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Good Morning!
June, 2011 by joanneleon
“With electricity we were wired into a new world, for electricity brought the radio, a "crystal set" and with enough ingenuity, one could tickle the crystal with a cat's whisker and pick up anything.”
~Theodore H. White
News
Scary protesters from Occupy whose interests the Dems have not been representing for the past four years will be in Charlotte exercising what is left of their first amendment rights. How dare they. Must fence them out. Must keep them off the news.
Secret Service seeks security barriers for Democratic National Convention
Two miles of concrete barriers. More than five miles of 9-foot “anti-scale” steel fence.
Nearly eight miles of lightweight metal barriers, and portable vehicle barriers designed to withstand the impact of a 15,000-pound vehicle at 50 mph.
These are some of items the Secret Service is seeking to protect the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, according to a federal government contract request released this week.
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Three of the sites are uptown: Time Warner Cable Arena, which will host the first two days of the DNC; Bank of America Stadium, the site of President Obama’s expected acceptance speech; and the Charlotte Convention Center, which will host the media.
National Reconnaissance Office accused of illegally collecting personal data
WASHINGTON — One of the nation’s most secretive intelligence agencies is pressuring its polygraphers to obtain intimate details of the private lives of thousands of job applicants and employees, pushing the ethical and legal boundaries of a program that’s designed instead to catch spies and terrorists.
The National Reconnaissance Office is so intent on extracting confessions of personal or illicit behavior that officials have admonished polygraphers who refused to go after them and rewarded those who did, sometimes with cash bonuses, a McClatchy investigation found.
Russia MPs pass 'foreign agents' law
Controversial bill is seen as government ploy to stifle opposition and dissent and has been criticised by EU and US.
Russia's lower house of parliament has approved a controversial bill that brands foreign-funded NGOs as "foreign agents".
Activists said the Kremlin, Russia’s seat of government, was using the law passed on Friday to rein in critics.
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NGOs failing to abide by the law would be punishable by hefty fines or jail time.
The deputies also passed another controversial law making libel or slander a criminal offence punishable by a fine of $152,000, voting 238 in favour to 91 against.
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"It will be used to prosecute people who are not happy with the government," said senior Communist MP and former prosecutor Yury Sinelschikov, complaining of the lack of time to properly study the bill.
Banksters Take Us to the Brink
by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
An article in the current issue of Rolling Stone chronicles “The Fallen: TheSharp, Sudden Decline of America’s Middle Class” and describes a handful of middle class men and women made homeless, forced to live out of their cars in church parking lots in Southern California.
One of them, Janis Adkins, drove a van filled with her belongings to Santa Barbara, where she panhandled at an intersection with a sign reading, “I’d Rather Be Working – Hire Me If You Have a Job.” Once upon a time she had a successful plant nursery business in Utah that annually grossed $300,000. But two years after the nation’s financial meltdown her sales had dropped by fifty percent and the value of her land plunged even more. She tried to refinance but four banks turned her down flat. “Everyone was talking about bailouts,” Adkins told reporter Jeff Tietz. “I said, ‘I’m not asking for a bailout, I’m asking you to work with me.’ They look at you, no expression on their faces, saying, ‘There’s nothing we can do.’”
In Canada's Tar Sands, a Dante's Hell Threatens People Nearby and Across the Globe
In Canada's western province of Alberta, Melina Laboucan-Massimo’s community—the Lubicon Lake Nation—has endured a withering toxic tar sands oil assault, an Armageddon against nature few Americans are fully aware of. Here in the once pristine sub-Arctic, tar sands mining operations level vast swaths of boreal forests near native lands, as pipelines burst and spew corrosive chemical-laced tar sands oil into rivers and lakes.
The Lubicon are used to living in harmony with nature. But tar sands mining has brought a deadly discordance to their environment. Melina has watched family and friends battle unheard of cancers and respiratory ailments; she's listened to local fishermen and hunters complain about unusual lesions and tumors festering in their catches and prey. She's reacted in disbelief as her government has sponsored airborne sharpshooters to gun down mighty Canadian wolf packs—a zero sum game that is killing one species to try to save another—as dwindling herds of caribou flee their disappearing forest homes and may be gone forever in the not so distant future.
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According to one report, at least seven million gallons of oil has been spilled in Alberta since 2006—much of it tar sands oil—and there have been thousands of pipeline accidents since the 1990s.
