Signs of a Bottom in Housing

Read the article and see the pretty graphs here.

Six House Democrats, led by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), want to set up a “Reasonable Profits Board” to control gas profits.

The Democrats, worried about higher gas prices, want to set up a board that would apply a “windfall profit tax” as high as 100 percent on the sale of oil and gas, according to their legislation. The bill provides no specific guidance for how the board would determine what constitutes a reasonable profit.

The Gas Price Spike Act, H.R. 3784, would apply a windfall tax on the sale of oil and gas that ranges from 50 percent to 100 percent on all surplus earnings exceeding “a reasonable profit.” It would set up a Reasonable Profits Board made up of three presidential nominees that will serve three-year terms. Unlike other bills setting up advisory boards, the Reasonable Profits Board would not be made up of any nominees from Congress.

Read the rest here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc4lnlDVW3o&feature=player_embedded

In mortgage-backed market segments, never securitize pooled LBOs.

by Carrick Mollenkamp, Special to ProPublica Jan. 19, 2012, 9:04 a.m.

At a time when mortgage-backed securities were imploding and customers were fleeing the market, a junior analyst at Deutsche Bank AG protested when he was asked to alter the numbers in a spreadsheet to make a Deutsche security look less risky to ratings agencies, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

Read the rest here.

13 Signs of a Bull Market

Anonymous has sure been quiet lately, but today’s federal bust of Megauploadriled ’em up good: a retaliatory strike against DoJ.gov (and plenty of other foes) leaving them completely dead.

DownForEveryoneOrJustMe.com is reporting the department’s site as universally nuked, and an Anonymous-affiliated Twitter account is boasting success. This is almost certainly the result of a quickly-assembled DDoS attack—and easily the widest in scope and ferocity we’ve seen in some time. If you had any doubts Anonymous is still a hacker wrecking ball, doubt no more.

The combination of the hacking nebula’s SOPA animosity—they’ve been a vocal opponent of the bill since its inception—combined with today’s sudden Megaupload news has made the group bubble over: hundreds upon hundreds of Anon operatives are in a plotting frenzy, chatting about which site will go down next. In Anon’s eyes, the government and media interests are responsible for the undue destruction of Megaupload (and the arrest of four of its operators), so it’ll be exactly those entities that’re feeling the pain right now. Pretty much every company that makes movies, TV, or music, along with the entirety of the federal government, is in Anonymous’ crosshairs.

Read the rest here.

By Marc Siegel

The final verdict may not be in yet, but some of the early returns on “ObamaCare” are not good. Indeed, many doctors are becoming wary of the law at a time when only one in three Americans support it.

In late December, a survey of 501 physicians was released by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions research group, whose parent company serves clients in the health care industry. Nearly half (48%) expected health reform to hurt their incomes this year, while 73% said it would not reduce costs.

Though this isn’t a scientific survey, and other such surveys have and will show physicians’ support for the Affordable Care Act, the early glimpse of the law’s potential impact will likely lead to economic pain for doctors and a diminished system for their patients. Indeed, the Deloitte survey found that 69% of the physicians are “pessimistic about the future of medicine” because of the law.

I’m not here to judge doctors who back ObamaCare. But as a practicing physician, I simply need to look at the economics of medicine, apply my own experience and see the law as it unfolds to know that physicians across this country should be demanding if not a new system, at least a better one.

Read the rest here.

New technology is a bitch…Even more so when you invented it.

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(Reuters) – Eastman Kodak Co, which invented the hand-held camera and helped bring the world the first pictures from the moon, has filed for bankruptcy protection, capping a prolonged plunge for one of America’s best-known companies.

The more than 130-year-old photographic film pioneer, which had tried to restructure to become a seller of consumer products like cameras, said it had also obtained a $950 million, 18-month credit facility from Citigroup to keep it going.

The loan and bankruptcy protection from U.S. trade creditors may give Kodak the time it needs to find buyers for some of its 1,100 digital patents, the key to its remaining value, and to reshape its business while continuing to pay its 17,000 workers.

“The board of directors and the entire senior management team unanimously believe that this is a necessary step and the right thing to do for the future of Kodak,” Chairman and Chief Executive Antonio Perez said in a statement.

“Now we must complete the transformation by further addressing our cost structure and effectively monetizing non-core intellectual-property assets. We look forward to working with our stakeholders to emerge a lean, world-class, digital imaging and materials science company,” he added.

