Tuesday, May 14, 2013

讀書壓力太大‧河南高中生買兇殺父姐

(中國‧鄭州14日訊)不堪讀書壓力太大,河南一名高中生竟雇兇殺害自己的父親與姐姐。
據河南省週口市公安局週一通報,星期日凌晨在家中遇害的河南省週口市鹿邑縣法院原院長高天峰(49歲),乃被兒子雇兇殺害。
同時遇害的還有高天峰的20歲左右女兒。
據介紹,命案大約發生在星期日2時許,兩名體態較瘦的青年男子翻墻進入高天峰家中,兩人均戴帽子,各拿一個包裹。隨後高天峰的鄰居聽到有異樣的聲音報警。行兇者作案後翻墻而逃,現場留下血跡。
這起重大刑事案件發生後,週口市公安局成立專案組全力偵破此案。目前,3名犯罪嫌疑人中,2名已經抓獲,另有1人在逃。抓獲的2名犯罪嫌疑人中,一人為高天峰的兒子。
據初步調查,高天峰的兒子就讀於河南省漯河市某高中,由姐姐陪讀。由於姐姐陪讀期間管教過於嚴格,高天峰的兒子遂雇傭兩名網民將自己的父親和姐姐殺害。
(星洲日報/國際)

47年來首次‧緬總統將訪美

(緬甸‧仰光14日訊)緬甸官方電視台週一宣佈,緬甸總統吳登盛即將正式訪問美國,這是緬甸國家元首近47年來首次訪問華盛頓。
不過,報導並沒有說明吳登盛訪問美國的確實日期。
緬甸政府官員向法新社表示,他們知道這項訪問計劃,但不知確實日期。
這是自美國時任總統的約翰遜在1966年邀請當時的緬甸軍方領導人尼溫訪問華盛頓以來,首位緬甸領導人訪美。
在去年,隨著美國官員,包括時任國務卿的希拉里到緬甸進行一系列訪問後,吳登盛去年曾到訪紐約,在聯合國大會上發表演說。
自從吳登盛開始在緬甸推行政治和經濟改革以來,緬甸與美國的關係大為改善,而吳登盛到訪華盛頓將是緬甸重返國際舞台的又一個里程碑。
吳登盛也讓反對黨領袖昂山舒吉當選國會議員,這是舒吉經歷20年的軟禁後的一大轉捩點。
西方取消了大部份對緬甸的制裁,以回應緬甸的改革。
美國的大公司可口可樂與通用電器等,也開始進軍緬甸,以期分享經濟發展。
(星洲日報/國際)

Oil prices slip as IEA highlights ‘supply shock’


IEA outlook, U.S. supply data on tap

By Carla Mozee and Sara Sjolin, MarketWatch
LONDON (MarketWatch) — Benchmark U.S. crude-oil futures reversed and slipped below $95 a barrel on Tuesday, after the International Energy Agency said strong oil production in the U.S. is expected to outpace the demand in high-growth emerging markets.
Crude oil for June delivery CLM3 -0.45%  dropped 31 cents, or 0.3%, to $94.86 a barrel.

Bloomberg News Enlarge Image
Oil tankers off the coast of Singapore.
The move added to Monday’s loss of 87 cents, or 0.9%, on the New York Mercantile Exchange, where the contract settled at $95.17 a barrel, the lowest since May 2.
The contract started to move lower during early European trading hours, after the International Energy Agency said the oil market is undergoing a positive supply shock, as production in North America continues to grow at a record pace, with non-OPEC supply alone expected to meet most of the world’s rising energy demand.
The agency maintained its supply forecast that non-OPEC production will rise by 1.1 million barrels a day, which has led to lower demand estimates for crude oil from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in the second quarter.
“The supply shock created by a surge in North American oil production will be as transformative to the market over the next five years as was the rise of Chinese demand over the last 15,” the IEA said in its annual Medium-Term Oil Market Report.
In the same vein, a report showed Monday that oil production from OPEC rose by 250,000 barrels a day in April from a month earlier to 30.5 million barrels per day, according to a Platts survey of OPEC and other oil-industry officials and analysts.
The survey showed production is running about 500,000 barrels a day above the cartel’s 30 million barrel-per-day output ceiling.
The IEA report came ahead of the American Petroleum Institute’s publication of its weekly report on U.S. crude-oil supply. The API’s report will be followed by supply data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration on Wednesday.

Falling gas prices boost retail sales

Falling gasoline prices allow U.S. consumers to spend more at other retail locations in April, a sign shoppers may be gaining confidence about the economic recovery. Photo: AP.
Analysts polled by Platts expect crude stockpiles to continue to push to record levels, with an expected build of 300,000 barrels in the week ended May 10. U.S. commercial crude stocks were at 395.514 million barrels for the week ended May 3, more than 9% higher than the EIA’s five-year average, Platts said in a statement.
Also, gasoline stocks are expected to have declined 800,000 barrels last week, while distillate stocks likely rose by 800,000 barrels.
Elsewhere in the energy complex on Tuesday, London-traded benchmark Brent crude oil for June UK:LCOM3 -0.50%  was down 1 cent at $102.68 a barrel.
Meanwhile, natural gas for June delivery NGM13 +1.20%  edged up 2 cents, or 0.4%, to $3.94 per million British thermal units.
June heating oil HOM3 -0.67% was slightly lower at $2.88 a gallon, and June gasoline RBM3 +0.14%  added less than 1 cent, or 0.1%, to $2.82 a gallon.
Carla Mozee is a reporter for MarketWatch, based in Los Angeles. Follow her on Twitter @MWMozee. Sara Sjolin is a MarketWatch reporter based in London. Follow her on Twitter @sarasjolin.

