Teach Your Fish How To Walk Popular Scientist (RM).
Avian flu crisis grows for poultry producers throughout USA USA Today
Economists have discovered how bad the economy really is WaPo. Labor force participation. NC readers have known for years.
A Veteran of the Financial Crisis Tells China to Be Wary NYT
Investors Just Got a Billion-Dollar Lesson in China’s ‘Mystery Meat’ Bloomberg
Why doesn’t Washington think Warren Buffett’s reinsurance arm is TBTF? Fortune
Grand Central: Mr. Dudley Hedges Himself on 2015 Rate Increase WSJ
How Emerald Knight’s sales pitch duped the Financial Times blog FT Adviser Redd Monitor (RS).
Trader Charged With Manipulation That Contributed to 2010 ‘Flash Crash’ NYT
Regional Banks Sweat Through Low-Rate ‘Torture’ WSJ
Chemical Activity Barometer “Leading Economic Indicator Rises for Fourth Consecutive Month” Calculated Risk
Oil Companies Are Getting a Second Chance in the Bond Market Bloomberg
The bank moved to seize a widow’s home. But it didn’t tell her the loan was insured. Charlotte Observer (Furzy Mouse). Yes, the banksters are still at it.
PhillyDeals: Helping home buyers before they go underwater Inquirer
NYT: Heastie Reaped $200k Profit from Mom’s Embezzlement The Albany Project. $200K? That’s chump change. Anyhow, Heastie’s the new Assembly speaker. I bet Sheldon Silver’s laughing now!
Is Slack Really Worth $2.8 Billion? A Conversation With Stewart Butterfield NYT. Must read, in the context of ISDS “lost profits.”
TPP
Obama, Abe poised to trumpet TPP deal next week, Japan’s ambassador says Japan Times
ISDS: Some battles won, but a long road ahead TTIP 2015
Obama’s Republican Collaborators Patrick Buchanan (BH).
Don’t Just Assume TPP Will Counter China Family Security Matters. Also from the right.
Trade rumble: Democrats stuck between Elizabeth Warren, Barack Obama Politico
The air is dark and asthma is deadly along the Mexico border Reveal. Among other reasons, NAFTA.
How the ‘Desaparecidos’ of Ayotzinapa Have Sparked a US-Mexican Solidarity Movement The Nation
Grexit?
Mythology that blocks progress in Greece Martin Wolf, FT
Greek deal could take weeks: Dijsselbloem The Australian
Gazprom CEO Visits Athens and Guarantees Gas Transit Through Greece Greek Reporter
Why a Greece-Russia gas deal would be more geopolitical than economical Business Insider
Greece’s Tsipras to meet Merkel in Brussels as cash squeeze tightens Reuters. This coming Thursday.
On Greece, Europe Bluffs Itself WSJ
Why the Real Deadline for Greece Is July 20 Bloomberg
Golden Dawn leaders snub court as criminal trial begins Ekathimerini. They fail to show. Trial adjourned.
Black Injustice Tipping Point
Justice Dept. opens Baltimore police probe; 1K protest AP. “Freddie Gray, a black man who suffered a fatal spinal-cord injury under mysterious circumstances after he was handcuffed and put in the back of a police van.”
Memorial tree for Michael Brown cut in half, stone memorial missing KMOV
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
US Congress to vote on ‘cybersecurity’ bills that are basically surveillance bills in disguise Boing Boing
Lawyers’ Group Seeks Overhaul of a Postal Service Surveillance Program NYT. “20 percent of the orders for surveillance under the program, known as mail covers, were improperly approved.”
There are a remarkably small number of people who trust the government WaPo
Syraqistan
Saudis end air campaign in Yemen, seek political solution Reuters
The New Saudi Foreign Policy CFR
What Is The Purpose Of This U.S. Fleet Concentration Next To Iran? Moon of Alabama
How to Avert a Nuclear War NYT
Vietnam asked Philippines to form pact to counter China, Aquino reveals South China Morning Post
Class Warfare
Workers Overwhelmingly Approve General Strike Reykjavik Grapevine
Time is now to fight back Rutland Herald (MR)
Why Did These Oil Workers Die? WSJ
Robert Reich: America’s “flexible” economy is making workers’ lives hell Robert Reich, Salon
Why American Workers Without Much Education Are Being Hammered NYT
How to get into Harvard LRB. The punchline comes at the end.
