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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 11, 2013 11:43:42 GMT -6
Increase in population will always increase the labor supply as well, thus DECREASING wages--which DECREASES demand by decreasing the spending power of the individual workers. Unlesss the demand for labor outstrips the increase in supply of labor, the net effect is a decrease in overall demand.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 10, 2013 23:33:25 GMT -6
As usual, Denninger points out some real interesting statistics. And as he pointed out elsewhere on this forum, the Fed's purchasing of $85 billion of assets/month is the equivalent of dumping that much money into the economy each month. This comes out to a monetary of expansion of about $1 trillion/year. If current dollar GDP isn't growing faster than $1 trillion/year, then the real economy is shrinking. Also worth drilling home is the genuinely lackluster employment reports. As per the household report, the number of not-employed Americans over age 16 is now 101 million. A huge surplus labor force puts significant downward pressure on wages. And that downward pressure is worsening, not improving.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 10, 2013 23:16:28 GMT -6
I don't own a SmartDumbphone.
Being constantly distracted and constantly interrupted in the middle of everything you do makes you Dumber, not "smarter."
Dumbphones fragment thinking and lower everyone who uses them's problem solving ability and attention span.
Dumbphones are an example of de-evolution.
They were a "solution-in-search-of-a-problem" to begin with, and now they've become a "problem-that-needs-a-solution."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 10, 2013 11:56:21 GMT -6
from smallbusiness.yahoo.com via Patrick.net smallbusiness.yahoo.com/advisor/best-explanation-fake-housing-market-recovery-ve-seen-162530153.html?source=Patrick.netFake Housing Recovery due to "Investorsby Michael Lombardi "The average American Joe isn’t participating in the U.S. housing market. As a matter of fact, according to the Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey, investors purchased 69% of “damaged” properties in April 2013, while first-time home buyers accounted for only 16% of “damaged” purchases. It is very well documented in these pages how home prices in the U.S. economy are being driven upward by institutional investors. Affirming my stance on the U.S. housing market, Suzanne Mistretta, an analyst at Fitch Rating Services, was quoted this week as saying, “The [housing price] growth is being propelled by institutional money… The question is how much the change in prices really reflects the market demand, rather than one-off market shifts that may not be around in a couple of years.” (Source: Popper, N., “Behind the Rise in House Prices, Wall Street Buyers,” New York Times Dealbook, June 3, 2013.) Major financial institutions like The Blackstone Group L.P. (NYSE/BX) have become major buyers in the U.S. housing market. Blackstone has spent more than $4.0 billion for 24,000 homes in the U.S. housing market that it plans to rent out. Rising prices on homes in various pockets of the U.S. housing market are a direct result of large institutional investors buying in. Take Atlanta, for example. Blackstone bought 1,400 properties worth more than $100 million in Atlanta last year. (Source: Bloomberg, April 25, 2013.) And what happened to prices for homes in Atlanta? According to CoreLogic, a housing data compiler, home prices in Atlanta increased 12.4% in the 12-month period ended February 2013, compared to a 10.2% increase in the overall U.S. housing market. Looking forward, I don’t hold a very optimistic view on the U.S. housing market for four very specific reasons: first-time home buyers (desperately needed in any housing recovery) are missing from the action; investors who are buying homes to rent them are pushing prices higher; new homebuilder stocks are down 14% in the past month, according to the Dow Jones U.S. Home Construction Index; and long-term interest rates are moving upward! Consider Colony American Homes Inc. This company delayed its initial public offering, which would have brought in roughly $230–$260 million, due to what the company says are “market conditions.” This company was formed last year, and it purchased homes in mid- and upscale neighborhoods in the U.S. housing market. On April 30, Colony held 9,931 homes in nine states. (Source: Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2013.) For institutional investors, at the end of the day, it’s all about the profit; they are buying homes and renting them out all in search of a higher return on their money. But institutional buying of American homes will not sustain a recovery in the U.S. housing market. We need the average American to be involved in the U.S. housing market because he/she provides liquidity and pushes up consumer spending. Increasing home prices right now don’t mean the U.S. housing market has recovered; actually, it’s far from it when first-time home buyers are missing from the action. As I wrote earlier this week, something is going on in the bond market. Yields on 30-year U.S. Treasuries are spiking. (See “What the Rising Yield on 30-year U.S. Treasuries Is Telling Us.”) Rising long-term interest rates could be another death-bed for the U.S. housing market. And by the way, those homebuilder stocks that went up last year on speculation, I don’t own any of them. Michael’s Personal Notes: The stock market is down 500 points in just over a week…does this mean the Dow Jones Industrial Average has finally topped out? Corporate earnings are weak; we know that. So far for the second quarter of 2013, more than 80% of the companies in the S&P 500 that have issued their corporate earnings guidance have provided a negative outlook. (Source: FactSet, May 31, 2013.) Yes, the key stock indices have gotten ahead of themselves. In the first two months of the second quarter, the S&P 500 increased five percent; but as that was happening, earnings estimates for the quarter dropped by 3.4%! At the end of March, analysts expected the S&P 500 companies to register an increase of 4.4% in their corporate earnings for the second quarter; now that number has dropped to a paltry 1.3%. (Source: FactSet, May 31, 2013.) In the first quarter of 2013, companies in the key stock indices struggled with revenue growth. Only 46% of the S&P 500 companies recorded revenues above estimates for the first quarter, while the average for the last four quarters was 52%. But there are further threats to corporate earnings. Demand is weak in the U.S. economy, as the American consumer is still under pressure—he or she is typically working at a job that pays the minimum wage (that’s where most of our jobs growth has been since the Great Recession ended), while the costs of basic necessities continue to rise in an environment where the government says there is no inflation. I remain skeptical of the rise in the key stock indices, as they aren’t moving in line with the current business conditions in the U.S. economy. I continue to believe the bear market rally, which began in 2009, has done a great job in luring investors back into the stock market. The key stock indices are up significantly and have given investors a false hope that they will climb further. The S&P 500 has been making lower lows and lower highs since May 22 (as you can see in the chart below), but from what I’ve read from stock advisors, they say to buy on dips—advice I’m not following. Best Explanation on the Fake Housing Market Recovery I’ve Seen Chart courtesy of www.StockCharts.comWhat’s going on with the equity markets right now reminds me of 2007 all over again—that’s when the key stock indices were moving higher, regardless of what was happening with the economy. We are experiencing something similar to that right now, with the stock market and economy having gone in such opposite directions. Predicting the exact point at which the top will be in for the stock market is difficult, if not impossible, but odds are we are very close. What He Said: “Prepare for the worst economic period ahead that we have seen in years, my dear reader, as that is what I see coming. I have written over the past three years how, in the late 1920s, real estate prices fell first before the stock market and how I felt the same would happen this time. Home prices in the U.S. peaked in 2005 and started falling in 2006. The stock market is following suit here in 2008. Is a depression coming? No. How about a severe deflationary recession? Yes!” Michael Lombardi in Profit Confidential, January 21, 2008. Michael started talking about and predicting the economic catastrophe we started experiencing in 2008 long before anyone else."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 9, 2013 23:15:11 GMT -6
