A great bedtime story for the kidz…
Comments »Monthly Archives: December 2012
Social Justice and Its Critics
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYH3jNkg8G8 450 300]
Comments »I Know You Forgot About Sandy Already, BUT CITIZENS ARE STILL NOT GETTING HELP…WTF???
TO: FEMA, MR. PRESIDENT, & CONGRESS
FROM: SANDY VICTIMS
RE: WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU ?
Just saw a clip of Sandy victims trying to still obtain simple information on how to get their lives in gear after being totally destroyed by hurricane Sandy.
A Fema agent on tv is trying to assist victims with info on getting loans from the SBA, or how to get help from the local community. I mean WTF are we paying these losers for. Victims continue to claim about the disorganization, absenteeism, and lack of ability to deliver the proper information to victims.
Meanwhile while trying to obtain food, shelter, and some sense of getting back to the good life; victims of Sandy have to deal with stupid shit like this:
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Think Tank: China May Grow 8.2% in 2013
“China’s economic growth may quicken to 8.2 percent in 2013 from an expected 7.7 percent this year in response to official growth-promoting polices, but downside risk remains from global uncertainties, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) said on Wednesday.
The country’s top think tank said in its “bluebook” report on China’s economy that Beijing should boost budgetary help to the economy by borrowing and spending more, and cutting taxes that hinder economic efficiency.
China has not yet issued an official GDP forecast for 2013,but CASS’s status as the premier state-backed center for academic and policy research means its outlook to a certain extent reflects central government thinking….”
Comments »New Zealand Keeps Rates Unch., Expects Record Low rates to Stay Until 2014
South Korea’s GDP Grows Less Than Expected, Future Growth Revised Downward
“South Korea’s economy grew just 0.1 percent in the July-September period from the previous quarter,revised data showed on Thursday, a slight downgrade from an earlier estimate and the slowest in three and a half years.
Over a year earlier, Asia’s fourth-largest economy expanded by a revised 1.5 percent in the third quarter, the Bank of Korea said in a scheduled statement, also down slightly from its previous estimate and the worst in three years.
The central bank had previously estimated South Korea’s third-quarter growth at 0.2 percent on a quarterly basis and 1.6 percent on an annual basis.”
Comments »Deutsche Bank Accused of Hiding $12 Billion in Losses During Financial Crisis
“Deutsche Bank failed to recognize up to $12 billion of paper losses during the financial crisis, helping the bank avoid a government bailout, three former bank employees have alleged in complaints to U.S. regulators.
The three complaints, made to regulators including the US Securities and Exchange Commission, claim that Deutsche misvalued a giant position in derivatives structures known as leveraged super senior trades, according to people familiar with the complaints.
All three allege that if Deutsche had accounted properly for its positions – worth $130 billion on a notional level – its capital would have fallen to dangerous levels during the financial crisis and it might have required a government bailout to survive.
Instead, they allege, the bank’s traders – with the knowledge of senior executives – avoided recording “mark-to-market”, or paper, losses during the unprecedented turmoil in credit markets in 2007-2009.
Two of the former employees allege that Deutsche mismarked the value of insurance provided in 2009 by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway on some of the positions. The existence of these arrangements has not been previously disclosed.
Deutsche said in a statement that the allegations were more than two and a half years old and were publicly reported in June 2011. It added that they had been the subject of “a careful and thorough investigation”, and were “wholly unfounded”.
The bank said the investigation revealed that the allegations “stem from people without personal knowledge of, or responsibility for, key facts and information”. Deutsche promised “to continue to cooperate fully with the SEC’s investigation of this matter”.
The complaints were made at different times in 2010 and 2011 independently of each other. All of the men spent hours with SEC enforcement attorneys and provided internal bank documents during multiple meetings, people familiar with the matter say.
Robert Khuzami, head of enforcement at the SEC, has recused himself from all Deutsche Bank investigations because he was Deutsche’s general counsel for the Americas from 2004 to 2009. Dick Walker, Deutsche’s general counsel, is a former head of enforcement at the SEC. The SEC declined to comment on the investigation….”
Comments »HSBC Might Pay $1.8 Billion Money Laundering Fine
“HSBC Holdings might pay a fine of $1.8 billion as part of a settlement with U.S. law-enforcement agencies over money-laundering lapses, according to several people familiar with the matter.
The settlement with Europe’s biggest bank – which could be announced as soon as next week – will likely involve HSBC entering into a deferred prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The potential settlement, which has been in the works for months, is emerging as a test case for just how big a signal U.S. prosecutors want to send to try to halt illicit flows of money moving through U.S. banks.
An HSBC spokesman said: “We are cooperating with authorities in ongoing investigations. The nature of discussions is confidential.”
Comments »Greece Downgraded to ‘Selective Default’ by S&P
“Standard & Poor’s on Wednesday cut Greece’s sovereign long-term foreign currency credit rating to “selective default” from an already low “CCC” rating.
Last week Greece and its international lenders reached a deal to lower the country’s debt burden, which included a debt buyback.