‘Gods’ edging out robots at Toyota facility Japan Times (MR)
What happens when the Internet of Things becomes artificially intelligent? World Economic Forum Agenda (DL).
Man shoots computer in Colorado Springs alley, gets revenge he wanted – and a citation Colorado Springs Gazette
Clockmaker John Harrison vindicated 250 years after ‘absurd’ claims Guardian
The Slow Death of the University Chronicle of Higher Education
The Radical Dissent of Helen Keller Truthout
WSU statistician sues seeking Kansas voting machine paper tapes Wichita Eagle (Furzy Mouse). Important.
Antidote du jour:
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
53 comments
Comments are closed.
So s little solitary “trader” in a house in Hounslow is doing the perp walk for a puny $40 million? While the Really Big JobAnd Liquidity Creative Destroyers go non about their business.
Lesson: if you are a coyote, eagle or lone wolf, don’t you dare try to feed off the sheep and cattle of the Overlords… “When you do it, it’s WRONG. When I do it, it’s DIFFERENT.”
Navinder Singh Sarao’s behavior is simply something the HFT people hadn’t thought of when they programed their systems.
Sarao should get a medal for exposing the dangerous fragility of their money-for-nothing contraption instead of being blamed for the consequences of their reckless faith in technological slight-of-hand.
Perhaps well disguised false-flag monkey wrenchers could do what this Mr. Rao is accused of doing.
And they could do it to crash and burn stock markets so conclusively as to create the sorts of crises which force issues.
On the WaPo article re: underemployment, here is the metric from the NBER study paper: “Rather, assessments of the employment gap should reflect the incidence of underemployment (that is, people working part time who want a full-time job) and the extent of hidden unemployment (that is, people who are not actively searching but who would rejoin the workforce if the job market were stronger).”
This is not the Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR), but rather our old friends “Part Time for Economic Reasons” (PTER) and “Not in Labor Force, but Want a Job Now.” (NILFWJN). Each of these is roughly 1.5% higher as a share of the adult population than they were at past times of full employment. Based on past history, to get significant wage growth, we probably need about .75% of that fully employed.
You’re quite right; I wrote in haste and inartfully. I did not write “labor force participation rate” because of under-employment, part-timers, crapfication, etc., all of which could arguably be put under the heading of “participation.” However, I should have written something like “Clue stick: The labor market is all ****ed up; at least if you’re a seller.”
But, as your comment shows, NC readers know all this already ;-)
I love how right at the beginning they say “That isn’t because the unemployment rate is a conspiracy to make things look better than they really are.”, and then go on to explain how, yes, the official number is the result of a conspiracy of careful number choosing.
Re: Economists discover how bad the Economy is
What’s the definition of insanity again? Pray, tell, Mr. O’Brien, what is the mechanism, exactly, by which cheap money for capitalists will be converted into higher wages for workers? Seeing as how it hasn’t worked in the last seven years, why do you assume it will work now, or in the future?
Your comment got me thinking. I’ve been wearing my copper bracelet for eleven years now and my arthritis keeps getting worse. I’m going to take it off tonight and never put it back on. Maybe eleven years will be enough for the monetarists to get a clue!
you know, in our most recent municipal election, voting “machines” were used for the first time.
do you know what drew outrage from the voters?
the machines were displaying american flags instead of canadian flags (they were leased from an american company).
other than that, the sheeps were happy because it’s “faster”.
help!
Did your machines return victories for American Republicans, too? Wouldn’t be surprised…”Some are calling it strange that George W. Bush managed to win handily in Vancouver…”
actually, ron e. manual* won.
*er, automatic.
hahaha *golf clap*
Frosty, we too, in New Brunswick used those blasted machines in our last provincial election: the result, lineups waiting for the machines to work; repeated re-insertions of paper when machines did not work; obvious failure of machines. It certainly wasn’t faster. (George, unfortunately, did not get one vote!!)
ah, but it certainly makes BREAKNG NEWS faster.
these local things are test bubbles for future, more grandiose, implementation.
