Weekend Economists and the Accidental President December 13-15, 2013

[Demeter]

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Gerald Rudolf Ford, Jr., a man who never dreamed of the White House, yet ended up there, is our topic for this weekend. Who was he, really?

Gerald Rudolph "Jerry" Ford, Jr. (born Leslie Lynch King, Jr.; July 14, 1913 – December 26, 2006) was the 38th President of the United States, serving from 1974 to 1977, and prior to this, was the 40th Vice President of the United States serving from 1973 to 1974. He was the first person appointed to the Vice Presidency under the terms of the 25th Amendment, after Spiro Agnew resigned. When he became president upon Richard Nixon's resignation on August 9, 1974, he became the first and to date only person to have served as both Vice President and President of the United States without being elected by the Electoral College. Before ascending to the Vice Presidency, Ford served nearly 25 years as the Representative from Michigan's 5th congressional district, eight of them as the Republican Minority Leader.

As President, Ford signed the Helsinki Accords, marking a move toward détente in the Cold War. With the conquest of South Vietnam by North Vietnam nine months into his presidency, U.S. involvement in Vietnam essentially ended. Domestically, Ford presided over the worst economy in the four decades since the Great Depression, with growing inflation and a recession during his tenure. One of his more controversial acts was to grant a presidential pardon to President Richard Nixon for his role in the Watergate scandal. During Ford's incumbency, foreign policy was characterized in procedural terms by the increased role Congress began to play, and by the corresponding curb on the powers of the President. In 1976, Ford defeated Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination, but narrowly lost the presidential election to Democrat Jimmy Carter.

Following his years as president, Ford remained active in the Republican Party. After experiencing health problems, Ford died in his home on December 26, 2006. Ford lived longer than any other U.S. president, living 93 years and 165 days, while his 895-day presidency remains the shortest of all presidents who did not die in office.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Ford

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Gerald_Ford_on_field_at_Univ_of_Mich,_1933.jpg

they don't make them like that anymore....all around American hero, public citizen, yet a private man. Let's see if we can find out what made President Ford tick.

[Demeter]

1. A real Friday 13th--we have a bank failure in Texas!

Texas Community Bank, National Association, The Woodlands, Texas, was closed today by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect the depositors, the FDIC entered into a purchase and assumption agreement with Spirit of Texas Bank, SSB, College Station, Texas, to assume all of the deposits of Texas Community Bank, National Association.

The two branches of Texas Community Bank, National Association will reopen as branches of Spirit of Texas Bank, SSB during their normal business hours...As of September 30, 2013, Texas Community Bank, National Association had approximately $160.1 million in total assets and $142.6 million in total deposits. In addition to assuming all of the deposits of the failed bank, Spirit of Texas Bank, SSB agreed to purchase approximately $147.9 million of the failed bank's assets. The FDIC will retain the remaining assets for later disposition...

The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $10.8 million. Compared to other alternatives, Spirit of Texas Bank, SSB's acquisition was the least costly resolution for the FDIC's DIF. Texas Community Bank, National Association is the 24th FDIC-insured institution to fail in the nation this year, and the second in Texas. The last FDIC-insured institution closed in the state was First National Bank, Edinburg, on September 13, 2013.


RELATIVE PEANUTS. MUST HAVE BEEN IN DEEP TROUBLE, IF NO ONE WOULD BUY IT.

[Demeter]

2. GERALD FORD'S Early life

Ford was born Leslie Lynch King, Jr., on July 14, 1913, at 3202 Woolworth Avenue in Omaha, Nebraska, where his parents lived with his paternal grandparents. His mother was Dorothy Ayer Gardner, and his father was Leslie Lynch King, Sr., a wool trader and son of prominent banker Charles Henry King and Martha Alicia King (née Porter). Dorothy separated from King just sixteen days after her son's birth. She took her son with her to the Oak Park, Illinois home of her sister Tannisse and brother-in-law, Clarence Haskins James. From there, she moved to the home of her parents, Levi Addison Gardner and Adele Augusta Ayer in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Dorothy and King divorced in December 1913; she gained full custody of her son. Ford's paternal grandfather Charles Henry King paid child support until shortly before his death in 1930.


A young boy circa 1916.
Leslie Lynch King, Jr. (later known as Gerald R. Ford) in 1916

Ford later said his biological father had a history of hitting his mother. James M. Cannon, a member of the Ford administration, wrote in a Ford biography that the Kings' separation and divorce were sparked when, a few days after Ford's birth, Leslie King threatened Dorothy with a butcher knife and threatened to kill her, Ford, and Ford's nursemaid. Ford later told confidantes that his father had first hit his mother on their honeymoon for smiling at another man.

After two and a half years with her parents, on February 1, 1916, Dorothy married Gerald Rudolff Ford, a salesman in a family-owned paint and varnish company. They then called her son Gerald Rudolff Ford, Jr. The future president was never formally adopted, however, and he did not legally change his name until December 3, 1935; he also used a more conventional spelling of his middle name. He was raised in Grand Rapids with his three half brothers from his mother's second marriage: Thomas Gardner Ford (1918–1995), Richard Addison Ford (born 1924), and James Francis Ford (1927–2001).

Ford also had three half-siblings from his father's second marriage: Marjorie King (1921–1993), Leslie Henry King (1923–1976), and Patricia Jane King (born 1925). They never saw one another as children and he did not know them at all. Ford was not aware of his biological father until he was 17, when his parents told him about the circumstances of his birth. That year his father Leslie King, whom Ford described as a "carefree, well-to-do man who didn't really give a damn about the hopes and dreams of his firstborn son", approached Ford while he was waiting tables in a Grand Rapids restaurant. The two "maintained a sporadic contact" until Leslie King, Sr.'s death.

Ford maintained his distance emotionally, saying, "My stepfather was a magnificent person and my mother equally wonderful. So I couldn't have written a better prescription for a superb family upbringing."

HE WAS A TREND-SETTER...HIS STORY, UNCOMMON FOR ITS TIME, IS NOW STANDARD FARE.

[Demeter]

3. DON'T TAX MY CREDIT UNION!

EMAIL NEWSLETTER FROM

http://www.donttaxmycreditunion.org/

As the year draws to a close, we thought it important to update you where we stand in our fight to protect your credit union. And we thank you for taking part in this fight.

All year long, we have pushed back at the Wall Street banks and their special interest lobbyists. The banker lobbyists want to use reform of the tax code as a Trojan horse to raise taxes on 96 million credit union members – all while eliminating their not-for-profit competition.

You were right there with us every step of the way, because you know your credit union’s earnings go to members like you, not some small group of Wall Street investors. And you know that the lower fees, higher interest rates on savings and more affordable loans you enjoy could be imperiled by new taxes on your credit union.

Through your efforts, we sent Congress more than 1.25 million messages since May – each one loud and clear: “Don’t Tax My Credit Union!”

Now, as Congress winds down its legislative year, it looks like the federal tax reform debate is being postponed until the spring session. However we are beginning to hear rumblings of new tactics in which banker lobbyists attempt to tax credit unions through state and even local governments.

While we are winning this fight, it’s clear we must remain vigilant. In fact, that’s exactly the message Connecticut credit unions got in this video from senior member of the tax-writing House Ways & Means Committee Rep. John Larson (D-CT):

SEE VIDEO AT LINK: http://connecticut.cubetvonline.com/cubetv/index.php?view=video&id=1274

As Larson says, “vigilance is eternal” in defense of our credit unions.

So we’re asking just that – that you remain vigilant, and stand ready to answer the call should we need it in the new year, whether in Washington, your state capital, or even your local community. We know the banks and their lobbyists aren’t holding anything back, and we can only expect more attacks to come.

But we know the 96 million Americans who like you love their credit union will be there to fight back that new attack comes. And we’ll be sure to let you know as soon as we hear it coming.

From all of us here at the Don’t Tax My Credit Union campaign team, we wish you and your family the happiest of holidays.

Your Don’t Tax My Credit Union PETITION AT LINK: http://www.donttaxmycreditunion.org/take-action/

[Demeter]

4. Millenial women pessimistic about gender equality in the workplace

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/11/millenial-women-pessimistic-workplace-equality?CMP=ema_565

Study finds 75% of young women believe the US needs to do more to bring about workplace equality, seeing a 'stalled revolution'...About 75% of young women believe the US needs to do more to bring about equality in the workplace, a new study finds, despite a narrowing pay gap and steady employment gains for women at higher levels of business and government.

Those women remain as pessimistic as their mothers and grandmothers regarding gender equality in the workplace, according to the report released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center.

The study finds that women under 32 now make 93% of what young men earn, aided by women's higher rates of college completion. But the analysis of census and labor data also shows the gender pay gap will widen for women by their mid-30s, if the experience of the past three decades is a guide....

[Demeter]

5. Five simple steps to financial freedom for women BY [i] Suzanne McGee and Alice Finn [/i]

http://www.theguardian.com/money/us-money-blog/2013/dec/11/five-steps-financial-freedom-women?CMP=ema_565

Step 1: Confront the reality of living longer with less money

The bottom line is that our lives vary significantly from those of our husbands, sons and brothers. Women live longer (72% of those who live to 90 are women), yet we earn less; 77 cents for every dollar that men earn. Odds are that our work lives will be interrupted by prolonged periods spent caring for others – young children, aging parents or both. That interrupts our career path and is one reason women are more likely to have jobs that offer more flexibility but lower salaries. Women are less likely to have a 401k plan; when we do, the assets tend to be about half those of male peers, according to a 2010 study from the Brookings Institution.

Some of this is inevitable, and it will be slow to change, as it has been for years. It’s irrational to decide against motherhood, for instance, because it’s going to prevent us from maximizing our income and retirement savings, to put it mildly. And few of us would opt for a shorter lifespan.

Step 2: Stop hiding from your money

Step 3: Hoarding won't save you in your old age

Step 4: Put your money to work

Step 5: Ignore the naysayers

Nor do you have to put up with financial advisors who condescend to and patronize women. They still exist, but you don’t need to put up with the BS, and every year that passes brings with it more financial planners and other resources aimed specifically at the unique financial challenges facing women.

Keep hunting until you find the right support network. And remember, there is no such thing as a stupid question if you think that the answer will help you better manage your finances. After all, none of us – from the hedge fund master of the universe to the neighborhood cookie baker in her 70s – was born knowing the difference between a stock and a bond.

[Demeter]

7. Or as Alice puts it

[Demeter]

6. Pope Francis understands economics better than most politicians

Last edited Sat Dec 14, 2013, 07:29 AM - Edit history (1)

SO DO MOST OTHER PEOPLE

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/27/pope-francis-understands-economics-better-than-most-politicians/

Pope Francis is a pontiff who has constructively broken all the rules of popery – so far to widespread acclaim. He’s faulted the Catholic church for its negative obsession with gays and birth control, and now he has expanded his mandate to economics with a groundbreaking screed denouncing “the new idolatry of money“.

As the Pope wrote in his “apostolic exhortation“:

The worship of the ancient golden calf has returned in a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose. The worldwide crisis affecting finance and the economy lays bare their imbalances and, above all, their lack of real concern for human beings.

His thoughts on income inequality are searing:

How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality.

The pope’s screed on “the economy of exclusion and inequality” will disappoint those who considers themselves free-market capitalists, but they would do well to listen to the message. Francis gives form to the emotion and injustice of post-financial-crisis outrage in a way that has been rare since Occupy Wall Street disbanded. There has been a growing chorus of financial insiders – from the late Merrill Lynch executive Herb Allison to organizations like Better Markets – it’s time for a change in how we approach capitalism. It’s not about discarding capitalism, or hating money or profit; it’s about pursuing profits ethically, and rejecting the premise that exploitation is at the center of profit. When 53% of financial executives say they can’t get ahead without some cheating, even though they want to work for ethical organizations, there’s a real problem....

...

In the discussions of why the US is not recovering, economists often mention metrics like economic growth and housing. They rarely mention the metrics that directly tell us we are failing our economic goals, like poverty and starvation. Those metrics of income inequality tell an accurate story of the depth of our economic malaise that new-home sales can’t. One-fifth of Americans, or 47 million people, are on food stamps; 50% of children born to single mothers live in poverty; and over 13 million people are out of work. Children are now not likely to do as well as their parents did as downward mobility takes hold for the first time in generations.

The bottom line, which Pope Francis correctly identifies, is that inequality is the biggest economic issue of our time – for everyone, not just the poor. Nearly any major economic metric – unemployment, growth, consumer confidence – comes down to the fact that the vast majority of Americans are struggling in some way. You don’t have to begrudge the rich their fortunes or ask for redistribution. It’s just hard to justify ignoring the financial problems of 47 million people who don’t have enough to eat. Until they have enough money to fill their pantries, we won’t have a widespread economic recovery. You can’t have a recovery if one-sixth of the world’s economically leading country is eating on $1.50 a day.

