ANIMA: A Documentary for a Taco Nation

An interesting exploration into the self. How fitting for this weekend’s holiday.

Cheers on your weekend!

Anima from Dominoes Falling Productions, is a feature length documentary using a collaboration of various material.

The film examines our relationships with ourselves, others and the environment around us.

Other themes include our creativity and our power as individuals and as a collective to manifest our own reality.

an·i·ma – The Latin translation of the Greek word psyche.

1. The inner self of an individual (soul); a relationship with that which is greater than self.

2. Expressions of the unconscious or true inner self of an individual (Carl Jung’s school of analytical psychology).

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“Employers in the U.S. added fewer jobs than forecast in March, underscoring Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s concern that recent gains may not be sustained without a pickup in growth.

The 120,000 increase in payrolls, the fewest in five months, followed a revised 240,000 gain in February that was bigger than first estimated, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The March increase was less than the most pessimistic forecast in a Bloomberg News survey in which the median estimate called for a 205,000 rise. Unemployment fell to 8.2 percent, the lowest since January 2009, from 8.3 percent.

Faster employment growth that leads to bigger wage gains is necessary to propel consumer spending that accounts for about 70 percent of the economy. Today’s data showed Americans worked fewer hours and earned less on average per week, helping explain why policy makers say interest ratesmay need to stay low at least through late 2014.

“You’re going to see a slowing in the pace of job growth,” Neil Dutta, an economist at Bank of America Corp. in New York, said before the report. “Despite the much ballyhooed recovery in the labor market, we’ve seen more jobs and yet disposable income is weaker.”

Stock-index futures declined after the figures, with the contract on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index expiring in June falling 0.8 percent to 1,379 at 8:33 a.m. in New York. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.10 percent from 2.18 percent.

Payroll estimates from 80 economists in the Bloomberg survey ranged from increases of 175,000 to 250,000 after an initially estimated 227,000 gain the prior month. Revisions added a total of 4,000 jobs to payrolls in January and February.

Fewer Retail Jobs

The March data showed a 34,000 decrease in retail employment, the biggest decline since October 2009.

The unemployment rate, derived from a separate survey of households, was forecast to hold at 8.3 percent, according to the survey median.

The jobless rate dropped as unemployed workers stopped looking for work and left the labor force. The participation rate, which indicates the share of working-age people in the labor force, fell to 63.8 percent from 63.9 percent.

While a 0.9 percentage-point drop in unemployment since August may underpin PresidentBarack Obama’s standing leading up to the vote in November, only one president since World War II – – Ronald Reagan — has been re-elected with a jobless rate above 6 percent. Reagan won a second term in 1984 with 7.2 percent unemployment in the month of the election, after the rate had fallen almost three percentage points in the previous 18 months.

Private Payrolls

Private payrolls, which exclude government agencies, rose 121,000 in March after a gain of 233,000 the prior month. They were projected to climb by 215,000. Manufacturing payrolls increased by 37,000 after a 31,000 gain.

Strengthening demand is prompting companies like Ford Motor Co. (F), the second-biggest U.S. automaker, to bring in more workers. The Dearborn, Michigan-based manufacturer boosted its 2012 sales forecast to 14.5 million to 15 million vehicles from a previous projection of 13.5 million to 14.5 million.

“We’ve already announced some shift increases, some adds in terms of shifts this year,” Erich Merkle, sales analyst at Ford, said April 3 on a conference call with analysts. “So, certainly we’ll be adding some people to fill those shifts.”

Employment at service-providers increased 89,000 after a 211,000 gain in February. Professional and business service payrolls rose 31,000 last month, even as temporary hiring declined 7,500.

‘Modest Growth’

“We see modest growth inside the U.S. and demand for labor,” Carl Camden, president and chief executive officer of Kelly Services Inc. (KELYA), a Troy, Michigan-based staffing agency, said March 12 during a conference. The expansion is “a nice steady, not robust, not rock-and-roll, but a steady recovery, capable of producing a steady stream of jobs.”

