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Bank Of America Presents 5 Bad Things That Could Soon Happen In Greece — Including Out-Of-Control Social Unrest

Five things can go wrong in Greece in the next few weeks, in our view. The coalition government could fail to agree on the new austerity package. The Greek Parliament could fail to approve the proposed austerity package. Implementation problems could continue after Parliament approval. Social unrest could get out of control. And some Eurozone members could oppose further commitment to increase funding for Greece. We believe that Greece’s survival in the Eurozone could be at risk if any of these risks lead to a failure of the new program.

Read the entire article here.

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PIGS Getting Slaughtered, or Bottoming?

Our Chartist Friend from Pittsburg has posted some charts with commentary. Most of the charts look like bottoms to me.

See the charts here.

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IBD: The Amazing Little Story that Didn’t Happen on Obama’s Big Bus Trip

Fantastic piece…

President Obama was back in Iowa for several days this past week. He has winning memories there. But the fact that an incumbent president feels it necessary to invest three of only 79 precious remaining days there says how close the presidential race now is.

Obama’s experienced advance team had a bunch of flubs. That farm family with all the windmills that President Quixote loves to laud turns out to be Republicans and informed reporters after Obama’s visit that he sure wasn’t getting their votes this time.

There was the state fair beer tent where Obama bought a round of Bud Lights for everyone, except the guy with the Mitt Romney sign. Great summertime photo op. Except it turns out the Secret Service closed down the guy’s tent long before Obama’s arrival and the small business owner lost thousands in sales.

Then there was the caterer who wore a “Government Didn’t Build My Business” T-shirt to work the president’s event. Our friend Tom Bevan at the must-read RealClearPolitics has all the details here.

But the moment that sticks out in our mind was something that didn’t happen during the president’s Iowa trip.

Read the rest here.

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Headline: Russian Orthodox Church Forgives Pussy Riot

Perhaps the best band name of all time! Who could one NOT forgive a Pussy Riot?

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia’s top Orthodox clerics on Saturday asked for mercy for the punk band Pussy Riot for its anti-government protest in a Moscow cathedral, but the church’s forgiveness is unlikely to change the band’s punishment in a case that caused an international furor over political dissent.

Read the rest here.

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Apocalypse Not: Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Worry About End Times

A great essay…Here is a tease:

When the sun rises on December 22, as it surely will, do not expect apologies or even a rethink. No matter how often apocalyptic predictions fail to come true, another one soon arrives. And the prophets of apocalypse always draw a following—from the 100,000 Millerites who took to the hills in 1843, awaiting the end of the world, to the thousands who believed in Harold Camping, the Christian radio broadcaster who forecast the final rapture in both 1994 and 2011.

Religious zealots hardly have a monopoly on apocalyptic thinking. Consider some of the environmental cataclysms that so many experts promised were inevitable. Best-selling economist Robert Heilbroner in 1974: “The outlook for man, I believe, is painful, difficult, perhaps desperate, and the hope that can be held out for his future prospects seem to be very slim indeed.” Or best-selling ecologist Paul Ehrlich in 1968: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s [“and 1980s” was added in a later edition] the world will undergo famines—hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked on now … nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.” Or Jimmy Carter in a televised speech in 1977: “We could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade.”

Read the rest here.

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Rachel Maddow to Blame for LGBT Nutjob Shooting up the Family Research Council

While the MSM ignores, The Other McCain boldly Ross’s today’s news of a crazy person shooting up the headquarters of the Family Research Council.

If you Google her name with Chick-fil-A and Family Research Council, you get more than 450,000 hits.

It therefore should be obvious that Maddow’s hateful rhetoric against Chick-fil-A and Family Research Council incited today’s shooting at FRC’s office in Washington, D.C.

Read the rest here.

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What Goldman Wants, Goldman Gets.

Zero Hedge believes “the Goldmans of the world want to inject some major vol (and volume) into the market.”

Read the reasoning behind this assertion here.

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Jobs 2012: Government Jobs Exceed Goods-Producing Jobs

Wonder why our recovery has been painfully slow? Your tax dollars are being circle-jerked to create more government jobs which then require more of your tax dollars to sustain.

First, recognized by Iacono Researchin 2010,  total government jobs at the federal, state, and local level, now exceed total employment in the private goods-producing sector,  including manufacturing, construction, mining and logging, which also includes oil and gas extraction.  We didn’t expect this.

Really? More government jobs than goods-producing jobs?  In the United States?

Read the rest here.

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‘Tiger Cubs’ Love Facebook

Shares of Facebookhave tanked nearly 50% since the social network’s highly anticipated initial public offering back in May. …Here’s a rundown of ten hedge funds who owned the most shares of Facebook for the second quarter ended 6/30/2012, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Read the rest here.

 

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Mitt Romney: Rich Taxpayers will Pay Their Share

I indicated as I announced my tax plan that the key principles included the following. First, that high-income people would continue to pay the same share of the tax burden that they do today. And second, that there would be a reduction in taxes paid by middle-income taxpayers. Those are the key principles of my plan that the Tax Policy Center chose to ignore.

Read the rest here.

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Nassim Taleb: Stay Out of Finance!

In a short new paper published on his website, the author of “The Black Swan” argues that, in the future, new entrants into finance simply won’t be able to out-compete existing investment managers who—mostly due to luck—have accumulated records of market-beating performance and vast sums of capital.

Read the rest here.

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Paul Krugman Is Wrong, Again

I’ve lost count of how many times Krugman has gotten pwned. John B. Taylor has written another takedown of the Smugman.

Paul Krugman took time off from his vacation last Friday to take a shot at a paper by Kevin Hassett, Glenn Hubbard, Greg Mankiw and John Taylor on the growth and employment impacts of Governor Romney’s economic program in comparison with President Obama’s program. Though flaming with vitriolic rhetoric, his shot misses the mark.

Read the rest here.

 

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America’s clear choice: Franklin Roosevelt or Ayn Rand

Obama/Biden or Romney/Ryan? The first two paragraphs of the article do a good job laying out the difficult choice facing Americans in November:

This much you have to give Mitt Romney: by choosing Paul Ryan as his running mate he has made it impossible to avoid turning the presidential election into a genuine and long overdue debate on the nature, extent and responsibilities of American government. By doing that, whatever the outcome, he will have rendered a service to the American people, who deserve to be drawn into an all-out contest of principles rather than the usual beauty-pageant cum pratfall-watch that consume most autumn campaigns.

Because Mr Ryan (unlike the top of the ticket), is in the habit of actually attaching numbers to his budget proposals, there is a faint possibility that the debate between Americans who want to retain the institutions of the New Deal and the 1960s (such as Medicare) and those who believe that under Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson the country took a fatal step towards collectivism, will actually have to consider evidence rather than collapse into the usual exchange of uninformed abuse that gets confused with argument.

Read the rest here.

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How Options Markets Have Changed Since 2008

Jared Woodard from Condor Options is out with a great post detailing some of the ways the option market has changed (in his opinion, maybe for the better) since the financial crisis.

Read the article here.

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