SOURCE CLICK HERE

Great piece from Rick Santelli over on Cnbc.com about a possible end to the great bond bull market.

Full Story Here.

Verizon unions strike after contract talks fail

(Reuters) – Almost half the workers in Verizon Communications wireline telecommunications business went on strike on Sunday as negotiations for a new labor contract failed.
The strike, involving 45,000 workers, is the first walk-out that Verizon, one of the two big U.S. telephone network operators, has faced since 2000, when about 80,000 workers went on strike for about three weeks.
Verizon and two unions — The Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers — had been in talks since late June but were still far apart when their contract expired Saturday night.
The workers who went on strike are technicians and customer support employees in the wireline unit, which provides traditional phone services to homes and businesses in the Northeast as well as high-speed Internet and FiOS television service.
The two sides were unable to agree on issues related to healthcare contributions, pension plans and work rules, according to Verizon and the CWA.
Verizon is looking to keep costs in check at its wireline business, which has been declining for a decade as customers have disconnected their home phones in favor of cellphone and Internet services.
A representative for the CWA, which represents about 35,000 of the workers, said that bargaining talks were expected to resume on Sunday while employees were told to start picketing as early as 6 a.m. EDT outside their work locations.
“A strike is a hardship for all and not to be undertaken lightly,” Jim Spellane, an IBEW spokesman said in an e-mail.
“I think that the fact that we are on strike instead of finalizing an agreement is a testimony to Verizon’s intransigence throughout the process,” Spellane said.
Michael Paleski, 45, who has worked for Verizon for 23 years, was one among the roughly 250 people gathered in front of Verizon’s Manhattan corporate headquarters, where workers walked in and out of the building to chants of, “Scab! scab! scab!” on megaphones.
The strikers were all dressed in red and had signs that read, “CWA workers on strike for middle-class jobs.”
“Nobody here wants a strike. I’m sure nobody on the other side wants a strike either. But we’re also very disappointed that the company put forward so many demands for givebacks. We feel that’s really the sticking point for us,” Paleski said.
“I have two children. I have a wife, a house and two cars. And things are not cheap these days, they’re getting more expensive for us. And that’s why we need to have the right contract structure.”
On Monday morning, thousands of striking workers will join mass picket lines and rallies at over 100 Verizon work locations across New York and New Jersey to pressure the company to back off its demands, said the CWA.
VERIZON’S BACK-UP PLAN
“As of now, talks are not taking place today. We’re always willing to talk. We’re willing to return to the bargaining table at any time,” Verizon spokesman Richard Young said in an email on Sunday afternoon.
“We’re in the process of implementing our emergency action plans,” Young added.
Verizon said late Saturday night that it had trained tens of thousands of employees, from retirees to management, to fill the role of the workers who are now on strike.
“We are confident that we have the talent and resources in place to meet the needs and demands of our customers,” Marc C. Reed, Verizon’s executive vice-president of human resources, said in a statement.
Chris King, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus, played down the impact of the strike on the company.
“The wireline business is something that Verizon is less exposed to than they have ever been in the past,” King said. “They are certainly more comfortable dealing with the strike today than they were 10 years or so ago.”
King, who has a “buy” rating on Verizon, said he sees the impact limited to slower-than-usual installations.
UNACCEPTABLE DEMANDS
Among the changes it is seeking, Verizon said it wants to freeze employee pension plans and replace them with an enhanced 401(k) plan.” It also wants workers to contribute to healthcare insurance premiums.
The CWA says the contributions to healthcare that Verizon wants the union members to make were unacceptable, and that increases in deductibles would make the proposed healthcare plan unaffordable.
It said the profitable company is asking for far too many concessions from affected workers, who include technical and customer service employees in Verizon’s wireline business.
Verizon has 93,000 workers in its wireline business, of whom 58,000 are unionized. Including its Verizon Wireless venture with Vodafone Group Plc, the company’s total workforce is 196,000 employees.
(Reporting by Sinead Carew, Roy Strom and Dhanya Skariachan; Editing by Vicki Allen and Marguerita Choy)

SOURCE: REUTERS

Souce: Reuters via @BreakingNews

PRESS RELEASE
7 August 2011 – Statement by the President of the ECB
1. The Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) welcomes the announcements made by the governments of Italy and Spain concerning new measures and reforms in the areas of fiscal and structural policies. The Governing Council considers a decisive and swift implementation by both governments as essential in order to substantially enhance the competitiveness and flexibility of their economies, and to rapidly reduce public deficits.
2. The Governing Council underlines the importance of the commitment of all Heads of State or Government to adhere strictly to the agreed fiscal targets, as reaffirmed at the euro area summit of 21 July 2011. A key element is also the enhancement of the growth potential of the economy.
3. The Governing Council considers essential the prompt implementation of all the decisions taken at the euro area summit. In this perspective, the Governing Council welcomes the joint commitment expressed by Germany and France today.
4. The Governing Council attaches decisive importance to the declaration of the Heads of State or Government of the euro area in the inflexible determination to fully honour their own individual sovereign signature as a key element in ensuring financial stability in the euro area as a whole.
5. It equally considers fundamental that governments stand ready to activate the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) in the secondary market, on the basis of an ECB analysis recognising the existence of exceptional financial market circumstances and risks to financial stability, once the EFSF is operational.
6. It is on the basis of the above assessments that the ECB will actively implement its Securities Markets Programme. This programme has been designed to help restoring a better transmission of our monetary policy decisions – taking account of dysfunctional market segments – and therefore to ensure price stability in the euro area.

