Flash: Leucadia Reports Purchase of Another Million Shares of JEF Today
A form 4 was filed. LUK bought a block of one millions shares of JEF earlier today.
Comments »JEF Reveals Euro-Land Exposure
Portugal: $5 million
Ireland $28M Italy $104M
Greece $3M
Spain $178M
“Peaceful Protests” Turn Violent in CA
Turning frustration to violence diminishes your cause. Protesters turned violent in Oakland CA; police use tear gas and make arrests.
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FLASH: BBC Reports Papandreou Will Resign Momentarily
Don’t Eat at Fast Food Joints Unless You Have a Taste for Sanguine Fluids
Corzine May Face Criminal Charges (video)
IPCC climate report was authored by kids
I think I busted a rib from laughing…
Comments »A scathing new expose on the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change — which sets the world’s agenda when it comes to the current state of the climate — claims that its reports have often been written by graduate students with little or no experience in their field of study and whose efforts normally might be barely enough to satisfy grad school requirements.
Grad students often co-author scientific papers to help with the laborious task of writing. Such papers are rarely the cornerstone for trillions of dollars worth of government climate funding, however — nor do they win Nobel Peace prizes.
“We’ve been told for the past two decades that ‘the Climate Bible’ was written by the world’s foremost experts,” Canadian journalist Donna Laframboise told FoxNews.com. “But the fact is, you are just not qualified without a doctorate. In academia you aren’t even on the radar at that point.”
The IPCC insists that the lead authors of individual sections of its climate report are indeed the pre-eminent experts in their field.
“These authors are nominated by governments and selected based on expertise,” a spokesman told FoxNews.com. “Author teams on IPCC chapters are a mix of individuals who have excelled in their fields of specialism.”
{PHOTO} #OccupyOakland Protest Grows in Size; Outside Wells Fargo
Sorry, Income Inequality Really Is Way Overblown
By James Pethokoukis
October 31, 2011, 3:36 pm
Over at the Columbia Journalism Review blog, Ryan Chittum takes issue with everything I wrote about income inequality in a recent post. (I don’t think he cared much for the font, either.) My piece merely pointed to several studies — ones rarely mentioned by the mainstream media — that suggest a) income inequality is hardly “exploding,” and b) the past 30 years have hardly been a lost three decades for the American middle class. My response:
1. Chittum thinks I have misused a study by Northwestern University economist Robert Gordon. Does Gordon believe inequality has increased? He does, indeed. The first sentence of the study, which Chittum highlights in his post: “The evidence is incontrovertible that American income inequality has increased in the United States since the 1970s.”
But lots of studies make that claim. It is the next part that I found interesting:
This paper shows that the rise in American inequality has been exaggerated in at least three senses. First, the conventional measure showing a large gap between growth of median real household income and of productivity greatly overstates the increase compared to a conceptually consistent alternative gap concept, which increases at only one‐tenth the rate of the conventional gap between 1979 and 2007. … Second, the increase of inequality is not a steady ongoing process; after widening most rapidly between 1981 and 1993, the growth of inequality reversed itself and became negative during 2000‐2007.
Chittum, nor other liberal economic pundits such as Ezra Klein, Jonathan Chait, Kevin Drum, Ryan Avent, have made an effort to dispute Gordon, hardly a conservative economist. Liberals don’t even like quoting that above bit.
2. Chittum really likes studies from the union-backed EPI. But when I looked at the issue of middle-class stagnation, I went with analysis from the Federal Reserve, more likely free of political influence. And here is what a Minneapolis Fed researcher found:
I calculate that median Census income per person rose by 50 percent. … The claim that the standard of living of middle Americans has stagnated over the past generation is common. An accompanying assertion is that virtually all income growth over the past three decades bypassed middle America and accrued almost entirely to the rich. The findings reported here … refute those claims. Careful analysis shows that the incomes of most types of middle American households have increased substantially over the past three decades.
Maybe Gordon and the Fed and many other academics are just “deniers,” unworthy of serious debate. But to me that sound like a clumsy effort to silence debate rather than encourage a competitive marketplace of ideas.
Comments »Flash: Jon Corzine is the Head of a Criminal Organization
Mf global admitted to authorities that they dipped into client accounts in an effort to save the bank.
