 ------------*********
07/08/2011 -000,834,469,945.40 ---
07/11/2011 -004,122,303,723.36 -- Mon
07/12/2011 -003,634,448,925.47 --
07/13/2011 +010,692,053,599.69 ------------**********
07/14/2011 -001,516,331,672.50 --
07/15/2011 +003,100,504,281.51 ------------*********
07/18/2011 +000,238,790,593.83 ------------******** Mon
07/19/2011 +000,061,099,321.97 ------------*******
07/20/2011 -000,246,591,087.61 ---
07/21/2011 -006,272,699,061.03 --
07/22/2011 +000,804,035,241.16 ------------********
07/25/2011 -000,991,970,057.94 --- Mon

8,951,276,514.75 Total of 15 above reports.

Heavy borrowing seems to start after 09/18/2008 while Bush was in power JUST BEFORE fiscal year end.
Bush admin borrowed $962,245,245,654.01 in those last 124 days in office crossing two fiscal years.
$360,093,093,653.42 in last 12 days of FY2008, and $602,152,152,000.59 in subsequent 112 days before leaving office.

For a prettier and more explanatory view of our nation's debt:
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
DUer primer on National debt

(Debt to the penny keeps changing. Stuff is missing. Best to keep our own history.) LAST REPORT:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4936078&mesg_id=4936764