Linkage excess because SOTU. –lambert
Rare and Dangerous Ice Storm Hits Deep South; Extreme Cold in the Midwest Weather Underground
Central banks in emerging markets take action AP
Turkey’s Central Bank Declares a Shock-and-Awe Rate Hike WSJ
The Reliability of Chinese GDP, Again Econbrowser
Orders for U.S. Durable Goods Unexpectedly Slump Bloomberg
Exclusive: U.S. banking regulator, fearing loan bubble, warns funds Reuters
Series of Deaths Among Financial Workers Jolts London WSJ
The challenges of a post-crisis world Martin Wolf, FT. Davose man so consensus wow.
Going past what is sustainable… Another market failure Angry Bear
“All You Need for a Financial Crisis . . . Baseline Scenario
Madoff IT Guys Wrote Code to Trick Auditors, Jury Told Bloomberg
BP Continued Suspension From New U.S. Contracts Sought Bloomberg
SOTU
What the State of the Union Means for 2014 Times. One word: “Squat.”
Six things we learned from the State of the Union NBC
Keeping His Powder Dry Foreign Policy
What’s the Deal With Obama’s New MyRA Plan? Matt Yglesias, Slate. The deal is more fees for money managers, duh. Why not just increase Social Security?
Obama’s Plan to End Discrimination Against the Long-term Unemployed New York. Will the political class ever admit that a permanently shrunken labor force is an elite policy goal that Obama has successfully achieved? Wait, don’t answer that.
What Obama Ignored About The ‘Lowest Unemployment Rate In Over 5 Years’ HuffPo (CB)
The White House Briefing Sheet [PDF] (SOTU full text). What, no school uniforms?
The Most Accessible and Interactive SOTU Yet WhiteHouse.gov. More walking around money for the creative class.
The world’s rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper FT. Gates letter takedown.
Gap between rich and poor may be exaggerated McClatchy
Pentagon investigations point to military system that promotes abusive leaders WaPo. No Wellingtons or Nelsons, these.
Alpha male ‘just a thing some men think they are’ Daily Mash (LS)
ObamaCare
How to measure Obamacare success CJR
Obamacare increases incomes of poorest, study finds USA Today
Why Nothing Apple Does Is Ever Good Enough Wired (and see also).
Unfriending Bronte Capital
Jason Calacanis launches Inside, a mobile news-curation app powered by humans GigaOM
Digital media goes highbrow Felix Salmon, Reuters
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
Huge swath of GCHQ mass surveillance is illegal, says top lawyer Guardian
Verizon’s Storefront emptywheel
We Are Sleepwalking Towards A Cashless Society Testosterone Pit
Bitcoin’s Future Gets a Hearing WSJ (and Winklevosses want sheriff to police virtual currency ‘wild west’).
Bitcoin repeats gold-standard errors Reuters
Thai Takedown Foreign Affairs
The horrors ‘12 Years a Slave’ couldn’t tell Al Jazeera
Advertisements for Death Times (FM). “Perpetrator images.”
Florida Finds New Ways to Encourage Reckless Gunplay Bloomberg. All I can say is I hope the oceans don’t rise.
‘Humane’ homes for migrant workers delayed by planning system in Qatar Guardian. Building 2022 World Cup facilities; “squalid and overcrowded conditions which are believed to contribute to a high death toll among migrant labourers.”
A History of Offense-vs.-Defense Super Bowls Grantland
What a good economy should look like The Center of the Universe
Antidote du jour:
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Exclusive: U.S. banking regulator, fearing loan bubble, warns funds Reuters
“”The OCC, Fed, and the FDIC issued guidelines to banks last year to limit their risk-taking for leveraged loans. But regulators are no more sanguine with asset managers taking on this risk given their investors include underfunded public pension plans. They are also worried about the growth of the so-called shadow banking sector, which includes non-bank lenders such as hedge funds and money market funds.
No major asset manager would comment for this story.”
——-
Good that they’ve at least got their eye on this. This is how GFC 1 started..
“”However, banks have increasingly financed their positions in assets by issuing a combination of uninsured deposits plus very short-term non-deposit liabilities. Hence, the GFC actually began as a run on these non-deposit liabilities, which were largely held by other financial institutions.””