MORE

[Ghost Dog]

15. Hmmm. Jesuits... ¿Has the IMF also gone neo-Franciscan? ... A few recent snippets:

... In his November investment commentary for bond giant Pimco, Mr. Gross asks the "Scrooge McDucks of the world" to accept higher personal income taxes and to stop expecting capital to be taxed at lower rates than labor. As for the IMF, its latest Fiscal Monitor report argues that taxing the wealthy offers "significant revenue potential at relatively low efficiency costs..."

/... http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304355104579232480552517224

Read the report here (.pdf) (This is from the 'executive' summary):

... Taxation is always a sensitive topic and is now more than ever at the center of policy debates around the world. The key challenges are: How can taxation best help bring down debt ratios in advanced economies and respond to mounting spending needs in developing countries? And how can equity concerns be balanced—especially in hard times—with the efficiency that is needed to secure long-term growth?

In practice, consolidation so far has been more reliant on revenue measures than was initially planned. But the options most often chosen have been guided by expediency rather than by a desire to build stronger and fairer tax systems, and they may be storing up problems for the longer term. Tax rates, for instance, have been raised when it would have been preferable to broaden the tax base and introduce new taxes to address environmental concerns or correct financial sector inefficiencies. With a large share of adjustment already behind in many countries but growth prospects still dim, policy design should now focus on addressing long-standing tax distortions and buoying potential growth.

Can countries tax more, better, more fairly? Results reported here show that the scope to raise more revenue is limited in many advanced economies and, where tax ratios are already high, the bulk of adjustment will have to fall on spending. Nonetheless, many (including some with the largest consolidation needs, like the United States and Japan) could still mobilize significant amounts while limiting distortions and adverse effects on growth. Broadening the base of the value-added tax ranks high in terms of economic efficiency (as new findings tend to confirm) and can in most cases easily be combined with adequate protection for the poor. In emerging market economies and low-income countries, where the potential for raising revenue is often substantial, improving compliance remains a central challenge. Recognition that the international tax framework is broken is long overdue. Though the amount is hard to quantify, significant revenue can also be gained from reforming it. This is particularly important for developing countries, given their greater reliance on corporate taxation, with revenue from this taxation often coming from a handful of multinationals.

Scope seems to exist in many advanced economies to raise more revenue from the top of the income distribution (and in some cases meet a nontrivial share of adjustment needs), if so desired. And there is a strong case in most countries, advanced or developing, for raising substantially more from property taxes (though this is best done when property markets are reasonably resilient). In principle, taxes on wealth also offer significant revenue potential at relatively low efficiency costs. Their past performance is far from encouraging, but this could change as increased public interest and stepped-up international cooperation build support and reduce evasion opportunities. Reforming international taxation will be harder, as it must go beyond the control of tax-minimizing tricks to address more fundamental aspects such as the allocation of tax bases across countries and finding better ways to realize mutual gains from closer cooperation in tax matters.

Political constraints can trump even the best-designed tax reform. History shows that meaningful, long-lasting tax reforms have most often been implemented in good times, when buoyant revenues can be used to compensate losers. But they can happen in lean times, too, if carefully attuned to a particular country’s institutional setting and supported by extensive political consensus building and a broad communication strategy. They are certainly increasingly needed in the current, taxing times...

And see much 'rightist' outrage:

... On page 49, the authors said, "The sharp deterioration of the public finances in many countries has revived interest in a 'capital levy' — a one-time tax on private wealth — as an exceptional measure to restore debt sustainability."

Let’s be clear: That tax would apply to all private wealth on the planet. And it wouldn’t balance budgets but would only bring them down to a slightly more manageable level so that government borrowing and spending could continue without interruption. The levy would have to be implemented rapidly, before the wealthy could react and move their assets, or themselves, out of harm’s way: "The appeal is that such a tax, if it is implemented before avoidance is possible … [will not] distort behavior..."

/... http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/item/17107-international-monetary-fund-rolls-out-dangerous-wealth-tax-proposal

...

... In a wide-ranging speech on the outlook for the continent delivered to the European Economic and Social Committee, Ms Lagarde said a failure to revive investment and employment would not bode well for the future.

"There is a palpable sense of optimism in some quarters that the European crisis is over,'' she said.

"But can a crisis really be over when 12% of the labour force is without a job? When unemployment among the youth is in very high double digits, reaching more than 50% in Greece and Spain? And when there is no sign that it is becoming easier for people to pay down their debts?''

As European finance ministers held a simultaneous meeting to try and reach a way forward on the complex issues surrounding a pan-European banking union, the IMF chief said growth rates and output levels remained well below what they should be.

She said the only durable solution was in "jump-starting'' growth, setting out four priority areas including reviving credit, supporting demand, reducing debt and fostering growth friendly labour markets. "The goal of reform is to break down barriers to growth," she said...

/... http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/business/news/eu-must-reform-to-help-jumpstart-economic-revival-says-imf-29827827.html

[Ghost Dog]

45. The New Advocates of Inequality want to take us back to the middle of the 19th century

Make no mistake: what we are witnessing here is an attempt to undo all the progress of the 20th century - the century where for the first time in history ordinary people were given equal political, social and economic rights - and where, after World War II, countries were given equal rights too. The New Advocates of Inequality want to take us back to the middle of the 19th century and accept a world where a small number of countries - and a tiny, fabulously wealthy elite within those countries, have all the power.

It’s an incredibly reactionary and undemocratic project, yet it poses as a modern, democratic one. We can’t say we weren’t warned. At the 1975 Labour Party conference, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson remarked on the extremist policies the Conservative Party under their new leader Margaret Thatcher, were adopting.

At the time, Britain was enjoying the lowest levels of inequality in its history.

Internationally, things were positive too, with the Helsinki Accords signed that year between the USSR and other communist countries and the west, marking the high-water mark of détente. It was the Age of Equality between nations and within nations, but some wanted to change it.

“The political philosophy of a once great Party has now been asserted,” Wilson said of Thatcher’s Conservatives. “Not a claim to unite the nation, but a policy to divide it. We have been told, on impeccable and undeniable authority, that the pursuit of inequality for its own sake is now to become an end in itself. It is now to become the altar, the deity, before which they seek to prostrate themselves - and the country.”

Alas ‘the pursuit of inequality for its own sake’ hasn’t just affected Britain, but many other countries in the world too.

For the sake of the future progress of mankind, we urgently need to return to the democratic, egalitarian and genuinely progressive path we were travelling down before those elitist, reactionary ideologies - neoliberalism and neo-conservatism - took over...

/... http://rt.com/op-edge/uk-inequality-economic-policies-691/

[Ghost Dog]

8. What does Spain make?

Last edited Sat Dec 14, 2013, 10:27 AM - Edit history (1)

A useful list in the comments to this piece on the Sheldon Adelson 'EuroVegas' withdrawal/defeat:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/13/spain-eurovegas-us-casino-operator-pulls-plug

so I'm sharing here (with my comments added).

MartynInEurope pconl

14 December 2013 9:37am
Recommend 4

"The problem with the Spanish economy is fixation on tourism and construction"

Not so...

What does Spain make?

Well, amongst other things (and it should be emphasised that all these are export products and/or are markets in which Spanish companies operate internationally):

- Spain today is the world's eighth largest producer of automobiles and its car market stands among the largest in Europe (I've read that only Germany manufactures more cars than Spain).
- Automobile components and tires
- Home electronic products/domestic appliances (ovens, hobs, fridge/freezers, etc.)
- Major civil and military aviation components (and a large arms industry in general)
- Aeronautical engine and gas turbines
- Complex (including aerospace, space, medical, scientific) systems (e.g. INDRA)
- Electronics
- Ships and boats
- Textiles
- Apparel (e.g. ZARA, Jooma, etc) (some of the sexiest clothes designs in the world)
- Foods and beverages (including olive oil and wine) (and much, much more, including a rapidly-growing 'organic' food ('ecological' it's called here; quality is strictly controlled) sector)
- Metals and metal products
- Chemicals
- Machine tools
- Clay and refractory products (tiles, porcelain wash basins, toilets, etc.)
- Footwear
- Parmaceuticals, and medical equipment.
- Furniture
- Petroleum, gas, alternative energy generation
- Telecommunications
- Public works / Infrastructure development (roads, bridges, etc.) (all over the world)
- Shipping
- Trains (trains and carriages) (e.g. CAF, Talgo) (and entire (including high-speed) rail infrastructure projects, all over the world)
- Transportation
- Tourism and Hospitality Industry (not jut located in Spain) (Large and small Spanish companies operate in these markets worldwide)
- Entertainment, art, culture (World class, of course)

Etc. etc. etc.

Spain even manufactures and exports snowmobiles and golf carts (and, no doubt, personal mobility vehicles).

[xchrom]

9. Chinese Military Ship Confronts U.S. Cruiser at Sea

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-13/chinese-military-ship-confronts-u-s-cruiser-at-sea.html

A U.S. Navy guided-missile cruiser had a confrontation with a Chinese military ship on Dec. 5 in the South China Sea, underscoring rising tensions in the region over China’s newly declared air defense zone.

The USS Cowpens, operating in international waters, and a Chinese naval vessel “had an encounter that required maneuvering to avoid a collision,” the U.S. Pacific Fleet said yesterday in a statement.

“This incident underscores the need to ensure the highest standards of professional seamanship, including communications between vessels, to mitigate the risk of an unintended incident or mishap,” according to the Navy statement.

China was probably angry that the Cowpens may have been trying to spy on China’s only aircraft carrier, which was operating in the area, said Dean Cheng, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center in Washington.

[xchrom]

10. Wholesale Prices in U.S. Fell for Third Month in November

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-13/wholesale-prices-in-u-s-declined-for-third-month-in-november.html

Wholesale prices in the U.S. declined for a third month in November, reflecting lower costs for energy and cars.

The 0.1 percent drop in the producer-price index followed a 0.2 percent decrease the prior month, a Labor Department report showed today in Washington. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 77 economists called for no change. The so-called core measure, which excludes food and energy, rose 0.1 percent.

Prices of goods and materials used in the earlier stages of production fell for a second month as slow improvement in global markets limited demand. Scant signs of accelerating inflation indicate Federal Reserve policy makers meeting next week have more room to maintain their unprecedented $85 billion in monthly asset purchases in order to help spur the expansion.

“Inflation remains quite tame,” said Jim O’Sullivan, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics Ltd. in Valhalla, New York, who correctly projected the drop in prices. “Over the course of the next year, the core numbers will drift up a little bit as the economy remains healthy and unemployment keeps falling.”

[xchrom]

11. Kids Living in Basements Drag On U.S. Services Spending: Economy

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-13/service-spending-lag-called-culprit-in-slow-u-s-growth-economy.html


The U.S. economy is suffering a service interruption.

Consumer spending on services -- everything from rents and water bills to health care and haircuts -- is a laggard as the economy has recovered from the worst recession since the Great Depression. Such expenditures adjusted for inflation have risen 6.3 percent since mid-2009, compared with a 34 percent surge in outlays on durable goods such as automobiles and appliances, according to data from the Commerce Department in Washington.

Slow services spending is “the culprit behind sluggish growth” of the economy, said Carl Riccadonna, senior U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. in New York.

Outlays have been held back by a slowdown in new household formation and meager wage growth. As young adults stay home with their parents rather than forging out on their own, spending on utilities and amenities such as cable television has languished.

[xchrom]

12. Aussie Dollar’s Longest Drop in 28 Years Driven by RBA Comments

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-13/aussie-dollar-s-longest-drop-in-28-years-driven-by-rba-jawboning.html

The Australian dollar headed for its longest stretch of weekly losses since 1985, as the central bank head intensified his efforts to talk down the world’s fifth-most traded currency.

Governor Glenn Stevens signaled a weaker Aussie is preferable over lower interest rates to help spur the nation’s slowing economy. The Aussie touched a more-than-three month low of 89.14 U.S. cents after Stevens said a level of 85 cents “would be closer to the mark than 95 cents,” in an interview published in the Australian Financial Review today. The governor last month put markets on notice, saying, while the benefits of intervention haven’t “so far” outweighed the costs, it “doesn’t mean we will always eschew” currency sales.

“The RBA appears to have made a strategic decision in mid-October that they could get the Aussie down and they should try and get it lower as they downgraded their view of the resource sector,” said Greg Gibbs, a Singapore-based strategist at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc. “They have sent a message and the currency has reacted. The real risk by saying 85 cents is that the market feels more comfortable with the currency around current levels.”

Averting Recession

Architects of the float of Aussie in December 1983 have said the currency must devalue and economic reform be renewed to avert recession, after the currency’s strength spurred losses at Qantas Airways Ltd. and prompted manufacturers including General Motors Co. to close operations.

[xchrom]

13. Iran Sanctions Applied to More Companies by U.S. Treasury

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-12/iran-sanctions-applied-to-more-companies-by-u-s-treasury.html

The Obama administration targeted companies and individuals today for evading international sanctions against Iran and supporting the country’s nuclear program, a move aimed in part at dissuading Congress from imposing additional trade penalties.

The Treasury Department said it was freezing assets and banning transactions of entities that attempt to evade the sanctions, including by doing business with the National Iranian Tanker Co., Iran’s primary shipper of crude oil.

“Today’s actions should be a stark reminder to businesses, banks, and brokers everywhere that we will continue relentlessly to enforce our sanctions, even as we explore the possibility of a long-term, comprehensive resolution of our concerns with Iran’s nuclear program,” David Cohen, Treasury under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement.

The companies designated today as sanctions violators include Eyvaz Technic Manufacturing Co., an Iranian company that the Treasury said was involved in procuring sensitive items for use in Iran’s centrifuge program, and the Exploration and Nuclear Raw Materials Production Co., a subsidiary of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, which was cited for overseeing uranium discovery, mining, and mineral processing operations in Iran.

[xchrom]

14. A Coming Golden Age for American Companies in China?

http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/12/a-coming-golden-age-for-american-companies-in-china/282352/


Will recent reforms—and a new treaty—make it easier for U.S. firms to compete in China? (Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)

At the recent Third Plenum political gathering, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) made headlines around the world by committing to a greater role for the market and for competition in China’s government-directed economy. Whether and when the Party will translate that rhetoric into reality is a critical question for the future. But a vital related question is this: Will the Party allow American companies to compete—freely and fairly—in China?

In its Plenary announcement, the CCP said that in the future the market should have a “decisive” role in resource allocation, instead of a “basic” role as set forth in past Party pronouncements. Though seemingly innocent, this linguistic shift was, in fact, a big deal—and possibly even radical. In an important related point, the Party also indicated that market reforms would constrain the powerful State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) which are subsidized, promoted and controlled by the Chinese government. Private Chinese businesses will be allowed to compete more directly against SOEs and to help reform them, and management of these companies will be made more professional and separated from government.

The potential for American companies to compete more freely in China is a fundamental issue in a related Chinese government action: on-going negotiation of a China-U.S. Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT). In theory, this treaty would allow U.S. companies to invest with fewer restrictions in a much broader range of important Chinese industries, such as autos, financial services, transportation, chemicals and energy. It would also diminish Chinese favoritism for domestic businesses, especially the SOEs. The U.S. would reciprocate by allowing greater Chinese investment in American sectors and companies, unless clear U.S. national security interests were threatened.

Although there are many obstacles to the BIT, the newly announced Chinese market reforms improve its prospects. An influential segment of the CCP now believes that market pricing and competition will accelerate the innovation needed to sustain economic growth and liberty, both considered integral in avoiding political instability. This is a new form of an old strategy: Use growth to satisfy the people, suppress broad movements for more accountable government, and maintain CCP control. And competition, innovation and growth in the economic sphere would be more robust with unconstrained international—not just Chinese—players operating in the nation’s economy.

[Demeter]

19. Simple Answer: No. Political Answer: HELL, NO!

China doesn't have any intention of becoming a dependency of the US Oligarchy

[DemReadingDU]

16. Dent, Faber, Celente, Maloney, Rogers – What Do They Say Is Coming In 2014?

12/13/14 Dent, Faber, Celente, Maloney, Rogers – What Do They Say Is Coming In 2014?

Some of the most respected prognosticators in the financial world are warning that what is coming in 2014 and beyond is going to shake America to the core. Many of the quotes that you are about to read are from individuals that actually predicted the subprime mortgage meltdown and the financial crisis of 2008 ahead of time. So they have a track record of being right. Does that guarantee that they will be right about what is coming in 2014? Of course not. In fact, as you will see below, not all of them agree about exactly what is coming next. But without a doubt, all of their forecasts are quite ominous. The following are quotes from Harry Dent, Marc Faber, Gerald Celente, Mike Maloney, Jim Rogers and nine other respected economic experts about what they believe is coming in 2014 and beyond...

-Harry Dent, author of The Great Depression Ahead: "Our best long-term and intermediate cycles suggest another slowdown and stock crash accelerating between very early 2014 and early 2015, and possibly lasting well into 2015 or even 2016. The worst economic trends due to demographics will hit between 2014 and 2019. The U.S. economy is likely to suffer a minor or major crash by early 2015 and another between late 2017 and late 2019 or early 2020 at the latest."

-Marc Faber, editor and publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report: "You have to say that we are again in a massive financial bubble in bonds, in equities, in [other] asset prices that have gone up dramatically."

-Gerald Celente: "Any self-respecting adult that hears McConnell, Reid, Boehner, Ryan, one after another, and buys this baloney… they deserve what they get. And as for the international scene… the whole thing is collapsing. That’s our forecast. We are saying that by the second quarter of 2014, we expect the bottom to fall out… or something to divert our attention as it falls out."

-Mike Maloney, host of Hidden Secrets of Money: "I think the crash of 2008 was just a speed bump on the way to the main event… the consequences are gonna be horrific… the rest of the decade will bring us the greatest financial calamity in history."

-Jim Rogers: "You saw what happened in 2008-2009, which was worse than the previous economic setback because the debt was so much higher. Well now the debt is staggeringly much higher, and so the next economic problem, whenever it happens and whatever causes it, is going to be worse than in the past, because we have these unbelievable levels of debt, and unbelievable levels of money printing all over the world. Be worried and get prepared. Now it [a collapse] may not happen until 2016 or something, I have no idea when it’s going to happen, but when it comes, be careful."

and more...
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/dent-faber-celente-maloney-rogers-what-do-they-say-is-coming-in-2014

[Ghost Dog]

29. End of US quantitative easing at the beginning of 2014 at the latest (LEAP/E2020 May 2013)

(Excerpt GEAB 75 (May 2013) - BoJ, Fed, ECB : with different methods, contrasting futures):

[center][/center]

Actually, the US economy only holds together thanks to the Fed. That’s why it can’t withdraw its support. Because without it there would no longer be enough US Treasury Bond buyers at current interest rates, which would climb to unsustainable levels as a result. Without the Fed, real estate would resume its downward spiral. Without the Fed, the stock exchange would plunge.

Therefore, only external events would cause the Fed to bring this policy to an end. A relapse into recession in the United States will weaken the dollar just like in 2007- 2008 (see chart below) and, if the fall is too hard, will require a halt in the accommodative policies to fix the currency: in fact, the United States’ biggest fear is that the dollar loses its reserve currency status and has to submit to the same rules as other currencies (40), which was about to happen in 2008 when the whole world started to doubt the dollar’s solidity.

[center]
Dollar exchange rate in Euros (USD/EUR), October 2005 – August 2008. Source : La Tribune.[/center]

It could also be domestic policy, with strong scepticism over the Fed’s policy, which could call the printing press into question. Or Ben Bernanke’s successor (whose term of office comes to an end in January 2014) who may consider that, over time, the risks of continuing this policy are too high.

Finally, there could be pressure from the international community wishing to reform the international monetary system in which a weak currency can’t play an important role: yet in continuing its policy once the dollar became a currency just like any other, the Fed would weaken it excessively so it couldn't claim to retain a major role.

Fed support is thus a drug hiding American problems whilst they are getting bigger and will cause the fall to be even more painful. It can’t continue indefinitely without putting the American economy in danger. It’s only a matter of time before it comes to a painful end. The recession which is about to begin, the end of Bernanke’s term of office and the increasingly lively discussions over international monetary system reform; all these factors are coming together to announce the end of US quantitative easing at the beginning of 2014 at the latest.



... Edit to add (from your source, DemReadingDU):

-Financial editor Jeff Berwick: "If they allow interest rates to rise, it will effectively make the U.S. government bankrupt and insolvent, and it would make the U.S. government collapse. . . . They are preparing for a major societal collapse. It is obvious and it will happen, and it will be very scary and very dangerous."

[DemReadingDU]

40. But if QE ends, markets will collapse

Just a few months ago, it was rumored QE was tapering and the markets declined quite a bit. So I don't think QE will end. But then if interest rates rise, then that will set off other repercussions. We are between a rock and a hard spot.

[Demeter]

42. I think they are trying to time to collapse

so that those in the know benefit, or at least, suffer the least.

Because we will never have a functioning economy unless the "price of money" returns to reality.

[Ghost Dog]

65. Currency Wars And Shooting Wars

China is THE key to any outright implosion of the U.S. monetary system. Other countries, like Saudi Arabia, may play a part; but ultimately it will be China that deals the decisive blow against the dollar’s world reserve status. China’s dollar and Treasury bond holdings could be used as a weapon to trigger a global sell-off of dollar-denominated assets. China has stopped future increases of dollar forex holdings, and has cut the use of the dollar in bilateral trade agreements with multiple countries. Oil-producing nations are shifting alliances to China because it is now the world’s largest consumer of petroleum. And, China has clearly been preparing for this eventuality for years. So, given these circumstances, how can the U.S. government conceive of confrontation with the East? Challenging one’s creditors to a duel does not usually end well. At the very least, it would be economic suicide. But perhaps that is the point. Perhaps America is meant to make this seemingly idiotic leap.

Here are just some of the signs of a buildup to conflict...

Currency Wars And Shooting Wars

In March 2009, U.S. military and intelligence officials gathered to participate in a simulated war game, a hypothetical economic struggle between the United States and China.

The conclusions of the war game were ominous. The participants determined that there was no way for the United States to win in an economic battle with China. The Chinese had a counterstrategy to every U.S. effort and an ace up their sleeve – namely, their U.S. dollar reserves, which they could use as a monetary neutron bomb, a chain reaction that would result in the abandonment of the dollar by exporters around the world . They also found that China has been quietly accumulating hard assets (including land and gold) across globe, using sovereign wealth funds, government-controlled front companies, and private equity funds to make the purchases. China could use these tangible assets as a hedge to protect against the eventual devaluation of its U.S. dollar and Treasury holdings, meaning the losses on its remaining U.S. financial investments was acceptable should it decide to crush the dollar.

The natural response of those skeptical of the war game and its findings is to claim that the American military would be the ultimate trump card and probable response to a Chinese economic threat. Of course, China’s relationship with Russia suggests a possible alliance against such an action and would definitely negate the use of nuclear weapons (unless the elites plan nuclear Armageddon). That said, it is highly likely that the U.S. government would respond with military action to a Chinese dollar dump, not unlike Germany’s rise to militarization and totalitarianism after the hyperinflationary implosion of the mark. The idea that anyone except the internationalists could “win” such a venture, though, is foolish.

I would suggest that this may actually be the plan of globalists in the United States and their counterparts in Asia and Europe. China’s rise to financial prominence is not due to its economic prowess. In fact, China is ripe with poor fiscal judgment calls and infrastructure projects that have gone nowhere. But what China does have on its side are massive capital inflows from global banks and corporations, mainly based in the United States and the European Union. And, it has help in the spread of its currency (the Yuan) from entities like JPMorgan Chase and Co. The International Monetary Fund is seeking to include China in its global basket currency, the SDR, which would give China even more leverage to use in breaking the dollar’s reserve status. Corporate financiers and central bankers have made it more than possible for China to kill the dollar, which they openly suggest is a “good thing.”

Is it possible that the war game scenarios carried out by the Pentagon and elitist think-tanks like the RAND Corporation were not meant to prevent a war with China, but to ensure one takes place?

/More... http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-12-13/war-china-inevitable

[xchrom]

17. The Volcker Rule: Wins, Losses and Toss-ups

http://www.thenation.com/article/177592/volcker-rule-wins-losses-and-toss-ups

After three years, multiple missed deadlines, and at least 111 meetings between regulators and Wall Street groups (versus only twelve meetings with pro-reform groups), we finally have a final version of the Volcker Rule—and if properly enforced, it will change the business of banking for the better.

The Volcker Rule aims to ensure that banks that enjoy the backing of the federal government and the cushion of customer deposits do not get to make risky bets (or, in the language of the rule, “proprietary trades”). In other words, banks that have a taxpayer-provided parachute don’t get to BASE jump off of mountains for the thrill (and profit) of it.

It was a long path to get here: Senators Jeff Merkley and Carl Levin authored the law in 2010, as a part of the Dodd-Frank Act. Financial regulators were responsible for writing the final rule. A draft was published in 2011, and 18,000 comment letters were written, the vast majority by Wall Street interests. But reformers also wrote letters, including Americans for Financial Reform, Better Markets, Public Citizen and a letter from the group “Occupy the SEC” that I co-authored. Despite being vastly outnumbered, reformers made a real difference: the final rule rejected many of the additional exemptions banks wanted, and it is stronger than the draft in many key places.