“just go to your app store and download the ‘wevote 2022’ app and pick your favourite emoji!”
holy carp!
emphasis ours.
http://canadajournal.net/science/record-levels-of-pollutants-found-in-a-hawk-in-langley-study-25468-2015/
197,000 parts per billion
I would love to see a chart of human body pollutants in parts per billion, versus, wealth.
I suspect, if you’re a rich TV show host/hostess, or a billionaire, you’re more likely have fewer pollutants inside. Who knows, some may even be immaculate.
“I only eat organic.”
well, a t.v. host/ess will be exposed to makeup, hairspray, and things like offgassing dry-cleaning.
a billioniare will be exposed to jet-fuel, offgassing remodeled mansions and pitchfork heavy metals.
so, maybe the levels are similar but the wealthoids have a higher class of toxins.
Your comment reminded me of this story from 2013: “How the chemicals in your blood can betray your wealth.” From the article:
“Levels of a chemical found in sunscreen, for example, were found to be higher in those with wealthier lifestyles.
“Mercury and arsenic levels were also higher among richer individuals because they eat more fish and shellfish, where these metals can accumulate.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/10219251/How-the-chemicals-in-your-blood-can-betray-your-wealth.html
And like police getting lead poisoning at shooting ranges.
“Sap and impurify our vital bodily fluids….”
Purity of Essence.
Reading the pieces by Pat Buchanan, familiysecuritymatters, considering the Tea party, and putting this together with anti-EU right-wing movements in Europe, it seems that the developed world needs to go back to the old clear-cut right vs. left political confrontation, because the political center has been thoroughly corrupted by neolibs, financial powers, charlatans and bland careerists. Rightists and leftists of the world unite! After removing the greedy moderates in polar togetherness, the polar fight can be resumed.
There may be differences between R and L, Dem or Repub, but the overall policy agendae are virtually the same; the destruction of the middle class to remove the last bulwark of democracy, depopulation and debt enslavement.
“Obama, Abe poised to trumpet TPP deal next week, Japan’s ambassador says Japan Times”
Now my day is ruined. Is this real or just Japanese for no progress?
Paging Clive. I don’t know whether “not quite yet” means “Hell no!” or what.
This appears to support my suspicion that Clive was over-optimistic about Abe regime opposition to TPP.
Actually the Abe regime and the DC FedRegime are desperately co-conspiring to achieve TPP any which way possible. That remains my suspicion.
Here’s that original article about election tampering:
http://madisonvoices.com/pdffiles/2008_2012_ElectionsResultsAnomaliesAndAnalysis_V1.5.pdf
Choquette and Johnson are doing a meta-analysis of results. The contrasts among the graphs are striking.
Interesting link from Black Agenda Report today on race as a conceptual category in “working class” formation in early America:
http://blackagendareport.com/ted-allen-invention-of-the-white-race
I’m not so sure I agree with them that this was “disastrous” for the white “working class” historically. On the whole, I think they milked it pretty good, and this goes a long way to explain today’s Republican Party, the identity politics that pretends it isn’t.
The slow death of university.
For the ultimate fate facing each of us humans, and other entities and beings, it’s interesting to note how the process will unfold (for a physicist, it’s called path-dependence).
In this case, one suspects college football and college basketball programs will be the last ones to go, along with well-spoken, appropriately dressed, smart, if not wise, administrators.
This would lend credence to that prediction
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-22/football-stadium-arms-race-pushes-colorado-school-to-double-debt
Great article. Its always good to be reminded how rent seeking slowly changes our institutions. The author has a number of great phrases, my favorite being, “Educating the young, like protecting them from serial killers, should be regarded as a social responsibility, not as a matter of profit.” (Shout out to whoever is controlling the revenue seeking justice departments in our country.)
Robert Reich – America’s ‘flexible’ economy.
