Never stop lambasting the banks….

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“While the global financial meltdown and its aftershocks have unleashed a flood of indignation, condemnation, and protest upon Wall Street, the crisis has exposed a deeper distrust and implacable resentment of capitalism itself.

Capitalism might be the greatest engine of prosperity and progress ever devised, but in recent years, individuals and communities have grown increasingly disgruntled with the implicit contract that governs the rights and responsibilities of business. The global economy and the Internet have heightened our sense of interconnectedness and sharpened our awareness that when a business focuses only on enriching investors, it implies that managers view the interests of customers, employees, communities and the fate of the planet as little more than cost trade-offs in a quarter-by-quarter game.

It’s time to radically revise the deeply-etched beliefs about what business is for, whose interests it serves, and how it creates value. We need a new form of capitalism for the 21st century, one dedicated to the promotion of greater well-being rather than the single-minded pursuit of growth and profits; one that doesn’t sacrifice the future for the near term; one with an appropriate regard for every stakeholder; and one that holds leaders accountable for all of the consequences of their actions. In other words, we need a capitalism that is profoundly principled, fundamentally patient, and socially accountable.

This isn’t a new challenge, but it’s more urgent than ever, not just as an effort to escape reform and regulation from the outside, but to restore the public trust, to repair the moral fabric of the system, and to unleash the innovation required to tackle the world’s most pressing and important challenges.

That’s why the MIX is eager to announce the third leg of the Harvard Business Review/McKinsey M-Prize for Innovation — the Long-Term Capitalism Challenge. With this challenge, we hope to accelerate the shift toward a more principled, patient, and socially accountable capitalism — one that’s truly fit for the long term.

Specifically, we’re looking for stories (real-world case studies) and hacks (boldly original ideas) that offer up the most progressive practices and disruptive ideas that tackle the challenge of making our organizations more:

PRINCIPLED
Capitalism degenerates into narrow self-interest without a strong ethical foundation.

• How do we focus the entire organization on a higher purpose and embed such virtues as generosity and selflessness into everyday interactions, evaluations, and reward systems?

• How do we measure the ethical or moral climate of a company, and what is the dashboard?

• What does it mean for individuals at all levels to act as wise stewards of organizational values, resources, and stakeholder well-being?

• What kind of a forum or process could we create that would allow individuals to freely share and discuss ethical dilemmas?

• In what ways might extreme transparency preserve and promote the highest purpose of the organization?

PATIENT
Vision and perseverance are critical to value creation and highly vulnerable to short-termism.

• How do we stretch management timeframes and perspectives?

• What does it mean to articulate and instill a vision compelling enough to inspire sacrifice, stimulate innovation, and hedge against expediency?

• How might we re-balance compensation and measurement systems to provide incentives for long-term value creation along with short-term performance?

• What tactics or capabilities might we develop to earn some slack from investors?

• What kind of incentives and measurement systems could we devise to encourage internal entrepreneurs and nurture a varied portfolio of opportunities?

SOCIAL
Capitalism cannot operate in a social vacuum, and profits and shareholder return can no longer be the only measures of a company’s value-add.

• How do we eradicate the pervasive zero-sum mentality in business and embed the positive-sum view of stakeholder interdependence into operations at every level?

• How do we build the consideration of social return into every conversation and every decision at every level in the organization?

• How could we embed social goals into an organization’s innovation agenda and processes? In other words, how might we encourage not just social responsibility, but social entrepreneurship?
• What kind of measurement and reward systems would give significant weight to social impact created by individuals and the wider organization?

We look forward to your entries.”

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Imagine a USA in total disarray; total political and economic collapse. Seems highly unlikely, but states like Wyoming will not discount the chance of it happening and have prepared a contingency plan.

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SOURCE: sbnation.com

Juan Pablo Montoya’s Daytona 500 Crash Creates Amazing, Scary Scene

Feb2710:23pby Brian Floyd

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Says he is good with his hands…

A naked meth addict gets taken down by the police after hanging around the welding shop.

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Being long energy is getting to be a crowded trade. I don’t want to pick a top (in fact I am currently long Heating Oil), but the bull market in energy prices is gaining way too much attention — kind of like Silver did last March and April.

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BY STEPHEN L. BERNARD AND KATY BURNE

Greece became the first euro-zone member officially to be rated in default, 13 years after the single European currency was adopted to strengthen the European Union.