Market Optimists See More Gains for Wall Street

With the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Standard & Poor's 500 index setting another string of record closing highs last week, the old Wall Street adage – "Sell in May and Go Away" – is starting to look weak.
Closing out the second week of May, the S&P 500 is up 2.3 percent for the month. For the year, the benchmark index gained a stunning 14.6 percent.
Some analysts say that when the market starts off this strong, it tends to keep the upward momentum going until the end of the year.
"Instead of 'Sell in May and Go Away,' we may be setting up for a surprise May rally," said Ryan Detrick, senior technical analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research in Cincinnati, Ohio.
"What's encouraging is that small-cap stocks have been outperforming the market recently. It's a sign that the market is going for even the riskiest sectors."
Both the Dow industrials and the S&P 500 topped major milestones for the first time in early May, with the Dow Jones industrial average surpassing 15,000 and the S&P 500 breaking through the 1,600 mark. Since then, the indexes have been steadily holding above the landmark levels. The Nasdaq Composite Index has climbed to the highest closing levels in 12-1/2 years.
In a sign of the rally's breadth, the Russell 2000 index of mid- and small-cap stocks also hit all-time highs recently.
Technical analysts say the next level to watch would be 1,660 on the S&P 500.
"The main question is whether the bulls can maintain the 1,600 level on the S&P 500 for another week," said Ari Wald, a technical analyst at PrinceRidge Group, a New York-based investment bank.
"If it does, the next level is 1,660. But with markets already this high, it won't be easy."
Despite lingering concerns about a technical pullback, the market's strong performance so far this year has also increased the chances of equities rallying throughout the year, according to some analysts.
"With the market up so much, can it continue to make gains over the next seven months through year end? At least based on history, it has a better chance of continuing higher during strong years than when it is not up significantly," Bespoke Investment Group analysts wrote in a note to clients.
Bespoke noted that this year is only the 11th-best start to a year since 1991, when the index gained another 9.7 percent for the rest of the year.
If 2013 plays out like that - with another 9.7 percent gain in store for the S&P 500 - the broad index would finish the year up a whopping 24.3 percent.
LAGGARDS PLAY CATCH-UP
Among recent gainers, sectors closely tied to economic growth such as technology and financial stocks have been catching up after lagging for most of the year.
"We are seeing the once beaten-down stocks making a comeback," Wald said. "It's been sort of a rotation of leadership that has been taking place for a month or so. It will be interesting to see if this can last" into next week.
The S&P financial sector index is up about 2 percent for the month, while the S&P information technology sector is up about 3 percent.
For some perspective, the tech sector has a way to go, when compared with defensive sectors like utilities. The S&P utility sector index is up more than 13 percent for the year, while the S&P info tech sector index rose less than 8 percent.

CONSUMER IN THE DRIVER'S SEAT
The American consumer will get Wall Street's attention this week when a raft of economic data and retailers' earnings could shed some light on whether they shopped for more than just the bare necessities.
Retail sales for April will be released on Monday by the U.S. Commerce Department.
"It (retail sales) will be a chance to look at the real picture after weak numbers last month on sequestration and other (external) factors," said Karyn Cavanaugh, a market strategist at ING U.S. Investment Management in New York.
"The market is driven by good fundamentals from corporate earnings, but it's really the consumers that take up 70 percent of our economy. They are a real game changer."
Other economic data on tap includes April import and export prices on Tuesday, followed on Wednesday by the U.S. Producer Price Index for April, the Empire State Index for May, industrial production and capacity utilization for April, and the National Association of Home Builders Index for May.
On Thursday, the economic agenda includes the U.S. Consumer Price index for April, housing starts for April, weekly jobless claims and the Philadelphia Fed's survey for May.
Wall Street will get a look at consumer sentiment on Friday, when the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers will release its preliminary reading for May.
On the earnings front, a number of retailers are scheduled to report results, including Macy's Inc on Wednesday. Results from J.C. Penney Co Inc, Nordstrom Inc, Kohl's Corp and Wal-Mart are expected on Thursday.
With 89 percent of the S&P 500 companies having reported earnings so far, 66.7 percent have topped profit expectations, above the average of 63 percent since 1994. However, only 46.4 percent have beaten revenue expectations, well under the average of 62 percent since 2002.
© 2013 Thomson/Reuters. All rights reserved.

U.S. hedge fund calls for Sony Entertainment spin-off

TOKYO (Reuters) - A New York-based hedge fund with a reputation as an activist investor has proposed that Sony Corp spin off its entertainment division via an IPO, saying the move could boost the Japanese electronics firm's shares by as much as 60 percent.
An IPO of Sony Entertainment, which includes one of Hollywood's leading film studios and one of the world's biggest music labels, would generate funds for Sony's electronics business and help reduce its debt held by the electronics company, Third Point said.
Third Point, a $13 billion hedge fund founded by billionaire investor Daniel Loeb, said it would put up 150-200 billion yen ($1.5-$2 billion) to support a public offering for Sony Entertainment.
The hedge fund, in a letter to Sony Chief Executive Kazuo Hirai, has recommended Sony sell a 15-20 percent stake by offering subscription rights to existing Sony shareholders.
"Our plan shifts that paradigm and we believe, if managed properly, it could result in as much as 60 percent upside to Sony's share price," Third Point said in a statement.
An official at Sony said its entertainment businesses are important growth contributors and are not for sale.
Third Point said it is the largest owner of Sony, holding shares worth 115 billion yen ($1.13 billion). Sony currently has a market value of close to $18.5 billion.
Loeb is one of the most closely watched hedge fund managers in the $2.25 trillion industry. His fund is known for building a sizeable position in distressed Greek government bonds last year and investing heavily in Yahoo shares.
Third Point's flagship hedge fund gained 1.4 percent in April, pushing returns to 10.5 percent for the year, according to an investor note reviewed by Reuters.
($1 = 101.7450 Japanese yen)
(Reporting by Nathan Layne, Emi Emoto and Chikafumi Hodo; Editing by Edwina Gibbs and Ian Geoghegan)

Regulation Nation - No Money and Going Out Of Business? You Need License To Close! | XRepublic

Regulation Nation - No Money and Going Out Of Business? You Need License To Close! | XRepublic

Saxo Bank CEO On The ‘Eurozone Minefield’: “This Crisis Will Not Pass”

Europe - Satellite image - PlanetObserver
Europe – Satellite image  (Photo credit: PlanetObserver)
“[Europe] is a politicial experiment gone wrong. The experiment was to see if Europeans could be forced into an even closer union – despite their wishes – by economic means, because the political means failed.” In this brief clip, Lars Seier Christensen, co-CEO and co-founder of Saxo Bank, tells an audience at the Saxo #FXDebates in London that the eurozone will eventually break up as Brussels claims even more power from nation states. He warns investors that Cyprus was indeed a template for bail ins and that outright confiscatory wealth taxes, disguised as solidarity payments, could be used to raise funds. “The governments of Europe need money, and the private sector has it. It is as simple as that. Be very paranoid,” he said, warning investors that the mattress may be a safer place to deposit money over the weekend than their bank accounts. “Frankly, it is a complete mess. And it is a mess that gets worse and worse every day,” is how the outspoken truthiness begins, adding, “anyone with a rational view of the world now sees the currency collaboration as a historic failure that can lead to even further fatal consequences for Europe and the continent’s competitiveness vis-à-vis the rest of the world.”

Most U.S. Stocks Fall After Record Highs Amid Sales Data


Most U.S. stocks fell, after benchmark indexes climbed to record levels last week, even as government data showed retail sales unexpectedly rose in April.



Yum! Brands Inc. fell 2.1 percent after the owner of the KFC and Pizza Hut dining chains reported a slump in April sales in China. Corning Inc. (GLW) climbed 0.9 percent as analysts raised their recommendation for the shares. Theravance Inc. rose 18 percent after Elan Corp. agreed to pay $1 billion for a share in royalties on new drugs.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPX) rose less than 1 point to 1,633.77 at 4 p.m. in New York. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 26.81 points, or 0.2 percent, to 15,091.68. Almost 5.3 billion shares traded hands on U.S. exchanges today, or 16 percent below the three-month average, as about seven stocks declined for every five that advanced.
“It’s obvious that this market has got legs, the question is whether the economy is going to grow some legs to support stocks going forward,” Frank Braddock, senior portfolio manager with the Braddock Group of JHS Capital Advisors, said by phone from Columbia, South Carolina. JHS oversees about $3.4 billion.
The 0.1 percent increase in U.S. retail sales followed a 0.5 percent decline in March, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. The median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for a 0.3 percent drop. A separate report showed companies in the U.S. unexpectedly held inventories in check in March as sales fell by the most in nine months, an indication orders will rise as demand picks up.
Overseas, Israel’s central bank cut its benchmark rate 25 basis points to 1.5 percent, joining a wave of monetary easing spanning from the U.S. to Europe. In China, the world’s second-largest economy, fixed-asset investment unexpectedly decelerated last month while industrial output trailed estimates.

Tax Increases

“It seems consumers have been able to absorb the tax increases better than most had thought, but we still need to see if we can come out of this second-quarter purgatory,” Ron Florance, the Scottsdale, Arizona-based managing director of investment strategy at Wells Fargo Private Bank, which has $170 billion assets under management, said in a phone interview. “Israel surprised with their rate drop and everyone around the world is now doing easy money, so the pedal is to the metal at the global level.”
The S&P 500 rallied to a record on May 10, capping a third week of gains and extending its advance so far this year to 15 percent. U.S. stocks climbed last week as companies from Walt Disney Co. to DirecTV beat earnings estimates and central banks worldwide stepped up monetary stimulus to boost growth.