Only if we had ‘flexible’ loot. But this chart has only one slope – positive, and it seems, increasing exponentially. No boom-and-bust cycles for the ones favored by the Omnipotent Father in Washington, for they do ‘His’ work, they worship Him before all other power centers, including themselves, and believe in Him.
“In Government (capital G), we trust.” – motto of the Budgets Unlimited Inc.
No mention in the Keller article that she was a member of the IWW
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/keller-helen/works/1910s/16_01_16.htm
There seems to be a relatively large amount of IWW erasure in websites like Truthout. I will have to start keeping track of articles like this one which omit it for no apparent reason.
Archive of Islamic State Administrative Documents
Halal bureaucratic sausage making detailed in IS(IL/IS) documents. Strange read.
There are a remarkably small number of people who trust the government WaPo
“There are also a few intriguing demographic and age differences. Young people (age 18 to 29 for these purposes) are nine points more likely to trust the federal government to do the right thing than those over 65.”
I used to be far more trusting or believing in government when I was younger. You live, you learn.
What is disheartening is the partisan belief in government rises when one’s team is in power. In Baltimore now, in a city completely run by democrats for decades, you see where the police sever a man’s spine while he was completely and only in their control. Yet somehow, more than a week later, nobody in the police department can explain it…..
Its pretty apparent that the police run Baltimore city hall more than city hall runs the police. People of either party should be concerned when a small faction is so immune to any real oversight and control.
In the Sixties, kids from 18 to 29 were the ones who shouted ‘We don’t trust anyone over 30,’ presumably with many leaders in the government at that time over 30.
Those crazy kids did not trust an imperial government with its Domino Theory.
I guess today’s kids are really different this time…”If the commander in chief says we must go to Iraq, or Libya, or Syria, or Ukraine, or Afghanistan, we must.”
“And when things settle down a bit globally, we can get to single payer health care insurance. We have to trust.”
There is no draft today. That is the difference.
Kids, in the 1960’s, refused to take part in that war, sorry, police action, I think is the correct term, or maybe something else.
Sure, they were citizens of the country and responsible for voting their leaders.
If our taxes do pay for drones, maybe we will be like those kids.
But our taxes don’t pay for them and sure, we are citizens still, but the basis for demanding our tax money not be waste or misused is gone.
in regards to the mexican border bad air story, i must say that the aire i inbibe has gotten considerably cleaner thanks to nafta.
“when tpp goes through, why, you’ll be able to see all the way to kansas city!”
American workers without much education are being hammered.
Yes.
But, American workers with much education are being hammered too.
With one exception.
Americans with psychopathy are not being hammered at all.
What does all it mean? I don’t know. Perhaps you can tell me.
Should we hope our children will be more psychopathic?
EOS.
oh, don’t worry they are.
by combining the epigenetic effects of icky chemicals, inorganic drugs, organic drugs, etc., with more and more psychotic “entertainment” each new layer of humans is just a little more overdriven and contorted.
shave and a haircut, two bits.
The returns to ‘salesmanship’ are greater than returns to adding ‘labor to material’, so under our current regime the ability to negotiate from absurd premises to hidden self-serving conclusions would preference a child with a psychopathy in order to garner resources. At some limit in a closed system, an abundance of salespersons would put downward pressure on their ability to take resources. This is likely when the folks who make things say, “F–k it, why should I get my hands dirty, I’ll start a Ponzi scheme. I have to make up for lost time.” Salespersons, who should know better since it is their trade, love a good story and figure they’ll get rid of a hot potato before it burns them and they join the Ponzi. Then the hypothecation begins, pledge upon pledge builds until some idiot asks for something tangible to replace the pledge. ‘Heretic!’ is the cry. ‘Eat my pledge, muthafucka,’ is the plaint of the salesperson to the idiot. Shockingly, the idiot retorts, ‘I can’t eat your pledge, it has no calories.’ Suddenly, everyone gets hungry…
So, yes, in our bizarre world, psychopathy makes sense in some limited fashion. If it is a heritable factor we can only hope that they are so self absorbed as to forget to propagate.
