Welcome! "What's Happenin'?" is a casual community diary (a daily series, 8:30 AM Eastern on weekdays, 10 AM on weekends and holidays) where we hang out and talk about the goings on here and everywhere.
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Good Morning!
Oak leaf hydrangea. June, 2012. Photo credit: joanneleon
We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
~John F. Kennedy
News
Foreclosure machinery creaks back to life
Eventually, some smart executive figured out exactly how rampant the illegal robo-signings had become and halted the runaway foreclosure process. Even though it was temporary, it gave the banks some time to try to clean up their acts. While there was hope of a settlement (as opposed to prosecution), the banks stopped processing defaulted home loans. This voluntary foreclosure abatement continued even as negotiations plodded on with the U.S. attorney general. Thus, with the foreclosure pipeline shut down for well over a year, home prices stabilized and distressed sales fell as a percentage of total home sales.
Ultimately, the attorneys general settlement amounted to a mere slap on the wrist for the banks in light of the institutionalized fraud that occurred.
With all that legal unpleasantness behind them, the voluntary foreclosure abatements quietly ended. This year, the banks began to once again review unpaid home loans. It takes a while for the creaky, wheezy, inadequate machinery of processing defaulted mortgages to rumble back to life. So it has — and we should expect to see signs of increasing foreclosures and distressed sales any day now.
What?
Citi Sees A Year-End Rally In The 'Living Large' Index
During good times, stocks of companies targeting high-end consumers tend to outperform those catering to low-end consumers, according to Tobias Levkovich, Citi's U.S. equity strategist.
To better serve clients looking to trade this phenomenon, Citi's has two proprietary indices: the "Living Large Index" and the "Thriving & Thrifty Index."
Thain Wins Best Dad Award as Charities Honor Bankers
Bank of America’s Brian T. Moynihan, JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)’s Jamie Dimon, Morgan Stanley’s James Gorman and Pandit are among the bankers recognized since May 1, a day of international protests against Wall Street. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. President Gary D. Cohn accepted an award for the firm that evening from Friends of the High Line over hen-of-the-woods mushrooms and slow-braised short ribs. Goldman Sachs and its employees have given more than $6 million to the Manhattan park, he said.
“Look, the whole idea of these things is to raise money for the charity,” Thain said in an interview after accepting his Father of the Year award. “The demonization of Wall Street and bankers is very much a function of the press and of Washington, and not much more broadly held.”
The cruelest month of the cruelest year
I recall reading that historically the fall was a popular time for crises because farmers needed to borrow to bring in the harvest, which strained fractional-reserve banking systems. I can't think why that pattern would persist into the post-industrial era. [ ... ]
No matter the explanation, this gives more reason, as if you needed more, to sweat as the fall approaches. Just to elevate the anxiety further: another calendar pattern to which Mr Rogoff first alerted me is the tendency for crises to happen in election years; think Mexico, 1982 and 1994, Korea, 1998, America, 2008, Greece, 2009. The intuition behind this was that crises are the result of imbalances that accumulate over a long time. Politicians have a strong incentive to delay dealing with them until after an election, and often, as was the case with Greece, to actually hide the truth until the polls close.
Federal Prosecutor Nominated for District Court Bench
President Obama on Monday nominated Katherine Polk Failla, the chief of the criminal appeals unit in the United States attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, to the Federal District Court in Manhattan.
Ms. Failla, 43, has led the criminal appeals unit for four years; previously, she had been the unit’s deputy chief, a White House release said. The unit handles appeals from the office’s criminal trials, including financial fraud, terrorism and other crimes. (A different unit handles civil appeals.)
Apple’s Retail Army, Long on Loyalty but Short on Pay
Last year, during his best three-month stretch, Jordan Golson sold about $750,000 worth of computers and gadgets at the Apple Store in Salem, N.H. It was a performance that might have called for a bottle of Champagne — if that were a luxury Mr. Golson could have afforded.
“I was earning $11.25 an hour,” he said. “Part of me was thinking, ‘This is great. I’m an Apple fan, the store is doing really well.’ But when you look at the amount of money the company is making and then you look at your paycheck, it’s kind of tough.”
Exxon reports leak in line at Baton Rouge, LA, refinery
(Reuters) - Exxon Mobil Corp reported a leak in a supply line on the T1 tower at its 502,000 barrel per day (bpd) refinery in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, that led to a release of benzene, according to a filing with the National Response Center.
Exclusive: Dell bids $2.32 billion for Quest Software: source
Two bidders have recently been competing to buy Quest: a buyout group led by private investment firm Insight Venture Partners, and an undisclosed bidder.
On Monday, a source close to the matter told Reuters that the mystery bidder was actually Dell, the No. 2 U.S. PC maker. [ ... ]
Dell has been actively snapping up companies as it tries to diversify away from personal computers, a market where growth is decelerating as Apple Inc's iPad and other mobile devices pull consumers away.
Dell executives have said they view software and services as a key growth area.
Soros: Germany must change its "can't do" attitude - FT
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has resisted all proposals to provide relief to Spain and Italy from the excessive risk premiums prevailing in the market, Soros said in an opinion piece in the Financial Times.