At the Western Area Career and Technology Center in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, about 25 miles southwest of Pittsburgh, the job placement rate is 94 percent.

Some companies in the region, home to an energy boom related to shale gas drilling, are starting to compete for workers, Joseph Iannetti, the school’s director said April 4. Enrollment at the campus in Canonsburg, typically less than 400 students, is 430 this year, he said.

“We’re about to go into a really nice labor shortage here,” he said. “We’re seeing increasing demand for people with skill.”

This Year

Matt Stuckey, 42, sought work for several months in 2011. In February, the former U.S. Marine officer became a marketing director for the United Services Automobile Association, a San Antonio, Texas-based provider of financial services to military personnel.

“During the fourth quarter of last year it was very quiet,” he said in a March 27 telephone interview. “Then at the beginning of the year the job market just turned on.”

The Commerce Department last week said the economy expanded at a 3 percent annual pace in the fourth quarter after a 1.8 percent rate in the prior three months. Gross domestic product grew at a 2 percent pace in the first quarter, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists last month.

Today’s report also showed construction companies reduced payrolls by 7,000 workers last month after a 6,000 decrease. Government payrolls fell 1,000 in March.

Weekly Earnings

Average weekly earnings fell to $806.96 in March from $807.56, today’s report showed. The average work week for all workers decreased to 34.5 hours from 34.6.

Wage increases are needed to help Americans weather gasoline prices that have increased by 66 cents this year through April 4, to $3.94 a gallon, according to data from AAA, the nation’s largest auto club.

The so-called underemployment rate, which includes part- time workers who’d prefer a full-time position and people who want work but have given up looking, decreased to 14.5 percent from 14.9 percent.

Bernanke, in a speech to economists on March 26, said the employment gains have been a “welcome development. Still, conditions remain far from normal, as shown, for example, by the high level of long-term unemployment and the fact that jobs and hours worked remain well below pre-crisis peaks.”

“We cannot yet be sure that the recent pace of improvement in the labor market will be sustained,” Bernanke said, adding he was particularly concerned about the number people out of work for six months or longer.

The report also showed a decrease in long-term unemployed Americans. The number of people unemployed for 27 weeks or more eased as a percentage of all jobless, to 42.5 percent from 42.6 percent.”

Source

“For those paying income taxes later this month and wondering just what their money goes toward, here is a breakdown of how the U.S. government spends it.

A new trend developing in the employment sector….

Source

“Financial markets tumbled around the world this week over concern that central banks won’t ease monetary policy any further.

But while it is questionable what they should do, the central banks will likely take the plunge into easing, says Mohamed El-Erian, CEO of money management titan Pimco.

The central banks are in a difficult spot, he writes in a blog on CNBC. “They are dealing with what Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke correctly called an ‘unusually uncertain outlook.’ They are forced to use blunt tools. They receive very little support from other government agencies.”

The cost-benefit score sheet of easing is beginning to shift toward the cost side, El-Erian says.

“When push comes to shove, however, we suspect that central banks may ultimately resort yet again to their printing presses, especially if meaningful economic and financial weaknesses reappear,” he writes.

It’s not that the central banks necessarily want to ease further, El-Erian says. “But they also feel that, for many reasons, they cannot be seen to stand on the sideline while politicians bicker, other agencies dither, and the economy stumbles.”

To be sure, some economists think that in the Fed’s case, it already has moved too far in its accommodative policy.

“It’s time to think about producing more normal interest rates,” Yale University economist Steve Roach tells Bloomberg.

“We don’t need to inject more liquidity into banks that are unable to convince consumers to borrow.”

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“Art Laffer, an economist and former adviser to President Ronald Reagan, says President Barack Obama’s recent criticism of the Republican budget plan misses the mark.

“What Obama is missing is that government spending doesn’t create jobs, it destroys jobs,” Laffer told CNBC.

“The tooth fairy doesn’t work on the Treasury staff,” he said.

“When you cut government spending, you get a boom in the economy,” says Laffer.

“When you increase it, the economy collapses, and it’s exactly what happened under [President George W. Bush] and Obama. They were two peas in a pod.”