Volatility Index

The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index, or VIX, fell 0.3 percent to 12.55. The equity volatility gauge is down 30 percent for the year.
Seven out of 10 (SPXL1)industries in the S&P 500 retreated as phone stocks and raw-material producers declined the most, while health-care companies had the largest gains as a group. Peabody Energy Corp. slumped 4.1 percent to $20.14 for the biggest retreat in the S&P 500, followed by losses of more than 3.4 percent in Joy Global Inc. and U.S. Steel Corp.
Yum slid 2.1 percent to $68.92 after the company reported a 29 percent drop in sales at stores open at least 12 months in China as the spread of bird flu hurt demand. Analysts projected a 27 percent drop, the average of five estimates compiled by researcher Consensus Metrix. Sales dropped 36 percent at KFC while gaining 5 percent at Pizza Hut.
AutoZone Inc. slipped 1.2 percent to $415.76. The retailer of automotive replacement parts and accessories was downgraded to hold from buy at Deutsche Bank AG with a 12-month price estimate of $410 a share.

Mosaic Buybacks

Mosaic Co. lost 3.1 percent to $61.30. The world’s largest producer of phosphate crop nutrients said it favors share buybacks over dividends to redeploy surplus cash. With an estimated $2 billion of cash by the end of the month, Mosaic is assessing its ability to buy back shares while seizing growth opportunities and maintaining a “solid” investment-grade credit rating, Chief Financial Officer Larry Stranghoener said today on a conference call.
Corning (GLW) rose 0.9 percent to $15.24 after Barclays Plc raised its recommendation for the shares to overweight, the equivalent of a buy rating. Morgan Stanley also upgraded the maker of glass for flat-panel televisions to equal weight, a level similar to hold, from underweight.

Theravance Rallies

Theravance jumped 18 percent to $41.20 after Elan agreed to buy a share of drug royalties that Theravance will receive from GlaxoSmithKline Plc. The Irish drugmaker will receive 21 percent of royalties earned by Theravance on four respiratory drugs, and 20 percent of that income will be paid to Elan shareholders as a dividend.
J.C. Penney Co. rose 2.9 percent to $18.24. The department-store chain that replaced its chief executive officer last month set a lender meeting for tomorrow to discuss a $1.75 billion loan, according to a person with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be identified because the deal is private. CEO Myron Ullman is working to improve sales after revenue last year tumbled 25 percent to $13 billion amid Ron Johnson’s failed attempt to remake the retailer.
The S&P 500 has climbed to record highs on seven of the last eight trading days. Oppenheimer & Co.’s John Stoltzfus raised his year-end target for the index to 1,730 today from 1,585, ranking him as the second-most bullish strategist on Wall Street after Canaccord Genuity Securities LLC’s Tony Dwyer, who has a 1,760 estimate on the benchmark index.

Bull Market

Returns from the U.S. equity bull market that started four years ago are matching those from the last half of the 1990s even as valuations are 28 percent lower.
The S&P 500 has gained 26.2 percent annually including dividends since March 2009, the same as during the last 50 months of the technology bubble, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Shares in the index now trade at 18.6 times annual profit, below the average 25.7 multiple in the 1990s rally led by Internet companies.
For bulls, the valuations show stocks will keep rising after the S&P 500 advanced 164 percent as individuals scarred by the worst financial meltdown since the Great Depression return to equities. Bears say the price-earnings ratios mean investors lack confidence in the economy and corporate profit growth. They also note that the last time returns were this high, the bubble popped and more than $5 trillion was erased from the value of U.S. stocks, according to data from the World Bank.
“The size of this rally’s not what keeps me up at night,” Paul Zemsky, the New York-based head of asset allocation for ING Investment Management, which oversees about $170 billion, said in a May 8 phone interview. “That was a tremendous rally then, too, but I’m not getting all nervous based on the size of the rally this time, because we’re not there yet in terms of valuation.”

Gangster State America. “Naked Short” in the Gold Market

There are many signs of gangster state America. One is the collusion between federal authorities and banksters in a criminal conspiracy to rig the markets for gold and silver.
My explanation that the sudden appearance of an unprecedented 400 ton short sale of gold on the COMEX in April was a manipulation designed to protect the dollar from the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing policy has found acceptance among gold investors and hedge fund managers.
The sale was a naked short. The seller had no gold to sell. COMEX reported having gold only equal to about half of the short sale in its vaults, and not all of that was available for delivery. No one but the Federal Reserve could have placed such an order, and the order came from one of the Fed’s bullion banks, one of the entities “too big to fail.”
Bill Kaye of the Greater Asian Hedge Fund in Hong Kong and Dave Kranzler of Golden Returns Capital have filled in the details of how the manipulation worked. Being sophisticated investors of many years of experience, both Kaye and Kranzler understand that the financial press runs with the authorized story planted to serve the agenda that has been put into play.
Institutional investors who have bullion in their portfolio do not want the expense associated with storing it securely. Instead, they buy into Exchange Traded Funds (ETF) and hold their bullion in the form of a paper claim. The largest, the SPDR Gold Trust or GLD, trades on the New York Stock Exchange. The trustee and custodian is a bankster, and only other banksters are able to turn investments into delivery of physical bullion. Only shares in the amount of 100,000 can be redeemed in gold.
The price of bullion is not set in the physical market where individuals take delivery of bullion purchases. It is set in the paper futures market where short selling can drive down the price even if the demand for physical possession is rising. The paper gold market is also the market in which people speculate and leverage their positions, place stop-loss orders, and are subject to margin calls.
When the enormous naked shorts hit the COMEX, stop-loss orders were triggered adding to the sales, and margin calls forced more sales. Investors who were not in on the manipulation lost a lot of money.
The sales of GLD shares are accumulated by the banksters in 100,000 lots and presented
This article originally appeared on : Global Research

Every President His Bubble – And Its Aftermath

Wolf Richter
www.testosteronepit.com   www.amazon.com/author/wolfrichter
During their second term, Presidents become obsessed with “legacy.” One of the yardsticks to measure their success is the stock market. Many people can relate to it. Retirement depends on it. It’s mentioned even on NPR several times a day. Outside of a few shorts, everyone wants it to go up. But President Obama must now be biting his fingernails down to the quick.
The stock market bragging started with President Clinton. In January 1993, while he was unpacking boxes in the White House, the S&P 500 stock market index was at 437. It then zigzagged up until it breached 1,500 in March 2000, a 243% gain. Those were the 500 biggest, most lethargic companies. Nimbler ones bursting with creativity, the tech companies on the NASDAQ, multiplied in value, some of them on a monthly basis.
Many of these gains became taxable events. The wealth effect bamboozled people into borrowing against the fruits of their stock-market wisdom. Some became day-traders. And they all spent some of this money, and it cranked up local economies. Sales-tax revenues jumped. Companies like Cisco used their inflated stocks as homemade currency to acquire other companies, sometimes paying billions for tiny startups. Unemployment dropped below 5%. Income-tax revenues soared. And suddenly there was a mirage on the horizon: a federal budget “surplus.”
Then it crashed. When President Bush was inaugurated in January 2001, the NASDAQ was evaporating, and the S&P was down to 1,342. But for Clinton, it was still up over 200%. Part of his legacy that – unlike the Lewinsky jokes – he never tired of bragging about.
Bush rode the S&P down to 800. Then the recovery started – the first “jobless” one. Wall Street was goosed by the Fed’s easy money, and housing was performing miracles. While waiting for a flight in late 2004, I was sitting next to a chick who was giving instructions on her cell phone to flip the house she’d bought months earlier. She had a day job with a nasty boss who’d dock her pay if she left early to meet her broker…. The housing bubble had just been declared.
Stocks marched upward. “Merger Monday” became part of the calendar. And in early October 2007, when Bush was already working on a rough draft of his legacy, the S&P set a new record, oblivious to the hissing from the housing bubble and the stench around banks. Then on November 7, Cisco CEO John Chambers, during theearnings call, said that growth in the US would be “very lumpy.”
Markets went south. The rough draft of Bush’s legacy went up in smoke. By the time he handed the scepter to President Obama, the S&P was at 831. The government that had for the briefest moment seen the mirage of a surplus at the beginning of his term was running a deficit of over $1 trillion. During Bush’s time in office, the S&P had plunged 38%. A catastrophic legacy.

If the Fed had printed a few trillion in 2007 and 2008 to delay the blowup and drive the S&P to 2,500 or something, Bush would be bragging to this day in a Clintonesque manner about how his economic policies and his two wars had made Americans better off. He would have handed President Obama the bubble to let it blow up in his face.
Instead, on March 2, 2009, less than two months after Obama had become President, the S&P bottomed out. The Fed had been handing trillions to Wall Street to re-inflate asset prices and bail out the banks. Obama had picked the bottom with near impeccable timing. His hallmark. He won the Nobel Peace Prize before he started the surge in Afghanistan.
Now the S&P is once again setting records on a near daily basis. The Federal Government is raking in tax revenues from income and capital gains. It had the largest April surplus since 2008. Even California is stepping away from the brink. Everybody loves a good asset bubble. Particularly politicians. It dissolves tough budget choices and gets them reelected. Now asset bubbles are everywhere. They’ve reached junk bonds, farmland, housing…. Even members of the Fed are pointing them out. And this wonderful stock market of ours, with margin debt at a near record, no longer knows any limits – though corporate revenues have been lousy and employment has barely kept up with population growth.
Obama has nearly four years left. An eternity for financial markets. He must persuade the Fed to keep printing or else he might get Bush-ed. He has already maneuvered devoted money-printer Vice Chair Janet Yellen into position to replace Chairman Bernanke. But Friday, something happened that should cause Obama to bite his fingernails to the quick: Bernanke issued a warning at a banking conference in Chicago.
“In light of the current low interest-rate environment, we are watching particularly closely for instances of ‘reaching for yield’ and other forms of excessive risk-taking, which may affect asset prices and their relationships with fundamentals,” he said in his bland manner.
He, who’d so far pretended to be oblivious to any bubbles, suddenly admitted their existence. His focus would be on “monitoring” – a word he used 28 times. But eventually, “monitoring” might turn into unplugging the money printer. And then the air will hiss out of these bubbles once again – not at all what Obama needs for his legacy. And it might just ruin his aura of impeccable timing.
And the great blue-collar middle-class jobs of yore? Aircraft maintenance was one of them. It required lots of training, but it paid well and came with generous healthcare, retirement, and vacation benefits; and free flights! They were working for icons like Delta, American Airlines, Continental, TWA, or Pan Am. Icons indeed! Read… When Flight Safety Gets Outsourced To China.

10 Scenes From The Economic Collapse That Is Sweeping Across The Planet

By Michael
Earth From Space
When is the economic collapse going to happen?  Just open up your eyes and take a look around the globe.  The next wave of the economic collapse may not have reached Wall Street yet, but it is already deeply affecting billions of lives all over the planet.  Much of Europe has already descended into a deep economic depression, very disturbing economic data is coming out of the second and third largest economies on the globe (China and Japan), and in most of the world economic inequality is growing even though 80 percent of the global population already lives on less than $10 a day.  Just because the Dow has been setting brand new all-time records lately does not mean that everything is okay.  Remember, a bubble is always the biggest right before it bursts.  The next major wave of the economic collapse is already sweeping across Europe and Asia and it is going to devastate the United States as well.  I hope that you are ready.
The following are 10 scenes from the economic collapse that is sweeping across the planet…
#1 27 Percent Unemployment/60 Percent Youth Unemployment In Greece
The economic depression in Europe just continues to get worse with each passing month.  According to the Daily Mail, the unemployment rate in Greece has nearly tripled since 2009…
Greek youth unemployment rose above 60 per cent for the first time in February, reflecting the pain caused by the country’s crippling recession after years of austerity under its international bailout.
Greece’s jobless rate has almost tripled since the country’s debt crisis emerged in 2009 and was more than twice the euro zone’s average unemployment reading of 12.1 percent in March.
While the overall unemployment rate rose to 27 per cent, according to statistics service data released on Thursday, joblessness among those aged between 15 and 24 jumped to 64.2 percent in February from 59.3 percent in January.
#2 Detroit, Michigan Is Insolvent And Is Rapidly Running Out Of Cash
I love to write about Detroit because it is a perfect example of where the rest of the country is headed.  They have just gotten there first.  At this point, Detroit is essentially bankrupt, and the new emergency financial manager is saying that Detroit may totally run out of cash next month
Detroit may run out of cash next month and must cut long-term debt and retiree obligations, according to emergency financial manager Kevyn Orr’s preliminary plan to save Michigan’s largest city from bankruptcy.
Orr’s report says the cost of $9.4 billion in bond, pension and other long-term liabilities is sapping the ability to provide public safety and transportation. He listed cutting debt principal, retiree benefits and jobs among his options.
“No one should underestimate the severity of the financial crisis,” Orr said yesterday in a statement. He called his report “a sobering wake-up call about the dire financial straits the city of Detroit faces.”
#3 Economic Despair In France
France is going down the same path that Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy have gone.  The following is an excerpt from a recent article in the Economist
HELDER PEREIRA is a young man with no work and few prospects: a 21-year-old who failed to graduate from high school and lost his job on a building site four months ago. With his savings about to run out, he has come to his local employment centre in the Paris suburb of Sevran to sign on for benefits and to get help finding something to do. He’ll get the cash. Work is another matter. Youth unemployment in Sevran is over 40%.
#4 7,000 Abandoned Buildings In Dayton, Ohio
All over the upper Midwest, there are formerly great cities that are dealing with thousands of abandoned buildings.  Dayton, Ohio is one example…
Like many urban cities in recent years, Dayton still finds itself knee-deep in abandoned, dilapidated properties as the result of the foreclosure crisis and economic downturn five years ago.
Boarded up buildings that appear to be on their last legs litter the city as it attempts to recover.
Kevin Powell, the city’s acting manager of housing inspection, says officials plan to use $5.2 million — half from the state’s Moving Ohio Forward program and a matching grant from the city’s general fund — to raze 475 abandoned properties by the end of September.
That will scratch the surface of an estimated 7,000 abandoned property problem that is growing.
#5 Overwhelmed By Squatters In Spain
In Spain, unemployment is rampant and people have become incredibly desperate.  In fact, in some Spanish cities you can now find entire apartment buildings that are being overwhelmed by squatters
A 285-unit apartment complex in Parla, less than half an hour’s drive from Madrid, should be an ideal target for investors seeking cheap property in Spain. Unfortunately, two thirds of the building generates zero revenue because it’s overrun by squatters.
“This is happening all over the country,” said Jose Maria Fraile, the town’s mayor, who estimates only 100 apartments in the block built for the council have rental contracts, and not all of those tenants are paying either. “People lost their jobs, they can’t pay mortgages or rent so they lost their homes and this has produced a tide of squatters.”
#6 The Collapse Of Chinese Power Consumption
Energy consumption tends to closely mirror economic activity.  That is why the recent collapse of Chinese power consumption is so alarming.  The following is from Zero Hedge
According to CLSA’s Chris Wood using NEA data, China’s monthly power consumption (the most accurate proxy for underlying economic strength according to the current premier) growth slowed from 5.5% YoY in Jan-Feb 2013 to 1.9% YoY in March, the slowest growth rate since May 2009(as discussed in-depth here).
#7 Horrible Economic Data Coming Out Of The Second Largest Economy On The Planet
The economic data that has been coming out of the second largest economy on the globe has been quite alarming recently…
For starters, China’s recent economic data, as massaged as it is to the upside, is downright awful. China’s PMI numbers were the worst in two years. Staffing levels in the Chinese service sector decreasedfor the first time since January 2009 (remember that year).
China’s LEI also shows no sign of recovery. If anything, it indicates China is heading towards an economic slowdown on par with that of 2008. And if you account for the rampant debt fueling China’s economy you could easily argue that China is posting 0% GDP growth today.
#8 One Out Of Every Five U.S. Households On Food Stamps
Back in the 1970s, about one out of every 50 Americans was on food stamps.  Today, even though we are supposedly in the midst of an “economic recovery”, food stamp enrollment continues to soar to new highs.  The following is from CNS News
The most recent Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program (SNAP) statistics of the number of households receiving food stamps shows that 23,087,886 households participated in January 2013 – an increase of 889,154 families from January 2012 when the number of households totaled 22,188,732.
The most recent statistics from the United States Census Bureau– from December 2012– puts the number of households in the United States at 115,310,000. If you divide 115,310,000 by 23,087,866, that equals one out of every five households now receiving food stamps.
#9 Child Hunger In America
Those that work for the big banks on Wall Street may have no problems feeding their children, but overall there is a rapidly growing child hunger crisis in America today.  Just check out the following statistics from one of my previous articles
*For the first time ever, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless.  That number has risen by 57 percentsince the 2006-2007 school year.
*In Miami, 45 percent of all children are living in poverty.
*In Cleveland, more than 50 percent of all children are living in poverty.
*According to a recently released report, 60 percent of all children in the city of Detroit are living in poverty.
#10 The Tremendous Suffering Of Hundreds Of Millions Of Desperately Poor People That We Never Hear About
There are billions of people around the globe that are deeply suffering but that do not have a voice.  We usually never hear about the desperate poverty that these people are living in, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.  The following statistics that Stephen Lendman recently compiled should shock and alarm you…
At least 80% live on less than $10 a day. Over three billion people live on less than $2.50 a day. More than 80% live in countries where income disparity is increasing.
The poorest 40% of world population has 5% of global income. The bottom fifth has $1.5%. The top 20% has 75%.
According to UNICEF, 22,000 impoverished children die daily. They “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.”
An estimated 28% of children in developing countries are underweight, malnourished and/or stunted.
How can so many people be living like that in a world with such wealth?
Sadly, things are going to get much worse.  The economic and financial systems of the world are rapidly breaking down, and in a few years these are going to look like “the good old days”.
And a growing number of people are starting to realize the direction that things are headed.  For example, according to a survey that has just been released, 48 percent of all Americans believe that the best days of America are now behind us.
So what do you think?
Are our best days behind us, or are they still ahead of us?
Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below…

