Monthly Archives: March 2012
Uncle Sam Asks Courts to Dismiss Lawsuit on AIG Takeover
Insurance Funds Drying Up According to Buffet
“Warren Buffett, the former hedge fund manager who built Berkshire Hathaway Inc. into a $195 billion company by gaining leverage through insurance premiums, said this traditional source of new funds is drying up.
Berkshire’s (BRK/A) insurance units, which cover risks from fender benders to asbestos-related hospital bills, can no longer be relied on to provide new investment funds in the form of float, or accumulated premium, Buffett said in a Feb. 25 letter. Float, which rose to $70.6 billion as of Dec. 31 from $65.8 billion a year earlier and $39 million in 1970, is unlikely to “grow much — if at all — from its current level,” Buffett said….”
Comments »U.S. Auto Sales Hit a Four Year High; Can They Keep Up the Pace ?
“U.S. auto sales accelerated to the fastest pace in four years, led by Chrysler Group LLC and a surprise gain from General Motors Co. (GM), as demand strengthened throughout automakers’ lineups.
GM deliveries rose 1.1 percent to 209,306 cars and light trucks, beating analysts’ estimates for a 4.8 percent decrease. Chrysler sales increased 40 percent to 133,521 and Ford Motor Co. (F)’s climbed 14 percent to 178,644. Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. deliveries each gained 12 percent, while Nissan Motor Co. sales rose 16 percent…”
Comments »Stephen Bannon: We’ll Release the Tapes Breitbart has of Obama’s College Years in the Next 10 Days
Dollar Rises, Yen and Euro Fall
Iron Ore Futures Defy Gravity as Demand Falls Sharply
“Iron ore, the world’s second-biggest commodity cargo after crude oil, is extending a bull marketafter rallying 22 percent from a 22-month low in October as the slowest expansion in exports in 11 years restricts supplies.
Seaborne supply will advance 3.8 percent to 1.09 billion metric tons this year, the smallest gain since 2001, according to Clarkson Plc, the largest shipbroker. Prices in China, the biggest importer, may rise 10 percent to an average of $157.50 a ton in the fourth quarter, the median of 11 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg shows. Shares of Vale SA (VALE), which ships more ore than any other company, will rise 19 percent to $30.42 in the next 12 months, the average of 16 estimates shows.
New mines and expansions of existing ones are being postponed by rising costs and licensing delays. Morgan Stanley cut its forecast for export supply by 9.6 percent since October and expects a 99 million-ton deficit in the seaborne market this year, at least the ninth consecutive annual shortage. Vale will report its second-biggest profit ever this year, the mean of 11 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg shows.
“The wall of additional iron-ore supply that investors have been fearing is going to be late,” said Neil Gregson, who helps manage about $7.4 billion of commodity assets at JPMorgan Asset Management in London. “Iron ore remains a tight market.”
Steel Index…”
Comments »Baidu Expands Their Search Capabilities With Tweet Search
“Baidu Inc. (BIDU), owner of China’s most- popular search engine, started displaying links to tweets on microblogs run by Sina Corp. (SINA) and Tencent Holdings Ltd. (700), broadening its services for social-networking users.
Users will also be able to search for posts on the microblogs of NetEase.com Inc. (NTES) andSohu.com Inc. (SOHU), Kaiser Kuo, a spokesman at Baidu, said in an e-mail today. He declined to disclose the commercial arrangements between the companies.
Baidu, which handles more than 80 percent of search-engine queries in China, is boosting spending to offer services targeted at social-networking, online travel and e-commerce users in the world’s biggest Internet market. Sina, based in Shanghai, is the local industry leader for microblogging services, according to BOCOM International. Such services are known as Weibo in Chinese,
“Weibo is popular among mobile-phone users, so this will help Baidu’s mobile business,” said Kelvin Ho, who rates Baidu “buy” at Yuanta Securities in Hong Kong. “Social networking is an area where Baidu is working on.”
Comments »The Aussie Dollar Hits Nine Month Highs Against the Yen
Oil Falls After The Saudi’s Deny Reports of a Pipeline Explosion
“Oil fell in New York and headed for the first weekly decline in four after Saudi Arabia denied a reported pipeline explosion in its Eastern province.
Futures slid as much as 0.9 percent after climbing to the highest price in 10 months yesterday. There was no sabotage at oil facilities in the Qatif area, according to Major General Mansour Al-Turki, a spokesman for the Saudi Arabian Interior Ministry. Prices rose above $110 a barrel for the first time since May after Iran’s Press TV said an explosion hit pipelines in the area, home to Saudi Arabia’s largest refinery.
“The report of the pipeline fire seems to have been a very successful scam by the Iranians,” said Filip Petersson, commodity strategist at SEB AB in Stockholm. “They want higher oil prices to compensate for lost export barrels and are obviously using various means to achieve it. The success clearly shows how nervous the market is.”
Oil for April delivery dropped as much as 98 cents to $107.86 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange and was at $108.24 at 11:45 a.m. London time. The contract closed up $1.77 at $108.84 yesterday, after rising as high as $110.55. Prices are down 1.4 percent this week and up 5.9 percent from a year ago.
Brent oil for April settlement slipped $1.08, or 0.9 percent, to $125.12 on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange after falling as much as 1.3 percent earlier. It surged as much as 4.7 percent to $128.40 yesterday, the highest price since July 2008, the month Brent reached a record $147.50. The European benchmark contract’s premium to West Texas Intermediate was at $16.87 a barrel today….”