from the Washington Post: U.S., British intelligence mining data from 9 U.S. Internet companies in broad secret programBy Barton Gellman and Laura Poitras, Published: June 6 | Updated: Friday, June 6, 2013 "The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track foreign targets, according to a top-secret document obtained by The Washington Post. The program, code-named PRISM, has not been made public until now. It may be the first of its kind. The NSA prides itself on stealing secrets and breaking codes, and it is accustomed to corporate partnerships that help it divert data traffic or sidestep barriers. But there has never been a Google or Facebook before, and it is unlikely that there are richer troves of valuable intelligence than the ones in Silicon Valley. Equally unusual is the way the NSA extracts what it wants, according to the document: “Collection directly from the servers of these U.S. Service Providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.” London’s Guardian newspaper reported Friday that GCHQ, Britain’s equivalent of the NSA, also has been secretly gathering intelligence from the same internet companies through an operation set up by the NSA. According to documents obtained by The Guardian, PRISM would appear to allow GCHQ to circumvent the formal legal process required in Britain to seek personal material such as emails, photos and videos from an internet company based outside of the country. PRISM was launched from the ashes of President George W. Bush’s secret program of warrantless domestic surveillance in 2007, after news media disclosures, lawsuits and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court forced the president to look for new authority. Congress obliged with the Protect America Act in 2007 and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which immunized private companies that cooperated voluntarily with U.S. intelligence collection. PRISM recruited its first partner, Microsoft, and began six years of rapidly growing data collection beneath the surface of a roiling national debate on surveillance and privacy. Late last year, when critics in Congress sought changes in the FISA Amendments Act, the only lawmakers who knew about PRISM were bound by oaths of office to hold their tongues. The court-approved program is focused on foreign communications traffic, which often flows through U.S. servers even when sent from one overseas location to another. Between 2004 and 2007, Bush administration lawyers persuaded federal FISA judges to issue surveillance orders in a fundamentally new form. Until then the government had to show probable cause that a particular “target” and “facility” were both connected to terrorism or espionage. In four new orders, which remain classified, the court defined massive data sets as “facilities” and agreed to certify periodically that the government had reasonable procedures in place to minimize collection of “U.S. persons” data without a warrant. In a statement issue late Thursday, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper said “information collected under this program is among the most important and valuable foreign intelligence information we collect, and is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats. The unauthorized disclosure of information about this important and entirely legal program is reprehensible and risks important protections for the security of Americans.” Clapper added that there were numerous inaccuracies in reports about PRISM by The Post and the Guardian newspaper, but he did not specify any. Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said: “I would just push back on the idea that the court has signed off on it, so why worry? This is a court that meets in secret, allows only the government to appear before it, and publishes almost none of its opinions. It has never been an effective check on government.” Several companies contacted by The Post said they had no knowledge of the program, did not allow direct government access to their servers and asserted that they responded only to targeted requests for information. “We do not provide any government organization with direct access to Facebook servers,” said Joe Sullivan, chief security officer for Facebook. “When Facebook is asked for data or information about specific individuals, we carefully scrutinize any such request for compliance with all applicable laws, and provide information only to the extent required by law.” “We have never heard of PRISM,” said Steve Dowling, a spokesman for Apple. “We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency requesting customer data must get a court order.” It is possible that the conflict between the PRISM slides and the company spokesmen is the result of imprecision on the part of the NSA author. In another classified report obtained by The Post, the arrangement is described as allowing “collection managers [to send] content tasking instructions directly to equipment installed at company-controlled locations,” rather than directly to company servers. Government officials and the document itself made clear that the NSA regarded the identities of its private partners as PRISM’s most sensitive secret, fearing that the companies would withdraw from the program if exposed. “98 percent of PRISM production is based on Yahoo, Google and Microsoft; we need to make sure we don’t harm these sources,” the briefing’s author wrote in his speaker’s notes. An internal presentation of 41 briefing slides on PRISM, dated April 2013 and intended for senior analysts in the NSA’s Signals Intelligence Directorate, described the new tool as the most prolific contributor to the President’s Daily Brief, which cited PRISM data in 1,477 items last year. According to the slides and other supporting materials obtained by The Post, “NSA reporting increasingly relies on PRISM” as its leading source of raw material, accounting for nearly 1 in 7 intelligence reports. That is a remarkable figure in an agency that measures annual intake in the trillions of communications. It is all the more striking because the NSA, whose lawful mission is foreign intelligence, is reaching deep inside the machinery of American companies that host hundreds of millions of American-held accounts on American soil. The technology companies, whose cooperation is essential to PRISM operations, include most of the dominant global players of Silicon Valley, according to the document. They are listed on a roster that bears their logos in order of entry into the program: “Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.” PalTalk, although much smaller, has hosted traffic of substantial intelligence interest during the Arab Spring and in the ongoing Syrian civil war. Dropbox, the cloud storage and synchronization service, is described as “coming soon.” Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.), who had classified knowledge of the program as members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, were unable to speak of it when they warned in a Dec. 27, 2012, floor debate that the FISA Amendments Act had what both of them called a “back-door search loophole” for the content of innocent Americans who were swept up in a search for someone else. “As it is written, there is nothing to prohibit the intelligence community from searching through a pile of communications, which may have been incidentally or accidentally been collected without a warrant, to deliberately search for the phone calls or e-mails of specific Americans,” Udall said. Wyden repeatedly asked the NSA to estimate the number of Americans whose communications had been incidentally collected, and the agency’s director, Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, insisted there was no way to find out. Eventually Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III wrote Wyden a letter stating that it would violate the privacy of Americans in NSA data banks to try to estimate their number. Roots in the ’70s PRISM is an heir, in one sense, to a history of intelligence alliances with as many as 100 trusted U.S. companies since the 1970s. The NSA calls these Special Source Operations, and PRISM falls under that rubric. The Silicon Valley operation works alongside a parallel program, code-named BLARNEY, that gathers up “metadata” — technical information about communications traffic and network devices — as it streams past choke points along the backbone of the Internet. BLARNEY’s top-secret program summary, set down in the slides alongside a cartoon insignia of a shamrock and a leprechaun hat, describes it as “an ongoing collection program that leverages IC [intelligence community] and commercial partnerships to gain access and exploit foreign intelligence obtained from global networks.” But the PRISM program appears to more nearly resemble the most controversial of the warrantless surveillance orders issued by President George W. Bush after the al-Qaeda attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Its history, in which President Obama presided over exponential growth in a program that candidate Obama criticized, shows how fundamentally surveillance law and practice have shifted away from individual suspicion in favor of systematic, mass collection techniques. The Obama administration points to ongoing safeguards in the form of “extensive procedures, specifically approved by the court, to ensure that only non-U.S. persons outside the U.S. are targeted, and that minimize the acquisition, retention and dissemination of incidentally acquired information about U.S. persons.” And it is true that the PRISM program is not a dragnet, exactly. From inside a company’s data stream the NSA is capable of pulling out anything it likes, but under current rules the agency does not try to collect it all. Analysts who use the system from a Web portal at Fort Meade, Md., key in “selectors,” or search terms, that are designed to produce at least 51 percent confidence in a target’s “foreignness.” That is not a very stringent test. Training materials obtained by The Post instruct new analysts to make quarterly reports of any accidental collection of U.S. content, but add that “it’s nothing to worry about.” Even when the system works just as advertised, with no American singled out for targeting, the NSA routinely collects a great deal of American content. That is described as “incidental,” and it is inherent in contact chaining, one of the basic tools of the trade. To collect on a suspected spy or foreign terrorist means, at minimum, that everyone in the suspect’s inbox or outbox is swept in. Intelligence analysts are typically taught to chain through contacts two “hops” out from their target, which increases “incidental collection” exponentially. The same math explains the aphorism, from the John Guare play, that no one is more than “six degrees of separation” from any other person. A ‘directive’ In exchange for immunity from lawsuits, companies such as Yahoo and AOL are obliged to accept a “directive” from the attorney general and the director of national intelligence to open their servers to the FBI’s Data Intercept Technology Unit, which handles liaison to U.S. companies from the NSA. In 2008, Congress gave the Justice Department authority for a secret order from the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Court to compel a reluctant company “to comply.” In practice, there is room for a company to maneuver, delay or resist. When a clandestine intelligence program meets a highly regulated industry, said a lawyer with experience in bridging the gaps, neither side wants to risk a public fight. The engineering problems are so immense, in systems of such complexity and frequent change, that the FBI and NSA would be hard pressed to build in back doors without active help from each company. Apple demonstrated that resistance is possible when it held out for more than five years, for reasons unknown, after Microsoft became PRISM’s first corporate partner in May 2007. Twitter, which has cultivated a reputation for aggressive defense of its users’ privacy, is still conspicuous by its absence from the list of “private sector partners.” Google, like the other companies, denied that it permitted direct government access to its servers. “Google cares deeply about the security of our users’ data,” a company spokesman said. “We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government ‘back door’ into our systems, but Google does not have a ‘back door’ for the government to access private user data.” Microsoft also provided a statement: “We provide customer data only when we receive a legally binding order or subpoena to do so, and never on a voluntary basis. In addition we only ever comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers. If the government has a broader voluntary national security program to gather customer data we don’t participate in it.” Yahoo also issued a denial. “Yahoo! takes users’ privacy very seriously,” the company said in a statement. “We do not provide the government with direct access to our servers, systems, or network.” Like market researchers, but with far more privileged access, collection managers in the NSA’s Special Source Operations group, which oversees the PRISM program, are drawn to the wealth of information about their subjects in online accounts. For much the same reason, civil libertarians and some ordinary users may be troubled by the menu available to analysts who hold the required clearances to “task” the PRISM system. There has been “continued exponential growth in tasking to Facebook and Skype,” according to the PRISM slides. With a few clicks and an affirmation that the subject is believed to be engaged in terrorism, espionage or nuclear proliferation, an analyst obtains full access to Facebook’s “extensive search and surveillance capabilities against the variety of online social networking services.” According to a separate “User’s Guide for PRISM Skype Collection,” that service can be monitored for audio when one end of the call is a conventional telephone and for any combination of “audio, video, chat, and file transfers” when Skype users connect by computer alone. Google’s offerings include Gmail, voice and video chat, Google Drive files, photo libraries, and live surveillance of search terms. Firsthand experience with these systems, and horror at their capabilities, is what drove a career intelligence officer to provide PowerPoint slides about PRISM and supporting materials to The Washington Post in order to expose what he believes to be a gross intrusion on privacy. “They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type,” the officer said."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 8, 2013 21:39:30 GMT -6