Heh,
It would have been interesting to see if those with bachelor’s who saw a supposed 7% increase or those with those with advanced degrees who saw a 13% increase in real earnings actually saw that when you take into consideration the enormous amount of debt they took on to get that increase. It isn’t like the cost of an education hasn’t changed drastically in recent years.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/15/cost-of-college-degree-increase-12-fold-1120-percent-bloomberg_n_1783700.html
Who fares better the kid who forgoes debt and picks up a minimum wage job or the guy who goes into debt $50,000 and then picks up a job making an extra dollar an hour(which then goes to pay for that $50,000 in debt they accrued?)
I’ve often wondered whether there’s a difference between a psychopath and a sociopath, so I finally looked it up in the arbiter of all things that might or might not be real: Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy#Sociopathy
How to get into Harvard.
My challenge to Harvard – if you are really good, take ONLY B and C high school students and turn them into A college graduates.
“Don’t take the EZ way out. You cheapen yourself…because you can do better than that. Let those second class universities admit those highly, self-motivated kids. They don’t need you.”
They already do.
They ONLY take B and C high school students?
Back in the 30’s Harvard stopped admitting students based on grades/test scores. They now look for well rounded students. I believe there was concern that too many of “not the right type” of students were getting admitted to Harvard.
Then they should look for not well rounded students and take on the job of turning them into well-rounded students.
It’s hard work. But worthy work. In fact, if the applicants are already well rounded, there is not much work to do, if the emphasis for their next 4 years is not intellect but on compassion and wisdom, unless they mess up and turn them into sociopaths/psychopaths.
Let the lesser universities have those easy cases, those already well-rounded applicants.
If a great university doesn’t challenge itself, how can it expect its students to do so?
John Harrison
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NENPdT4LASw
“Why the Real Deadline for Greece Is July 20”
I love it! Another deadline. Seems like all of Europe is conspiring to amuse old docG. Well, thanks folks, you really didn’t have to do it. I have plenty of ways to amuse myself.
There once was a hedge fund named Europe
That found a nice Ponzi to stir up.
They stirred it so well
That it started to gel
To a hellish financial syrup.
The returns to ‘salesmanship’ are greater than returns to adding ‘labor to material’, so under our current regime the ability to negotiate from absurd premises to hidden self-serving conclusions would preference a child with a psychopathy in order to garner resources. At some limit in a closed system, an abundance of salespersons would put downward pressure on their ability to take resources. This is likely when the folks who make things say, “F–k it, why should I get my hands dirty, I’ll start a Ponzi scheme. I have to make up for lost time.” Salespersons, who should know better since it is their trade, love a good story and figure they’ll get rid of a hot potato before it burns them and they join the Ponzi. Then the hypothecation begins, pledge upon pledge builds until some idiot asks for something tangible to replace the pledge. ‘Heretic!’ is the cry. ‘Eat my pledge, muthafucka,’ is the plaint of the salesperson to the idiot. Shockingly, the idiot retorts, ‘I can’t eat your pledge, it has no calories.’ Suddenly, everyone gets hungry…
So, yes, in our bizarre world, psychopathy makes sense in some limited fashion. If it is a heritable factor we can only hope that they are so self absorbed as to forget to propagate.
The NYT article on reducing nuclear warfare risks is pretty stupid.
First of all, the article didn’t say a single word about the most destabilizing development that has taken place in recent years: the USA’s unilateral abrogation of the ABM treaty.
Second, the article didn’t point out that there are nuclear defense postures that are much more risky than launch-on-warning. One example would be decentralized launch authority. If a nuclear power fears that its nuclear command system is too vulnerable to an enemy first strike, that power could decide to delegate launch authority to lower echelons.
A second example of something more risky than launch-on-warning would be launch-by-default. In other words, “launch at any time that high command is not telling you not to.” This extreme posture could be resorted to by a nuclear state in imminent fear of an enemy preventive strike. The state would then tell its prospective enemy, “you had better hope that nothing happens to the communications between our high command and our nuclear weapons units!”
The Feds Say One Schmuck Trading From His Parents’ House Caused a Market Crash. Here’s the Problem. Mother Jones
Here’s the kicker that the Feds may be all wet here: