They blamed weather on the earnings miss. Audio will be posted here later.
Comments »Monthly Archives: May 2012
TRAIN WRECK LIVE: $GMCR CONFERENCE CALL
Whole Foods Beats by a Nickel; $WFM Up in A.H.
Allstate Puts Shareholders in Good Hands; $ALL Beats by $0.41
Green Mountain, $GMCR, Tanks on Earnings
shut down level 2, but it is being reported the stock is down 30% on earnings.
Comments »NFL GREAT JUNIOR SEAU FOUND DEAD; SHOOTING SUSPECTED {UPDATED}
UPDATE: Hearing that it is a suicide (CBS NY)
via TMZ.com & yahoo.com
TMZ is reporting retired NFL star Junior Seau is dead, and the police are investigating a shooting in his home:
Comments »NFL legend Junior Seau was found dead in his home in Oceanside, CA … and cops are investigating a shooting … multiple law enforcement sources tell TMZ.
Cops are currently at Seau’s home just outside San Diego. Seau was 43-years-old … and leaves behind 3 kids and an ex-wife.
Market Update
Markets pare early morning losses, but commodities remain weak.
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi9sLkyhhlE 450 300] Comments »Spain Can Be Saved if the EU Acts Quickly
An Apple CEO-in-waiting sells 95% of his company shares
Normally i do not care to much about insider selling, but found it curious that 95% of the position was sold; turns out the executive will receive more bonus stock.
Comments »Bowles: US Faces ‘Most Predictable Economic Crisis’ Ever
“The United States is facing a massive economic crisis that is both predictable and avoidable, says former North Carolina Senator Erskine Bowles, head of a former White House deficit-reduction commission.
According to Bowles, 100 percent of the tax revenue coming into the Treasury in 2011 went right out the door to pay for mandatory spending — such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — and to pay the interest on the country’s massive $15.6 trillion national debt, Bowles says, according to Bloomberg View…”
Full article
Order Up: The Best Restaurants
Israel In A State Of Political Upheaval
(CNN) — Israel, by necessity, has developed one of the most able security and intelligence apparatus in the world. There has been no necessity to develop a world-class political apparatus, however, and it shows.
In a single week, the Israeli army’s chief of staff, the former head of internal security and the former head of external security have all publicly questioned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judgment on Iran. While the current army chief spoke narrowly about the Iranian government, the former security officials directed their fire at Israeli politicians. On Friday, the former internal security chief told an Israeli audience, “I don’t believe in a leadership that makes decisions based on messianic feelings” — and he was speaking not of Iran, but of Israel.
Last week was Israel’s independence day, traditionally an occasion of pride and celebration. Instead, Israelis are in a deep funk.
At its founding in 1948, Israel seemed an improbable state. An ingathering of Jews from Eastern Europe, the Arab world and beyond had no real economy, no common language and no common idea of what it was to be an Israeli. Tensions between religious Jews and secular Jews, European Jews and Oriental Jews, and Jews and Arabs simmered for decades. They made accommodations in the name of survival, but few conceded the fight for control of the state.
To hear many Israelis tell it now, their nation has become an impossible state. Politics are more contentious than ever. The Israeli welfare state is in full view, as the religious, the poor and the religious poor make increasing demands on the state. Prices are skyrocketing, and the public feels squeezed. A diminishing number of Israelis serve in the army, which once prided itself on universal conscription.
Read more here:
Comments »Media Almost Blew Cover On Obama’s Trip Before Hand
Washington (CNN) — Hours before the official announcement that President Barack Obama had landed in Kabul, Afghanistan, for a surprise visit, the media — both social and electronic — were already buzzing with reports about the trip.
Had he indeed landed in-country? Was it just a rumor? Should it be reported anyway?
Some, including those inside the administration, were actively concerned about the safety of the commander in chief as he arrived in a war zone, while others felt any word of the president’s visit was public information and fair game in today’s competitive, instant news cycle.
Before the day began, the administration issued what was later revealed to be a fake presidential schedule, having the president and vice president in meetings throughout the day at the White House.
Read the rest here:
Comments »UN’s UNEP Requires Bailout After Budget Accounting Error
The United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), a organization leading the charge for a radical reorganization of “global environmental governance,” has added another item to its list of administrative fiascos: this time, over how it has been protecting the Mediterranean Sea.
According to internal documents obtained by Fox News, a UNEP-administered program to protect the Mediterranean and its coasts overspent its budget by $5.1 million from 1994 to 2011 — equivalent to about a quarter of its entire budget for 2010-2011 — through a rudimentary accounting error that went undetected for most of the 18 years. The cumulative error punched a major hole in the program’s budget.
Despite some frenetic subsequent juggling of accounts and a quiet partial bailout by the European Union, the agency still has the Mediterranean protection program on a budgetary crash diet aimed at getting its books back in balance. UNEP claims that the cash squeeze has not affected any of its actual protection programs.
Read more:
Comments »Taliban Attack Kabul, Just Hours After Obama’s ‘End In Sight’ Speech
KABUL, Afghanistan – A suicide car bomber and Taliban militants disguised in burqas attacked a compound housing hundreds of foreigners in the Afghan capital on Wednesday, killing seven people, officials and witnesses said.
The Taliban said the attack was a response to President Barack Obama’s surprise visit just hours earlier.
At least 17 people were also wounded in the assault, most of them Afghan children on their way to school, the Interior Ministry said.
The second major assault in Kabul in less than three weeks, the attack highlights the Taliban’s continued ability to strike in the heavily guarded capital even when the city is on its tightest security for a combination of events — the Obama visit and Wednesday’s anniversary of the killing of Usama bin Laden in neighboring Pakistan.
The attack started around 6 a.m. in eastern Kabul with a series of explosions and gunfire ringing out from the privately guarded compound known as Green Village that houses hundreds of international contractors. Shooting and blasts continued for hours later as militants who had stormed into the compound held out against security forces, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.
Read more:
Comments »Gingrich Prepares Exit From Campaign
Newt Gingrich is preparing to quit his Republican presidential run, but not without leaving behind a multi-million dollar debt to consultants and other companies across the country.
With the candidate set to make his exit official Wednesday afternoon, a close look at his finance records reveals a free-spending machine that ran up a million-dollar debt in private jet flights alone, along with other services and benefits that left the unpaid bill at a whopping $4.3 million at the end of March, according to the latest filing with the Federal Election Commission (FEC). The campaign says it has paid off $500,000 of that total, which still leaves a $3.8 million tab.
And while huge amounts of money are still owed to a variety of vendors — some of whom might wonder when and if they’ll see their money — the campaign seems to have paid off all its bills to businesses run by Gingrich family members, as well as “reimbursed” the candidate himself with nearly half a million dollars.
Read here:
Comments »Fed Governor Tarullo On Shadow Banking
While there is a well-defined set of regulatory measures to address too-big-to-fail, the same cannot be said for the second major challenge revealed by the crisis: the instability of the shadow banking system. Although some elements of pre-crisis shadow banking are probably gone forever, others persist. Moreover, as time passes, memories fade, and the financial system normalizes, it seems likely that new forms of shadow banking will emerge. Indeed, the increased regulation of the major securities firms may well encourage the migration of some parts of the shadow banking system further into the darkness–that is, into largely unregulated markets. And it bears reminding that, just as the fragility of major financial firms elicited government support measures during the crisis, so the runs and threats of runs on the shadow banking system brought forth government programs such as the Treasury’s insuring of money market funds.
Reform measures to date are not wholly unrelated to the shadow banking system, and wholesale funding more generally. Dodd-Frank addresses the associated issue of derivatives trading by requiring central clearing of all standardized derivatives and margining of non-cleared trades by major actors in over-the-counter derivatives markets. Strengthened capital and liquidity standards for prudentially regulated institutions should help by giving increased assurance to counterparties about the soundness of these firms. But in periods of high stress, with substantial uncertainty as to the value of important asset classes, questions about liquidity and solvency could still arise, even with respect to well-regulated institutions. In fact, the supposed low-risk lending transactions–typically secured by apparently safe assets–that dominate the shadow banking system are likely to be questioned only in a period of high stress. It cannot be overemphasized that this systemic effect can materialize even if no firms were individually considered too-big-to-fail.
Interesting and productive academic debates continue over the sources of the rapid growth of the shadow banking system, the precise reasons for the runs of 2007 and 2008, and the possible sources of future problems. The conclusions drawn from these debates could be important in eventually framing a broadly directed regulatory plan for the shadow banking system. Domestically, among member agencies of the FSOC, and internationally, among members of the Financial Stability Board, policy officials are engaged in these debates and their implications for reform. But policymakers cannot and should not wait for the conclusion of these deliberations to address some obvious vulnerabilities in today’s shadow banking system.
Two areas where the case for reform in the short-run is compelling are money market funds and the tri-party repo market. The requirement adopted by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2010 for a greater liquidity buffer in money market funds was a step in the right direction, but the combination of fixed net asset value, the lack of loss absorption capacity, and the demonstrated propensity for institutional investors to run together make clear that Chairman Schapiro is right to call for additional measures. As to the tri-party repo market, there are several important concerns. A major vulnerability lies in the large amount of intraday credit extended by clearing banks on a daily basis. An industry initiative to address the issue led to some important operational improvements to the tri-party market, but, to be frank, fell short of dealing comprehensively with this problem. So it now falls to the regulatory agencies to take appropriate regulatory and supervisory measures to mitigate these and other risks.
Read the rest here:
Comments »Crude Inventory Grows Another 2.8 Million Barrels
NEW YORK (AP) — The nation’s crude oil supplies increased last week, the government said Wednesday.
Crude inventories grew by 2.8 million barrels, or 0.8 percent, to 375.9 million barrels, which is 2.5 percent above year-ago levels, the Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration said in its weekly report.
Analysts expected an increase of 2.5 million barrels for the week ended April 27, according to Platts, the energy information arm of McGraw-Hill Cos.
Read more here:
Comments »A Look at 15 Stocks Short Sellers are Taking Positions In
ONE, USNA, CRR, RSH, OSG, ESI, SVU, KBH, MCP, INVN, GME, BKS, BPI, HGG, TEA
Comments »The Bow Tie: The Next Economic Slowdown Is Coming And It’s Going To Be Much Worse
“After a few months of decent data, most people suddenly think the U.S. economy is finally headed towards a recovery. Not Jim Rogers.
Rogers, who stopped by our offices the other day, thinks another economic slowdown is coming and that it will be much worse than what we’ve just experienced. Rogers says the good news we’re hearing about the economy is basically just propaganda from a government hoping to be re-elected this fall….”
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