Win: No Portfolio Hedging

In the original law, Congress sought to preserve banks’ ability to trade with clients (called “market making” on Wall Street), as well as their ability to hedge their risk, which is the way banks try to protect themselves from staggering losses. But many feared these allowances for market making and hedging could be abused. As I previously pointed out in The Nation, the London Whale trading fiasco highlighted an enormous loophole in the rule for “portfolio hedging.” This blanket loophole could have allowed banks to continue their proprietary trading unimpeded.

[Demeter]

18. The Backroom Deal That Could've Given Us Single-Payer MUST READ!

http://truth-out.org/news/item/20595-the-backroom-deal-that-couldve-given-us-single-payer

It's not so much that Obama "sold us out" to a powerful constituency, but that he picked the wrong powerful constituency. A quick look at the financial details reveals that health insurance nationalization was always the real "path of least resistance."

Back in March 2009, leaks from the White House made it clear that a single-payer health insurance system was “off the table” as an option for health care reform. By doing so, the President had ruled out the simplest and most obvious reform of the disaster that is US healthcare. Instituting single-payer would have meant putting US health insurance companies out of business and extending the existing Medicare or Medicaid to the entire population. Instead, over the following weeks the outlines of the bloated monstrosity known as Obamacare emerged; an impossibly complicated Rube Goldberg contraption, badly designed, incompetently executed, and whose intended beneficiaries increasingly seem to hate.

The decision to abandon the nationalization of perhaps the most unpopular companies in the US is correctly attributed to the fundamental conservatism of the Obama White House, and its unwillingness to take on the health insurers, pharmaceutical companies, or any interest group willing and able to spend millions lobbying, hiring former politicians, and donating to campaigns. Obama’s “wimpiness,” his need to always take the path of least resistance, became common tropes among the American left. Obamacare, liberals claim, is the best possible reform that could’ve been wrangled out of the health insurance industry.

But were the many backroom deals that make up Obamacare really an easier alternative to nationalization? A look at the financial details reveals the opposite conclusion. In strictly financial terms, nationalization would have been the easiest way forward, costing relatively little and delivering immediate savings while making access to health care truly universal. Politically, Obama could have counted on the support of a unlikely ally of progressive causes: health insurance shareholders, the theoretical owners of those very companies who would have been relieved of their then-dubious investments with a huge payout...buying out the entire health insurance industry at an enormously generous premium of, say, 100 percent, would have cost the Treasury $240 billion – about 2 percent of 2009 gross domestic product. And this figure is highly inflated —premiums for buying out well-established companies rarely exceed 50 percent and are usually closer to 20 percent. Also, I am valuing the dubious claims of non-profit policyholders on par with the more vigorously-enforced property rights of for-profit shareholders.Other than the big smiles on the faces of health insurer shareholders across the country, what would have been the US Treasury’s payoff for writing a $240 billion check? Once again, the numbers are simple, and startling. US private insurance, whether for-profit or otherwise, may well be the most wasteful bureaucracy in human history, making the old Gosplan office look like a scrappy startup by comparison. Estimates of pure administrative waste range anywhere from 0.75 percent to 2.6 percent of total US economic output...

MORE AT LINK...AND DAMNING AT THAT

[xchrom]

20. ...

[Demeter]

22. Makes you wish this discussion happened 5 years ago, in public, doesn't it?

Good morning, X! It's snowing for real, the plows are out, and I'm freezing. Temperature is 19F, windchill is 11F.

[xchrom]

24. BRRRR!

it's been gloomy and cold here.

we're having some rain today.

try to stay warm and dry, miss demeter!

[DemReadingDU]

41. We have 3 inches wet heavy snow

Temp is 33. If temperature falls, we will have a giant ice rink

[DemReadingDU]

23. Last paragraphs

The US does not have a health insurance problem. It has a health care cost problem – the uninsured are a symptom, not the illness itself. The parasitism of the actual health insurance companies is just more obvious than others. But from overpaid doctors, to usurious hospitals that charge $500 for a stitch, to snake oil-peddling pharmaceutical companies charging thousands a year for dubious treatments, there are simply too many people collecting too much money just because they can.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, they all seem to have a very good friend in the White House.
http://truth-out.org/news/item/20595-the-backroom-deal-that-couldve-given-us-single-payer

[Demeter]

21. Obama and the harsh reality check Mark Morford

http://blog.sfgate.com/morford/2013/12/10/obama-and-the-harsh-reality-check/



You want the good news, or the wincingly bleak news that makes you shudder and sigh and wish you didn’t have such sad dreams? You want a bit of both? You should probably hear a bit of both...Because here’s the thing: He did more or less what he said he was going to do – so far, anyway – which was to end Bush’s devastatingly stupid war(s), re-establish America as a respectable force in world affairs, orate in complete sentences so as not embarrass the nation on the international stage at every turn, shift the race discussion to the next level, enact at least some modest education reform, protect women’s rights, defend the middle class, slap back the GOP’s toxic plot to rule American politics for the next 75 years, and usher in an impossibly variegated, increasingly messy era of barely controlled, women-empowered, multicultural chaos in which old, fear-soaked white men no longer control every election, industry, media, cultural discussion, power source and hunk of propaganda in the nation.

And what of Obama’s signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act? So horribly mismanaged, watered down, blocked, lied about and spit upon that it’s almost impossible to tell that it’s a pretty good law overall, one that will reverberate for years and benefit millions, despite the raging lies and laughable rhetoric of the right...Oh, yes ­– one more thing:­ When Obama took office, the Dow was a desolate, gut-wrenching 8000 points and plummeting like a suicidal eagle. Every pundit from the Wall Street Journal to the Economist declared that America’s unprecedented combination of a failed war, brutal housing crisis, recession, auto industry collapse and manufacturing exodus was a perfect storm of economic cataclysm that would take at least 20 years to fix, if that. Obama said he’d do most of it in four. Maybe five. Behold! Both the Dow and S&P 500 reached record highs just last week. In just five short years, the economy, while maybe not exactly “booming,” has more than fully recovered in nearly every category. The auto industry is flourishing anew. There’s also 1.5 million new jobs, and unemployment has steadily dropped to a slightly more reasonable 7% (jobs always lag behind growth).


In short, the guy accomplished the unimaginable. We are now is as stable and strong as can be for a fractured, deeply corrupt, post-9/11 nation on the verge of perpetual economic and environmental apocalypse. Miraculous? Damn straight. Of course, that doesn’t tell quite the whole story, does it? For lo, the woes and problems, snags and disappointments are plethoric, ugly and barbed like everyday hate speech on Fox News. Oh, the missed opportunities, the failings, the ugly choices that make you despise politics all over again, and realize it’s all just an insidious shell game, and you’re not even rich enough to be the pea.

Radical overhaul of Wall Street corruption and runaway greed when Obama had the chance? Didn’t happen, won’t happen. Cartoonish CEOs still gorging on salary bloat, many making as much as 1,000 times the pay rate of their average employee? No end in sight. We now live in a country where wealth inequality is so violently lopsided as to be laughable, if it weren’t so disgusting. The kicker? The ratios are probably a lot worse than you think. Despite all the good Obama has done, from housing reform, defending gay rights, killing DADT/DOMA and enacting college loan reform, et al, the dominant system is more brutally rigged for the over-class than ever, and Obama is more enmeshed in that framework than even the most moderate Democrats imagined. He has also repeatedly upheld the Patriot Act, increased military spending, increased domestic oil production, championed drone warfare, and done almost nothing to curtail the NSA or America’s rabid gun fetishism. Benghazi? Iran? Guantanamo? What else you got? I will never be so naive or cynical to say it doesn’t matter which party is in office (God forbid we were in a McCain or Romney presidency right now), but step back far enough and it’s more of a frothy sea of inbred powerbrokers than ever, and Obama, despite all hopes to the contrary, stands right at the helm of the ship. Not that he necessarily wants to be there....

AND IF YOU BELIEVE THAT, I HEAR THERE'S AN HISTORIC BRIDGE IN BROOKLYN GOING CHEAP...

NOSTALGIA FOLLOWS...SEE LINK

[Ghost Dog]

28. Nicely put. ¿What else you got? - The Saudi thing (and Egypt)...

The Egyptian government has ruled out an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a proposed loan... For more than one year, Egypt had been in negotiations with the IMF for a proposed $4.8 billion loan to help shore up its faltering post-revolution economy... Following the July 3 ouster of elected president Mohamed Morsi by the army, Egypt has received a combined total of $15.9 billion in aid from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait...

/... http://www.worldbulletin.net/?aType=haber&ArticleID=124725

... But working in a better direction re. Iran/Israel, maybe...

[Demeter]

25. Scouting and athletics THE ALL-AMERICAN PRESIDENT WAS JUST THAT

Ford was involved in The Boy Scouts of America, and earned that program's highest rank, Eagle Scout. In later years, Ford received the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award in May 1970 and Silver Buffalo Award from the Boy Scouts of America. He is the only U.S. president who is an Eagle Scout. Scouting was so important to Ford that his family asked that Scouts participate in his funeral. About 400 Eagle Scouts were part of the funeral procession, where they formed an honor guard as the casket went by in front of the museum. A few selected scouts served as ushers inside the National Cathedral.

Ford attended Grand Rapids South High School and was a star athlete and captain of his football team. In 1930, he was selected to the All-City team of the Grand Rapids City League. He also attracted the attention of college recruiters.

Attending the University of Michigan as an undergraduate, Ford played center and linebacker for the school's football team and helped the Wolverines to undefeated seasons and national titles in 1932 and 1933. The team suffered a steep decline in his 1934 senior year, however, winning only one game. Ford was the team's star nonetheless, and after a game during which Michigan held heavily favored Minnesota (the eventual national champion) to a scoreless tie in the first half, assistant coach Bennie Oosterbaan later said, "When I walked into the dressing room at half time, I had tears in my eyes I was so proud of them. Ford and[Cedric Sweet played their hearts out. They were everywhere on defense." Ford later recalled, "During 25 years in the rough-and-tumble world of politics, I often thought of the experiences before, during, and after that game in 1934. Remembering them has helped me many times to face a tough situation, take action, and make every effort possible despite adverse odds." His teammates later voted Ford their most valuable player, with one assistant coach noting, "They felt Jerry was one guy who would stay and fight in a losing cause."

During Ford's senior year a controversy developed when the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets refused to play a scheduled game if a black player named Willis Ward took the field. Even after protests from students, players and alumni, university officials opted to keep Ward out of the game. Ford was Ward's best friend on the team and they roomed together while on road trips. Ford reportedly threatened to quit the team in response to the university’s decision, but eventually agreed to play against Georgia Tech when Ward personally asked him to play.

During the same season, in a game against the University of Chicago, Ford "became the only future U.S. president to tackle a future Heisman Trophy winner when he brought down running back Jay Berwanger, who would win the first Heisman the following year". In 1934, Ford was selected for the Eastern Team on the Shriner's East West Crippled Children game at San Francisco (a benefit for crippled children), played on January 1, 1935. As part of the 1935 Collegiate All-Star football team, Ford played against the Chicago Bears in the Chicago College All-Star Game at Soldier Field. In honor of his athletic accomplishments and his later political career, the University of Michigan retired Ford's No. 48 jersey in 1994. With the blessing of the Ford family, it was placed back into circulation in 2012 as part of the Michigan Football Legends program and issued to sophomore linebacker Desmond Morgan before a home game against Illinois on October 13.

Ford remained interested in football and his school throughout life, occasionally attending games. Ford also visited with players and coaches during practices, at one point asking to join the players in the huddle. Ford often had the Naval band play the University of Michigan fight song, The Victors, before state events instead of Hail to the Chief. He also selected the song to be played during his funeral procession at the U.S. Capitol. On his death in December 2006, the University of Michigan Marching Band played the fight song for him one final time, for his last ride from the Gerald R. Ford Airport in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Ford was also an avid golfer. In 1977, he shot a hole in one during a Pro-am held in conjunction with the Danny Thomas Memphis Classic at Colonial Country Club in Memphis, Tennessee. He received the 1985 Old Tom Morris Award from the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, GCSAA's highest honor.

[Demeter]

26. No, the Budget Deal Isn't a "Compromise" (NOT AN EQUITABLE ONE, ANYWAY) By Patrick Caldwell

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/12/budget-deal-is-not-compromise-murray-ryan

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) were noticeably pleased with themselves when they announced their new budget deal at a press conference Tuesday evening. The 15-minute session was filled with compliments and bipartisan kumbayas for reaching such a sensible accord. "From the the outset," Ryan said, "we knew that if we forced each other to compromise a core principle we would get nowhere. That is why we decided to focus on where the common ground is." Murray backed that up, stressing that the two found success because they ditched ideological rigidity in favor of accommodation. "We have broken through the partisanship and the gridlock," Murray said, "and reached a bipartisan budget compromise that will prevent a government shutdown in January."

Compromise, compromise, compromise. It was the word of the day. Even President Barack Obama joined in on the hosannas. "This agreement doesn’t include everything I’d like—and I know many Republicans feel the same way," he said in a statement shortly after the deal was announced. "That's the nature of compromise."

Who doesn't like an agreement where each side gives a little to get something in return? That's the basic concept of negotiation that we all learn in kindergarten. The only trouble is our political class has a distorted sense of what constitutes a "compromise." The Washington Compromise lacks any relation to the actual policies being discussed. It's just a grade-school level formula you can plug into any scenario. Find the midpoint between two competing plans and you've found the centrist goal. The trouble is, not every starting point is created equally. It's a simplistic vision of politics, akin to the critics who think all political disagreements can be boiled down to winners and losers, or the persistent Green Lantern notion of presidential power that Obama could accomplish anything if he would just lead already.

According to Washington wisdom, the new budget meets the platonic ideal of a compromise since it slices everything neatly down the middle. Ryan's initial budget accepted sequestration's caps on military and domestic spending, which allocated $967 billion for 2014. Murray's budget ignored sequestration and slotted $1.058 trillion for 2014. The compromise? $1.012 trillion. In other words, the two elected officials and their staffs spent the past month figuring out how to add their numbers together and divide by two. Rather than discerning whether the country would be better off if either domestic programs or military spending were spared sequester's ax, the Ryan and Murray split it right down the middle. Fifty percent of the new spending goes to the military, 50 percent to domestic programs. Murray and Ryan used a similar logic for the revenue offsets included in the budget. Ryan got $6 billion in savings from federal employee pensions, so Murray had to get an equal $6 billion in revenue from military pensions...Sequestration was written to be unpalatable to both Democrats and Republicans, yet the vast majority of those cuts are here to stay. The new budget deal only replaces one-third of sequestration's cuts for 2014 and 2015. So much for compromise.

MORE DETAIL AT LINK

[Demeter]

33. A Cruel, Irresponsible and Dysfunctional Budget Deal John Nichols

http://www.thenation.com/blog/177550/cruel-irresponsible-and-dysfunctional-budget-deal

The trouble with making “functional” government the great aspiration of the American experiment – as so many pundits and politicians now do – is that a smoothly operating Congress is not necessarily moral, humane or even economically smart. It is important to remember this disconnect as we consider the budget deal announced late Tuesday by House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, and Senate Budget Committee chairman Patty Murray, D-Washington.

“This agreement breaks through the recent dysfunction to prevent another government shutdown and roll back sequestration’s cuts to defense and domestic investments in a balanced way,” said Murray. “It’s a good step in the right direction that can hopefully rebuild some trust and serve as a foundation for continued bipartisan work.”

Ryan was equally self-congratulatory, declaring that – after a fall the saw a government shutdown, nasty wrangling over the historically uncontroversial task of raising the debt ceiling and general congressional dysfunction – he and Murray had achieved “a clear improvement on the status quo.”

“This agreement makes sure that we don't have a government shutdown scenario in January,” he added. “It makes sure we don't have another government shutdown scenario in October. It makes sure that we don't lurch from crisis to crisis."

Murray and Ryan are excited that they had stopped fighting for long enough to agree to $63 billion in “sequester relief” – as opposed to an actual end to sequestration – and $23 billion in net deficit reduction. They're also glad that they have set the discretionary spending level for fiscal year 2014 at $1.012 trillion, while setting the level at $1.014 trillion for fiscal year 2015. That apparently qualifies – in the eyes of the budget negotiators – as a sufficient alternative to lurching from crisis to crisis. But the agreement does not address the crises that matter. “This plan won't create jobs, get the economy back on track, or meaningfully cut the deficit,” explains Congressman Peter DeFazio, D-Oregon. And that's not the worst of it.

What of the 1.3 million jobless Americans who – with a fully Dickensian twist – now stand to lose Federal unemployment benefits three days after Christmas?

MORE VITRIOL AT LINK

[xchrom]

27. 10 Countries Sitting On Enormous Mounds Of Gold

http://www.businessinsider.com/countries-with-largest-gold-reserves-2013-12?op=1

Gold looks like it is on its way to its first annual drop in 13 years.
This is bad news for central banks that have been diversifying their foreign reserves to include gold, but at a slower pace than in 2012.

A new report from the World Gold Council showed that year-to-date central bank gold reserves increased by nearly 300 tonnes.

Global official gold holdings totaled 31,913.5 tonnes as of December 2013, according to the latest report from the World Gold Council.

We pulled the numbers on the 10 biggest official reserves.


10. India

REUTERS/Krishnendu Halder
Official gold holdings:
557.7 tonnes

Percent of foreign reserves in gold:
8.4%

The government has been trying to deter people from purchasing the precious metal and some like Jim Rogers attribute the price decline to lowered emerging market demand. Gold imports have been blamed for the nation's high current account deficit. India's central bank governor Raghuram Rajan has previously said the country can pay off its debt in gold.


9. Netherlands

Reuters/Brian Snyder
Official gold holdings:
612.5 tonnes

Percent of foreign reserves in gold:
54.0%

A large portion of the Netherlands' gold reserves are held in the U.S, and some are held in Canada and the UK. About 10% is expected to be held in Amsterdam. Earlier this year the Netherlands wanted to repatriate its gold.


8. Japan

Reuters/Issei Kato
Official gold holdings:
765.2 tonnes

Percent of foreign reserves in gold:
2.6%

Japan's gold reserves were at just 6 tonnes in 1950, and its central bank registered its first serious jump in gold holdings in 1959, with purchases increasing by 169 tonnes from the previous year.

In 2011, the Bank of Japan sold gold to pump ¥20 trillion into the economy to calm investors after the tsunami and nuclear disaster.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/countries-with-largest-gold-reserves-2013-12?op=1#ixzz2nSbpgMzJ

[Demeter]

31. Between Rehypothecation and Counterfeiting, One Wonders How Much Gold There Really Is

and how many times it has been sold to two or more parties at the same time...

Because unwinding the gold scams would really take down the last prop of fiat currency.

I'll BET the Netherlands wants their gold back. Just like the Germans, they smell a rat.

[Demeter]

30. Bill Moyers | The Great American Class War: Plutocracy vs. Democracy

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/20583-the-great-american-class-war-plutocracy-vs-democracy

I met Supreme Court Justice William Brennan in 1987 when I was creating a series for public television called In Search of the Constitution, celebrating the bicentennial of our founding document. By then, he had served on the court longer than any of his colleagues and had written close to 500 majority opinions, many of them addressing fundamental questions of equality, voting rights, school segregation, and -- in New York Times v. Sullivan in particular -- the defense of a free press. Those decisions brought a storm of protest from across the country. He claimed that he never took personally the resentment and anger directed at him. He did, however, subsequently reveal that his own mother told him she had always liked his opinions when he was on the New Jersey court, but wondered now that he was on the Supreme Court, “Why can’t you do it the same way?” His answer: “We have to discharge our responsibility to enforce the rights in favor of minorities, whatever the majority reaction may be.”

Although a liberal, he worried about the looming size of government. When he mentioned that modern science might be creating “a Frankenstein,” I asked, “How so?” He looked around his chambers and replied, “The very conversation we’re now having can be overheard. Science has done things that, as I understand it, makes it possible through these drapes and those windows to get something in here that takes down what we’re talking about.” That was long before the era of cyberspace and the maximum surveillance state that grows topsy-turvy with every administration. How I wish he were here now -- and still on the Court!

My interview with him was one of 12 episodes in that series on the Constitution. Another concerned a case he had heard back in 1967. It involved a teacher named Harry Keyishian who had been fired because he would not sign a New York State loyalty oath. Justice Brennan ruled that the loyalty oath and other anti-subversive state statutes of that era violated First Amendment protections of academic freedom. I tracked Keyishian down and interviewed him. Justice Brennan watched that program and was fascinated to see the actual person behind the name on his decision. The journalist Nat Hentoff, who followed Brennan’s work closely, wrote, “He may have seen hardly any of the litigants before him, but he searched for a sense of them in the cases that reached him.” Watching the interview with Keyishian, he said, “It was the first time I had seen him. Until then, I had no idea that he and the other teachers would have lost everything if the case had gone the other way.” Toward the end of his tenure, when he was writing an increasing number of dissents on the Rehnquist Court, Brennan was asked if he was getting discouraged. He smiled and said, “Look, pal, we’ve always known -- the Framers knew -- that liberty is a fragile thing. You can’t give up.” And he didn’t.

The Donor Class and Streams of Dark Money

The historian Plutarch warned us long ago of what happens when there is no brake on the power of great wealth to subvert the electorate. “The abuse of buying and selling votes,” he wrote of Rome, “crept in and money began to play an important part in determining elections. Later on, this process of corruption spread in the law courts and to the army, and finally, when even the sword became enslaved by the power of gold, the republic was subjected to the rule of emperors.” We don’t have emperors yet, but we do have the Roberts Court that consistently privileges the donor class. We don’t have emperors yet, but we do have a Senate in which, as a study by the political scientist Larry Bartels reveals, “Senators appear to be considerably more responsive to the opinions of affluent constituents than to the opinions of middle-class constituents, while the opinions of constituents in the bottom third of the income distribution have no apparent statistical effect on their senators’ roll call votes.” We don’t have emperors yet, but we have a House of Representatives controlled by the far right that is now nourished by streams of “dark money” unleashed thanks to the gift bestowed on the rich by the Supreme Court in the Citizens United case. We don’t have emperors yet, but one of our two major parties is now dominated by radicals engaged in a crusade of voter suppression aimed at the elderly, the young, minorities, and the poor; while the other party, once the champion of everyday working people, has been so enfeebled by its own collaboration with the donor class that it offers only token resistance to the forces that have demoralized everyday Americans.

Writing in the Guardian recently, the social critic George Monbiot commented,

“So I don’t blame people for giving up on politics... When a state-corporate nexus of power has bypassed democracy and made a mockery of the voting process, when an unreformed political system ensures that parties can be bought and sold, when politicians [of the main parties] stand and watch as public services are divvied up by a grubby cabal of privateers, what is left of this system that inspires us to participate?”

Why are record numbers of Americans on food stamps? Because record numbers of Americans are in poverty. Why are people falling through the cracks? Because there are cracks to fall through. It is simply astonishing that in this rich nation more than 21 million Americans are still in need of full-time work, many of them running out of jobless benefits, while our financial class pockets record profits, spends lavishly on campaigns to secure a political order that serves its own interests, and demands that our political class push for further austerity. Meanwhile, roughly 46 million Americans live at or below the poverty line and, with the exception of Romania, no developed country has a higher percent of kids in poverty than we do. Yet a study by scholars at Northwestern University and Vanderbilt finds little support among the wealthiest Americans for policy reforms to reduce income inequality...We are this close -- this close! -- to losing our democracy to the mercenary class. So close it’s as if we’re leaning way over the rim of the Grand Canyon waiting for a swift kick in the pants.

PERSONAL VIGNETTES FOLLOW--A GLIMPSE OF AMERICA PAST--SEE LINK

Bill Moyers has received 35 Emmy awards, nine Peabody Awards, two prestigious Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards and three George Polk Awards, the National Academy of Television’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and an honorary doctor of fine arts from the American Film Institute over his 40 years in broadcast journalism. He is currently host of the weekly public television series Moyers & Company and president of the Schumann Media Center, a non-profit organization which supports independent journalism. He delivered these remarks (slightly adapted here) at the annual Legacy Awards dinner of the Brennan Center for Justice, a non-partisan public policy institute in New York City that focuses on voting rights, money in politics, equal justice, and other seminal issues of democracy. This is his first TomDispatch piece. Moyers' most recent book, "Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues," was published in May 2011.

A broadcast journalist for more than four decades, Bill Moyers has been recognized as one of the unique voices of our times, one that resonates with multiple generations. In 2012, at the age of 77, Moyers begins his latest media venture with the launch of "Moyers & Company." With his wife and creative partner, Judith Davidson Moyers, Bill Moyers has produced such groundbreaking public affairs series as "NOW with Bill Moyers" (2002-2005) and "Bill Moyers Journal" (2007-2010).

[Demeter]

32. US unemployment claims rise sharply but recent economic growth intact

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/dec/12/us-unemployment-claims-rise-sharply-economic-growth?CMP=ema_565



The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits rose sharply last week, reversing the prior three weeks declines, but a recent strengthening of the labor market likely remains intact. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits surged 68,000 to a seasonally adjusted 368,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. That was the largest weekly increase since November 2012. Claims for the prior week were revised to show 2,000 more applications received than previously reported. Economists polled by Reuters had expected first-time applications to rise to 320,000 last week. The four-week moving average for new claims, which irons out week-to-week volatility, rose 6,000 to 328,750.

A Labor Department analyst said no states had been estimated and there were no special factors influencing the report. He noted, however, that seasonal volatility, including a late Thanksgiving, made it difficult adjusting the data for seasonal variations. Jobless claims fell for much of November. The labor market is strengthening, with nonfarm payrolls increasing solidly in October and November. The unemployment rate dropped to a five-year low of 7% in November.

The claims report showed the number of people still receiving benefits under regular state programs after an initial week of aid increased 40,000 to 2.79 million in the week ended November 30.

[Demeter]

34. EDUCATION OF A PRESIDENT

At University of Michigan, Ford became a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Omicron chapter) and washed dishes at his fraternity house to earn money for college expenses. Following his graduation in 1935 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics, he turned down contract offers from the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers of the National Football League to take a coaching position at Yale and apply to its law school. Ford continued to contribute to football and boxing, accepting an assistant coaching job for both at Yale in September 1935.

Ford hoped to attend Yale's law school beginning in 1935 while serving as boxing coach and assistant varsity football coach. Yale officials at first denied his admission to the law school, because of his full-time coaching responsibilities. He spent the summer of 1937 as a student at the University of Michigan Law School and was eventually admitted in spring 1938 to Yale Law School. Ford earned his LL.B. degree in 1941 (later amended to Juris Doctor), graduating in the top 25 percent of his class. His introduction to politics came in the summer of 1940 when he worked in Wendell Willkie's presidential campaign. While attending Yale Law School, he joined a group of students led by R. Douglas Stuart, Jr., and signed a petition to enforce the 1939 Neutrality Act. The petition was circulated nationally and was the inspiration for the America First Committee, a group determined to keep the U.S. out of World War II.

Ford graduated from law school in 1941, and was admitted to the Michigan bar shortly thereafter. In May 1941, he opened a Grand Rapids law practice with a friend, Philip W. Buchen, who would later serve as Ford's White House counsel. But overseas developments caused a change in plans, and Ford responded to the attack on Pearl Harbor by enlisting in the Navy.

[Demeter]

35. Lurid Subprime Scams Unveiled in Long-Running Fraud Trial By Matt Taibbi

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/lurid-subprime-scams-unveiled-in-long-running-fraud-trial-20131212


Lost amid the hoopla over JP Morgan Chase's record-setting $13 billion settlement this fall was news of another monster court resolution – a $2.46 billion judgment, the largest ever awarded after trial in a securities fraud class action case, handed down in October against a HSBC acquisition called Household International. It's an old case, with the trial completed way back in 2009 and the fraud in question having all taken place between 1997 and 2002. But it has crucial ramifications for the present, for one key reason:

The evidence uncovered in the Household suit should put to lie once and for all the oft-repeated myth – spread by many of America's most notable dumb people, from Rush Limbaugh to New York City Mayor-unelect Mike Bloomberg – that the financial crisis was caused by the government "forcing" banks to lend to poor people.

In reality, of course, the subprime bubble exploded because financial companies and banks were in a mad rush to get as many iffy borrowers into loans as quickly as possible – and not because they were forced to, but because they made assloads of money doing so. Nowhere was that more in evidence than in this case, Lawrence E. Jaffe Pension Plan v. Household International, Inc., et al., where a major trafficker in subprime and "alternative" mortgage products schemed in every conceivable way to get low-income, high-risk borrowers into as many dangerous mortgages and refinance deals as they could.

Thankfully, the principals in this case left behind a treasure trove of amazingly disgusting videos and internal memoranda showing in graphic detail an elaborate, company-wide plan to herd unsuspecting high-risk borrowers into bad loans. We can share some of that evidence here, with particular emphasis on the firm's "training videos," and I can pretty much guarantee that some readers may actually vomit with rage when they watch them.

VIDEOS AT LINK

FUEL FOR REVOLT

[Demeter]

36. JP Morgan facing $2bn fine for involvement in Madoff ponzi scheme

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/dec/12/jpmorgan-facing-2bn-fine-madoff-involvement?CMP=ema_565

...The bank has tentatively agreed to pay $2bn to settle allegations it failed to inform US authorities of the jailed fraudsters suspicious activity, according to people familiar with negotiations. A settlement deal with the Justice Department could come as early as next week...Madoff was arrested at his Manhattan penthouse five years ago this week after his $20bn scam came to light. JP Morgan was his bank for two decades and the US authorities suspect it continued to service his business even as it suspected something was wrong.

The fraudster himself predicted the bank would one day face a big fine. In a 2011 interview with the Financial Times he said: “JPMorgan doesn’t have a chance in hell of not coming up with a big settlement.” He claimed: “There were people at the bank who knew what was going on,” an assertion that JP Morgan has consistently claimed is false. According to court papers filed by Irving Picard, the trustee charged with recouping losses for Madoff’s victims, the bank had grave doubts about Madoff 18 months before his scam unwound. The documents quote one banker claiming Madoff’s “Oz-like signals” were difficult to ignore. The filings also quote a June 2007 email from a senior JP Morgan banker warning colleagues that another banker “just told me that there is a well-known cloud over the head of Madoff and that his returns are speculated to be part of a Ponzi scheme.” The bank filed a “suspicious activity” report with UK authorities in 2008 but did not take a similar step in the US.

JP Morgan has always denied wrongdoing and disputes Picard’s findings but this week chief executive Jamie Dimon signalled that a deal was in the offing and suggested it was easier for the bank to settle than to fight its corner in court. “You read about Madoff in the paper the other day. We have to get some of these things behind us so we can do our job,” he told a conference in New York on Wednesday, first reported by the Financial Times.

According to a report in the New York Times on Thursday, the settlement would include a so-called deferred-prosecution agreement. Such an agreement would list all of JP Morgan’s alleged criminal wrongdoings but stop short of an indictment as long as the bank acknowledges wrongdoing and pays the fines. The agreement would be the second time in a month that JP Morgan has been forced to acknowledge wrongdoing...If the fine comes before Christmas it will cap an annus horribilis for JP Morgan. Alongside the $13bn fine for its involvement in the subprime loan scandal, JP Morgan has:

paid $4.5bn in November to settle allegations it has mis-sold mortgage bonds to pension funds and other institutional investors;

paid $920m in September to settle US investigations into the “London Whale” trading scandal;

in the same month, paid another $390m in refunds and $80m in settlement for billing credit card customers for identity theft protection they did not receive;

paid $410m in penalties and repayments in July related to alleged manipulation of California and midwest electricity markets;

Investors, however, have largely discounted the historic scandals and the bank’s share price is currently close to a year high.

[Demeter]

37. Soothing Words on ‘Too Big to Fail,’ but With Little Meaning

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/12/11/soothing-words-on-too-big-to-fail-but-with-little-meaning/?hp&_r=1

Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said “Dodd-Frank ended ‘too big to fail’ as a matter of law.” This summer, President Obama’s new Treasury secretary, Jacob J. Lew, offered a financial reform litmus test: By the end of 2013, could we say with a straight face that we have solved the “too big to fail” problem? Last week, Mr. Lew gave a sweeping overview of the efforts to overhaul financial regulation. It was the talk of a man who has been practicing his straight face in the mirror.

To judge by his performance, one technique for remaining stone-faced is to recite platitudes. Mr. Lew told the attendees: “Going forward, we cannot be afraid to ask tough questions, with an open mind and without preconceived judgments.” That requires that “we must remain vigilant as emerging threats appear on the horizon.” He reassured us that “we have made tough choices, and very significant progress toward reforming our financial system.”

This is not the stuff of persuasion. Simply asserting that the financial system becomes safer as regulators complete Dodd-Frank rules does not make it so. To those who don’t think those rules go far enough, the administration offers little. More important, the claim frames the issue in a discouragingly limited fashion.

In his speech, Mr. Lew claimed that his test had been passed. He said, more than once, that “Dodd-Frank ended ‘too big to fail’ as a matter of law.” That may sound soothing, but it is empty of meaning. “Too big to fail” was never literally the law of the land. Therefore, it wasn’t something that Dodd-Frank excised. As long as there are gargantuan banks, Mr. Lew is left to make a faith-based argument that we can assume officials’ pre-battle boasts of courage will hold true as the fight is engaged. “Too big to fail” is a generally held assumption that some entities are so central and vital to our markets that they will be backstopped by the government. For starters, it requires expecting that government officials will have the stomach to unwind a failing bank with a multitrillion-dollar balance sheet and impose losses on shareholders and, if required, bondholders and other creditors...

LIKE THE WHOLE REST OF THE WORLD...MORE DETAIL AT LINK

[Demeter]

38. GERALD FORD'S MILITARY SERVICE

Ford received a commission as ensign in the U.S. Naval Reserve on April 13, 1942. On April 20, he reported for active duty to the V-5 instructor school at Annapolis, Maryland. After one month of training, he went to Navy Preflight School in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he was one of 83 instructors and taught elementary navigation skills, ordnance, gunnery, first aid and military drill. In addition, he coached in all nine sports that were offered, but mostly in swimming, boxing and football. During the one year he was at the Preflight School, he was promoted to Lieutenant Junior Grade on June 2, 1942, and to Lieutenant in March 1943.

Applying for sea duty, Ford was sent in May 1943 to the pre-commissioning detachment for the new aircraft carrier USS Monterey (CVL-26), at New York Shipbuilding Corporation, Camden, New Jersey. From the ship's commissioning on June 17, 1943, until the end of December 1944, Ford served as the assistant navigator, Athletic Officer, and antiaircraft battery officer on board the Monterey. While he was on board, the carrier participated in many actions in the Pacific Theater with the Third and Fifth Fleets in late 1943 and 1944. In 1943, the carrier helped secure Makin Island in the Gilberts, and participated in carrier strikes against Kavieng, New Ireland in 1943. During the spring of 1944, the Monterey supported landings at Kwajalein and Eniwetok and participated in carrier strikes in the Marianas, Western Carolines, and northern New Guinea, as well as in the Battle of the Philippine Sea.[30] After overhaul, from September to November 1944, aircraft from the Monterey launched strikes against Wake Island, participated in strikes in the Philippines and Ryukyus, and supported the landings at Leyte and Mindoro.

Although the ship was not damaged by Japanese forces, the Monterey was one of several ships damaged by the typhoon that hit Admiral William Halsey's Third Fleet on December 18–19, 1944. The Third Fleet lost three destroyers and over 800 men during the typhoon. The Monterey was damaged by a fire, which was started by several of the ship's aircraft tearing loose from their cables and colliding on the hangar deck. During the storm, Ford narrowly avoided becoming a casualty himself. As he was going to his battle station on the bridge of the ship in the early morning of December 18, the ship rolled twenty-five degrees, which caused Ford to lose his footing and slide toward the edge of the deck. The two-inch steel ridge around the edge of the carrier slowed him enough so he could roll, and he twisted into the catwalk below the deck. As he later stated, "I was lucky; I could have easily gone overboard."

Ford, serving as General Quarters Officer of the Deck, was ordered to go below to assess the raging fire. He did so safely, and reported his findings back to the ship’s commanding officer, Captain Stuart Ingersoll. The ship’s crew was able to contain the fire, and the ship got underway again.

After the fire the Monterey was declared unfit for service, and the crippled carrier reached Ulithi on December 21 before continuing across the Pacific to Bremerton, Washington where it underwent repairs. On December 24, 1944, at Ulithi, Ford was detached from the ship and sent to the Navy Pre-Flight School at Saint Mary's College of California, where he was assigned to the Athletic Department until April 1945. One of his duties was to coach football. From the end of April 1945 to January 1946, he was on the staff of the Naval Reserve Training Command, Naval Air Station, Glenview, Illinois as the Staff Physical and Military Training Officer. On October 3, 1945, he was promoted to Lieutenant Commander. In January 1946, he was sent to the Separation Center, Great Lakes to be processed out. He was released from active duty under honorable conditions on February 23, 1946. On June 28, 1946, the Secretary of the Navy accepted Ford's resignation from the Naval Reserve.

For his naval service, Gerald Ford earned the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with nine engagement stars for operations in the Gilbert Islands, Bismarck Archipelago, Marshall Islands, Asiatic and Pacific carrier raids, Hollandia, Marianas, Western Carolines, Western New Guinea, and the Leyte Operation. He also received the Philippine Liberation Medal with two bronze stars for Leyte and Mindoro, as well as the American Campaign and World War II Victory Medals.

Ford was a member of several civic organizations, including the Junior Chamber of Commerce (Jaycees), American Legion, AMVETS, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, Sons of the Revolution, and Veterans of Foreign Wars.

