via The Economist 

THE most memorable incidents in earth-changing events are sometimes the most banal. In the rapidly spreading scandal of LIBOR (the London inter-bank offered rate) it is the very everydayness with which bank traders set about manipulating the most important figure in finance. They joked, or offered small favours. “Coffees will be coming your way,” promised one trader in exchange for a fiddled number. “Dude. I owe you big time!… I’m opening a bottle of Bollinger,” wrote another. One trader posted diary notes to himself so that he wouldn’t forget to fiddle the numbers the next week. “Ask for High 6M Fix,” he entered in his calendar, as he might have put “Buy milk”.

What may still seem to many to be a parochial affair involving Barclays, a 300-year-old British bank, rigging an obscure number, is beginning to assume global significance. The number that the traders were toying with determines the prices that people and corporations around the world pay for loans or receive for their savings. It is used as a benchmark to set payments on about $800 trillion-worth of financial instruments, ranging from complex interest-rate derivatives to simple mortgages. The number determines the global flow of billions of dollars each year. Yet it turns out to have been flawed.

READ THE REST HERE 

down over 60%

via BusinessWeek.com

Patriot Coal Corp. (PCX) (PCX), the U.S. fuel producer that has lost more than $7 billion in value, has lined up financing ahead of a bankruptcy filing that may come as soon as today, said two people with knowledge of the matter.

The so-called debtor-in-possession financing is being provided by Citigroup Inc., Barclays Plc and Bank of America Corp., said the people, who asked not to be identified as the process is private.

Patriot is the biggest casualty so far of the slump in the U.S. coal industry, which has seen tens of millions of tons of production cutbacks this year. Coal miners are struggling because of a combination of a warm winter, utilities switching some generating capacity to cheaper natural gas and regulatory moves to curb emissions from coal-burning power plants. U.S. coal use in the first quarter was the lowest for that period since 1988, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Patriot was spun off five years ago by Peabody Energy Corp. (BTU) (BTU) The shares had tumbled 74 percent this year through July 6 after the company idled some of its mines. The company’s market value peaked at $7.5 billion in 2008.

Patriot, Citigroup, Barclays and Bank of America didn’t immediately return phone calls seeking comment.

The St. Louis-based company said in May it hired Blackstone Group LP as it worked with lenders to refinance $625 million of loans and credit facilities.

READ REST HERE 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CjC2YviaAQ&feature=player_embedded

SOURCE 

We might not be able to get there yet, but as NASA says, ‘this is the next best thing’.

From fresh rover tracks to an impact crater blasted billions of years ago, a newly completed view from the panoramic camera on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows the ruddy terrain where the voyaging robot spent the Martian winter.

This scene, recorded from the mast-mounted color camera includes the rover’s own solar arrays and deck in the foreground, provides a sense of sitting on top of the rover and taking in the view.

A winter on Mars: NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows the ruddy terrain which the voyaging robot spent the Martian winter

A close-up of the left-hand-side of the image: The high-resolution picture is extremely detailed, and can be downloaded from the link at the bottom of the article

Read the rest here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2170196/Mars-Exploration-photo-Spectacular-360-panorama-captured-NASAs-Opportunity-Rover.html#ixzz1zzfnoxBH

H/T @thestalwart

FULL STORY AT FBI.GOV

The FBI Bank Robbery Task Force needs your help identifying a bank robber dubbed the “Abe Lincoln Bandit.” The man, sporting a long, Abraham Lincoln-like beard, robbed the Wells Fargo Bank located at 11102 Scarsdale in Houston, Texas, earlier today (June 30, 2012). Surveillance photos are below.

via AccuWeather.com

A dangerous situation is unfolding from Indiana to the mid-Atlantic where millions remain without power and temperatures are once again soaring.

A violent thunderstorm complex, known as a super derecho, left a trail of power outages and destruction from Indiana to southern New Jersey, Virginia and northern North Carolina Friday afternoon and night.

Eleven lives were lost, all due to falling trees…

Indiana: 112,760
Kentucky: 140,461
Ohio: 363,500
West Virginia: 500,000
Virginia: 2.5 million
Maryland: More than 1.3 million
New Jersey: 168,000

READ FULL STORY HERE 

by Charles Krauthammer

It’s the judiciary’s Nixon-to-China: Chief Justice John Roberts joins the liberal wing of the Supreme Court and upholds the constitutionality of Obamacare. How? By pulling off one of the great constitutional finesses of all time. He managed to uphold the central conservative argument against Obamacare, while at the same time finding a narrow definitional dodge to uphold the law — and thus prevented the court from being seen as having overturned, presumably on political grounds, the signature legislation of this administration.

Why did he do it? Because he carries two identities. Jurisprudentially, he is a constitutional conservative. Institutionally, he is chief justice and sees himself as uniquely entrusted with the custodianship of the court’s legitimacy, reputation and stature.

As a conservative, he is as appalled as his conservative colleagues by the administration’s central argument that Obamacare’s individual mandate is a proper exercise of its authority to regulate commerce.

That makes congressional power effectively unlimited. Mr. Jones is not a purchaser of health insurance. Mr. Jones has therefore manifestly not entered into any commerce. Yet Congress tells him he must buy health insurance — on the grounds that it isregulating commerce. If government can do that under the commerce clause, what can it not do?

“The Framers . . . gave Congress the power to regulate commerce, not to compel it,”writes Roberts. Otherwise you “undermine the principle that the Federal Government is a government of limited and enumerated powers.”

