Not good. initial claims rose by 16K, with the 4 week moving average rising by 2250, though continuing claims fell.
Of more concern, consumer confidence fell, probably influenced by the sequester.
Year: 2013
For Your European Friends
Buy them a safe that fits into a mattress:
If you arte going to put your savings in the mattress, this is the way to go.
This is Free Market Mousketeer Bullsh%$
Bolivia President Evo Morales is looking about setting up a state owned concern to refine his country’s huge lithium deposits:
Is Bolivia poised to become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” the vital ingredient in batteries for smartphones and electric cars?
The Uyuni salt flats, stretching across a remote Andean plateau in the southwest of the country, are easily the world’s largest reserve of the soft, light, whitish metal coveted by high-tech firms from Silicon Valley to Tokyo.
This year, President Evo Morales has moved swiftly ahead with plans to finally begin reaping a potential lithium windfall of billions of dollars for the impoverished South American nation.
In January, Bolivia opened its first trial plant. It will produce 40 tons of lithium carbonate a year. Over time, the government wants to ramp production up to 30,000 tons — roughly a fifth of current global demand.
Of course there are some potential difficulties, the salt flats are both moist, and contain a fair amount of magnesium, which makes extraction more difficult.
But here is the assumption that seems to be everywhere these days that just pisses me off:
Meanwhile, Morales’ socialist administration’s go-it-alone attitude — including recent nationalizations of everything from utilities to airports — may mean it will have problems accessing the foreign technology needed to process the lithium.
This is bullsh%$.
If they want the technology, they will get it the same way that multinational megacorporations do today: they buy the f%$#ing technology.
Exxon, BP, and all the rest don’t know how to do difficult drilling, they hire companies like Halliburton or Slumberger for their expertise in deep water drilling, they hire companies like Transocean for its expertise in building deep water rigs.
I’m not talking about industrial espionage here, it’s that companies have increasingly outsourced core competencies in the name of cost savings, and these are now available freely for sale.
You hire a company to do the design, you hire another to do the construction, and if you have any sense, you structure it so as to ensure that the local folks get at least a general understanding of the process when you do this.
Ain’t capitalism grand?
I Dope Slapped Him, Then I High Fived Him
Just watch, you’ll understand
Charlie told me that he had uploaded a video of him doing the “The Knife Song”.
You know the one, where you take a knife, and stab it between your spread fingers at high speed.
He told me about this, and I told him that he was so grounded.
Well, he wasn’t grounded, but I was unimpressed that he pranked me.
I did not know whether to dope slap him or high five hin, so I did both.
There is No Medicine for Stupidity
Click for full size
Much better than the Euro Zone
Because their currency floated
Paul Krugman has noted that Poland has done remarkably well by retaining its own currency and allowing it to float, (see chart pr0n).
Of course, the response of the Polish leaders is to try to join the Euro:
Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister, took a big political gamble on Tuesday when he opened the door to a referendum on joining the euro, in the face of strong public opposition to the common currency.
The move is part of a campaign to prepared Poland to begin the final stages of accession to the single currency by 2015. Mr Tusk had previously opposed a public vote, arguing that Poles had already bound themselves to the euro when they voted in 2003 to join the EU.
The crisis in the eurozone has hit support for the euro – the latest opinion survey shows 62 per cent of Poles are opposed to joining, with scepticism increasing markedly since the financial and debt crises hit Europe five years ago.
But now Mr Tusk has publicly raised the possibility of allowing a referendum – demanded by rightwing opposition parties opposed to euro membership – in return for an agreement with the opposition to push through the necessary constitutional changes.
Seriously, they want a piece of this?
You see, what happened was that instead of creating inflation, the wild capital flows caused the Zloty to appreciate, and when those flows reversed, the currency depreciated.
In the Euro zone, what happens is inflation, and then the need for depression to contract the economy. Wanting to be a part of this is stupid and insane.
Seriously, we need higher quality elites running the world.
Quote of the Day
The Dark Side of Disney
Do not drink anything while watching this. I will not be responsible for the purchase of screen wipes.
A Thought on Inequality in Our Society
Yes, this is very wrong.
Light Posting for the Next Few Days
Retelling the story of the Exodus from Egypt without the aid of Cecile B. DeMille, Yul Brynner, or Charton Heston.
Probably a good thing on the latter one.
I do not like guns at the Passover Seder.
