SOURCE: @OptionsHawk

SOURCE: @Street_Insider

I’m proposing a new rule. Every time you make a fucking prediction to the press, you need to pony up $500 and register your name with the FBI. At least that way, some of these clowns would start to run out of money.

 

MAYS LANDING, N.J. – February 1, 2012 (WPVI) — A college in Atlantic County, NJ has been locked down as police try to track down an escaped prisoner.

Security officials at Cape May Community College, Mays Landing Campus confirm that the campus was put on lockdown Wednesday beginning at 12:30 p.m. while police searched for a man who escaped from Hamilton Township Police Tuesday night.

People are not being allowed to enter the campus and are being asked not to leave. If they do leave they are not being permitted back on campus.

Shane K. Hopkins, 38, escaped from the custody of Hamilton Township Police on Tuesday night as he was being transported to the Atlantic County justice facility in Mays Landing for a hearing.

He was a prisoner of South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton, N.J. and had been in custody since April 27, 2011 on several charges, including burglary and eluding police.

Hopkins is 5’3″, 135 lbs with blue eyes and brown hair. He was wearing an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs when he escaped.

An alert on the college’s website says Hopkins may now be wearing a white flannel shirt and gray sweatpants.

The alert reads:

“A lockdown is in progess at Atlantic Cape’s Mays Landing Campus. Stay indoors until further notice; do not come to campus at this time. Police are pursuing escaped inmate near campus. Escaped inmate is wearing white flannel shirt and gray sweatpants. Updates will be provided as available.

“To stay updated with essential information on weather-related closings and other up-to-the-minute bulletins, sign up for TxtAlerts or find us on Facebook. Please contact your instructor or view the list of instructor cancellations for individual courses.”

Police say anyone who spots Hopkins should immediately call 911.

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Setups are so hot, they made breaking news.

The Indiana House approved a ‘right to work’ bill late Tuesday, taking the state a giant step closer to ruling out mandatory dues for workers at union workplaces. Indiana would be the first ‘right to work’ state in the upper Midwest.

By Mark Guarino, Staff writer

Indiana is poised to become the first state in the upper Midwest to follow the lead of Southern “right to work” states, taking a big step Tuesday to bar unions from requiring nonunion workers to pay membership dues for representation in bargaining.

The Republican-led Indiana House approved the controversial measure, 55 to 44, late Tuesday, after almost a year of dramatic standoffs between the political parties. The state Senate has already passed an identical bill, and Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) is expected to sign it.

State GOP leaders say the so-called right-to-work legislation is essential to turn around Indiana’s struggling economy and to make the state a more desirable destination for businesses. “We are one stop closer to bringing more jobs to Hoosiers,” said House Speaker Brian Bosma, in a statement.

Democrats framed the bill’s passage as a political maneuver by Republicans to weaken union strength in the state.

“The only places where today’s events will be cheered is in the boardrooms of big businesses and corporations across this state,” said the top House Democrat, Patrick Bauer, in a statement Tuesday. “The House Republicans just helped increase the profit margins for these companies at the expense of their workers.”

Union dues have long been a target of Republican lawmakers, who say those dues are often used to further a Democratic agenda and to elect Democrats to office. The right-to-work legislation hits unions right in their pocketbooks, reducing their ability to wield clout in elections and during negotiations over labor contracts.

Once the bill becomes law, Indiana will be the 23rd right-to-work state – and the first in 10 years to take this path. Right-to-work laws are in effect mostly in the South and the West, where unions are least active and where “anti-union ideology is predominant,” says law professor Ann Hodges at the University of Richmond in Virginia. Attacking union coffers traditionally benefits Republicans, Ms. Hodges says, because of the ongoing political ties between unions and the Democratic Party.

“Reducing unions’ resources reduces their ability to provide political support and influence public policy” introduced by Democrats, she says.

Unions already have precarious standing in Indiana. Union membership there has dwindled during the past 20 years, dropping 42 percent between 1990 and 2010. It fell below 300,000 in 2010, resulting in a state workforce that is 10.9 percent union, lower than the national average of 11.9 percent.

With union membership already in free-fall, the GOP victory Tuesday is largely “symbolic,” says Gary Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. “It just shows unions have declining political power.”

Unions might have been wiser to spend less energy in Indiana and to have redirected their efforts and resources to states such as Wisconsin or Michigan, where unions are stronger and have more political clout, he says.

It’s unlikely that right-to-work laws will now cascade through the rest of the Midwest, says Mr. Chaison. But events in Indiana may result in “right to work” becoming a theme in the 2012 presidential race, endorsed by GOP hopefuls Newt Gringrich, a former US House speaker, and Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor.

Read the rest here.

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Facebook is expected to file to raise US$5bn in a preliminary IPO prospectus on Wednesday morning, which while less than anticipated could be increased to ultimate investor demand, according to sources close to the deal.

The smaller deal size reflects a decision to start with a conservative base before deciding whether to increase.

The social networking site has opted to hire five bookrunners, featuring Morgan Stanley in the coveted lead left role.Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital and JP Morgan round out the initial list of bookrunners on the deal, though the syndicate could also grow, sources indicated.

The filing timetable appears to establish a framework for Facebook to finalise the IPO process by May, pending a smooth registration process with the SEC.

Investment banking sources note the company has been unusually guarded about the process for selecting banks involved in the underwriting syndicate, but Morgan Stanley’s market leading position in Internet IPOs has given it an upper hand in securing the leading role.

Morgan Stanley’s selection implies that Facebook took account of Goldman Sachs’ handling of a private placement last year, though some have also pointed to Facebook’s desire to distance itself from the bank.

With final pricing of Facebook shares unlikely to be settled for at least three months, it is still unclear what valuation the company is targeting on the IPO.

Recent trading in Facebook stock on private exchanges has pointed to a US$80bn-plus valuation.

CSIQ is spiking on heavy volume, and heavy call activity.

Keep the solars on watch here.

BYRON, Ill. (AP) — A nuclear reactor at a northern Illinois plant shut down Monday after losing power, and steam was being vented to reduce pressure, according to officials from Exelon Nuclear and federal regulators.

Unit 2 at Byron Generating Station, about 95 miles northwest of Chicago, shut down at 10:18 a.m., after losing power, Exelon officials said. Diesel generators began supplying power to the plant, and operators began releasing steam to cool the reactor from the part of the plant where turbines are producing electricity, not from within the nuclear reactor itself, officials said.

The steam contains low levels of tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, but federal and plant officials insisted the levels were safe for workers and the public.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission declared the incident an “unusual event,” the lowest of four levels of emergency. Commission officials also said the release of tritium was expected.

Exelon Nuclear officials believe a failed piece of equipment at a switchyard caused the shutdown. The switchyard is similar to a large substation that delivers power to the plant from the electrical grid and that takes power from the plant to the electrical grid. Officials were still investigating the equipment failure.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokeswoman Viktoria Mitlyng said officials can’t yet calculate how much tritium is being released. They know the amounts of tritium are small because monitors around the plant aren’t showing increased levels of radiation, she said.

Read the rest here.

Read here:

NPR and ProPublica released an explosive report Monday that found government-owned mortgage giant Freddie Mac betting against the very homeowners it is supposed to help. According to the news article, the investment division of Freddie Mac (or as Henry calls it, Freddie’s “gambling desk”) placed billions of dollars of bets against homeowners who were trying to refinance their mortgages at lower rates.

According to NPR/ProPublica’s review of public documents, Freddie Mac invested in securities called “inverse floaters,” which receive all the interest payments from a specified mortgage-backed securities. “If lots of people ‘pre-pay’ their old loans and refinance into new, cheaper ones, then Freddie Mac starts to lose money,” ProPublica’s Jesse Eisinger and NPR’s Chris Arnold explain. “If people can’t refinance, then Freddie wins because it continues to receive that flow of older, higher interest payments.”

Although Freddie Mac’s bets are legal, they’re highly offensive. Rightly or not, many Americans blame Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae — which was not mentioned in the NPR/ProPublica report — for the housing boom and subsequent bust. Nearly all Americans would agree the company’s should not be focused on generating profits, now that they are officially wards of the state and are using taxpayer dollars to make these bets, as Aaron and Henry discuss in the accompanying video.

Freddie Mac plays a significant role in determining mortgage rates and is one of the “gatekeepers” with the power to decide whether a homeowner can refinance at a lower rate. If homeowners can reduce their mortgage payments, then Freddie Mac loses money. Hence the conflict of interest and the concern Freddie has been turning down refi requests in order to benefit its proprietary trades.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=VhkDdayA4iA

via BreakingNews.com

Facebook Inc., the largest social- networking site, may file for its initial public offering on Feb. 1 and is close to hiring Morgan Stanley to handle the deal, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unidentified people. Read More

-Pending News

Italy (A+ to A-), Spain (AA- to A), Ireland (Outlook negative), Cyprus (BBB to BBB-), Belgium (AA+ to AA)

Happy Friday