In 1992 the U.S. Navy Memorial Foundation awarded Ford its Lone Sailor Award for his naval service and his subsequent government service.

Gerald R. Ford was initiated into Freemasonry on September 30, 1949. He later said in 1975, "When I took my obligation as a master mason—incidentally, with my three younger brothers—I recalled the value my own father attached to that order. But I had no idea that I would ever be added to the company of the Father of our Country and 12 other members of the order who also served as Presidents of the United States."

[Demeter]

39. Alas, I must be going into that frozen wasteland for a bit

If I survive, I'll post more. Carry on, Weekenders!

[Fuddnik]

44. I've got to out into a wasteland myself.

I have to get some gardening and yard tools.

If you catch it right, Big Lots has some quality stuff at reasonable out of season prices. Unfortunately, there's a walmart in the same shopping center.

I broke the shovel, trying to transplant some ground cover, and the mattock handle removing a stump.

[bread_and_roses]

43. Waves hello and steals a line

"Ecosocialism or barbarism: There is no third way"

That's the header on a site I just came across while doing some research http://climateandcapitalism.com/

I haven't had time to read anything there yet - but I agree wholeheartedly with the header.

I hope you are all well ... I've just been busy and tired ....

Right now I am trying to write a skit that uses Scrooge, Cratchet, and Tiny Tim to excoriate Congress for not extending UI benefits and the looming probability that they'll cut food stamps. The concept is perfect but the execution ... trying to get across the point in about three minutes .... how do I get myself into these things? I am not a playwright.

I haven't been able to work on some writing of my own I want to do .... but no time to even read here either.

A most festive and abundant and happy holiday season to all of you if I don't have a chance to post again this year .... hope to be back and at least reading soon.

[Demeter]

46. me, neither

Take the original, and parodize it. That's the most effective way.

[Demeter]

47. Will Fed end 2013 with bang or whimper?

PROBABLY BOTH, DEPENDING ON WHICH END YOU'RE FACING

http://news.yahoo.com/fed-end-2013-bang-whimper-235505100--sector.html

The Federal Reserve holds the wild card for the U.S. stock market next week. Will the U.S. central bank now slow the pace of its stimulative bond buying as the economy's outlook begins to brighten or will it wait, setting the stage for stock investors' undreamed of gains to keep going?

Fed policymakers gather for the last time in 2013 for a two-day meeting that concludes on Wednesday. Many investors are still expecting the Fed to delay scaling back its $85-billion-a-month bond buying program until early next year. But recent developments suggest a December move by the Fed is at least in the realm of possibilities. Those developments include a stronger-than-expected November jobs report, a U.S. budget deal in Washington and the latest signs of tame inflation. A decision to begin scaling back quantitative easing now is "potentially the largest factor for the market in the near term," said Robert McIver, co-portfolio manager of the Jensen Quality Growth Fund in Lake Oswego, Oregon. "The very thought of it has had a very negative reaction in the market," so a period of consolidation is likely to follow, he said. Indeed, stocks logged their worst week in nearly four months this week.

The Fed's ultra-loose money policy, adopted more than four years ago, has helped lift the Standard & Poor's 500 index 24 percent so far this year...

MORE HAND-WRINGING AT LINK

[Demeter]

48. U.S. finalizes Volcker rule, curbing Wall Street's risky trades

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/11/us-financial-regulation-volcker-idUSBRE9B705120131211

U.S. banks will no longer be able to make big trading bets with their own money after regulators finalized on Tuesday a rule shutting down what was a hugely profitable business for Wall Street before the credit crisis.

The measure known as the Volcker rule was a late addition to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law and seeks to ensure that banks can't make speculative trades that are so large and risky that they threaten individual firms or the wider financial system.

Banks had hoped to substantially soften the rule, but JPMorgan's $6 billion trading loss in 2012, dubbed the "London Whale" because of the huge positions the bank took in credit markets, motivated regulators to devise a tough version.

After more than two years crafting the complex reform, five regulatory agencies signed off on the roughly 900-page rule with new narrower exemptions for legitimate trades...

[Demeter]

49. SEC plans to take more cases to trial despite losses

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/12/us-usa-sec-trials-idUSBRE9BB1C920131212

Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White says her team will not shy away from high-stakes trials, and not just strike settlements with wrongdoers, but a string of recent court setbacks shows she has her work cut out for her.

On Tuesday, a federal judge in California rejected a securities fraud case brought by the SEC and said the agency had "not carried its burden of proof" against two former senior executives at Basin Water Inc who were accused of fraudulently boosting their company's revenue.

That defeat came one week after a Kansas jury cleared Stephen Kovzan, an executive at technology company NIC Inc. The SEC had accused him of concealing a payment of more than $1.18 million used to fund perks for the then-CEO, including vacations, clothing, houses, spa treatments and a luxury car. But a jury disagreed and rejected all of the SEC's claims.

The most high-profile defeat this year came in October, when a Texas jury cleared billionaire Mark Cuban, owner of the National Basketball Association's Dallas Mavericks, of insider-trading charges brought by the SEC. After the verdict, Cuban slammed the SEC attorneys who tried the case...

MORE

[xchrom]

50. Tepid Welcome: Germany Struggles to Lure Skilled Workers

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/skilled-immigrant-workers-face-obstacles-in-german-labor-market-a-938519.html


At first glance, immigrating to Germany seemed rather straightforward to Enio Alburez. When the engineer from Guatemala heard last spring that he could acquire a visa to look for work in Germany, he booked a flight to Berlin and went to the German embassy in Guatemala City.

There, Alburez asked for the special visa -- but the embassy staff members merely shrugged their shoulders. They had never heard of the "jobseeker visa," which has existed since August 2012 for non-EU citizens, but promised to look into the matter. A week went by, then another. For six long weeks, Alburez waited in vain for news from the embassy. Then the 25-year-old, who had learned German at the Austrian School in Guatemala, traveled to Germany as a tourist. After all, his flight was booked.

When he arrived in Berlin, he was contacted by the embassy in Guatemala: The jobseeker visa had now been approved, they said, but unfortunately Alburez had to fly back to Guatemala to have it glued into his passport. Without the visa, he says, he had no chance of receiving a residence or work permit in Germany.

"It was pretty crazy that I had to explain to the embassy staff what opportunities existed in Germany," says Alburez. So he flew back to Guatemala City, picked up his jobseeker visa from the German embassy and returned to Berlin. He applied to a number of companies and received an offer from the automotive supplier Continental in Hanover. He rented an apartment and exchanged his visa for a long-term residence permit.

[Demeter]

51. POST-WAR PRESIDENT

On October 15, 1948, at Grace Episcopal Church in Grand Rapids, Ford married Elizabeth Bloomer Warren (1918–2011), a department store fashion consultant. Warren had been a John Robert Powers fashion model and a dancer in the auxiliary troupe of the Martha Graham Dance Company. She had previously been married to and divorced from William G. Warren.

At the time of his engagement, Ford was campaigning for what would be his first of thirteen terms as a member of the United States House of Representatives. The wedding was delayed until shortly before the elections because, as The New York Times reported in a 1974 profile of Betty Ford, "Jerry was running for Congress and wasn't sure how voters might feel about his marrying a divorced ex-dancer."

The couple had four children:

Michael Gerald, born in 1950
John Gardner, known as Jack, born in 1952
Steven Meigs, born in 1956
Susan Elizabeth, born in 1957

House of Representatives



A billboard for Ford's 1948 Congressional Campaign

After returning to Grand Rapids, Ford became active in local Republican politics, and supporters urged him to take on Bartel J. Jonkman, the incumbent Republican congressman. Military service had changed his view of the world.

"I came back a converted internationalist", Ford wrote, "and of course our congressman at that time was an avowed, dedicated isolationist. And I thought he ought to be replaced. Nobody thought I could win. I ended up winning two to one."

During his first campaign in 1948, Ford visited voters at their doorsteps and as they left the factories where they worked. Ford also visited local farms where in one instance, a wager resulted in Ford spending two weeks milking cows following his election victory. Ford was known to his colleagues in the House as a "Congressman's Congressman".

Ford was a member of the House of Representatives for 25 years, holding the Grand Rapids congressional district seat from 1949 to 1973. It was a tenure largely notable for its modesty. As an editorial in The New York Times described him, Ford "saw himself as a negotiator and a reconciler, and the record shows it: he did not write a single piece of major legislation in his entire career." Appointed to the House Appropriations Committee two years after being elected, he was a prominent member of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. Ford described his philosophy as "a moderate in domestic affairs, an internationalist in foreign affairs, and a conservative in fiscal policy."

In the early 1950s, Ford declined offers to run for both the Senate and the Michigan governorship. Rather, his ambition was to become Speaker of the House.

[Demeter]

52. Google execs saved millions on private jet flights using cheaper Nasa fuel

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/12/nasa-fuel-saves-google-execs-millions-private-jet-flights?CMP=ema_565

Google's executives have been getting cheap flights for their private planes due to a "misunderstanding" that led Google to buy fuel from from the US space agency Nasa at cut prices, according to a report from Nasa's inspector general. Now the company may have to compensate Nasa, after the report from Nasa's top lawyer noted that the arrangement had "engendered a sense of unfairness and a perception of favouritism", and recommended it explore "possible options to remedy this situation".

Since 2007, Nasa's Ames Research Centre, the administration's home in Silicon Valley, has been leasing space in one of its aircraft hangers to H211, a private company which manages the planes owned and leased by Google execs Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt - comprising a Boeing 757 and 767, three Gulfstream 5 private jets and a Dassult alpha jet (classified by aircraft books as a "light attack jet&quot . The company bought the Dassult jet in 2008 specifically so that it could fulfil the terms of its lease at Ames. Under the deal, H211 allows the Dassult jet to be borrowed by Nasa for no charge to conduct scientific research. But the company fuels all its planes for both private and Nasa-related flights with aviation fuel provided by the US Department of Defence (DoD). While the DoD charges a higher rate to non-DOD entities such as Nasa and its contractors, that rate still excludes state and local taxes and other fees that H211 would have paid at local airports. The fuel was supplied for between $3.05 and $3.81 per gallon, compared to $7.01 and $7.44 per gallon at "retail" prices on the airport in 2012.

The report finds that: "A misunderstanding between Ames and DLA-Energy personnel rather than intentional misconduct led to H211 enjoying the discounted fuel rate for flights that had no NASA-related mission." The only "victims", it says, are the state of California and local government which "may have lost tax revenue" from the fuel purchases, and any commercial supplier which missed out on profit from the fuel sales.

"While this arrangement did not cause a loss to Nasa or DLA-Energy, it resulted in considerable savings for H211. Specifically, we calculated that since inception of its lease H211 paid approximately $3.3m to $5.3m less for fuel supplied by DLA-Energy than it would have paid to buy fuel at market rates." Since September 2013, H211 has been paying a market rate for fuel it purchases for private flights. The difference goes to the US Treasury.

YEAH, SURE, THAT'S WHAT THEY ALL SAY

[Demeter]

53. Global exchange trade group launches cyber security committee

I SUGGEST THEY HIRE EDWARD SNOWDEN

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/12/12/exchanges-cybersecurity-idUKL1N0JQ1KA20131212

The World Federation of Exchanges on Thursday launched a cyber security committee made up of members from dozens of exchanges and clearing houses to collaborate on finding the most effective ways to protect the global capital markets from cyber crime. The Cyber Security Working Group will be chaired by Mark Graff, chief information security officer, at Nasdaq OMX Group and vice-chaired by Jerry Perullo, who heads information security at IntercontinentalExchange Group.

"We are tasked with a significant goal: to build universal best practices and partner with third-parties to combat systemic cyber abuse to ensure the resiliency and strength of our capital markets," Graff said in a statement.

Around half of the world's securities exchanges were the target of cyber-attacks last year, according to a paper released in July by the World Federation of Exchanges Office and the research department of the International Organization of Securities Commissions. The prevalence of attacks along with the interconnected nature of the markets creates the potential for widespread systemic impacts, the groups said.

In addition to developing cyber security best practices, the new committee will focus on principles such as facilitating information sharing, including threat intelligence, attack trends, and useful policies, standards and technologies, the WFE said. The committee will also seek to open a dialogue with policy markers, regulators and government organizations on cyber threats.

Other exchanges and clearing houses with representatives in the committee include the Australian Securities Exchange, BM&F BOVESPA, CME Group, Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, Saudi Stock Exchange, Singapore Exchange Ltd SIX Swiss Exchange, and TMX Group.

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54. The Transformation of America's Energy Economy

In a ground-breaking move, voters in Boulder, Colorado, approved an initiative to end their relationship with Xcel Energy, a utility with $10.7 billion in revenues, thus clearing the way for the city to form its own municipal utility that would lower rates and make greater use of renewable energy.