This week's summit of European Union leaders could turn into a "fiasco" because of Germany's aversion and will leave the rest of the euro zone without a strong enough firewall to protect it against the possibility of a Greek exit, Soros said.
"This may serve Germany's narrow self-interest but it will create a very different Europe from the open society that fired people's imaginations," said Soros.
"It will make Germany the centre of an empire and put the 'periphery' into a permanently subordinated position."
The One Thing You Need To Know About The George Soros Plan To Save Europe
The buzz all week is going to be about the upcoming European Summit, and today specifically everyone is talking about George Soros's big plan to save Europe.
The plan introduces a new alphabet soup of acronyms like EFA (European Fiscal Authority) and DRF (Debt Redemption Fund), and on top of everything else in Europe, Soros's idea may not be totally clear, so let's cut to the chase and explain what Soros has in mind...
Soros wants Europe (using the ECB and Germany as a backstop) to take the risk of a sovereign blowup completely off the table. Investors should not have to worry about Spain or Italy going belly up. In exchange for governments getting this guarantee, a scheme would be put in place to financially penalize governments that do not adequately reform.
And then there were five: Cyprus seeks EU aid
(Reuters) - A fifth euro-zone country turned to Brussels for emergency funding on Monday when Cyprus announced it was seeking a lifeline for its banks and its budget, hours after Spain submitted a formal request to bail out its banks.
[ ... ]
Cyprus joins Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain in seeking EU rescue funds, meaning more than a quarter of the 17 euro zone members are now in the bloc's emergency ward. Italy's funding costs have soared too, which means it could be next.
Coin Toss May Determine Women’s Olympic Track Team
A coin toss probably isn’t how two of the country’s best female sprinters imagined their Olympic futures would be determined after years of training and racing. But after an unprecedented finish in the 100 meter race at the United States Olympic track and field trials Saturday night, who gets to go to London and represent her country may come down to the flip of a coin, a quarter to be exact.
What NASA’s Next Mars Rover Will Discover
NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory is on its way. In a little more than a month, the 1-ton rover, which launched in November, will descend to the Martian surface.
The nuclear-powered robot is designed to make spectacular new discoveries about the Red Planet. It will drill and analyze the Martian soil to search for signs of water, past or present, and determine whether or not the planet was ever able to support life.
Steven Strogatz and The Joy of X
Steve has an amazing book coming out this October called The Joy of X. Expanding on his math series, it explores numerous aspects of math. From the math behind everything from flipping mattresses to popular culture, it is an incredible romp through the world of mathematics.
Defense Industry Shill: Give Lockheed Credit for Bin Laden Kill
Shed a tear for the executives at Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and the rest of the sprawling defense industry. Yes, they benefit from billions in taxpayer dollars while millions of Americans struggle to make ends meet. But they’re not getting the praise they deserve for killing Osama bin Laden. Wait, what?
That is an actual argument made by Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, a Beltway research group that reliably represents the interests of defense contractors. Thompson wants President Obama to tip his cap to the defense companies whose hardware and software SEAL Team Six and the CIA used to kill Osama bin Laden. “[I]s it really asking too much for some sort of official acknowledgement of the role that private enterprise played in the Bin Laden raid?” Thompson asks in a Monday op-ed.
Iraq's Sadr demands reforms for support of PM
(Reuters) - Cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, head of a powerful Shi'ite movement in Iraq, on Sunday called for more political reforms, saying he would back a no-confidence vote against the prime minister if they were not made.
Sadr, a Shi'ite cleric who led uprisings against the U.S. presence before American forces withdrew last December, is now an influential player in government after his bloc's support of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki helped secure his position.
Suicide rate now higher than combat toll
New statistics from the war in Afghanistan have revealed more American soldiers are now dying through suicide, rather than in combat. The spike in the number of troops taking their own lives is causing concern at the highest levels of the Obama administration, with the Defence Secretary Leon Panetta admitting he's 'very concerned'.
[ ... ]
One count says that in the first 155 days of this year, 154 troops killed themselves, a figure 50 per cent higher than the number of US forces killed in action in Afghanistan over the same period - and the highest rate in 10 years of war.
[ ... ]
REBECCA MORRISON: He tried six times to get help. We need to know and we need to really take it to heart that when someone comes in to get help, that they really need it.
Taliban leader bans polio vaccinations in protest at drone strikes
The Taliban have banned an anti-polio campaign in Pakistan, accusing health workers of spying for the US
Leaflets distributed in South Waziristan on behalf of Mullah Nazir, the leader of the Federally Administered Tribal Agencies (Fata) accused health workers who administer anti-polio drops of being US spies.
"In the garb of these vaccination campaigns, the US and its allies are running their spying networks in Fata which has brought death and destruction on them in the form of drone strikes," the leaflet said.
[ ... ]
The leaflet raised the case of Shakil Afridi, the frontier doctor who ran a hepatitis vaccination campaign in Abbottabad as cover for a CIA effort to find intelligence about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.
Blog Posts of Interest
The Evening Blues - 6-25-12 on DailyKos by joe shikspack
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