from Yahoo Pakistan's Answer to U.S. Drone Defianceby Connor Simpson "Pakistan's newly-elect prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, announced the country would no longer permit U.S. drone strikes on his country's soil during his first speech earlier this week. So when the U.S. openly defied him with another drone strike late Friday, he called the U.S. envoy in Pakistan for a little chat. What happened behind those closed doors, or what was said during the ensuing conversation, is unknown at this time. We know Sharif was "protesting" the drone strike that killed nine people in north western Pakistan late Friday. All we can know is this sternly worded statement released by Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. "It was conveyed to the U.S. charge d' affaires that the government of Pakistan strongly condemns the drone strikes, which are a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty and territorial integrity," they say. "The importance of bringing an immediate end to drone strikes was emphasized." This all comes just days after Sharif assumed power in Pakistan and promised this end of the U.S. drone strikes in their country during his very first speech. "This daily routine of drone attacks, this chapter shall now be closed," Sharif said before parliament. "This campaign should come to an end." The dirty agreement between the U.S. and Pakistan for drone-rights has long been broken. Pakistan said they stopped consenting to drone strikes in September. Friday's drone strike was the first since Sharif declared Pakistan a drone-free zone. But, also, it was only ten days removed from the previous U.S. drone strike in Pakistan. These things happen fast. We raised questions about what Pakistan might do, or even could do, to stop the U.S. from carrying out drone strikes there when Sharif made his promise. This appears to be the initial answer." RELATED: What the Toll of Drones Looks Like, in Just One Country ----------------------------------- from the Atlantic. Pakistan Really Doesn't Want to Be a U.S. Drone Target AnymorePakistan's just-elected new prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, is officially the thorn in the side of President Obama's beloved Predator drones. In a speech just before getting sworn into office Wednesday, Sharif announced he would no longer allow the U.S. to execute drone strikes on Pakistani soil. "This daily routine of drone attacks, this chapter shall now be closed," Sharif said before parliament. "We respect the sovereignty of others and they should also respect our sovereignty and independence. This campaign should come to an end." Whether it ever will come to an end, well, that's a tall order. It took years for the U.S. and Pakistan to acknowledge their dirty agreement allowing the U.S. to begin and extend its targeted killing program over Pakistani airspace as militants proliferated across the country. As far back as mid-2004, the Pakistani government wouldn't acknowledge they were permitting C.I.A. strikes because it could be seen as Pakistan bending for the big, bad U.S., a challenge to their sovereignty. But the strikes quickly deepened the rift between American diplomats and Pakistan, an important American ally with a fast growing nuclear arsenal in one of the most pivotal regions on Earth. That rift deepened arguments within the Obama administration, leading to a standoff between then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. From Mark Mazetti's Way of the Knife: This turf battle spread to Washington, and a month after Bin Laden was killed, President Obama’s top advisers were arguing in a National Security Council meeting over who really was in charge in Pakistan. At the June 2011 meeting, Munter, who participated via secure video link, began making his case that he should have veto power over specific drone strikes. Panetta cut Munter off, telling him that the C.I.A. had the authority to do what it wanted in Pakistan. It didn’t need to get the ambassador’s approval for anything. “I don’t work for you,” Panetta told Munter, according to several people at the meeting. But Secretary of State Hillary Clinton came to Munter’s defense. She turned to Panetta and told him that he was wrong to assume he could steamroll the ambassador and launch strikes against his approval. “No, Hillary,” Panetta said, “it’s you who are flat wrong.” Pakistan reportedly stopped consenting to U.S. drone strikes altogether back in September, and Obama's big drone speech last month represented a shift in policy that White House officials had long said was focused on smoothing over relations with Pakistan as unmanned targeting increasingly centered on terror havens like Yemen, but the first reported strike since the speech killed a Taliban commander in Pakistan. A poll released by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News today shows 66 percent of Americans support drone strikes, with high approval from both political parties. So now Sharif, facing huge financial and domestic problems, is using his new platform to posture up to the U.S. and taking a stand against the drone strike program. Whether or not he'll follow through on that promise — whether or not he even can — will be interesting to watch. ----------------------------------------- www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2013/03/drone-strikes-pakistan-chart/63506/What the Toll of Drones Looks Like,in Just one Countryby Esther Zuckerman Mar 25, 2013 Drone attacks in countries like Pakistan have become an increasingly controversial (if accepted) and no less common (if transferred) reality — Pakistani officials reported another one by U.S. missile fire just this weekend. So what do all of the strikes look like broken down by the available data, even if many strikes in the U.S. targeted killing program go unreported? That's what Pitch Interactive attempts to represent with their new graphic, "Out of Sight, Out of Mind." Using data primarily from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the graphic charts every drone strike it can inside Pakistan since 2004. Within that chart Pitch highlights who was killed in the strike: how many children, civilians, high profile targets, and "others." Pitch defines the "other" category as such: The category of victims we call “OTHER” is classified differently depending on the source. The Obama administration classifies any able-bodied male a military combatant unless evidence is brought forward to prove otherwise. This is a very grey area for us. These could be neighbors of a target killed. They may all be militants and a threat. Pitch Interactive says that the graphic is not designed "to speak for or against" the use of drones, but the data itself can be striking. Take for instance an attack in October 2006 that killed 69 children—represented in bright red.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 7, 2013 11:49:17 GMT -6
Wow! What a surprise!
The initial link I posted to the Court Order document is no longer working.
But the 2nd one still is.
I recommend everyone download it as soon as possible before the Government removes all links from the internet (which it is very likely going to do).
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 7, 2013 0:29:28 GMT -6
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 6, 2013 11:55:08 GMT -6
This is both a text copy and pdf attachment of the NSA/FBI requested Court Order for ALL Verizon phone records: TOP SECRET//SI//NOFORN UNITED STATES FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE COURT WASHINGTON, D.C. IN RE APPLICATION OF THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION FOR AN ORDER REQUIRING THE PRODUCTION OF TANGIBLE THINGS FROM VERIZON BUSINESS NETWORK SERVICES, INC. ON BEHALF OF MCI COMMUNICATION SERVICES, INC. D/B/A VERIZON BUSINESS SERVICES. Docket Number: BR ¯ 15-80 SECONDARY ORDER This Court having found that the Application of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for an Order requiring the production of tangible things from Verizon Business Network Services, Inc. on behalf of MCI Communication Services Inc., d/b/a Verizon Business Services (individually and collectively "Verizon") satisfies the requirements of 50 U.S.C. § 1861, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that, the Custodian of Records shall produce to the National Security Agency (NSA) upon service of this Order, and continue production Derived from: Declassify on: TOP SECRET//SI//NOFORN Pleadings in the above-captioned docket 12 April 2038 TOP SECRET//SI//NOFORN on an ongoing daily basis thereafter for the duration of this Order, unless otherwise ordered by the Court, an electronic copy of the following tangible things: all call detail records or "telephony metadata" created by Verizon for communications (i) between the United States and abroad; or (ii) wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls. This Order does not require Verizon to produce telephony metadata for communications