Standard & Poor’s cut Greece’s long-term credit rating to selective default from double-C. The move was expected, as S&P said this month that it would consider Greece in default if it added “collective-action” clauses to its sovereign debt, effectively forcing all bondholders to accept a bond-swap offering. ..

Read the rest here.

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By Elizabeth Lopatto

Maybe, as the novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald suggested, the rich really are different. They’re more likely to behave badly, according to seven experiments that weighed the ethics of hundreds of people.

The “upper class,” as defined by the study, were more likely to break the law while driving, take candy from children, lie in negotiation, cheat to increase their odds of winning a prize and endorse unethical behavior at work, researchers reported today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Taken together, the experiments suggest at least some wealthier people “perceive greed as positive and beneficial,” probably as a result of education, personal independence and the resources they have to deal with potentially negative consequences, the authors wrote.

While the tests measured only “minor infractions,” that factor made the results “even more surprising,” said Paul Piff, a Ph.D. candidate in psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a study author.

One experiment invited 195 adults recruited using Craigslist to play a game in which a computer “rolled dice” for a chance to win a $50 gift certificate. The numbers each participant rolled were the same; anyone self reporting a total higher than 12 was lying about their score. Those in wealthier classes were found to be more likely to fib, Piff said.

“A $50 prize is a measly sum to people who make $250,000 a year,” he said in a telephone interview. “So why are they more inclined to cheat? For a person with lower socioeconomic status, that $50 would get you more, and the risks are small.”

Read the rest here.

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Full article

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Growing concerns over Iran’s nuclear facilities may prove to be all for naught. Officials from the global intelligence company Stratfor allegedly discussed that Israel may have already destroyed the Iranian nuclear facility, according to one of the emails released by Wikileaks Monday.

“In one of the over five million emails leaked, the conversation centered on Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak praising the news of deadly munitions blasts at a base of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards.

“I think this is a diversion. The Israelis already destroyed all the Iranian nuclear infrastructure on the ground weeks ago,” one intelligence official wrote in an email dated November 14, 2011. “The current ‘let’s bomb Iran’ campaign was ordered by the EU leaders to divert the public attention from their at home financial problems. It plays also well for the US since Pakistan, Russia and N. Korea are mentioned in the report. ”

One other Stratfor official allegedly indicated a similar finding.

“Israeli commandos in collaboration with Kurd forces destroyed few underground facilities mainly used for the Iranian defense and nuclear research projects,” he wrote on November 13, 2011. “Even if the Israelis have the capabilities and are ready to attack by air, sea and land, there is no need to attack the nuclear program at this point after the commandos destroyed a significant part of it.”

Stratfor released a statement on Mondaycondemning the leaks.

“This is a deplorable, unfortunate – and illegal – breach of privacy,” the company said. “Some of the emails may be forged or altered to include inaccuracies; some may be authentic. We will not validate either.”

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“Global research company J.D. Power & Associates found that almost 10 percent of bank customers switched to another financial outlet in 2011, thanks in large part to increased fees.

Last year, 9.6 percent of people moved their money, compared to 8.7 percent in 2010 and 7.7 percent in 2009.

“It is apparent that new or increased fees are the proverbial straws that break the camel’s back,” J.D. Power’s director Michael Beird told the Los Angeles Times.

Along with increased fees, poor service was cited as another reason for the rise in departures.

A majority of the bank switches occurred at the larger banks. Only 0.9% of customers left their small bank or credit union for another outlet.”

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Servers will wipe their ass with his steak from now on…..

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Perhaps not yet, but it appears their debt bubble is not looking good going forward…

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“At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Visa announced a new over-the-air provisioning service for smartphones for use with Visa’s payWave mobile payments system. The service will make it easier for operators, banks and even transit operators to link Visa payment accounts to consumers’ smartphones, the company says.

Although perhaps not as exciting as news of a mobile wallet “app” in consumers’ eyes, what Visa is revealing is a key part to the underlying infrastructure that can make NFC-based mobile payments a reality.

By allowing phone to be “switched on” for mobile payments through an over-the-air activation process, the process will become more seamless for users and service providers alike. However, because the system is NFC-based, it’s limited only to supported handset which include an NFC chip. This is nowhere near the majority of smartphones today, and does not include the Apple iPhone. In addition, while there appears to be growing consumer demand for mobile payments, it’s not clear whether consumers will take to NFC in large numbers. (Only analysts’ predictions on that front.)