Opponents of the effort had themselves put the question on the ballot in order to block measures by the city council. They also tried through a second initiative to hamstring the city from issuing enough bonds to be able to afford the purchase of Xcel’s facilities.

During the fierce battle that attracted national attention, corporate executives and their allies argued that the city had neither the money nor the expertise to manage such a complex enterprise. Advocates for the municipal utility, including New Era Colorado Foundation, fought back with a crowd-funding campaign that raised more than three times their financial goal. In a landslide, two-thirds of voters supported the idea of bringing the utility under public control and then rejected the borrowing limits designed to kill the deal by a similar margin.

Though the utility industry has gone through a wave of consolidation over the last two decades, they are starting to show the strains of technological, economic, and political change. Municipal utilities are far more common than most people are aware, with more than 1000 already functioning in the United States, serving 50 million customers, a population greater than the size of Spain. Most of these entities are owned by cities, and controlled by panels of local citizens. Some are even cooperatives owned by their members...


http://truth-out.org/news/item/20564-the-transformation-of-americas-energy-economy

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55. Are Economic Royalists Leading the US Over a Precipice?

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/20624-are-economic-royalists-leading-the-us-over-a-precipice

BOOK EXCERPT--HISTORY OF ALEC SINCE 1073, DISGUSTING.

MUST READ!

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56. CAMPERS HELP AMAZON KEEP UP WITH HOLIDAY RUSH

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SANTAS_CAMPERS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-12-14-18-53-33

CAMPBELLSVILLE, Ky. (AP) -- Twinkling lights, ornament-strewn trees and bustling campgrounds. Those are signs of the Christmas season in this Kentucky town, where the Amazon.com distribution center recruits an armada of RV owners as seasonal workers to help fill holiday orders.

They're dubbed the "CamperForce" by the world's largest online retailer. Hundreds of campers are assigned packing, sorting and collection duties at Amazon warehouses in Kentucky, Kansas and Nevada - roles meant to keep orders flowing during the yuletide rush.

Swarms of workers take up temporary residence in campgrounds. For many, it's another short-term stint on a nonstop journey. It's a lifestyle and mindset for retirees, empty nesters and younger parents who shuck traditions of home and work to roam from campsite to campsite, job to job.

"It's a job, it's not a career, so you don't have to take it so seriously," said Ron Dale, a college graduate with a business degree. "Go and have a good time. ... You don't have the stress of thinking, `I've got to perform at an unbelievable level. I've got to work extra hours so the boss knows I'm dedicated.'"

[DemReadingDU]

57. University of Cincinnati Sues Crayola over Patent Infringement

12/13/13 University of Cincinnati Sues Crayola over Patent Infringement

The University of Cincinnati is dragging the toy company, Crayola, to federal court for employing its patented technology into its popular products - Glow Board, Glow Dome and Glow Book. The University officials claim that the light-source invention was created by the school's optical-physics researchers.

Through the lawsuit, the school is urging Crayola to stop using the technology and is seeking financial damages for 'willfully' breaching on the school's patent. "To protect our faculty who pursue useful research, and the taxpayers who support them, the university will take action to defend the rightful ownership of our intellectual property," the university officials said in a statement, Dispatch reports.

Mike DeWine, Ohio Attorney General, filed the lawsuit on behalf of the university in U.S. District Court in Columbus on Monday.

Crayola, famous for its signature crayons, has been in business for nearly 110 years. It has evolved into a larger franchise with the introduction of unique products to meet the growing needs of kids. Its glow products allow users to draw with markers on reusable surfaces that glow in the dark.

For the holiday season, the Crayola has introduced See Thru Light Designer for $22.99. Children, below six, can make use of the reusable transparent panels to create art work and then animate it with 7 different light effect combinations. Children can also place their toys, pictures or people behind the panels and produce various animated creations.

Another product is the Crayola Marker Maker for $19 that helps kids create custom colors, labels and packaging. The kit comes with three different ink colors, beakers and plastic tubes to help make custom markers.

http://www.universityherald.com/articles/6185/20131213/university-cincinnati-sues-crayola-over-patent-infringement.htm

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58. The EU Has Suspended Trade Talks With Ukraine

http://www.businessinsider.com/eu-ukraine-talks-2013-12

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union said on Sunday it was suspending further work with Ukraine on an ambitious trade and cooperation agreement because the government in Kiev had failed to give a clear commitment to signing the deal.
EU enlargement chief Stefan Fuele said on Twitter that the words and deeds of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich and his government on the proposed trade pact with the EU were "further and further apart. Their arguments have no grounds in reality."

Fuele said he had told Ukraine's first deputy prime minister Serhiy Arbuzov in Brussels last Thursday that further discussion on the trade agreement was conditional on a clear commitment by Kiev to sign it, but he had received no response.

As a result, work on the agreement was "on hold", he said.

Kiev had been expected to sign the agreement at a summit last month, but Yanukovich turned his back on the accord at the last minute in favor of closer ties with Moscow, leading to mass protests in Kiev.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/eu-ukraine-talks-2013-12#ixzz2nYEKdoCx

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59. 3 New Technologies That Will Force Laws To Be Totally Rewritten

http://www.businessinsider.com/technology-laws-2013-12

1. Bitcoin
The government cares a lot about its money, especially when it can be converted into Bitcoin, the digital anonymous currency, and taken off the radar to be sent anywhere without anyone's identity attached to it.

The Feds are still figuring out how to address Bitcoin. In the meantime, many marketplaces legitimate and illegitimate alike will gladly take the currency as payment for everything from socks to drugs.

2. Commercial drones
Commercial drone use was catapulted to the public's attention with Amazon's surprising announcement that it's been experimenting with package delivery by unmanned aerial vehicle.

But here's the thing – there's no legal framework in the United States for businesses to make use of drones with the government's blessing. The FAA is on record as saying that it will be drawing up rules for such use cases, and when that happens, it'll shake up a number of industries. Obviously the aforementioned package deliveries can be handled much more swiftly and cheaply when there's not a human responsible for getting it to your door, but farmers can use them to dust crops, and companies in Australia are even using them to put out bush fires.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/technology-laws-2013-12#ixzz2nYFF5VRe

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60. Swiss banker in eye of U.S. tax evasion storm to face court

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/12/15/uk-banker-extradition-tax-idUKBRE9BC0KE20131215

(Reuters) - For years, former top Swiss banker Raoul Weil had U.S. charges for allegedly helping rich Americans avoid tax hanging over him.

Now that he is due to appear in a Florida court on Monday, his lawyer says he is looking forward to confronting them.

His trial, on charges he denies, will offer a respite from the shared cell in the tough Italian jail where the ex-head of wealth management at UBS (UBSN.VX) was held after his arrest in October on a visit from Switzerland.

It may also unmask more Americans hiding money from the tax authorities, cast a new spotlight on UBS and encourage other banks to hand over information to the United States and European countries also chasing tax avoiders.

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61. Exclusive - Euro zone to share costs of bank closures gradually : proposal

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/12/15/uk-eu-banks-closures-idUKBRE9BD0EN20131215

(Reuters) - The cost of closing down a euro zone bank will initially be borne almost fully by its home country, but the obligations of euro zone partners will gradually rise to be shared equitably after 10 years, under the terms of an EU proposal seen by Reuters on Saturday.

The proposal, prepared by Lithuania which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, will be discussed at an extraordinary meeting of senior EU officials in Brussels on Monday, December 16.

Separately, several European finance ministers and senior EU officials will meet again in Berlin on Monday to try to make further headway on a compromise for rules to wind down stricken banks, senior euro zone sources told Reuters on Sunday.

The meeting will, in essence, include the same group of finance ministers and senior officials who met in Berlin on December 6, the sources said.

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62. This Week in ‘Nation’ History: How Janet Yellen Can Turn the Fed to the Left

http://www.care2.com/causes/why-is-there-so-much-trouble-at-national-zoo.html

Next week’s all-but-certain confirmation of Janet Yellen as Federal Reserve chair presents a crucial opportunity to implement bold, progressive ideas in an institution that has for too long done too little to combat the vast economic inequalities in American society. As The Nation’s longtime national affairs correspondent William Greider wrote in our October 7, 2013 issue, Yellen “well understands that much deeper change must be considered to get the economy back in balance.”

Should the new chair need additional ideas as to what exactly should be changed at the Fed, Greider’s articles in The Nation over the past decade would be a helpful place to start.

In “The One-Eyed Chairman: How Greenspan Has Pushed the Right’s Agenda” (September 19, 2005), Greider lambasted the outgoing chairman’s partisanship, irresponsibility and betrayal of ordinary Americans. It is amazing to read Greider’s warnings, years before the 2008 crash, about the inevitable failure of Greenspan’s policies and the implications that would have for the broader deregulatory ideology of which he was for several decades perhaps the most prominent champion. (Greenspan would concede as much with his famous admission in October 2008 that there was “a flaw in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works.”)

Beware of economic policy-makers who go to extremes in defense of ideological convictions. Essentially, that is the nature of Greenspan’s grave failure. The real world did not cooperate with his right-wing beliefs, but he persisted anyway. In the hydraulics of monetary policy, his posture set in motion deep waves of economic extremes: fabulous personal wealth alongside a deeply indebted populace; extraordinary corporate profits alongside stagnant wages and surplus labor; too much capital and not enough consumer demand. These exaggerated waves, and some others, are still sloshing back and forth in the US economy. They will for years ahead, with more crises to come. Greenspan collected much praise for his swift and daring rescue missions—the nimble fireman rushing from blaze to blaze, putting out fires before they destroyed the economy. What many people did not understand is that it was Greenspan who lit the match.

In 2009, as the Obama administration was reeling from aftereffects of the crash, Greider wrote “Dismantling the Temple: How to Fix the Federal Reserve” (August 3/10, 2009), which outlined a plan for a more democratic, more transparent, and more effective Federal Reserve.

A reconstituted central bank might keep the famous name and presidentially appointed governors, confirmed by Congress, but it would forfeit the mystique and submit to the usual standards of transparency and public scrutiny. The institution would be directed to concentrate on the Fed’s one great purpose—making monetary policy and controlling credit expansion to produce balanced economic growth and stable money. Most regulatory functions would be located elsewhere, in a new enforcement agency that would oversee regulated commercial banks as well as the “shadow banking” of hedge funds, private equity firms and others.

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63. How a Simple Idea to Rein In Banks Got Supersized

http://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/the-volcker-rule/

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines “speculation” in 31 words. The key ones are “risk of a large loss.” When Paul Volcker, the former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman, proposed banning speculation by federally insured banks to reduce risk to the world economy, he did it in one paragraph. Four years later, the nation’s regulators issued a final rule based on Volcker’s proposal. It runs close to 100 pages, with hundreds more in supporting material — and no one is quite sure how it will be enforced. It’s a lesson in how complicated simplifying Wall Street can be.

The Situation

Dodd-Frank reforms of 2010. Even as draft rules were being fought over, many banks shut down the desks they used for trades that were solely for their own account, what’s known as proprietary trading. Banks do other kinds of trading that can also make them money, or lose it. One involves the steady stream of securities banks buy, sell and hold so their customers can always buy what they want to buy and sell what they want to sell, an activity called market-making. Another involves trades to offset the risks of a bank’s own transactions, known as hedging. The rule approved Dec. 10 is more lenient on market-making and tougher on hedging than was originally proposed: Regulators grew wary after JPMorgan Chase’s $6.2 billion London Whale loss, which many saw as closer to gambling than to a hedge. Now Wall Street is waiting to see how regulators decide to enforce the rules. The responsibility is split between five agencies with very different agendas. Some care most about keeping markets working smoothly, while others worry most about keeping banks from blowing themselves up.

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64. Manhattan Apartment Rents Drop for a Third Straight Month

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-11/manhattan-apartment-rents-drop-for-a-third-straight-month.html

Manhattan apartment rents fell for a third month in November and the vacancy rate reached the highest in at least seven years, signs the market is weakening amid a spike in homebuying and the lure of leasing in Brooklyn.

The median monthly rent in Manhattan dropped 3 percent from a year earlier to $3,100, according to a report today by appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate. The vacancy rate climbed to 2.8 percent, the highest since the firms began tracking the data in August 2006.

Rents had been climbing for almost two years and approaching the 2006 peak of $3,265 a month before they began to slide in September. Manhattan home purchases jumped to a six-year high in the third quarter as buyers rushed to make deals before rising mortgage rates pushed costs higher, Miller Samuel and Douglas Elliman said. Sales of one-bedroom units reached a 15-year high, suggesting an influx of first-time buyers.

“With the scare about rising mortgage rates, it poached a lot of demand from the rental market,” Jonathan Miller, president of New York-based Miller Samuel, said in an interview. “On top of that, what else is poaching demand from the Manhattan rental market is Brooklyn.”