The decision to lower the sovereign rating follows the government’s invitation to private sector bondholders to participate in the debt buyback “which under our criteria we view as a selective default,” S&P said in an e-mailed statement.
“When the buyback is consummated (which we understand is scheduled to occur on or about Dec. 17, 2012), we will likely consider the selective default to be cured and raise the sovereign credit rating on Greece to the ‘CCC’ category,” the statement said…”
Comments »The SEC Makes a Mickey Mouse Bust at $WFC, Nine Others Charged for Insider Trading
“WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. securities regulators charged a Wells Fargo investment banker and nine others with fraud on Wednesday in connection with their alleged role in an insider-trading ring that earned more than $11 million by trading on tips about impending mergers.
The Securities and Exchange Commission said that John Femenia, 30, misused his position at a unit of Wells Fargo to obtain material, non-public information about four different mergers involving clients.
The SEC said Femenia then tipped his friend, Shawn Hegedus, a registered broker-dealer. The SEC says the two then tipped other friends, resulting in a “massive, serial insider-trading ring” that spread across five states.
The SEC said it has already obtained a court order to freeze the defendants’ assets.
“Here you have an investment banker who clearly knew better that inside information can’t form the basis of trading decisions,” said William Hicks, associate director for enforcement in the SEC’s Atlanta Regional Office.
“Instead, he basically started a phone tree of nonpublic information to enrich friends and others.”
According to the SEC’s complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, Femenia is still employed in the Wells Fargo New York office with the Industrials Investment Banking Group. Previously, he worked in the North Carolina office.”
Comments »Banking on Banks
Today’s tape was anything but normal. Tech got smashed and banks led the markets higher. Are the much hated banks feeling the luv ?
Comments »$GS: Shale Drilling to Lift the Phoenix From the Ashes
Who knew shale gas in the U.S. could have such profound and potentially long last affects on a plebs life. You thought oil was for rich men drawing blood, but now every pleb can be thankful for the shale revolution.
Comments »2012’s 10 Best Stocks in the S&P
U.S. Aerospace Industry Expected to Keep Flying High
“(Reuters) – U.S. aerospace and arms companies are poised for sales growth in 2013 for what would be their 10th straight year, even as the Pentagon prepares to cut its purchases as much as 10 percent, the industry’s chief trade group said Wednesday.
One of the economy’s bright spots, these companies continued to lead the United States in the net export of manufactured goods, buoyed by strong civil aircraft sales, the Aerospace Industries Association said.
Exports rose to an estimated $95.5 billion this year from $85.3 billion last year and are likely to grow during “at least the next several years” based on order backlogs, the AIA said in its annual year-end review and forecast publication.
Civil aircraft, engines and parts represent about 88 percent of all aerospace exports and about $9 billion of the increase in overall exports in 2012, the report said.
China, a prominent growth market, could account for 20 percent of all global business jet deliveries by the end of the decade, up from 7 percent now, AIA cited estimates as showing.
Overall sales are projected to have risen 3.4 percent this year from $210.8 billion in 2011 to $217.9 billion, it said.”
Comments »Analysis: Brazil Banks, Pressured to Lend More, Cut Costs Instead
“(Reuters) – President Dilma Rousseff’s government has pulled out all the stops to persuade Brazilianbanks to lend more – pushing interest rates to an all-time low, leaning on state-run lenders, and even publicly shaming the industry for its high profits.
Yet banks have generally gone in a different direction, slashing costs as a way to protect their bottom lines from Rousseff’s offensive.
Many private-sector banks are cutting jobs and outsourcing services as profitability falls to multi-year lows. Even some state-run banks have indicated they may follow suit. Credit growth, meanwhile, has remained stagnant.
“The sector is naturally focusing on efficiency as part of a ‘new normal’ – banks in Brazil are changing dramatically,” Marcial Portela Álvarez, chief executive of Banco Santander Brasil SA (SANB11.SA), said at a recent event. “Cost efficiency is at the core of those changes.”
Bank sector austerity has stung Latin America’s largest economy. Activity in the financial sector shrank 1.3 percent in the third quarter as banks adjusted to the changes Rousseff has imposed since April.
Bank struggles were a drag on gross domestic product, which grew just 0.6 percent in the third quarter, less than half the pace analysts had expected. That put Brazil on track for second straight year of below-trend growth.
Government officials describe the problems as a painful but necessary transition after years in which they say banks got far too fat because of the highest interest rates among the world’s top 20 economies. Banks’ return on equity, a gauge of how much a bank earns per dollar of shareholder money invested, surpassed those of other sectors by a large margin in the past decade.
For years, bankers paid little attention to efficiency since borrowers were charged average annual lending rates above 40 percent and government debt yielded fabulous returns.
Banks in Brazil face high overhead largely due to the low average maturity of their loan books, rigid labor costs and high taxes.
As a result, they lagged global peers in cost efficiency. Expenses in Brazil represented 6 percent of assets last year, compared with 3 percent in the United States and 1.5 percent in Europe, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc estimates….”
Comments »The Bush Era Tax Cuts Didn’t Create Wealth
“The Republican Party has long promoted itself as the party of business.