It’s Always the Tapes………
We now have NYPD managers on tape giving quotas on stop and frisk, and telling officers to target blacks and Hispanics:
The New York police department’s controversial stop-and-frisk program is being driven by a high-pressure quota system imposed upon lower-ranking officers by their supervisors, two NYPD officers testified in court this week.
The claims were made as part of a landmark class action lawsuit that began Monday. The suit seeks to prove that the nation’s largest police department has demonstrated a widespread and systemic pattern of unconstitutional stops that disproportionately target minorities.
Lawyers for the city have dismissed allegations of quotas and scrutinized the credibility of the suit’s plaintiffs, including their allegations of racial bias on the part of the department.
………
The trial represents a historic challenge to the legacies of NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly and mayor Michael Bloomberg, who have both vocally supported stop-and-frisk.
………
Darius Charney, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in opening statements that the trial is about more than numbers. “It’s about people,” he said. The NYPD has “laid siege to black and Latino communities” through “arbitrary, unnecessary and unconstitutional harassment”, Charney added.
………
By mid-week lawyers for the plaintiffs shifted focus from the experience of street stops to the internal NYPD incentive structure that allegedly motivates them.
Officer Adhyl Polanco began his testimony Tuesday by saying “there’s a difference between” the department’s policies on paper and “what goes on out there”, on the city’s streets.
Polanco testified that in 2009, officers in his Bronx precinct were expected to issue 20 summons and make one arrest per month. If they did not they would risk denied vacation, being separated from longtime partners, undesirable assignments and other consequences.
Polcano claimed it was not uncommon for patrol officers who were not making quotas to be forced to “drive the sergeant” or “drive the supervisor”, which meant driving around with a senior officer who would find individuals for the patrol officer to arrest or issue a summons to, at times for infractions the junior officer did not observe.
“We were handcuffing kids for no reason,” Polanco said. Claiming he was increasingly disturbed by what he was witnessing in his precinct, Polcanco began secretly recording his roll call meetings.
In one recording played for the court, a man Polanco claimed was a NYPD captain told officers: “the summons is a money–generating machine for the city.”
Bronx police officer Pedro Serrano also secretly recorded comments made by supervisors at the same Bronx precinct. His recordings were also played for the court this week.
On a track played Thursday, Deputy Inspector Christopher McCormack was heard telling Serrano he needed to stop “the right people, the right time, the right location”. When asked what he believed McCormack meant Serrano told the court: “he meant blacks and Hispanics.”
Later in the tape McCormack says: “I have no problem telling you this … male blacks. And I told you at roll call, and I have no problem [to] tell you this, male blacks 14 to 21.”
Serrano claims his attempts to raise concerns about stop and frisk and the existence of quotas have been met with retaliation, including fellow officers vandalizing his locker with stickers of rats.
I think that both Bloomberg and Kelly know that this is racial profiling, but they don’t care, because they know that any protests serve to reinforce their image as being “tough on crime”.
Tough on crime in the United States means dealing with minority neighborhoods as if the police department is an occupying foreign force.
Yes, Virginia, the Trans Pacific Partnership Sucks Wet Farts from Dead Pigeons
It is a wet dream of Wall Street and IP holders.
The post is too long to summarize, but the Angry Bear goes through and summarizes the low points.
These are things like investors can sue in an extranational and secret courts for losses from:
- Strikes.
- Public protest.
The latter is the most serious. If your protest can result in a multibillion dollar judgement against your county or state, they will shut you down, constitution or no.
Tell your Congresscritter to vote no.
Wimp Out
Obama has withdrawn Caitlin Halligan’s nomination To D.C. Circuit Court:
President Obama has withdrawn the nomination of Caitlin J. Halligan, a prominent New York lawyer, to serve on an important federal appeals court in Washington, blaming Republicans for blocking her confirmation twice.
The president formally notified the Senate of his decision on Friday, after Ms. Halligan requested that her name be withdrawn from consideration. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is widely viewed as the most important federal appellate court because it reviews many cases on the government’s authority.
“I am deeply disappointed that even after nearly two and a half years, a minority of senators continued to block a simple up-or-down vote on her nomination,” Mr. Obama said in a statement. “This unjustified filibuster obstructed the majority of senators from expressing their support. I am confident that with Caitlin’s impressive qualifications and reputation, she would have served with distinction.”
First, to Harry Reid: It was such a good idea to soft pedal filibuster reform. Here’s hoping that the Senate Democrats will choose a new leader in 2014.
Obama needs to show some guts.
The DC Court of Appeals is effectively the 2nd highest court in the land, and it is the one that is shortest staffed, because the ‘Phants are filibustering any appointment to the court.
Rolling over and playing dead is not a winning proposition.
Oh Ho!
The lawyer at the core of the whole “bribing prostitutes to lie about f%$#ing Senator Bob Menendez” is now saying that the Daily Caller was the one paying him to do this:
A top Dominican law enforcement official said Friday that a local lawyer has reported being paid by someone claiming to work for the conservative Web site the Daily Caller to find prostitutes who would lie and say they had sex for money with Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.).
The lawyer told Dominican investigators that a foreign man, who identified himself as “Carlos,” had offered him $5,000 to find and pay women in the Caribbean nation willing to make the claims about Menendez, according to Jose Antonio Polanco, district attorney for the La Romana region, where the investigation is being conducted.
The Daily Caller issued a statement Friday saying that the information allegedly provided by the Dominican lawyer, Melanio Figueroa, was false.
The videotaped claims of two women, made with their faces obscured, were posted in the fall on the Daily Caller. The site reported that “the two women said they met Menendez around Easter at Casa de Campo, an expensive 7,000-acre resort in the Dominican Republic. . . . They claimed Menendez agreed to pay them $500 for sex acts, but in the end they each received only $100.”
In its statement Friday, the Daily Caller said: “At no point did any money change hands between The Daily Caller and any sources or individuals connected with this investigation, nor did anyone named Carlos travel to the Dominican Republic on behalf of The Daily Caller. As recently as two weeks ago, Figueroa was on record with another news outlet as saying the women he represented were telling the truth about their initial allegations against Senator Menendez.”
Tucker Carlson, who runs the Web site, said in a statement provided through his spokesman that the Daily Caller “never paid anyone, was never asked to pay anyone and of course never would pay anyone for this story.”
Yeah, sure. They somehow just got prostitutes to talk, on camera, ratting out an (as we now know falsely) alleged John out of the goodness of their hearts.
Please, don’t insult our intelligence, Tucker.
Because they Do Not Want to Pay to Get Screwed
It appears the the Russians are not going to be extending additional credit to Cyprus, nor are they going to drop the interest or extend the loans that they have already made.
Paul Murphy, watching Cypriot finance Minister Michael Sarris returning empty-handed from Moscow, says that “Medvedev and co could not have played a worse hand during this crisis — and it’s not immediately clear why”. His point is that the most likely outcome right now — he calls it “popping the red pill” — is that big depositors at Laiki Bank (read: rich Russians) are likely to lose some 40% of their money. Since that will make Russia very unhappy, why is Russia doing nothing to prevent it?
I don’t pretend to understand Russian politics, but this move seems to me to be a classic high-risk, high-aggression play; think of Medvedev as a geopolitical hedge-fund manager or poker player, and it begins to make a bit more sense.
Firstly, it’s worth noting that Russia is actually moving backwards on the amount of help it’s likely to extend to Cyprus. When the bailout plan was first announced, it included Russia extending its existing €2.5 billion loan to the country by five years, as well as reducing that loan’s interest rate. Now, Russia is refusing to agree even to that.
More generally, Russia is taking an absolutist stance with respect to Cyprus. No, we won’t restructure the money you owe us. No, we won’t buy a bank off
you. No, we aren’t interested in your natural-gas reserves. And underlying it all, of course, an unspoken — and all the more powerful for being unspoken — physical threat to any Cypriot who causes powerful Russians to lose billions of euros.
I think, and noted in the comments, that there are a number of motivations for the Russians:
- Medvedev and Putin believe that Frau Merkel (sound of horses whinnying) will demand a haircut of the Russians under any circumstances, both for political advantage, and because of the natural hostility of former residents of Warsaw Pact nations, who will gladly cut their nose off to spite the Russian face.
- The second reason is that if the ultra-rich Russia tax evaders get dinged, in the future, they may decide to keep assets in, and pay taxes in Russia, because they see the cost of taxes being less than the cost of an IMF and an EU determine to f%$# them.
- The third reason is that the Russians have been VERY concerned about their western near-abroad for centuries, it’s where they have been invaded from, and they feel that any expansion of the EU presages and expansion of NATO, which they see as a ring of steel intended to threaten them. If Cyprus, and honest hardworking depositors get boned, it is far less likely that places like the Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, etc. will join the union.
Note that the reasons above are orthogonal, so it might be all of the above.
I do think that any tighter government integration in the EU will have to include some sort of government structure which prevents German hegemony, something like the bicameral structure of the US Congress, because this whole “Germany runs Europe” thing is working about as well as it did the last time.
It’s Jobless thursday!!!
336,000 initial claims, up 2K, with the 4-week moving average falling to 339,750, though continuing claim rose.
Not bad.
Scotus Gets One Very Right
They reaffirmed the right of first sale of a copyrighted work:
The Court at last seems to have reached a consensus on a seemingly intractable problem of copyright law: whether a U.S. copyright holder can prevent the importation of “gray-market” products manufactured for overseas markets. When the Court tried to address this question two Terms ago – in Costco Wholesale Corp. v. Omega, S.A. – the Court was equally divided (with Justice Kagan recused). However, in today’s opinion in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Justice Breyer, writing for a strong majority of six, emphatically rejected the publisher’s control over the importation of such products.
The facts are almost too good to be true. A Thai national (Kirtsaeng) came to this country to study at Cornell and U.S.C. To subsidize his educational expenses, he resold textbooks purchased by his family at bookstores in Thailand. All in all, he sold several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of textbooks imported in this way, reaping a net profit in the range of $100,000. When his activities came to the attention of Wiley (a major American textbook publisher), a suit for copyright infringement predictably ensued. The district court found for Wiley and imposed statutory damages of $600,000. The Second Circuit affirmed.The case turns on a provision of the Copyright Act that permits the owner of a copy that was “lawfully made under this title” to resell the work. The publisher argues that the Thai books, printed in Thailand, were not made “under this title,” and thus that Kirtsaeng cannot lawfully resell them. Kirtsaeng, on the other hands, argues that the books were “lawfully made,” because they were made under a license from Wiley.
………
The issue in Kirtsaeng was whether the first-sale doctrine applies to copyrighted works manufactured overseas. Kirtsaeng bought textbooks in Thailand, where they are cheap, brought them to the United States, and resold them at a large profit. The lower courts said he couldn’t do this, and ordered him to pay damages to the publisher (John Wiley). The Supreme Court disagreed. The Justices said that the first-sale doctrine applies to all books, wherever made. So even if you buy a book made in England, you can resell it without permission from the publisher.
Normally, this is a close thing, but this time it was 6-3, and the opinion was strident, describing the consequences of ruling for the publisher to be a, “parade of horribles”, where people owning foreign made cars, or tablets, or cell phones would need permission from the publisher in order to resell the products.
I also think that the court was aware that if they allowed the restriction on the right first sale, that the copyright holders would set up manufacturing offshore so as to extort additional revenue by prohibiting resales, or demanding blackmail money licensing fees.
Rather unsurprisingly, the dissent was written by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who never saw a draconian power that she did not want to give IP holders.
As an aside, we are seeing a change in the public view of IP.
The Supreme Court, with this decision, did not ask, “How can we stop piracy of protected works,” but instead asked, “What are the reasonable limits to the exclusive license we grant to IP holders.”
This is a rather significant change in the tenor of the discussion, and we not just seeing it at the Supreme Court, but among an increasing number of Congressmen. (The White House is still firmly in the pocket of the the MPAA, the RIAA, and the rest of that hive of scum and villainy)
At Least the IMF Isn’t Being Run By Crooks ……… Ummmm ……… Nevermind
Her apartment in France just got raided as a part of a corruption investigation:
Police have searched the Paris home of the head of the International Monetary Fund as part of a fraud investigation centred on a supporter of former president Nicolas Sarkozy.
Christine Lagarde’s flat was raided along with that of her office manager and the home of businessman Bernard Tapie, a former politician, actor, singer and television celebrity.
The IMF chief has been the subject of preliminary investigations for “complicity in the embezzlement of public funds”, since 2011, when Tapie was awarded €284m of public money in compensation in a financial dispute while she was economy minister.
The search came hours after the French government was rocked by a separate scandal after the budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac was put under criminal investigation amid claims he hid money from the French taxman in a secret Swiss bank account. Lagarde and Cahuzac have vehemently denied any wrongdoing.
………
The accusations against Lagarde centre on her role in what is known as the Tapie Affair, a row that has rumbled for two decades, which ended when she made a controversial decision to refer the businessman’s dispute with the public bank Crédit Lyonnais to arbitration. Critics say she abused her authority. Investigators are looking into whether Tapie was given a secret deal in return for supporting Sarkozy during his successful 2007 presidential election campaign.