The new provisioning system was developed in hand with Oberthur Technologies, and allows for Visa’s payWave mobile payments technology as well as other payment applications to be deployed over the air to consumers’ NFC-equipped phones. NFC, or near field communication, is the short-range wireless communications technology that forms the backbone of several mobile payments initiatives, including the carrier-led Isis, as well as Google Wallet….”

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“We’ve already caught wind of the Lenovo K800 and Orange’s newly-announced Santa Clara but Intel CEO Paul Otellini isn’t content to leave their push into mobile at that.

Otellini has just announced that Intel has entered into partnerships with a handful of companies in hopes of solidifying their place in the smartphone market. Among those new partners are relative unknowns like Lava International, to major players like ZTE and Visa.

Lava’s first Intel-powered smartphone offering is dubbed the Xolo X900 (pictured left), which Intel seems to hope will give the company a stronger presence in the Indian market.

It’s a huge growth opportunity for Intel — Otellini noted that India’s smartphone market has recently tripled, and according to Lava International co-founder Vishal Sehgal, there’s a significant difference between India’s smartphone and feature phone customers. Otellini and Sehgal presumably hope to wow those Indian smartphone shoppers with a bit of horsepower, as the X900 sports a 1.6GHz Medfield chipset and a graphics processor running at over 400MHz.

ZTE will help Intel push into China with their own Medfield device, though Executive VP He Shiyou didn’t offer up any specifics beside a vague 2H 2012 release window. With these two new additions, Intel now has four smartphone manufacturers taking significant interest in their mobile platform, a far cry from their stance last year….”

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“MADRID—Spain’s new government said the country will miss its budget-deficit target by a wide margin, and announced spending cuts and tax increases of about €15 billion ($19.4 billion) to stem the tide of red ink.

One week after conservative Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy took his o

ath of office, his government said Spain’s budget deficit will be about 8% of gross domestic product in 2011—well above the 6% target the previous government of Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero committed to with the European Union and financial markets.

The overrun makes Spain the latest country on the euro zone’s fiscally frail periphery to stumble in attempts to close a yawning budget gap. Portugal, Italy and Greece have all been forced to push through austerity measures in recent months.

On Friday, Madrid proposed about €8.9 billion in spending cuts for 2012 that ranged from trimming public-sector employment to curbing subsidies for political parties.

The government also went back on a campaign pledge of Mr. Rajoy’s and approved tax increases of about €6 billion. The total budget adjustment represents about 1.5% of GDP.

“We weren’t in favor of tax hikes,” government spokeswoman Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría said at a news conference. “They were forced by the size of the [budget] gap we encountered.”

Spain’s latest measures will likely be insufficient to slash the budget deficit from 8% of GDP in 2011 to the target of 4.4% in 2012, a gap of about €36 billion. The government will present a new 2012 budget in March.

Ms. Sáenz de Santamaría hinted more austerity measures will come. “The government has started to take measures; this is the beginning of the beginning,” she said…”

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QZlv9Ekb9QA

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2013 MLB All-Star Game Reportedly To Be Played At Citi Field

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Citi’s Tobias Levkovich has become a bit skeptical of this rally, but overall he’s still quite bullish on where stocks might head.

One reason for that? The spread between the S&P 500 earnings yield vs. the 10-year Treasury rate.

The basic idea is that if you imagine that stocks could theoretically pay out 100% of their earnings as dividends, you can easily compare stocks to bonds based on yield. If the S&P had an average PE of 20, then you could say that you’re getting a 5% earnings yield. If bonds were only paying 1%, then you’re obviously getting way more meat buying equities, with a fat 4% spread between them.

Anyway, it turns out that using this method shows that stocks are still incredibly cheap, even after their runup.

In the chart below, Levkovich is using the S&P 500 10-year rolling earnings (so it includes the earnings collapse of 2008/2009), and comparing that to the yield on the 10-year, which remains remarkably low, as we’ve been pointing out all year.

The gap is currently between 2 and 3 standard deviations away from the average (going back tio 1971), and based on this, the average 12-month gain from here is a stunning 24.0% for equities, according to Levkovich.

You can see the value in this technique. In 1999, when stocks were near a peak, the spread was exactly the opposite, as investors were getting FAR more yield from risk-free Treasuries than they were from equities.

Bottom line today: Even with the runup, and some yellow warning signs, the outlook is extremely bullish.

 

Citi

 

 

Read more: http://trade.cc/aqdb#ixzz1nbjGSCiM

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