Exclusive: U.S. banking regulator, fearing loan bubble, warns funds, they may have to be BAILED OUT! Reuters
The MyRa, an Obama classic:
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-01-29/obama-unveils-retirement-savings-for-workers-lacking-401-k-1
What it is not:
– a no-fee alternative to IRAs
– an option for those without “participating” emloyers
– an FDIC insured account to the legal maximum
– an option outside a predatory system to extract rents from retirement savings
What it is:
– “an automated way for people to get into the savings system”
– a “kick off a much-needed national conversation” on retirement security
– “a new way for working Americans to start their own retirement savings”
– a plan for those whose employers choose to participate
– with a maximum balance of $15,000
– money would have to be rolled over into a private-sector Roth IRA, feeding participants to said predatory system
The record of the 401(k) as well as the IRA throughout the financial crisis is atrocious, with a national 40% average lost. Obama, as could be expected, does nothing to address this issue. MyBama is simply offering a token reinforcement to “every retiree for himself” memes in support of the privatization of Social Security Trust Fund obligations and revenue streams. To the extent this executive exercise in masturbatory wrist-flicking actually accomplishes anything, it would be to force anybody succeeding in saving more than 15k into a private sector in dire need of additional rents.
Bush’s bank bailouts at least had panache and vision (within the narrow context of the ongoing competition to go balls-out for the financial sector). This is as tepid as it is disgusting.
– not a no-fee/low risk alternative to 401(k) either
– workers “automatically enrolled unless they specifically elected not to participate”
http://blogs.marketwatch.com/encore/2014/01/28/will-obamas-myra-retirement-plan-take-off/
The timing is impeccable: “While the stock market has doubled over the last five years, that doesn’t help folks who don’t have 401(k)s,” the president said. If he should actually deliver on this – fat chance – it will be just in time for the Bernanking Bubble to burst.
No mention of single administrater, universal pension for all.
Just don’t get old, cause that ‘Cadillac’ defined benefit retirement plan is not for you.
It does sound like classic Obama. Complexity piled high and deep, all kind of legal conditions, laws almost noone can understand the ins and outs of, with hidden gotchas. Whether one even qualifies will be entirely arbitrary. Sounding familiar? Maybe they should make the states have to implement it so whether you qualify depends on the state you live in .. . of course the website will be too complex to code well. Actually if software engineers made our laws unlike Obama they would K.I.S.S. Obama’s S.O.P. seems to be: keep things hopelessly complex and very narrowly targetted. A program for the masses? No for people who happen to meet weird qualification x, y, and z. The bureaucracy just grows as thick as a rain forrest. Oddly enough that type of red tape is part of what people actually HATE about government and with good reason.
To think that in the days of actual U.S. prosperity you could get 6% on an FDIC insured bank account without 500 pages of legalese.
Ads for death broken, live link: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/28/opinion/advertisements-for-death.html?&_r=0
A “retouch” operation for the Left
http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2014/01/a-retouch-operation-for-left.html
For a good laugh, Samantha Bee explores the minimum wage, with comments from Peter Schiff (who could not come up with a politically correct word for the mentally retarded) and Barry Ritholtz, on last night’s Daily Show segment, “Wage Against the Machine”:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-january-28-2014/wage-against-the-machine
I am betting the cat is a Norwegian Forest Cat. I have one. He is a different color, but has the mane, the big paws, long whiskers and fancy ear hairs, among other traits.
Don’t Norwegian Forest Cats grow to huge sizes? Friend of mine told me about seeing some kind of Scandinavian cat at a cat show someplace and the thing was like effing huge!
More likely a Maine Coon. The curved nose and the oval eyes are the giveaway.
Not that there’s much difference. The Maine Coon is a Norwegian Forest Cat one ocean –and a thousand years!– removed, I always say. Yup, our long haired friends came over on the Viking ships, and then decided to stay, and unlike later settlers like the Pilgrims and the Conquistadors, they’ve lived in peace and harmony with the locals ever since.
Not quite 1929-esque levels but bank employee suicides are making the headlines here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2547275/BREAKING-NEWS-Man-30s-dies-plunge-JP-Morgan-headquarters-Canary-Wharf.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2547343/Former-executive-Deutsche-Bank-hanged-Kensington-home.html
Where I work, I now know of two in the last two months. Middle/lower ranks so they don’t get the coverage (even in death, the 5% get priority treatment). Deepest sympathies to the families of those involved. No-one — no-one — deserves death.
Of the cases I know directly, “overwork” is the catch-all explanation. What never gets properly analysed is what, exactly, the nature of that “work” really is. From what I can tell, it was more a situation of trying to hold the line between at-best dishonest and at-worst illegality “requests” from higher management and wrestling in either the individual’s consciences or their fear of getting caught / having to take the fall.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The rich are, by and large, not especially happy. They are not happy because they can become trapped in a dependency on high incomes. The ability to acquire a lifestyle beyond one’s salary is a constant risk to all but the 0.1%. Many people I know on £100k+ a year comp have negative or borderline positive net worth. Walking away is not always a viable option (or at least, the unfortunately people concerned don’t see it as such).
One final observation (sorry to be morbid in this comment) — a friend witnessed the scene at Canary Wharf and she described a low-key speedily cleaned up slickly managed operation in the aftermath. The Metropolitan Police are not usually so discreet (bodies turning up where they shouldn’t are normally 10 o’clock news fests with armies of forensic specialists and Deputy Chief Police Officers bigging up their public profiles) and they convinced themselves pretty quickly this couldn’t possibly be anything like a crime scene. If there was an unexplained death at my house, they’d be there for a week.