LoL…

Nearly two in three Americans think President Barack Obama is better suited than Republican rival Mitt Romney to deal with an alien invasion, according to a survey released Wednesday.

National Geographic Channel contacted 1,114 adults across the United States last month for its fanciful opinion poll ahead of its new cable television documentary series “Chasing UFOs.”

Thirty-six percent of respondents said they were certain that unidentified flying objects exist. Eleven percent were confident they had spotted a UFO, and 20 percent said they knew someone who claimed to have seen one.

With Obama facing re-election in November, 65 percent said Obama would be more adept than Romney to respond to an alien invasion, with women and younger Americans more likely than men and over-65s to agree with that prospect.

READ THE REST HERE AT  YAHOO/AP CANADA 

via HuffingtonPost.com

via Mark Hanna at marketmontage.com

Infotainment financial channel CNBC continues to see its ratings plummet.  I am sure part of this is just the general disgust towards equities by Joe 6Pack but the “shout at you” format (at least in the U.S. version) has to be contributing as well.  I continue to be amazed some of these “emergency weeks” the difference between CNBC Asia (cordial) v CNBC Europe (intelligent) v CNBC USA (interrupt guests, yell, make every topic center on how the Democrats are destroying the economy)…

• Squawk Box (6-9 a.m.) is supposed to prime traders before the bell. The show posted its lowest rated its time block since Q4 2006.
• The Closing Bell (3-5 p.m.) is supposed to wrap up the day’s action. The slot posted its fifth-lowest rating in total viewers and second-lowest ratings in the key 25-54 demographic since 1997.
• Fast Money (5-6 p.m.) is focused almost specifically on swing trading stocks. That time slot showed the lowest rating for the 25-54 demo since 1997 — and lowest in total viewers since Fast Money launched in 2006.

READ FULL PIECE HERE 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dlc9pPeS2Q0

12,572.44-251.95(-1.96%)

1,325.46-30.23(-2.23%)

2,859.09-71.36(-2.44%)

(Reuters) – Greece’s new government promised on Thursday to renegotiate the terms of the country’s bailout without endangering its future in the euro, responding to intense pressure to ease mounting social tensions but also risking a showdown with European powers.

The three-party coalition called for changes to the deal that is helping Greece avoid bankruptcy after the announcement of an 18-member cabinet dominated by the conservative New Democracy party of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras.

READ THE REST HERE AT REUTERS.COM

U.S. Supreme Court rules against SEIU Local 1000 in fee case
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that SEIU Local 1000 didn’t appropriately notify members and fair-share payers when it temporarily raised fees in 2005 and 2006.

The 7-2 decision released by the high court this morning in Knox v. SEIU Local 1000 means that unions must give nonmembers an immediate chance to opt out of unexpected fee increases or special assessments required of workers in closed-shop workplaces, such at California’s state government.

The court said that Dianne Knox and other nonmembers represented by Local 1000 didn’t receive the legally required notice in advance of a $12 million assessment the 93,000-state employee union charged them to raise money for the union’s political fund.

READ THE REST HERE AT THE SACRAMENTO BEE 

(Reuters) – The S&P 500 index fell more than 2 percent late on Thursday as data raised worries about global growth and a bearish note on the markets from Goldman Sachs added to the weak tone.

READ THE REST HERE AT REUTERS.COM

chessNwine commentary: Consider this an open forum. Do you think Goldman is trying to trap retail traders? Chime in below.

via BreakingNews.com

via CNBC.com

Moody’s could downgrade the debt ratings of as many as 15 global investment banks after the closing bell today, a move that would cost the banks billions of dollars in extra collateral.

In February, Moody’s announced it would review the ratings of 17 global investment banks and has already downgradedMacquarie and Nomura. In the U.S., the companies that are most likely to be affected by today’s action: Bank of America [BAC 7.845    -0.295  (-3.62%)   ], Citigroup [C  28.01   -0.85  (-2.95%)   ], Goldman Sachs [GS  94.31    -2.24  (-2.32%)   ], JPMorgan[JPM  35.68    -0.77  (-2.11%)   ] and Morgan Stanley [MS  13.9969    -0.2031  (-1.43%)   ]. Royal Bank of Canada and nine European banks, includingDeutsche Bank [DB  35.70    -1.06  (-2.88%)   ], BNP Paribas and Credit Suisse[CS  18.62    -0.69  (-3.57%)   ] are also on the list.

The current credit actions are part of a comprehensive review of the overall global banking system by Moody’s. In the middle of last month Moody’s downgraded Italian, Spanish, German and Austrian bank credit ratings. The U.S. banks with global capital markets capabilities have had an open dialogue with the ratings company, in an effort to soften the severity of the downgrades.

READ THE REST HERE 

(Reuters) – Spain’s medium-term borrowing costs spiraled to a euro-era record on Thursday and independent auditors said Spanish banks may need up to 62 billion euros ($78 billion) in extra capital, to be filled mostly by a euro zone bailout.

Euro zone finance ministers met in Luxembourg to discuss how to channel up to 100 billion euros ($126 billion) in rescue aid to Spanish lenders weighed down by bad debts from a burst property bubble.

Many in the markets see the package as a mere prelude to a full program for the Spanish state, which Madrid vehemently denies it will need.

“We have already started working on the design of the aid with the Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund,” Spanish Economy Minister Luis de Guindos told reporters as he arrived for the talks. “We will present the request in the next few days.”

READ THE REST HERE AT REUTERS.COM