wholly originating and terminating in foreign countries. Telephony metadata includes comprehensive communications routing information,. including but not limited to session identifying information (e.g., originating and terminating telephone number, International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) number, International Mobile station Equipment Identity (IMEI) number, etc.), trunk identifier, telephone calling card numbers, and time and duration of call. Telephony metadata does not include the substantive content of any communication, as defined by 18 U.S.C. § 2510(8), or the name, address, or financial information of a subscriber or customer. IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that no person shall disclose to any other person that the FBIor NSA has sought or obtained tangible things under this Order, other than to: (a) those persons to whom disclosure is necessary to comply with such Order; (b) an attorney to obtain legal advice or assistance with respect to the production of things in response to the Order; or (c) other persons as permitted by the Director of the FBI or the Director’s designee. A person to whom disclosure is made pursuant to (a), (b), or (c) TOP SECRET//SI//NOFORN TOP SECRET//SI//NOFORN shall be subject to the nondisclosure requirements applicable to a person to whom an Order is directed in the same manner as such person. Anyone who discloses to a person described in (a), (b), or (c) that the FBI or NSA has sought or obtained tangible things pursuant to this Order shall notify such person of the nondisclosure requirements of this Order. At the request of the Director of the FBI or the designee of the Director, any person making or intending to make a disclosure under (a) or (c) above shall identify to the Director or such designee the person to whom such disclosure will be made or to whom such disclosure was made prior to the request. IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that service of this Order shall be by a method agreed upon by the Custodian of Records of Verizon and the FBI, and if no agreement is reached, service shall be personal. -- Remainder of page intentionally left blank. -- TOP SECRET//SI//NOFORN 3 TOP SECRET//SI//NOFORN This authorization requiring the production of certain call detail records or "telephony metadata" created by Verizon expires on the I~t~ day of July, 2013, at 5:00 p.m., Eastern Time. Signed °013 P09 :’p6 Eastern Time Date Time I, Beverly C. Queen, Chief Deputy Clerk, FISC, certify that this document is a true and correct copy of the original~,~ TOP SECRET//SI//NOFORN 4
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 5, 2013 20:45:11 GMT -6
www.bls.gov/news.release/prod2.nr0.htmNewly revised figures from the BLS show that hourly wages were down -3.8% in the 1st quarter of 2013. This is a HUGE revision from the initially reported +1.2% increase. The -3.8% decline in hourly wages was the worst ever reported since the series began in 1947.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 5, 2013 18:09:00 GMT -6
from Marketwatch U.S. stocks tumble with jobs report in mind Worst session since April 15 for Dow industrials Wed, June 5, 2013 By Kate Gibson "U.S. stocks tumbled on Wednesday for a 2nd session as data on U.S. private-sector job growth darkened views of the monthly nonfarm-payrolls report to be released in 2 days. “More attention is being brought to the economic data, so everyone can play Nostradamus and guess what the Fed’s next move will be,” Mark Luschini, chief investment strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott, said of ongoing guessing as to when the Federal Reserve would begin tapering its $85 billion in monthly bond purchases. Stock indexes remained deeply under water after the release of the Fed’s so-called Beige Book.... In its worst session in more than a month, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI:DJIA) lost 216.95 points, or 1.4%, to 14,960.59, with Intel Corp. (NASDAQ:INTC) pacing declines that included all of its 30 components. The S&P 500 index (SNC:SPX) declined 22.48 points, or 1.4%, to 1,608.90, with materials and financials leading losses that included all of its 10 major industry groups.... Markets worldwide could move depending on what Mario Draghi says at his press conference. VeriFone stock is down on its earnings report, and investors wait for J.M. Smucker before the bell. Photo: AP. General Motors Co. (NYSE:GM) fell 2.7% after the U.S. Treasury said it would sell 30 million more shares of the car manufacturer’s common stock. The Nasdaq Composite (NASDAQ:COMP) fell 43.78 points, or 1.3%, to 3,401.48. For every share rising, 4 fell on the New York Stock Exchange, where 738 million shares traded. Composite volume approached 3.6 billion. Gold (CNS:GCQ3) and oil (NMN:CLN3) prices rose; the U.S. dollar (NYE:DXY) declined and the yield on the 10-year Treasury note (TICKER:10_YEAR) used in determining mortgage rates and other consumer loans fell to 2.087%. U.S. companies created 135,000 jobs in May, according to ADP Employer Services. “The market is in the midst of a bit of a correction, so the bias is lower anyway. But with the ADP report being as underwhelming as it was, there is an increasing loss of enthusiasm for equities at the moment,” said Janney Montgomery Scott’s Luschini. Revised government figures showed...hourly compensation falling 3.8%. Wednesday’s data came ahead of Friday’s nonfarm-payrolls report, and added credence to the view that a soft labor market would extend the time frame before the Federal Reserve begins tapering its bond purchases. “The market is playing wait-and-see with Friday’s numbers, but certainly the ADP number that came out showed there is probably moderate downside risk to that May employment number,” said Lynch at Wells Fargo Private Bank.... A 20-Tuesday-long win streak for the Dow industrials was derailed, with the index falling 76.49 points, or 0.5%, to end at 15,177.54. Fears over when the Federal Reserve will begin to pull back on its bond-buying program weighed on sentiment. On Tuesday, Fed Bank of Kansas City President Esther George advocated for the Fed to pare back its bond-buying program, and Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher stepped up his criticism of the Fed’s easy-money program."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 5, 2013 17:03:36 GMT -6
from Venture Beat Apple is Price-Fixing RingmasterMay 15, 2013 by John Koetsier "Apple and U.S. book publishers conspired to limit e-book competition and break Amazon’s hold on the digital book market, the U.S. Department of Justice says. The case, which was filed in April 2012, is finally coming to trial in June. And in new documents that the government filed, the attorney general paints Apple as the ringmaster. All of the other original codefendants, including Harper Collins, the Penguin Group, and Simon & Schuster, have already settled with the government, leaving Apple as the sole defendant. As the saying goes, them’s fightin’ words. And Apple is fighting back. “Apple has not ‘conspired’ with anyone, was not aware of any alleged ‘conspiracy’ by others, and never fixed prices,” the company stated in a reply to the suit last year. The trial is set to begin on June 3. Source: Dean Takahashi/VentureBeatApple CEO Tim Cook and iBooks The DOJ is pointing to an email from Steve Jobs, in which he told Rupert Murdoch of News Corp to “throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream e-books market at $12.99 and $14.99” as evidence to the contrary..... But Apple says that it was simply establishing the currently accepted agency model of pricing, in which publishers set the price and e-book stores simply sell at that price. That contrasts with the wholesale method of publishing, in which retailers buy books from publishers at whatever price they can negotiate and then sell the books to consumers at whatever price they wish. That is, of course, the model Amazon prefers.... The bigger question here for Apple and its fans is how Apple used its power in mobile apps to strong-arm publishers such as Random House into agreeing with the deal. According to the DOJ filing, Apple blocked approval of an e-book app from Random House in 2010 until the publisher signed the agency deal. That’s clearly dirty pool, and using power in what was then an almost all-powerful Apple smartphone ecosystem to influence — or compel — partner behavior in the ebook market."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 5, 2013 16:38:54 GMT -6