There is no way Corzine didn’t know about this.
Comments »MF Global Customers Light Up the Phones at SIPC
The Twenty-Five Most Valuable Blogs In America
Somehow iBankCoin was left off this list, the 25 most valuable blogs in 2011
Comments »Pizza Wars: This is One Way to Eliminate Competition
#OWS Discrimination on the Rise
Meet OWS’s “Think Tank”
HAHAHAHA
He’s a fucking anthropologist anarchist.
“I have arrived at a point where I can write about whatever I want.”
Apparently you need to teach at a university to write about nothing. That’s funny, I would have figured I could have done that without formal training and experience.
Have a chuckle here:
Comments »When he’s not busy brainstorming how to tear apart and rebuild America’s democratic system, David Graeber prefers to think about simpler things, like why we still don’t have flying cars.
Graeber, a professor at the University of London and a widely respected anthropologist, has achieved a new level of fame in recent weeks for his early influence on the Occupy Wall Street protests that began in New York City and have since spread around the world. The Wall Street Journal declared Graeber to be “the single academic who has done the most to shape the nascent movement,” while Bloomberg Businessweek declared him to be the “anti-leader” of Occupy Wall Street who generally abstains from the limelight even as his writings, including a new book on the history of debt and the influence of money, serve as an “intellectual frame” for the protesters.
Indeed, when MainStreet managed to reach Graeber by phone, his focus was light-years away from the protests, as he was busy working on an article about his disappointment that the world doesn’t yet have technology like flying cars, robots and other futuristic technology that one might have hoped would exist by the 21st century. As Graeber puts it, “I have arrived at a point where I can write about whatever I want.”
Flying cars probably aren’t the future that protesters are marching for around the world, but then again few can say for sure precisely what the demands of each protester in Manhattan and Oakland and Rome actually are, not even Graeber, who is based in London and shuttles between protests on a fairly regular basis.
#OWS Hates the Poor and the Homeless
Despite having over 500K in the bank, the Occupy crowd is now refusing to feed those that don’t contribute in some way to the Occupation. Hmmm…Wonder if they see the irony here? Nah….
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The Occupy Wall Street volunteer kitchen staff launched a “counter” revolution yesterday — because they’re angry about working 18-hour days to provide food for “professional homeless” people and ex-cons masquerading as protesters.
For three days beginning tomorrow, the cooks will serve only brown rice and other spartan grub instead of the usual menu of organic chicken and vegetables, spaghetti bolognese, and roasted beet and sheep’s-milk-cheese salad.
They will also provide directions to local soup kitchens for the vagrants, criminals and other freeloaders who have been descending on Zuccotti Park in increasing numbers every day.
NY Post: Chad Rachman
TUMMY TROUBLE: Protesters and hangers-on were disappointed in yesterday’s fare supplied by cooks who plan to serve only brown rice instead of fancy feasts in protest over an influx of “professional homeless” eaters.
To show they mean business, the kitchen staff refused to serve any food for two hours yesterday in order to meet with organizers to air their grievances, sources said.
As the kitchen workers met with the “General Assembly’’ last night, about 300 demonstrators stormed from the park to Reade Street and Broadway, where they violently clashed with cops. Officers made at least 10 arrests when rowdy demonstrators refused to get out of the street and stop blocking traffic. A dozen cops on scooters tried to force them back to the sidewalk. There were no reported injuries. The demonstrators said they were angry over the violence in Oakland.
After making their way to Union Square, many of the protesters returned to Zuccotti. The Assembly announced the three-day menu crackdown announced earlier in the day — insisting everybody would be fed something during that period. Some protesters threatened that the high-end meals could be cut off completely if the vagrants and criminals don’t disperse. Unhappiness with their unwelcome guests was apparent throughout the day.
“We need to limit the amount of food we’re putting out” to curb the influx of derelicts, said Rafael Moreno, a kitchen volunteer. A security volunteer added that the cooks felt “overworked and underappreciated.” Many of those being fed “are professional homeless people. They know what they’re doing,” said the guard at the food-storage area.