Republicans understand the needs of business, we are told, and if the country would leave the economy in their hands business would boom.
All we need to do is to give those at the very top of the income distribution – the “job creators” – more income through tax breaks, and then sit back and wait for the magic happen.
Our investment in the wealthy will produce remarkable economic growth, and everyone will be better off.
The Bush tax cuts were a test of these claims about supply-side economic policies. To justify the tax cuts the nation was, in effect, given a business prospectus from the Republican Party.
We were promised that cutting taxes on the wealthy would result in much higher economic growth and broadly shared prosperity. For those who wondered how we would pay for such a large cut to the government’s revenue stream, the Republican prospectus had a remarkable claim.
The tax cuts wouldn’t cost
us anything. Growth would be so strong that the tax cuts would more than pay for themselves. Even those who admitted that the tax cuts might not be fully self-financing still made strong claims about faster economic growth offsetting much of the lost revenue from the tax cuts.
The reality, of course, has been quite different. There is little evidence that the Bush tax cuts, or any other tax cuts directed at the so-called job creators, have had a noticeable effect on economic growth. And the promise of broadly shared prosperity has not been realized.
Most of the gains from economic growth in recent decades have gone to the top of the income distribution while the inflation adjusted wages of the working class have been relatively flat. Furthermore, the tax cuts have not paid for themselves as promised, and it hasn’t even been close. The Bush tax cuts have already cost us trillions in revenue, and if they are extended for high income tax payers, they will cost us roughly another trillion over the next decade….”
Comments »America Positioned Properly for Austerity
“What does the drama in Washington over the “fiscal cliff” have to do with strikes and work stoppages among America’s lowest-paid workers at Walmart, McDonald’s, Burger King, and Domino’s Pizza?
Everything.
Jobs are slowly returning to America, but most of them pay lousy wages and low if non-existent benefits.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that seven out of 10 growth occupations over the next decade will be low-wage — like serving customers at big-box retailers and fast-food chains.
That’s why the median wage keeps dropping, especially for the 80 percent of the workforce that’s paid by the hour.”
Comments »DigiTimes Cites Margin Requirements are to Blame for $AAPL’s Debacle
$AAPL has been down all day …
“Yield rates for the production of iPhone 5 in the supply chain appear to have improved recently, as Apple has shortened the standby period for pre-sale orders in the US and Europe to within one week, from the previous four weeks, and will begin to sell the smartphone in Taiwan and China on December 14, according to industry sources.
Some international wireless chipset suppliers have also claimed that pull-in orders from Apple are increasing and that sales of the iPhone 5 are expected to top 45 million units in the fourth quarter of 2012, higher the previous conservative estimate of 40 million units.
Since some chipset suppliers have revealed that their sales are likely to reach the ceilings of their fourth-quarter guidance, there should be no problem for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) to also reach its sales target of NT$131 billion (US$4.5 billion) set for the quarter, the sources noted.
Taiwan-based IC backend service providers including Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE), Siliconware Precision Industries (SPIL), Adentec and STATS ChipPAC are also expected to perform better than expected in the fourth quarter, buoyed by orders from chipset vendors, said the sources.
However, with demand in the end market expected to teeter into a slow season in the first quarter of 2013, Apple’s demand for parts and components may plunge over 20% sequentially in the quarter, the sources warned.”
Some other ideas why $AAPL is down
Comments »Anecdotal Economic Data
“When the official headline economic indicators don’t work, savvy investors turn to the unconventional economic indicators.
In his latest Breakfast With Dave note, David Rosenberg visits a signal being sent by the restaurant sector:
EATING OUT IS OUT
Our hedge fund desk has always told me that among the most reliable cyclical indicators for the American consumers is the restaurant sector. Traffic is slowing down precipitously and the companies are issuing negative guidance.”
HAJIME KITANO: The Big Surprise Of 2014 May Be A Brazilian Financial Crisis
“JPMorgan strategist Hajime Kitano is skipping the 2013 predictions.
Instead, Kitano is moving the conversation forward to 2014, which he says could be the year that the Brazilian real finally crashes, enveloping the country in a financial crisis.
The reason, Kitano says, is that the real is one of the most overvalued currencies on the planet, second only to the Australian dollar.
Of course, Brazilian authorities are aware of this concern and have been quite outspoken about the overvalued real, attacking developed market central banks like the Federal Reserve and Bank of Japan for instituting easy money policies that have the pernicious side effect of driving up the value of the Brazilian currency against the U.S. dollar.
The country’s finance minister, Guido Mantega, went so far as to dub this phenomenon “currency wars” back in 2010. In that case, Brazil is definitely one of the losers.
This leads us to Kitano’s latest ruminations on the subject:
It is that time of year when we are often asked ‘What will next year’s surprise be?’ When asked this over the past few years, our reply has been a dramatic fall in the Brazilian real. This is because we considered the Brazilian real overvalued, and expected a return to average values.
Figure 1 shows the real effective Brazilian real. It has tended to fall after peaking in July 2011, but remains above its average since 1970 +2σ….”
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