Greece takes emergency action against striking teachers


Striking teachers march towards the Greek parliament in Athens on September 12, 2012. (AFP)
 
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Greece on Monday took emergency action — the third this year — to ward off a strike by secondary school teachers timed to coincide with university entry exams.
The emergency order to work follows similar steps taken against metro workers in January and seamen in February as the conservative-led coalition government fights to minimise labour unrest.
“What kind of teachers choose to go on strike at the most sensitive time for the students?” government spokesman Simos Kedikoglou told To Vima radio.
“It is base cunning to decide to go on strike two days before the exams. They could have planned their protest before the Easter holidays,” he added.
Refusing to back down, the federation of secondary education state school teachers OLME made a formal appeal on Monday to Greece’s highest administrative court to overturn the government’s order.
OLME has also called on the country’s two main unions, GSEE and ADEY, to hold a general strike on May 17, the first day of the exams.
Public sector union ADEDY decided to hold a 24-hour strike in support of the teachers Tuesday as well as joint work stoppages with private sector union GSEE on Thursday.
OLME opposes expected job cuts, obligatory transfers and an extension of teaching hours.
It also objects to school closures and mergers.
School teachers have suffered major pay cuts as a result of the harsh austerity programme imposed on the indebted country by its international creditors.
“We have lost our salaries. All of us could lose our jobs at any given time,” high school teacher Katerina told AFP during an anti-austerity protest earlier this month.
Facing a sixth year of continuous recession, Greece was obliged to adopt a strict austerity programme that includes salary and pension cuts as part of its EU-IMF bailout deal.
The European Union and the International Monetary Fund have committed a total of 240 billion euros in rescue loans to Greece since 2010.

Ayn Rand USA: In 20 Years Corporate Profits Are Up 4X and Their Taxes Have Fallen by 50% -- Meanwhile the Workers' Payroll Tax Has Doubled

Corporations have decided to let middle-class workers pay for national investments that have largely benefited businesses over the years.