Former president Bill Clinton cut government spending as a share of GDP, Laffer notes. “Look at the boom that occurred under Clinton,” he says. “That’s what we’re talking about.”

The same thing happened after World War II, says Laffer, when a massive cut in government spending as a share of GDP sent the private economy “through the ceiling.”

Moreover, to help ease the burden of entitlement spending Laffer thinks the age at which people can receive Social Security benefits should be extended “way out.”

“We’re living longer. We’re living much healthier,” Laffer says. “Let us be productive without being on Social Security.”

The Christian Science Monitor reports that In an election-year pitch to middle-class voters, Obama is denouncing the House Republican budget plan as a “Trojan horse,” warning that it represents “an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country” that would hurt the pocketbooks of working families.”

Surprise, surprise, surprise…. 

“(Reuters) – Surprise rippled across America last month as a new wave of consumers discovered that hamburgers often contained ammonia-treated beef, or what critics dub “pink slime”.

What they may not have known is that ammonia – often associated with cleaning products – was cleared by U.S. health officials nearly 40 years ago and is used in making many foods, including cheese. Related compounds have a role in baked goods and chocolate products.

Using small amounts of ammonia to make food is not unusual to those expert in high-tech food production. Now that little known world is coming under increasing pressure from concerned consumers who want to know more about what they are eating.

“I think we’re seeing a sea change today in consumers’ concerns about the presence of ingredients in foods, and this is just one example,” said Michael Doyle, director of the University of Georgia’s Center for Food Safety….”

Read more

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“In recent weeks, hedge funds and other investors have been puzzled by unusual movements in some credit markets, and have been buzzing about the identity of a deep-pocketed trader dubbed “the London whale.”

That trader, according to people familiar with the matter, is a low-profile, French-born J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. employee named Bruno Michel Iksil.

Mr. Iksil has taken large positions for the bank in insurance-like products called credit-default swaps. Lately, partly in reaction to market movements possibly resulting from Mr. Iksil’s trades, some hedge funds and others have made heavy opposing bets, according to people close to the matter.

Those investors have been buying default protection on a basket of companies’ bonds using an index of the credit-default swaps, or CDS. Mr. Iksil has been selling the protection, placing his own bet that the companies won’t default.

Mr. Iksil, who works primarily out of London, has earned around $100 million a year for the bank’s Chief Investment Office, or CIO, in recent years, according to people familiar with the matter.

There is no suggestion the bank or the trader acted improperly.

Mr. Iksil didn’t respond to calls and emails seeking comment.

J.P. Morgan said the CIO unit is “focused on managing the long-term structural assets and liabilities of the firm and is not focused on short-term profits.”

The bank added, “Our CIO activities hedge structural risks and invest to bring the company’s asset and liabilities into better alignment.”

Kavi Gupta, a trader at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, wrote a message to investors Thursday about the mystery trader, saying hedge funds are accelerating wagers against “the large long,” or bullish investor. “Fast money has smelt blood,” he wrote. Bank of America declined to comment.

The hedge funds are wagering that the cost of default protection using the index will increase, potentially putting Mr. Iksil in a money-losing position and forcing him to reduce some of his holdings.

Buying protection on the index is currently cheaper than what it costs to protect the index’s component companies individually.

Any reduction in Mr. Iksil’s position could result in profits for the hedge funds and losses for the bank, according to a person familiar with the matter. There is no indication that any such reduction is planned.

J.P. Morgan Chase has emerged from the financial crisis as one of the strongest global banks, and Chief Executive James Dimon often boasts of the company’s “fortress balance sheet.”

Mr. Iksil’s trades are partially hedged, or protected by some offsetting trades, according to people close to the matter. Mr. Dimon is regularly briefed on details of some of the group’s positions, these people added.

One person familiar with the matter said the bank has run tests that show Mr. Iksil’s positions likely will be profitable in any economic or market downturn.