from VentureBeat.com Justice Dept Lays Out Killer Case Against Applefor Price-FixingJune 3, 2013 by Devindra Hardawar "U.S. DISTRICT COURT, Manhattan — In the case of Apple allegedly coordinating a massive price-fixing operation in the e-book market, a huge question remains: How will Apple combat the mountain of evidence the U.S. Department of Justice has against it? In opening statements for the United States v. Apple Inc. et al trial, held today in a Manhattan federal court, Justice Department lawyers laid out a fairly clear-cut case to U.S. District, Southern District of New York, Judge Denise Cote that Apple helped to organize an effort among top publishers to raise e-book prices. The Justice Department has collected dozens of e-mail, phone calls, and key witnesses that seem to seal the deal for Apple. “This is a straightforward case about price-fixing,” one DOJ lawyer said. He noted that the government isn’t trying to attack Apple over its size or success (which some have argued is the case with Apple’s overseas tax inquiries) — it’s just trying to prove that Apple was the key instigator for helping 5 publishers to fundamentally change their pricing model all at once. Initially, e-books were sold through a wholesale pricing model, which allowed for the low $9.99 price popularized by Amazon. But with the launch of the iPad, the publishers collectively adopted an agency pricing model, which let them set their own pricing and ultimately led to more expensive $12.99 and $14.99 e-books. Even though Amazon tried to stick with its lower prices initially, it was practically forced to adopt the agency model after the iPad’s launch. That was no coincidence, the DOJ argued. Just looking at the Justice Department’s opening slide deck [below] paints a pretty damning case against Apple. In particular, Eddy Cue, Apple’s head of Internet Software and Services, looked to be the key ringleader in orchestrating the price change. Prior to the launch of the iPad in January 2010, Cue was in constant communication with executives from Hachette, Simon & Schuster, Penguin Group, Macmillan, and HarperCollins about getting them aboard the iBooks store. “After talking to all the other publishers and seeing the overall book environment, here is what I think is the best approach for ebooks,” Cue wrote in an e-mail to Penguin CEO David Shanks. Although Cue was initially resistant to the idea of agency pricing after it was first brought up by a publishing executive, a conversation with Steve Jobs convinced him that it was the right path. Eventually, Cue proposed that the publishers adopt the agency pricing model for e-books, allowing them to price titles as they like while Apple gets its usual 30 percent cut (just like with songs, TV shows, and apps in App Store). That was a fundamental shift from the wholesale pricing Amazon was using previously. Just like physical book stores, Amazon purchased titles at a discounted rate and was able to price them as it saw fit. The DOJ pointed out that publishers tried for years to move the e-book market away from Amazon’s $9.99 price — but they needed a strong company like Apple to serve as the ammunition for getting the deed done. Some of the evidence implies that Apple knew exactly what it was doing. During Jobs’ blowout presentation for the first iPad, he bought a copy of the Edward Kennedy autobiography on stage for $14.99. That same title was available on Amazon for $9.99. When the Wall Street Journal‘s Walt Mossberg questioned Jobs on why people would pay more for an e-book from Apple, Jobs not so wisely replied, “That won’t be the case. … The prices won’t remain the same.” Carolyn Reidy, the CEO of Simon & Schuster, ended up calling that remark “incredibly stupid” in an e-mail to a colleague [slide 76 below]. So far, Apple’s lawyers seem more concerned about having a fair trial rather than combating the DOJ’s arguments directly. One Apple lawyer brought up Cote’s pretrial comments, in which she practically had the case already judged: “I believe that the government will be able to show at trial direct evidence that Apple knowingly participated in and facilitated a conspiracy to raise prices of e-books, and that the circumstantial evidence in this case, including the terms of the agreements, will confirm that,” she told Reuters a few weeks ago. But Cote was quick to point out that Apple still had a fair shot. “This isn’t a vote about whether I like Apple,” she said."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 4, 2013 23:21:22 GMT -6
Apparently ProBoards has eliminated the "exalt" feature.
Nothing like change-for-the-sake-of-change, or, as Paul Krugman would put it--a solution in search of a problem.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 4, 2013 11:54:35 GMT -6
Why in the devil doesn't the US do the same thing?? (i.e., impose TARIFFS)
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 4, 2013 11:49:24 GMT -6
Just to let everyone know that I had nothing to do with the current changes in the forum layout.
They were forced on me (and us) by Proboards.
unlawflcombatnt (admin)
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 3, 2013 22:06:56 GMT -6
All of this continues because Corporate America loves the money immigration brings in, and the wage suppression it causes by flooding the labor market with both MORE workers and more impoverished workers.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 3, 2013 21:56:27 GMT -6
The main story was that New Orders decreased a whopping -3.5%.
That means new workers won't be hired, leading to further declines in worker income and buying power--which would logically lead to even further declines in demand for goods.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 3, 2013 16:26:03 GMT -6
And all of this despite the Fed pouring $85 billion/month into the economy (at the top, of course).
$1 trillion/year of Reverse Robin Hood handouts to the banks, and little if any real growth
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 3, 2013 11:59:48 GMT -6
This is just 1 more step towards a complete Police State.
Did they ever consider the concept that the DNA evidence may be in error, and that it might allow a conviction of someone for something in the distant past that they did NOT do?
All kinds of false evidence gets entered into PERMANENT records in a criminal case, and that false evidence will haunt a falsely accused person for the rest of their lives.
This ruling needs to be overturned.
Going back years to dig up DNA that allegedly matches a current suspect is insane.
What if was switched? What if was taken from the wrong person to begin with? What if the Police deliberately switched it to get a conviction?
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 1, 2013 22:38:08 GMT -6
I just couldn't let this falsehood go. Being able to "afford to hire extra workers" has got NOTHING to do with it. It's the demand for goods the workers produce that causes hiring of extra workers, not their "affordability." Companies don't hire more workers simply because they can afford them. They hire them ONLY when they need them to produce more goods--to make more money for the company through sale of those additional goods produced. Affordability does not dictate hiring. Demand does. I agree. Unfortunately, demand creating more sales can mean more hiring in Bangaladash, China, India, Phillipines, Brazil ... America's labor parcticipation continues to collapse Yes. Those workers are more "affordable".
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 1, 2013 7:39:06 GMT -6
I just couldn't let this falsehood go.
Being able to "afford to hire extra workers" has got NOTHING to do with it.
It's the demand for goods the workers produce that causes hiring of extra workers, not their "affordability."
Companies don't hire more workers simply because they can afford them.
They hire them ONLY when they need them to produce more goods--to make more money for the company through sale of those additional goods produced.
Affordability does not dictate hiring. Demand does.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on May 30, 2013 18:17:44 GMT -6
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on May 30, 2013 11:55:30 GMT -6
from Housingwire via Patrick.net"Nearly 4 million single-family homes entered the rental market over the course of the past 8 years. This strong inventory of rental homes has finally caught up with the increased demand for rentals during the housing crisis, causing single-family home rents to flatten nationwide, according to data from Trulia. Nationally, rents for single-family homes were flat, rising only 0.1% year-over-year. In Las Vegas, Orange County, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Phoenix — where investors have actively bought and rented out single-family homes — rents are either flat or continuing to fall. "Rising prices and flattening rents change the math for investors and renters," said Jed Kolko, chief economist for Trulia ($30.31 0%). "
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on May 30, 2013 11:47:33 GMT -6
GDP growth was reportedly +2.4%. Not really indicative of a strong recovery--or even "normal" economic growth--especially with a price deflator of only 1.1%. biz.yahoo.com/c/e.html
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on May 30, 2013 11:41:15 GMT -6
Creeping Fascism, Part 3: They Really Are Watching You.... The 5 Creepiest Ways Major Companies Are Watching You... TVs That Feed You Ads Based on What You’re Doing on the Sofa.... Verizon has submitted a patent for a new cable box that uses infrared cameras and microphones to keep track of what you’re doing while sitting through syndicated blocks of The Big Bang Theory. According to the patent, the box is programmed to watch for specific activities, such as talking, laughing, singing, and playing an instrument, because it was apparently designed to be placed inside Billy Joel’s house. It will then show you commercials based on whatever it is you happen to be doing. For example, if you’re cuddling up next to your significant other on the couch, Verizon’s cable box will take notice and play some commercials for flowers, romantic getaways, Righteous Brothers CDs, and condoms. We are in no way making this up. The TV is now your wingman. Is this actually legal?
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on May 30, 2013 4:59:04 GMT -6
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on May 28, 2013 18:08:32 GMT -6
The charts imply that there is now 0 benefit to growth by adding debt to the economy. If $1 of debt is producing less than $1 of GDP growth, than we're simply redistributing wealth when money is borrowed to create GDP. As implied by Jesse, all that's happening is that wealth is being redistributed by the creation of new debt--and redistributed upward at that.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on May 28, 2013 11:50:10 GMT -6
from OCHousingNews.com via Patrick.net ochousingnews.com/news/bailouts-and-false-hopes-redux?source=Patrick.net"One of the more interesting phenomenon observed during the bubble was the perpetuation of denial with rumors of homeowner bailouts. Many homeowners held out hope that if they could just keep current on their mortgage long enough, the government would come to their rescue in the form of a mandated bailout program. Part of this fantasy was not just that people could keep their homes, but that they could keep living their lifestyle as they did during the bubble. What few seemed to realize was any government bailout program would be designed to benefit the lenders by keeping borrowers in a perpetual state of indentured servitude. With all their money going toward debt service payments, little was going to be left over to live a life. All of these plans had benefits and drawbacks. One of the first problems was to clearly define who should be “bailed out.” The thought of bailing out speculators was not palatable to anyone except perhaps the speculators themselves, but with regular families behaving like speculators, separating the wheat from the chaff was not an easy task. If a family exaggerated their income to obtain more house than they could afford in hopes of capturing appreciation, did they deserve a bailout? The credit crisis that popped the Great Housing Bubble was one of solvency, and there was no way to effectively restructure payments when a borrower could not afford to pay the interest on the debt, and this was a very common circumstance. None of the bailout programs did much for those with stated-income (liar) loans, negative amortization loans, and others who are unable to make the payments, and since this was a significant portion of the housing inventory, none of these plans had any real hope of stopping the fall of prices in the housing market. The main problem with all of the plans is the moral hazard they created because those who did not participate in the bubble and behaved in a prudent manner would be penalized at the expense of those who were careless with risk. In one form or another either through free market impacts or direct subsidies from the government paid by tax dollars, these bailout plans all asked the cautious to support the reckless. The moral hazard involved and the moral outrage from those being asked to pay the bills prevented any of these plans from being implemented. Many of the bailout plans called for changing the terms of the mortgage note. This might have been easy in the days when banks held mortgages in their own portfolios, but it was nearly impossible once these mortgages were bundled together in collateralized debt obligations and sold to parties all over the world. Even if it would have been possible to easily change the terms, the resulting turmoil in the secondary mortgage market would have caused higher mortgage interest rates. When an investor faces the risk of the government changing the terms of their contract, and these changes would not be in their favor, the investor would demand higher returns. Higher investor returns means higher mortgage interest rates which would raise the cost of borrowing. This was the opposite of what the government bail plans were trying to accomplish. Hope Now? The first of the numerous bailout programs was “Hope Now” introduced in October of 2007. As the name suggests, Hope Now was sold to the general public as a reason for them to hang on and continue making crushing payments for as long as possible. It was a false hope, but even false hope gave homedebtors a little emotional relief, and it provided a few more payments to the lenders. According to their website, “HOPE NOW is a cooperative effort between counselors, investors, and lenders to maximize outreach efforts to homeowners in distress.” The plan was to streamline the process of negotiating workouts between lenders and borrowers to keep borrowers making payments and ostensibly to stop them from losing their homes. The emphasis was on making payments and maximizing investor value in collateralized debt obligations. Very few people benefited from the program, despite government claims to the contrary, and no rights or benefits were conferred to borrowers that they did not already contractually have. There was much fanfare when it was first announced, but the program did far too little to have any impact on the housing market. The next bailout was aimed directly at the lenders with the Super SIV program introduced in November of 2007. An SIV is a special investment vehicle is an off-balance-sheet investment designed to hold investments a company (usually a lender) does not want to show on their own balance sheets. It is a smoke-and-mirrors device used primarily to get around regulations intended to stop lenders from taking excessive risk. The Super SIV program was intended to purchase assets from the troubled SIVs and provide liquidity for lenders who desperately needed it. The problem with the Super SIV was simple: nobody wanted these assets. Moving bad mortgage paper around was akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Few in the general public knew what this program was for, and even fewer cared. Most wanted to know their government was doing something to solve