Installing a free latte dispenser and a springboard would help.
Say if I’m misinterpreting here Shutter, but be careful about whom you wish to see on the end of your springboard. The 0.1% use the notion “because they don’t deserve any better” to justify their methodologies and philosophies. Suffering is suffering is suffering. The only reason we are better then they are is because we realise this.
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/26964.html
Clive, thanks for bring that up. Don’t want to be misunderstood.
If they won’t jump, I’ll push them.
There. Now my position is clear as a bell.
Laugh them off the end.
No need to push, it makes us like them.
Must be a board meeting – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjBt5XpEezk
Sublime humor, mpython is
http://vimeo.com/m/27582815
The fall
A favorite of mine by steve cutts
Bullshit. They would hire someone to push you. I would do it out of duty to the community.
The religious devotion to non-violence doesn’t gain any ground if they don’t actually need you alive.
(To clarify, I would push *them*, not *you*.)
I see these 1 minute kids; its a dead-ringer giveaway for lousy parents.
It would be better if they were checking their tomato plants or something like that, every minute.
At least, they would be contributing to the GDP (only if they sold them).
I always thought the dead ringer giveaway for crap parents was kids becoming anti-authoritarian punks who play 1 minute songs.
Well thank God then for the crap parents whose offspring gave us this 80s gem!
Minutemen, Double Nickels On The Dime
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXdGjdYQh4k
What a good economy should look like shows how clueless WARREN MOSLER is. It sounds like a doddering old man saying “back in the good old days we used to……”.
Economics is simply an accounting of all possible resources required for life on this planet balanced out with all life on this planet.
Economics has left the stratosphere wrt any hint of reality based accounting.
What it has become is a tool for the rich and powerful to manipulate in their favor to become even more rich and powerful
Full employment will never again be possible, at least not anything like what humanity has ever experienced so far. We either come to terms with that and establish an equitable path forward with dignity for all or we will just keep playing cut-throat musical chairs until the population numbers are – ahem! – more equitable.
It’s a problem of human nature…the only field worth going into.
Now, consider these:
the tallest person < 2 x the average person
the highest jump < 2 x the average person's jump
the fastest 100 yard dash < 1/2 the average man's 100 yd
the heaviest person < 3 x the average person
the weight lifting record < 8 x the average person's bench press
etc.
and this
the highest I.Q. < 2 x the average person's IQ of 100 (not sure it's an exponential scale).
So, it's quite reasonable to assume that the most a person would need, as far as wealth is concerned, should not be 2 to 3 or 4 times the average wealth, combining all different factors. And if your I.Q. is over 200 (two times the average of 100), and if you don't know that, that I.Q is wasted on you…you have no wisdom.
I agree with everything in your comment except the assertion that somehow economics has changed and was not always a tool for the rich and powerful to manipulate in their favor.
Full employment will never again be possible, at least not anything like what humanity has ever experienced so far.
Really? Full employment, 100% employment, zero unemployment is and always will be extremely easy to attain. No country which has ever tried to have full employment has ever had any difficulty attaining it. If there is unemployment, it is because the government wants it, and the people are too stupid. To get rid of unemployment, the government just puts up a sign, $20/hour say, for whatever work the government decides. In a sane society, the government is democratic and the work is tailored to each person’s abilities and desires as much as possible, That’s it. The JG. World’s Biggest Economic Problem solved for eternity. The END.
Extremely stupid problems like unemployment – or bleeding from stabbing yourself – tend to have extremely simple solutions, like the JG, like stopping stabbing yourself. No devil in the details.
Sad really that some would agree with the neo]classical’s that unemployment should be used as a first order inflation tool, when there are other options that don’t ravage such a large population.
skippy… self inflicted wound thingy…
This is Your Congress – NY Rep. Threatens to Throw Journalist Off Balcony and “Break Him in Half”
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2014/01/29/this-is-your-congress-ny-rep-threatens-to-throw-journalist-off-balcony-and-break-him-in-half/
The dude’s follow on today is that the reporter was not being professional and didn’t have enough respect…..classy
Maybe some of the kids who used to go wilding would take a request. The proper posture for an elected official is tearful, wailing prostration before the citizens whom they ostensibly serve.
As presented, what came to mind as the myRA was a Treasury-based savings bond account withheld by employers and tax-deferred according to one or the other IRA rules. A poor man’s T-Bill deposited into an IRA and government managed. Kinda gimmicky way for people to try to get a higher return on investment through tax deferment.
If however it is welfare for Wall Street (i.e., involves yet another product peddled through employers to employees), it is the boondoggle that the notes next to the link describe.