Some analysts who follow J.P. Morgan Chase, the biggest U.S. bank by assets, said they weren’t aware of the group’s trading. “They’ve talked about their investment strategies and procedures and risk controls but haven’t highlighted this division,” said Gerard Cassidy, a banking analyst at RBC Capital Market.

J.P. Morgan said the CIO unit’s “results are disclosed in our quarterly earnings reports and are fully transparent to our regulators.”

Mr. Iksil, who has worked at J.P. Morgan since January 2007, commutes to London each week from his home in Paris, and works from home most Fridays. He sometimes wears black jeans in the office and rarely a tie, according to someone who worked with him.

Mr. Iksil works with two junior traders and focuses on complex trades in credit markets, developing most of his investment ideas and then getting approval from senior bank executives, according to someone close to the matter.

In the past, he often has been bearish on markets and placed trades to express that downbeat perspective, sometimes criticizing colleagues as too optimistic on markets. Some of his best performances have come during market downturns, though he has also made trading mistakes in volatile times.

However, Mr. Iksil has turned more upbeat recently. He has been selling protection on an index of 125 companies in the form of credit-default swaps. That essentially means he is betting on the improving credit of those companies, which he does through the index—CDX IG 9—tracking these companies.

Mr. Iksil has done so much bullish trading that he has helped move the index, traders say. Now, even as Mr. Iksil is selling credit protection on the company index, a number of hedge funds and other investors are buying protection on it.

Some investors say they are betting that Mr. Iksil could have to exit some of his bullish trades, perhaps because the pending Volcker rule limiting bank risk-taking would push up the cost of credit protection. J.P. Morgan has said the Volcker rule doesn’t prohibit its CIO unit from investing or hedging activities.

A sign of how hot the trade is: The net “notional” volume in the index ballooned to $144.6 billion on March 30 from $92.6 billion at the start of the year, according to Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. data.”

“Imagine a country in which the very richest people get all the economic gains. They eventually accumulate so much of the nation’s total income and wealth that the middle class no longer has the purchasing power to keep the economy going full speed. Most of the middle class’s wages keep falling and their major asset – their home – keeps shrinking in value.

Imagine that the richest people in this country use some of their vast wealth to routinely bribe politicians. They get the politicians to cut their taxes so low there’s no money to finance important public investments that the middle class depends on – such as schools and roads, or safety nets such as health care for the elderly and poor.

Imagine further that among the richest of these rich are financiers. These financiers have so much power over the rest of the economy they get average taxpayers to bail them out when their bets in the casino called the stock market go bad. They have so much power they even shred regulations intended to limit their power.

These financiers have so much power they force businesses to lay off millions of workers and to reduce the wages and benefits of millions of others, in order to maximize profits and raise share prices – all of which make the financiers even richer, because they own so many of shares of stock and run the casino.

Now, imagine that among the richest of these financiers are people called “private-equity” managers who buy up companies in order to squeeze even more money out of them by loading them up with debt and firing even more of their employees, and then selling the companies for a fat profit.

Although these private-equity managers don’t even risk their own money – they round up investors to buy the target companies – they nonetheless pocket 20 percent of those fat profits.

And because of a loophole in the tax laws, which they created with their political bribes, these private equity managers are allowed to treat their whopping earnings as capital gains, taxed at only 15 percent – even though they themselves made no investment and didn’t risk a dime.

Finally, imagine there is a presidential election. One party, called the Republican Party, decides to nominate as its candidate a private-equity manager who has raked in more than $20 million a year and paid only 13.9 percent in taxes – a lower tax rate than many in the middle class.

Yes, I know it sounds far-fetched. But bear with me because the fable gets even wilder. Imagine this candidate and his party come up with a plan to cut the taxes of the rich even more – so millionaires save another $150,000 a year. And their plan cuts everything else the middle class and the poor depend on – Medicare, Medicaid, education, job-training, food stamps, Pell grants, child nutrition, even law enforcement.

What happens next?

There are two endings to this fable. You have to decide on which it’s to be….”

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“The Bank of Japan may expand stimulus this month after lawmakers escalated pressure for extra action by blocking a candidate for the bank’s board and renewing calls for a more “proactive” monetary policy.