 

SOURCE: ECB WEBSITE–CLICK HERE FOR SOURCE & RELEASE

An indicator followed by veteran technical analyst John Roque that has perfect results for almost twenty years just flashed a buy signal. The beauty of Roque’s indicator, which has signaled positive returns three months out every time from its trigger point, is in its simplicity.

FULL STORY HERE

Source: CNBC.com

_____________

“I would recommend you panic.” -Hugh Hendry, 2010

Still applicable to European crisis…

CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO

(Reuters) – The European Central Bank will intervene decisively on markets to protect Italy and Spain from an accelerating debt crisis, a monetary source said on Sunday, indicating it would buy government bonds of the euro zone’s third and fourth biggest economies.
The agreement of the bank’s policy-making Governing Council marked a watershed in the ECB’s fire-fighting after modest bond buying efforts last week failed to stem contagion to the currency bloc’s larger economies.
Officials on an ECB conference call carefully considered the situation in Italy and Spain, and took note of a statement by France and Germany on Sunday stressing their commitment to European financial reforms, the source said.
“The Euro system will intervene very significantly on markets and respond in a significant and cohesive way,” the source said, adding the ECB would shortly issue a statement.
The move aims to help keep markets at bay after last Friday’s U.S. debt downgrade added to the euro zone’s sovereign debt crisis, until the bloc’s own rescue fund can take over.
Germany and France earlier said in a statement that the EFSF bailout fund would soon be able to buy government bonds of debt strugglers Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal and Ireland.
ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet had wanted the policy-setting Governing Council to take a final decision on buying Italian paper after Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi announced new measures on Friday to speed up deficit reduction and hasten economic reforms, other euro zone sources said.
One said the council would also discuss possible emergency liquidity measures to prevent money markets freezing.
The Eurosystem comprises the ECB and national central banks of the 17 countries that share the euro single currency.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy said they were committed to getting approval from their parliaments for new powers for the European Financial Stability Facility rescue fund by the end of September.
That will allow the EFSF to buy government bonds in the secondary market if the ECB thinks it is warranted and if euro zone member states agree, potentially absolving the ECB of the need to do so, a policy that a powerful minority of its council members strongly oppose.
“France and Germany are confident that the ECB analysis will provide the appropriate basis for secondary market interventions as it will help determine the case when financial stability of the euro zone as a whole is at risk,” the leaders said.
Their statement reiterated the agreement at last month’s emergency euro zone summit which granted a second bailout to Greece, but the focus on the EFSF’s ability to buy government bonds once the bloc’s parliaments have ratified its new powers was meant to encourage the ECB to do the same in the interim.
Twin debt crises in Europe and the United States are causing global market turmoil and stoking fears of the rich world sliding back into recession.
Another source said the ECB meeting was put back into the evening to see what measures U.S. authorities were prepared to take to calm markets after credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded Washington’s AAA rating to AA+ on Friday.
“The important part of the picture now is the U.S.,” that source said.
G7 TO CONFER
Finance ministers of the Group of Seven major industrialized nations are to hold a teleconference late on Sunday (European time) to discuss a response to the crisis after senior officials conferred by telephone late on Saturday.
The ECB reactivated its controversial sovereign bond-buying programme last Thursday but only bought small quantities of Irish and Portuguese bonds, seeking more front-loaded austerity measures from Italy.
Italian and Spanish 10-year bond yields spiked to 14-year highs when investors saw the central bank was not buying their paper.
Under pressure from EU peers and the central bank, Berlusconi announced late on Friday plans to bring forward balancing the budget by one year to 2013, enshrine a balanced budget rule in the constitution and push through welfare and labor market reforms after talks with trade unions and employers.
Merkel and Sarkozy welcomed the new Italian plan.
“Especially the Italian authorities’ goal to achieve a balanced budget a year earlier than previously envisaged is of fundamental importance,” they said.
However, details of Italy’s austerity drive are thin, leaving many analysts — and maybe some in the ECB — skeptical.
After a week that saw $2.5 trillion wiped off global stock markets, political leaders are under pressure to reassure investors that Western governments have both the will and ability to reduce their huge and growing public debt loads.
That had raised pressure on the ECB to act to calm bond markets until the euro zone’s 440-billion-euro rescue fund is empowered to intervene on secondary bond markets and give countries in difficulty precautionary credit lines.
It has also prompted widespread calls from economists and market analysts for the euro zone to at least double the size of the European Financial Stability Facility — a move that EU paymaster Germany and its close ally France has rejected as unnecessary.
(additional reporting by Paul Carrel; writing by Paul Taylor and Mike Peacock; editing by Janet McBride)

SOURCE: REUTERS

outlook stable.

Take that you filthy Americans!

developing…

We are so grateful.

This is no different from QE. Get your space helmets ready.

Fun times

Sequel

Fun times

Saudi market tanks

Nikkei Futures

Take a dirt nap

Economist feel now that the U.S. has been given a haircut that France could be the next to lose its AAA status.

Full article

While it will not happen immediately, it is possible to see something in the form of another downgrade as soon as 6 months from now.

Full article

David Beers Comments

JPM will be in charge of $12-$15 billion of state finances

NASDAQ 100 Flashing a bottom

• Courtesy of Zero Hedge
• German Govt: Italy Too Big For EFSF To Save – Spiegel
• German Govt: Doubts Whether Tripling EFSF Would Help It Save Italy
• German Govt: Italy Must Make Savings, Reforms To Exit Crisis – Spiegel
• Italy Debt Guarantee Could Raise Doubts Over Germany’s Finances – Spiegel
• German Govt: EFSF Should Only Help Small, Mid-Size Countries – Spiegel