So How Much Did the Banksters Make on Libor-Related Ill-Gotten Gains
So far, we have:
$350 trillion net notional x 25% customer trades x 33% net loss incidence from manipulation x 1 basis point revenue capture
That gives you $2.9 billion across all 16 banks, or $180 million per bank. Times four years, you have $720 million. Compensation as a percent of investment bank revenues is typically 40% to 50%. So we have, on pretty conservative assumptions, roughly $290 to $360 million in extra comp on average per bank for Libor manipulation. This would presumably have gone to comparatively few people (recall Bob Diamond trying to say only 14 traders were involved, although the FSA said “at least 14″). Assume 20 per desk. plus everyone in the reporting line above would have benefitted, as well as the C level execs. So how many people is that? Maybe 50 tops? OK, let’s be really charitable and assume only 50% directly benefitted those people, the rest helped improve bank-wide comp (all those back office types, etc). Even assuming that, you have an average of $2.9 to $3.6 million in extra bonuses per person over the four year period.
The point here is pretty simple. Even if you go to some lengths to cut the numbers way down, you come to the conclusion that if this manipulation had any meaningful impact on the profits of the swaps and derivatives desks, a comparatively small number of people who’d be very cognizant of the manipulation by virtue of seeing the contrast between posted Libor versus actual market prices, likely profited very handsomely. And the people up the line would have benefitted as well.
Marshall Auerback: The Pain in Spain
By Marshall Auerback, a hedge fund manager and portfolio strategist. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives.
Yiagos Alexopoulos at Credit Suisse estimates that Spanish capital outflows are currently running at an annualised rate of 50 per cent of GDP. No question, the bank run is clearly accelerating, and one can easily understand why. The country is turning into a Little House of Economic Horrors. The alleged “rescue” of Madrid’s banks is a non-starter. 100 billion euros won’t begin to cover the scale of the problem on any honest accounting or “stress test” (and that’s before we get to the next phase of announced austerity measures).
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To help fund these bailouts, Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy is continuing to propel the country toward national economic suicide via more ruinous fiscal austerity measures. He has just increased the sales tax from 18% to 21%. This in a country with 25% unemployment, 50% youth unemployment and collapsing retail sales.
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Given the prospect for policy paralysis ahead, we should expect a continued capital outflow of the kind now manifesting itself in Spain. That outflow should strain the recent efforts of the ECB to retard depreciation of the euro and alert even more participants to the euro’s truly rickety foundations.
Watch Bruce Springsteen Dance Onstage With His Daughter
Jessica Springsteen came onstage in Paris for 'Dancing in the Dark'
Bruce Springsteen's 20-year-old daughter, Jessica, just missed the cut for the U.S. Olympic equestrian team, but she got a nice consolation prize in Paris on July 5th, when her dad brought her out onstage during his performance of "Dancing in the Dark."
US strengthens its military might in the Gulf
Washignton deploys extra aircraft and floating base to prevent Iran from blocking the Strait of Hormuz.
Fears of a closure of the Straight of Hormuz -- through which about a fifth of the world's traded oil passes -- intensified earlier this year after Iran threatened to close it if Western governments kept up efforts to rein in Tehran's controversial nuclear programme by choking off its oil exports.
In response, the US military has been bolstering its presence in the region.
It sent four mine sweeper ships in early June, joining four other mine sweeping vessels already in the region, according to the Fifth Fleet.
The Navy also has MH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters and USS Ponce, an old amphibious warship that has been converted into a "floating base," stationed in Bahrain, home to the Fifth Fleet headquarters.
ASEAN talks fail over South China Sea dispute
Failure to issue joint statement marks sharp deterioration in efforts to cool territorial tensions in South China Sea.
Foreign ministers from the 10-member bloc have been wrangling since Monday to hammer out a diplomatic communique, which has held up progress on a separate code of conduct aimed at soothing tension in the flashpoint South China Sea.
China claims sovereignty over nearly all of the resource-rich sea, which is home to vital shipping lanes, but ASEAN members the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei have competing claims in the area.
The long-stalled code of conduct, strongly supported by the United States, is seen as a way of reducing the chances of a spat over fishing, shipping rights or oil and gas exploration tipping into an armed conflict.
Blog Posts of Interest
The Evening Blues - 7-13-12 by KBO
Freaky Friday: "This Machine Kills Fascists" by Lady Libertine
No Woody at 100 diary? Guess I might as well do it. by BOHICA
Saturday Morning Garden Blogging v. 8:21 - Gardening for climate change by Merry Light
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"Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen."
~ Winston Churchill
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