Morgan Stanley MUFG Securities Co., Mizuho Securities Co. and SMBC Nikko Securities Inc. predict that the BOJ will expand asset purchases at a meeting on April 27.

Parliament’s upper house yesterday rejected BNP Paribas SA economist Ryutaro Kono, described by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) as holding similar views to Governor Masaaki Shirakawa, who says that monetary policy alone cannot solve deflation. The central bank may stand pat at a two-day meeting ending April 10, preserving ammunition for later in the month, when price projections will show a goal of 1 percent inflation is not in sight, according to Morgan Stanley.

“The BOJ must be struggling to balance between responding to political requests and operating effective monetary policies,” said Akio Makabe, an economics professor at Shinshu University in central Japan.

Japanese stocks pared losses on the decision by the upper house, with the Nikkei 225 Stock Average still closing down 0.5 percent yesterday after falling demand for Spanish bonds refocused attention on Europe’s debt crisis. Japan’s currency traded at 82.27 per dollar as of 12:10 p.m. in Tokyo today and the Nikkei fell 0.7 percent, heading for its biggest weekly loss since August….”

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The Euro is up 0.0005 @ 1.3067

Wow, unbelievable clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E57VQut6lZQ

I’d like to think that man will rise to the occasion of becoming sentient beings in the eastern philosophy sense…sooner rather than later.

These videos speak to me despite not being sure what our ultimate effect is upon mother earth and ourselves as a species.

Good stewardship of the planet and good will to one and other is all that really matters.

Perhaps some day we can move closer to a better life for our species.  Planned obsolescence, debt traps, chattel slavery,  etc. is just not to my liking.

Enough said; and taco this is not a hidden message to support Agenda 21…lol

Good evening.

The bulls and bears had a tug of war today. All in all a win for the bulls as we did not see follow through from yesterday.

An interesting note is that besides yesterday we have decoupled from European markets when you compare market action.

Oil went up silly today as did many commodities.

DOW down 16

NASDAQ up 12

S&P down 0.63

WTI up $1.66

Gold up $17

Source

“More than half a million Apple computers have been infected with the Flashback Trojan, according to a Russian anti-virus firm.

A Russian anti-virus suggests that about 600,000 Macs have installed the malware – potentially allowing them to be hijacked and used as a “botnet”.

The firm, Dr Web, says that more than half that number are based in the US.

Apple has released a security update, but users who have not installed the patch remain exposed.

Flashback was first detected last September when anti-virus researchers flagged up software masquerading itself as a Flash Player update. Once downloaded it deactivated some of the computer’s security software.

Later versions of the malware exploited weaknesses in the Java programming language to allow the code to be installed from bogus sites without the user’s permission.

Remote control

Dr Web said that once the Trojan was installed it sent a message to the intruder’s control server with a unique ID to identify the infected machine.

“By introducing the code criminals are potentially able to control the machine,” the firm’s chief executive Boris Sharov told the BBC.

“We stress the word potential as we have never seen any malicious activity since we hijacked the botnet to take it out of criminals’ hands. However, we know people create viruses to get money.

“The largest amounts of bots – based on the IP addresses we identified – are in the US, Canada, UK and Australia, so it appears to have targeted English-speaking people.”

Dr Web also notes that 274 of the infected computers it detected appeared to be located in Cupertino, California – home to Apple’s headquarters.

Update wait

Java’s developer, Oracle, issued a fix to the vulnerability on 14 February, but this did not work on Macintoshes as Apple manages Java updates to its computers…”

Source 

“Noted doomsayer Richard Russell’s latest missive contains a lot of…well, doom.

The author of the Dow Theory Letters, Russell writes on King World News that the “big money” — shorthand for savvy investors — do not like what they’re seeing in the market.

“My guess is that this is the big money that has been holding off as long as it decently can — and then dumping their goods just before the close.  I don’t think the big money likes this market, and I think they have been slowly exiting this market, as quietly as they can.”