At best it founders on the fundamental issue with self-saving for retirement. If you don’t have sufficient money to save a sufficient retirement nest egg, you can’t put it away to start with. If socially caused dislocation, like massive housing fraud, wipes out your assets, you are lost in retirement. And government guarantees are not going to mean much if the government establishes a pattern of cutting and running when there are large claims on entitlement programs.
So at best, it depends on the good faith and credit of the Congress, which is currently standing in the balance.
It appears to be an upper-middle-class sop for people who lust for a secure Roth IRA. The other 80% won’t be able to use it.
But it does create a class of small creditors of the US government who might kick up a stink when failure to pay debts comes up again. Because the PtB seemingly think that debt ceiling games are in their interest or they would immediately shut down the nonsense.
Phone checking every 20 minutes.
People are crying out for connection, waiting for something meaningful to happen to them. Whatever this world is providing them, 24 hours news, or what not, it’s not satisfying enough…perhaps he/she is stuck in a boring job or waiting for a meaningless job that might come along when we have a JG program – to ease the billionaire’s insomnia problem, I guess, but I doubt it. I think the billionaire just needs less noise, making his/her world, er, more tranquil and beautiful.
Man is a social animal. That means, we do things together, like, er, GDP. We produce GDP as a team. If you don’t believe it, try making a smartphone from scratch all by yourself.
Why do you think JG jobs would be meaningless? Were the New Deal jobs programs, the WPA, the PWA, the CCC, the NYA, the Federal Arts Project etc meaningless?
Why should a job to do stuff that everybody gets together and says “itoughtabedone”, done by people with the skills to do it, with people being taken as they are and placed in jobs matching their skills and desires as much as possible – and this job and the money that comes with it being understood as a human right – why should this be meaningless? Are the only meaningful jobs ones that help some rich person get richer? Why? Seems to me that the reverse is the truth.
Do you really think trust fund baby Matty Yglesias is going to give us an accurate run-down of ways to help ordinary people save?
Towards a cashless society.
This quote is interesting: ‘…we are, it seems, descending into a world where new technologies threaten to put absolute power well within the grasp of a select group of individuals and organizations’
Is this not usually true – With every technology, the rich can always purchase more of it, earlier too, if not exclusive to them, to their advantage and to the regret of the not-rich?
And if the First Machine Age didn’t get you, the conclusion should not be rashly that there is nothing to worry about concerning the Second Machine Age. That would be Induction Folly…like saying ‘hyperinflation never happened here before.’
A prudent man reminds himself that machines are not stupid. Machines know ‘if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.’
A History of Offense-vs.-Defense Super Bowls Grantland
I am quite amazed and disheartened to see NC promoting the STUPOR BOWL. It shows little understanding of how the Media-Entertainment-Sportz complex puts the population to sleep. Those billionaire sportz team owners chortle in their taxpayer funded Skyboxes as the debt slaves enjoy their days of drunkenness and overconsumption before heading back to work, if they have any.
I dread to think what the Olympricks and Sochi may bring to NC.
By the way the MYRa. It’s a libertarian meme that government seeks more and more programs to try to solve the problems they have caused. But really isn’t that what is going on here? Is not low interest rate policy so that you get no interest on your bank account and CDs very much government policy? And now they complain that we don’t have invesetments with a good balance of risk and reward? Well uh … duh .. it’s called ZIRP. You built that. Of course they also aren’t interested in reducing the risks due to even pure criminality (slap on the hand for looking the other way at Bernie Madoff!)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/29/us-banks-regulators-loans-idUSBREA0S0DG20140129
“Transferring future losses from banks to pension funds does not aid long-term financial stability for the U.S. economy,” he added.”
Apparently, this gubermint employee never got the memo that the sole purpose of the corporernment is to harvest all assets, including organs, from the citizens for the benefit of the banks…because its a credit based….uh, fraud based system. The stability of the economy for other than the 1% is not the government’s concern.
RE: Reliability of Chinese GDP.
Ten percent growth rates year over year certainly will never happen again, but despite problems, China has dedicated itself to continued prosperity for its people, and has not taken the bait of threatening and truculent moves by Japan and the US.
They will advance and prosper, while others deceive themselves into believing that they can change outcomes by being tough guys, instead of “sticking to their own knitting of development and real economic progress.”
there’s -save our iternet slash no fast track over at boingboing. it’s on every page. so go sign/write congresscritter for those of us into civic duty. http://boingboing.net/2014/01/29/save-the-internet-stop-fast-t.html
see ya, zn
Ohhhhhh, so that’s why Magee (deceased VP of IT) might’ve jumped.
That Reuters Bitcoin article- it was posted satirically, right? I’m no Bitbug but, come on, “in the contemporary world governments are the pre-eminent social guardians.”? I don’t know how anyone could say that with a straight face. I lost it just reading it.