At end September, the group had total assets of $5.1 billion and liabilities of $6.75 billion.

Read the rest here.

(Reuters) – Hedge fund titan Steven A. Cohen is once again in the spotlight over allegations of improper trading at his $14 billion SAC Capital Advisors.

The arrest on Wednesday of technology analyst Jon Horvath marks the fourth time in two years that U.S. authorities have implicated or charged a person with engaging in insider trading while working at SAC Capital. It is the latest to come from an investigation FBI agents have coined Operation Perfect Hedge.

Federal authorities did not charge Cohen or SAC Capital with any wrongdoing in the case against Horvath, who is accused of using inside information to help the Stamford, Connecticut-based hedge fund generate a $1 million profit from trading in shares and option contracts of PC maker Dell Inc..

Horvath’s lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment.

The case against Horvath comes less than a month after SAC Capital capped another successful year, generating an 8 percent return while most hedge funds lost money in 2011.

Read the rest here.

If there is nothing new, what will this say for ABCNews’s “ethics?”

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“A knowledgeable insider says that Newt Gingrich’s second wife does not say anything in the taped interview with ABC News that she hasn’t said in previous print interviews. But to repeat her account of how their marriage failed—because the then-House speaker was having an affair—in a form that can be endlessly replayed on television could prove a serious distraction for the presidential candidate two days before the South Carolina primary.”

Read the rest here.

Odd. I had no idea that Hollywood types were Democrats.

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By NIKKI FINKE | Wednesday January 18, 2012 @ 3:20pm PST

EXCLUSIVE: Internet sites on their SOPAStrike may be conducting a blackout but Hollywood studios are conducting a boycott. I’ve learned that Hollywood studio chiefs individually and as a group are drawing a line in the sand on the piracy issue with the Obama re-election campaign and refusing to give any more donations.  The blowup came after President Obama on Saturday dashed moguls’ hopes that he would remain on the sidelines in the dispute over the U.S. House Of Representatives’ Stop Online Piracy Act and the U.S. Senate’s Protect IP Act. In a posting on the White House web site, three of the Obama administration’s top officials for Internet and intellectual property matters said that  they share many of the concerns that the Internet community has about the Hollywood-supported bills.

Read the rest here.

Let’s hope we don’t have more similarities with 1987…

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U.S. stocks rose, giving the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index its best start to a year since 1987, after confidence among homebuilders topped forecasts, Goldman Sachs (GS) Group Inc. rallied and concern about Europe eased.

Read the rest here.

“The US economy may be on the verge of a big comeback. It could experience an unusual second recovery over the next three years following the weak initial recovery of the past three years. In the past, recessions were followed by one broad-based recovery in economic activity. The Naysayers have been predicting a “double dip” recession for the US economy since it started to recover in 2009. I’m suggesting that a more likely scenario might be a double back-to-back recovery.”

Read the rest, and see some pretty graphs, here.

“But an analysis of the Fed data is still revealing in that it shows the wealth gap, as measured by net worth, is much more extreme than the chasm as measured by income.“

I was surprised to read that a “guaranteed basic income” for every American would be considered “conservative.”

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“Murray’s conclusion is that Americans need to steer clear of Europe and instead get back to their roots. We should scrap the institutions of the New Deal and Great Society and replace them with the system of guaranteed basic income he first proposed in In Our Hands (2006). And we should pin our faith on the four traditional pillars of the American way of life: family, vocation, community, and faith. These, Murray argues, were the true foundations of the American project, from Kennedy all the way back to Washington.”

Read the rest here.

Oil demand has fallen for the first time since the 2008-09 global financial crisis, a result of the weakening economy, a mild winter and high crude prices, according to new estimates from the International Energy Agency.

Read the rest here.

Casey B. Mulligan is an economics professor at the University of Chicago.

One myth about the surge in federal government spending over the last four years is that it was an automatic response to the recession. But the “tests” that beneficiaries of various government safety-net programs are required to pass before they can participate have gotten easier since 2007.

Read the rest here.

Answer: Sometimes, maybe, depends on the researcher and his methods.

By Dan Nguyen, ProPublica. Updated Jan. 18, 2012

Well-funded interests on either side of SOPA and PIPA are lining up support among members of Congress. This database keeps track of where members of Congress stand. Findings are based on two factors: whether a member is a sponsor of the proposed bills, and each member’s voting record on the current bills’ precursors and alternatives. Click the links on the left to filter the supporters list.

See the list here.