Russell is convinced something terrible is on the horizon for the markets. What it is ain’t exactly clear — a European depression? More bad housing news? Whatever it is, it’s time to plan for the worst.

“The big money tends to look out six months to a year or so, and there is something ‘out there’ that they see — but don’t like.  Is it a rise in interest rates, is it the power of the Chinese yuan, is it a further collapse in real estate values?

“Honestly I don’ know what it is, but I’m convinced that there is an ominous something out there waiting to materialize.  The big money, the institutional money, doesn’t want to be in this market when it materializes.”

Read the whole post at KingWorldNews.com > “

“Facebook’s highly-coveted “FB” stock will list on the Nasdaq when the company makes its public debut in May, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The listing decision marks the end of a tense and drawn out courting process between the company and numerous executives at the NYSE and rival Nasdaq. Both exchanges launched aggressive marketing campaigns to woo the multi-billion dollar listing, and have made numerous pitches to the company in recent months.

Because both exchanges’ listing fees are relatively nominal for companies with billions in revenue like Facebook, the decision was seen by many observers as a choice of branding and image. The NYSE is widely seen as the home of the traditional “blue chip” company while the Nasdaq’s reputation is more associated with Silicon Valley.

In recent years however, the NYSE has made extensive efforts to pursue what would be considered more traditional Nasdaq companies – a strategy which has won them business with internet companies like LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD – News), Pandora (NYSE:P – News), and Yelp (NYSE:Y –News).

While the listing decision is a key component of Facebook’s IPO process, advisors close to the company said the mechanics of the listing process will have little impact on how the company structures, executes, and markets the deal….”

Read more

Source 

“A Harvard Business School study that Niall Ferguson pointed us to today shows the U.S. has fallen severely behind in terms of international competitiveness.

The study, from January, found that for Harvard alums personally involved in a company relocation decision, 57 percent said the decision “involved the possibility of moving existing activities out of the U.S.”

Meanwhile, only 9 percent considered moving existing activities from another country into the U.S.

“A U.S.-based respondent was three times as likely to be considering moving business activity out of the U.S. than a non-U.S. respondent was likely to be considering moving an activity into the U.S,” writes Professor Michael Porter, the study’s author.

The most interesting table from the study plotted current versus expected American industry sector global success.

No, you’re not missing something: The respondents expect a decline in competitiveness for all sectors.

Harvard Business School

Here’s another chart which confirms that virtually nobody sees things getting better from a competitiveness standpoint.

“Like conservatives, law professor David R. Dow thinks it’s disappointing that the Supreme Court vote on the constitutionality of the Obamacare individual mandate will likely fall along partisan lines — but his disappointment stems from his utter conviction that the individual mandate is constitutional.

He’s so convinced of it that he thinks any Supreme Court justice who votes to overturn Obamacare should be impeached. He cites Thomas Jefferson’s call to impeach Justice Samuel Chase as an historical reminder that impeachment is and should be an option for justices who undermine constitutional values. I agree with him that impeachment of justices is itself constitutional — but what constitutional principles, exactly, would the Supreme Court be undermining if they vote against Obamacare?

Dow’s argument that the individual mandate is constitutional is exactly what you would expect: If you are going to voluntarily do something (e.g. drive a car), the government can make you purchase a product (e.g. insurance) provided it has a good reason for doing so (e.g. making sure you can pay for any damage you do). This argument might make some sense if the activity for which Obamacare mandates insurance was something more than merely existing.

But Dow takes it a step further by arguing that the Constitution doesn’t just grant the federal government the power to regulate commerce, but that it also, in fact, grants the federal government the power to guarantee medical coverage for the poor and to implement a system to pay for it. He writes:

You don’t have to pull the analytical thread of that reasoning very hard to see that it boils down to an argument for allowing the poor to die. And if the Supreme Court strikes down the health-care law, that is exactly the ideology it will have to embrace. It will be saying that Congress cannot guarantee medical coverage for the poor and then implement a system to pay for it. In other words, the only people entitled to health care are the people who can afford it.

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