Today, a limited menu of sandwiches, chips and some hot food will be doled out — so legitimate protesters will have a day to make arrangements for more upscale weekend meals. Protesters got their first taste of the revolt within the revolt yesterday when the kitchen staff served only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and chips after their staff meeting.
Organizers took other steps to police the squatters, who they said were lured in from other parks with the promise of free meals. A team of 10 security volunteers moved in to the trouble-prone southwest section of Zuccotti Park in a show of force to confront them.
“We’re not going to let some members of this community destroy the whole movement,” a volunteer said.
Some arguments broke out as the security team searched tents — but no violence erupted.
Overall security at the park had deteriorated to the point where many frightened female protesters had abandoned the increasingly out-of-control occupation, security- team members said. Rumors swirled that one homeless man had pulled a knife in a dispute the night before — and that there had been yet another case of groping. But protesters and a cop on duty told The Post that most of the crime goes unreported, because of a bizarre “stop snitching” rule.
“What’s happening in there is staying in there,” said the cop.
Comments »Federal Judge Questions Cit’s $285 Million Settlement With the SEC
Marines Get Fired Up Over #OWS Violence (video)
A protester was put in the hospital suffering a coma after getting hit in the head by a rubber bullet…
Comments »Occupy Wall Street Kitchen Staff Protesting Fixing Food for Freeloaders #OWS
The Occupy Wall Street volunteer kitchen staff launched a “counter” revolution yesterday — because they’re angry about working 18-hour days to provide food for “professional homeless” people and ex-cons masquerading as protesters.
For three days beginning tomorrow, the cooks will serve only brown rice and other spartan grub instead of the usual menu of organic chicken and vegetables, spaghetti bolognese, and roasted beet and sheep’s-milk-cheese salad.
They will also provide directions to local soup kitchens for the vagrants, criminals and other freeloaders who have been descending on Zuccotti Park in increasing numbers every day.
NY POST: CHAD RACHMAN
TUMMY TROUBLE: Protesters and hangers-on were disappointed in yesterday’s fare supplied by cooks who plan to serve only brown rice instead of fancy feasts in protest over an influx of “professional homeless” eaters.
To show they mean business, the kitchen staff refused to serve any food for two hours yesterday in order to meet with organizers to air their grievances, sources said.
As the kitchen workers met with the “General Assembly’’ last night, about 300 demonstrators stormed from the park to Reade Street and Broadway, where they violently clashed with cops.
Officers made at least 10 arrests when rowdy demonstrators refused to get out of the street and stop blocking traffic. A dozen cops on scooters tried to force them back to the sidewalk.
There were no reported injuries.
The demonstrators said they were angry over the violence in Oakland.
After making their way to Union Square, many of the protesters returned to Zuccotti.
The Assembly officially approved the three-day menu crackdown announced earlier in the day — insisting everybody would be fed something during that period.
Some protesters threatened that the high-end meals could be cut off completely if the vagrants and criminals don’t disperse.
Unhappiness with their unwelcome guests was apparent throughout the day.
“We need to limit the amount of food we’re putting out” to curb the influx of derelicts, said Rafael Moreno, a kitchen volunteer.
A security volunteer added that the cooks felt “overworked and underappreciated.”
Many of those being fed “are professional homeless people. They know what they’re doing,” said the guard at the food-storage area.
Today, a limited menu of sandwiches, chips and some hot food will be doled out — so legitimate protesters will have a day to make arrangements for more upscale weekend meals.
Protesters got their first taste of the revolt within the revolt yesterday when the kitchen staff served only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and chips after their staff meeting.
Organizers took other steps to police the squatters, who they said were lured in from other parks with the promise of free meals.
A team of 10 security volunteers moved in to the trouble-prone southwest section of Zuccotti Park in a show of force to confront them.
“We’re not going to let some members of this community destroy the whole movement,” a volunteer said.
Some arguments broke out as the security team searched tents — but no violence erupted.
Overall security at the park had deteriorated to the point where many frightened female protesters had abandoned the increasingly out-of-control occupation, security- team members said.
Rumors swirled that one homeless man had pulled a knife in a dispute the night before — and that there had been yet another case of groping.
But protesters and a cop on duty told The Post that most of the crime goes unreported, because of a bizarre “stop snitching” rule.
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