the problem, and the Super SIV announcement provided them with much wanted denial. In December of 2007, the government offered a more direct homeowner bailout plan. The proposal was to freeze the interest rates on certain loans for certain borrowers for five years. This was greeted as a panacea by all parties, and the beast of homeowner denial was fed once again. As with the Hope Now program, few people qualified, and it did nothing to hold back the tide of increasing defaults and foreclosures. The denial was short lived, and this unnamed bailout plan quickly fell from the headlines. In the Savings and Loan disaster of the late 1980s, the government was liable to investors for their losses through the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC.) The government had no choice by to compel taxpayers to cover the costs of the industry bailout. The Great Housing Bubble had no such government liability. However, in February of 2008 Congress and the President signed the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 temporarily increasing the conforming loan limit for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government sponsored entities (GSEs) that maintain the secondary mortgage market. This had the ominous prospect of putting the government in a position where they may step in with taxpayer money to bail out the GSEs, even though the GSEs are explicitly not backed by the assurance of government assistance. The GSEs provide insurance to mortgage backed securities, and by raising the conforming limit, the GSEs were able to insure large, so called “jumbo” loans. This enabled the holders of jumbo loans who were unable to sell these mortgages access to capital in the secondary market. The secondary mortgage market behaves as if the GSEs are government backed, and if they were to fail due to losses from the insurance they provide, the government may have had to step in to back them. All of this was seen as another reason for homeowners in severely inflated bubble markets to hope the government was going to rescue the housing market. Forgiveness of Debt Perhaps the most outrageous suggestion put forth was the suggestion by the FED Chairman Ben Bernanke when he proposed lenders forgive mortgage debt in early 2008. The moral hazards were obvious. Would people stop making their payments to make sure they qualified? Would more people buy homes they could not afford then appeal for debt relief? Rational people became frightened when they heard the head banker in the United States propose massive debt forgiveness as they realized this meant the entire banking system was in peril. The implications of this proposal were lost on the typical homedebtor who only saw how they might benefit from it. Debt forgiveness was the ultimate fantasy of every homedebtor. They could be relieved of their financial burdens and get to keep their houses and their lifestyles. It did not matter to the financially troubled that the proposal made no sense and had no possibility of happening, the thought of it would motivate them to hang on a little longer to see if maybe they could hit the jackpot. Do Nothing It is difficult not to become cynical about all the various bailout programs, and the proposals outlined were not the only ones discussed in the public forum. There was a steady drumbeat of public plans and announcements that were never substantial, and their only purpose seemed to be to foster denial among those who needed it. At the time of this writing, no substantive bailout program has been implemented, and that is a good thing. There is no possible bailout program without the commensurate moral hazards and unfair benefits they would contain. The best course of action would be to ease the transition of people from overextended homeowner to renter and not to attempt to manipulate the financial markets for the benefit of a few. There is nothing that can be done to prevent of the collapse of a financial bubble. The solution lies in easing the pain of their deflation and in preventing them from inflating in the future. 2013 Perspective We have added history to the perspective above, but nothing really has changed. The list of bailout programs grew significantly, and each one was as big a failure as the last. In 2012, the banks finally achieved their threshold of success as the false hope bailout programs finally got enough borrowers into loan modification programs to dry up the foreclosures and MLS inventory. A 50% reduction in inventory caused prices to bottom and move up dramatically in certain markets. In the end, there are still millions of people clinging to properties they can’t afford. Perhaps some will survive through a loan modification and remain current on their mortgages through to an equity sale at a time of their own choosing. Those people will be the exceptions rather than the rule. Most will sell in a distressed or semi-distressed condition caused by the burden of their monthly housing costs"
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on May 25, 2013 15:41:51 GMT -6
from ZeroHedge.com www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-16/gold-demand-one-chart-physical-vs-etfChina's demand for gold jumped 20% to 294 tonnes in the first quarter of 2013, while global gold demand overall slid 13% thanks to the dramatic rotation of demand from paper to physical. Chinese demand in gold bars and coins grew to 109.5 tonnes - more than double the five-year quarterly average of 43.8 tonnes. Central banks added 109.2 tonnes of gold to their reserves in Q1 2013, the ninth consecutive quarter of net purchases. But it was the Q1 ETF outflows of 176.9 tonnes, equating to a 7% decline in total gold ETF holdings that obscured the strong rise in investment for gold bars and coins at the retail level. In the face of the huge 'paper' gold ETF outflows, 'physical' gold demand surged to its highest in 18 months... And direct from the World Gold Council More from the WGC: Overall total global demand for gold in Q1 2013 was 963t, down 19% from Q4 2012. Marcus Grubb, Managing Director, Investment at the World Gold Council commented: “The price drop in April, fuelled by non-physical moves in the market, proved to be the catalyst for a surge of buying that has left many retailers short of stock and refineries introducing waiting lists for deliveries. Putting this into context, sales of bars and coins, jewellery and consumption in the technology sector still make up 81% of the market. “What these figures show is that even before the events of April, the fundamentals of the gold market remain robust with growing demand in India and China, central banks consistently adding gold to their reserves and strong buying of investment products such as gold bars and coins.” The key findings from the report are as follows: • Total demand in China totalled 294t in the first quarter, a rise of 20% on the same quarter last year, as the economy continued to pick up from the downturn experienced in the second half of 2012. Of that figure, jewellery demand in the quarter was a record 185t, up 19% on last year, while bar and coin investment was 110t, rising by 22% from last year. • The Indian market also demonstrated a continued appetite for gold. Total demand was 257t, up 27% on the same quarter last year. Retail investment was up 52% while jewellery was up 15% on Q1 last year. • Q1 2013 was the 7th consecutive quarter in which central banks acquired more than 100t of gold, and the 9th consecutive quarter in which central banks have been net purchasers as they diversify their portfolios. Central bank net purchases were 109t in Q1 2013, although the figure was 5% lower than the purchases a year ago. • ETFs saw a net outflow of 177t in the quarter. By contrast there were strong inflows into other forms of investment: bar and coin demand was 378t, 10% higher than last year. Marcus Grubb, Managing Director, Investment, at the World Gold Council commented further: “Gold-backed ETFs, which made up 6% of gold demand in 2012, have seen some holders, primarily in the US, collect profits and move into equities. While gold ETF holdings are down, this has been balanced by 378t of investment in bars and coins, an increase of 10% on the same period last year, and up 12% on Q4 2012. “Overall, the long-term appetite for investment remains strong, demonstrated by the continued demand for bars and coins.”
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