Comments »Italy’s Deficit Shrinks More Than Expected
The EU Declares a Victory For Greece and Now Turns Focus Towards Growth
Asia Rocks to the Upside While Europe is Mixed and U.S. Futures are Down Slightly
UN Action Team Has Begun Discussing Ways to Divert 2011 AG5 AKA Armageddon 2040
Have No Fear: THE BULLS WILL BE FUCKING DEAD
Boots on the Ground Confirmation From The Arab Digest of Saudi Pipeline Fire/Explosion/ Attack Scenario (pics inside)
Stratfor Email Contradicts Official Osama bin Laden Burial Story
Just Another Day on the NYC Subway
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMIw82pX4mA 450 300]
Comments »Andrew Breitbart: Media Manipulation as an Art Form
Andrew Breitbart didn’t invent the new media universe. It was already safely in place when he emerged as a potent force in the conservative blogosphere several years ago. But no one exploited the immediacy and subversive force of new media like Breitbart, who died Thursday of an apparent heart attack at age 43.
Breitbart was a revolutionary eager to overthrow a media establishment that he viewed as a front for left-wing social causes. Always brimming with righteous indignation — before he died, his final tweet offered an explanation for why he’d called an adversary a “putz” — he had contempt for anything that smacked of liberal do-gooderism or hypocrisy.
As much as Breitbart loathed his liberal adversaries, he shared many of their beliefs — not the political ones but the ones rooted in an adversarial approach to the establishment. Like many on the left, such as Christopher Hitchens and Jon Stewart, Breitbart had a sly wit, a knack for courting controversy and a disdain for the insular, self-important Washington press corps.
A savvy provocateur, Breitbart knew that the best defense was a good offense. Even though “Game Change,” HBO’s film about how Sarah Palin became John McCain’s 2008 running mate, doesn’t debut until later this month, one of his websites, BigHollywood, has been attacking the film’s credibility for weeks. A typical headline: “‘Game Change’: Meet the Leftists Who Turned HBO Into a Pro-Obama SuperPAC.”
When it came to liberals, it took one to know one. Breitbart was born in the cradle of modern progressivism, growing up in a Jewish liberal household in Brentwood. Largely apolitical through his college years, Breitbart embraced the conservative cause in the early 1990s, only after he became outraged at what he viewed as an insidious liberal attack on Clarence Thomas during the Supreme Court justice’s confirmation hearing. From then on, outrage was Breitbart’s chosen weapon. After apprenticing with Matt Drudge and Arianna Huffington (even after she’d emerged as a full-blown liberal), Breitbart began launching a variety of his own websites, including BigGovernment, BigJournalism and BigHollywood, each one dedicated to the destruction of the old media guard.
Because I write about pop culture, I kept a close eye on BigHollywood, a site especially close to Breitbart’s heart, since it gave him a platform to bash the most visible form of liberal hegemony — the pampered, self-absorbed denizens of show business. Breitbart viewed Hollywood as an industry of sellouts who disguised their careerism by embracing silly social causes. As he once memorably put it: “People come out to Hollywood not to do Shakespeare in the Park, but to get rich and to be able to have sex with the best looking people in the world.”
PHOTOS: Notable deaths of 2012
According to BigHollywood, the movie industry was ridiculously out of touch and often contemptuous toward regular Americans, slipping left-wing messages into virtually every aspect of entertainment, even “Muppets” films. To hear Breitbart’s bloggers tell it, there was a blacklist against conservatives in Hollywood, forcing them to avoid ever revealing their true beliefs. No one avoided the lash — after I took issue with Breitbart on that last issue, BigHollywood’s lead writer, John Nolte, took to calling me Hollywood’s “left-wing enforcer.”
Breitbart would’ve been a marginal figure if he had simply been a media gadfly. His genius was rooted in the realization that in the new media universe, being outrageous often gets far more attention than being authoritative. After Ted Kennedy died in 2009, when everyone else was lionizing the great liberal crusader, Breitbart ripped him as a “duplicitous bastard.”
In many ways, Breitbart was a throwback to the subversive media manipulators of the 1960s, especially counterculture provocateurs like Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. They courted the media with bizarre antics. Breitbart often did the same. One of his most potent weapons was the hidden camera. In 2009, his confederates posed as a prostitute and her boyfriend, seeking assistance from the staff of the community group ACORN. The stunt attracted nationwide controversy when ACORN staffers offered advice on a scheme designed to skirt federal law to obtain housing that could be used for illegal activities.
A Government Accountability Office report cleared ACORN of criminal activities, but the explosion of news coverage put Breitbart’s BigGovernment site on the map. Other exposés weren’t as successful. Breitbart posted video excerpts of an agriculture department employee, Shirley Sherrod, supposedly making a racist remark but had to backtrack when a longer version of the tape showed Sherrod discussing bridging racial differences.
Last year, Breitbart was at the heart of the scandal involving New York Rep. Anthony Weiner, an outspoken supporter of liberal causes. Breitbart posted a sexually explicit photo on his BigJournalism site that he obtained from Weiner’s Twitter account. After Breitbart leaked other graphic photos that Weiner had sent to young women, Weiner resigned, but not before Breitbart hijacked a Weiner press conference, taking control of the podium and holding court with reporters before Weiner could take the stage.
If Breitbart had a psychic twin it was Michael Moore, someone he loathed but someone who shared Breitbart’s gift for self-promotion and agit-prop exposés. Love him or hate him, Breitbart was a bracing breath of fresh air who brought an entrepreneurial zeal to his combative style of journalism. Breitbart once said, “I have two speeds — humor and righteous indignation.” It was his true gift — putting pedal to the metal. That may not qualify him as a hall of fame journalist, but in today’s shoot-from-the-hip media universe, it makes him irreplaceable.
Comments »Japan Stock Rally at Open
Japanese stocks rally at open; Nikkei up 0.9% –@MarketWatch
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