Of course, a police raid does not imply guilt, but it does show just how corrupt the political elites are as a class, and why the idea of apolitical “technocrats” is a fraud.
Signs of the Apocalypse
Too true
Michael Steel just said something that was:
- Provocative, and
- Not blindingly stupid.
What he said was that, if Republicans want to get minorities to vote for them they have to stop trying to trying to suppress their votes:
Steele said the RNC’s autopsy of the 2012 election does nothing to address the substantive reasons why the party fails to connect with minorities, highlighting voter identification laws championed by many Republicans, including Priebus, that disproportionately affect black voters.
“How does Reince Priebus reconcile his approach and his agreement with voter registration policies that many in the black community view as anti-black, racist, whatever the term happens to be,” Steele said. “You’ve got to reconcile how people feel about your policies, not just the fact that you’re going to show up. You can show up any time. It’s what you say and what you do when you get there that matters most to people.”
He’s right, of course, and he did not put his foot in his mouth in the progress.
I’m pleasantly surprised.
Dick Durbin Wants to F%$3 Us Like a Steubinville Football Player Would
He is proposing a Social Security to “fix” the program:
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin announced Wednesday morning that he will introduce a bipartisan bill to create a Social Security commission tasked with making the program solvent for the next 75 years.
………
Durbin says the bill would require votes in the House and Senate on whatever the commission proposes.
With no possibility of filibuster, or amendment.
It’s another way to accommodate Obama’s, and the other Washington, DC “very serious people’s”, burning need to gut security.
The solution is straightforward. If you lift the cap. It’s solvent for at least 75 years.
If you extend the tax to things like capital gains, or at least carried interest, it’s solvent basically forever.
I am sick to death of people trying to create yet another cat food commission.*
*In the interest of health, I would suggest that people eat dog food, and not cat food. Cats because they are one of the few true carnivores, do not need the complex carbohydrates and fats that people, and dogs do. As such, dog food is better for you than cat food because it provides carbs and essential fatty acids. A dog can go blind if it is fed on cat food, but a cat lives just fine on dog food. The phenomenon is known as rabbit starvation.
I Like the Way that This (These) Guy(s) Think
This proposal for Cyprus is brilliant:
So TMM propose the Cypriot Government do the following – they’ll have to do it very quickly to avoid the ECB panicking and pulling back the ELA cash lent against dodgy collateral. Once done, the ECB will not be able to do anything about it.
- Transfer all bank deposits & unencumbered assets from the existing Cypriot banks to new bank holding companies: e.g. Cyprus Phoenix Bank. This should include the transfer of IT infrastructure, the branch network & any tangible assets like real estate (e.g. the banks’ HQs).
- Let the old banks go bankrupt, leaving the ECB with EUR 9bn of losses and wiping out both the subordinated & senior bondholders (EUR 1.75bn).
- These new banks are now adequately capitalised & under EU law, the ECB will not be able to prevent their participation in Target 2 via the Central Bank of Cyprus. The ECB may well kick & scream, but there will be nothing they can do about it.
- Domestic Bills/Bonds haircut by 80% for non-Cypriot banks. Although their non-bank ownership is small, every little helps, & using JPM’s ownership estimates, this would produce ~EUR 820m.
- The international bonds under UK (with a 75% CAC hurdle) are certainly tough to PSI, but let’s all be realistic, there’s no money left & government debt is at astronomically large amounts of GDP. TMM believe that Cyprus will be more successful than market punters reckon in restructuring this debt. And of course, they can also just unilaterally default on the debt. Again, an 80% haircut here sounds realistic, producing EUR 3.04bn.
- Adding the Gas reserve privatisation (which JPM estimate at EUR 4.2bn), TMM have found EUR 18.9bn.
- Cyprus could also, of course negotiate with the Russians to restructure the EUR 2.5bn loan, and if they are able to get say 20% NPV reduction on this, they could make the terms on the international bond restructuring less-onerous.
I’m not a fan of the proposal to privatizing the gas reserves, I think that it’s stupid to sell the future for pennies on the dollar, but otherwise I like it.
It appears legal, and it legally f%$#s the powers that be of finance, and it doesn’t make the people of Cyprus pay for their banksters fraud.
Them that broke the world should pay, but that will never happen.