 
Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged" fantasizes a world in which anti-government citizens reject taxes and regulations, and "stop the motor" by withdrawing themselves from the system of production. In a perverse twist on the writer's theme the prediction is coming true. But instead of productive people rejecting taxes, rejected taxes are shutting down productive people.
Perhaps Ayn Rand never anticipated the impact of unregulated greed on a productive middle class. Perhaps she never understood the fairness of tax money for public research and infrastructure and security, all of which have contributed to the success of big business. She must have known about the inequality of the pre-Depression years. But she couldn't have foreseen the concurrent rise in technology and globalization that allowed inequality to surge again, more quickly, in a manner that threatens to put the greediest offenders out of our reach.
Ayn Rand's philosophy suggests that average working people are 'takers.' In reality, those in the best position to make money take all they can get, with no scruples about their working class victims, because  taking, in the minds of the rich, serves as a model for success. The strategy involves tax avoidance, in numerous forms.
Corporations Stopped Paying
In the past  twenty years, corporate profits have  quadrupled while the corporate tax percent has dropped by  half. The payroll tax, paid by workers, has doubled.
In effect, corporations have decided to let middle-class workers pay for national investments that have largely benefited businesses over the years. The greater part of  basic research, especially for technology and health care, has been  conducted with government money. Even today  60% of university research is government-supported. Corporations  use highways and shipping lanes and airports to ship their products, the FAA and TSA and Coast Guard and Department of Transportation to safeguard them, a nationwide energy grid to power their factories, and communications towers and satellites to conduct online business.
Yet as corporate profits surge and taxes plummet, our infrastructure is deteriorating. The  American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that $3.63 trillion is needed over the next seven years to make the necessary repairs.
Turning Taxes Into Thin Air
Corporations have used numerous and creative means to avoid their tax responsibilities. They have about a year's worth of profits  stashed untaxed overseas. According to the  Wall Street Journal, about 60% of their cash is offshore. Yet these corporate 'persons' enjoy a foreign earned income  exclusion that real U.S. persons don't get.
Corporate tax haven ploys are legendary, with almost 19,000 companies claiming home office space in one  building in the low-tax Cayman Islands. But they don't want to give up their U.S. benefits. Tech companies in 19 tax haven jurisdictions received  $18.7 billion in 2011 federal contracts. A lot of smaller companies are legally exempt from taxes. As of 2008, according to IRS data, fully 69% of U.S. corporations were organized as  nontaxablebusinesses.
There's much more. Companies call their CEO bonuses  "performance pay" to get a lower rate.  Private equity firms call fees "capital gains" to get a lower rate.  Fast food companies call their lunch menus "intellectual property" to get a lower rate.
Prisons and casinos have stooped to the level of calling themselves  "real estate investment trusts" (REITs) to gain  tax exemptions. Stooping lower yet, Disney and others have added cows and sheep to their greenspace to get a  farmland exemption.
The Richest Individuals Stopped Paying
The IRS estimated that  17 percent of taxes owed were not paid in 2006, leaving an underpayment of $450 billion. The revenue loss from  tax havens approaches $450 billion. Subsidies from special deductions, exemptions, exclusions, credits, capital gains, and loopholes are  estimated at over  $1 trillion. Expenditures overwhelmingly  benefit the richest taxpayers.
In keeping with Ayn Rand's assurance that "Money is the barometer of a society's virtue," the super-rich are relentless in their quest to make more money by eliminating taxes. Instead of calling their income 'income,' they call it  "carried interest" or "performance-based earnings" or "deferred pay." And when they cash in their stock options, they might look up last year's lowest price, write that in as a  purchase date, cash in the concocted profits, and take advantage of the lower capital gains tax rate.
So Who Has To Pay?
Middle-class families. The $2 trillion in tax losses from underpayments, expenditures, and tax havens costs every middle-class family about $20,000 in community benefits, including health care and education and food and housing.
Schoolkids, too. A study of 265 large companies by  Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) determined that about $14 billion per year in state income taxes was unpaid over three years. That's approximately equal to the loss of 2012-13  education funding due to budget cuts.
And the  lowest-income taxpayers make up the difference, based on new  data that shows that the Earned Income Tax Credit is the single biggest compliance problem cited by the IRS. The average sentence for cheating with secret offshore financial accounts, according to the  Wall Street Journal, is about half as long as in some other types of tax cases.
Atlas Can't Be Found Among the Rich
Only 3 percent of the CEOs, upper management, and financial professionals were  entrepreneurs in 2005, even though they made up about 60 percent of the richest .1% of Americans. A recent  study found that less than 1 percent of all entrepreneurs came from very rich or very poor backgrounds. Job creators come from the middle class.
So if the super-rich are not holding the world on their shoulders, what do they do with their money? According to both  Marketwatch and economist  Edward Wolff, over 90 percent of the assets owned by millionaires are held in a combination of low-risk investments (bonds and cash), personal business accounts, the stock market, and real estate.
Ayn Rand's hero  John Galt said, "We are on strike against those who believe that one man must exist for the sake of another." In his world, Atlas has it easy, with only himself to think about.

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In global Monopoly game there can be only one winner

Max Keiser, the host of RT’s ‘Keiser Report,’ is a former stockbroker, the inventor of virtual specialist technology and co-founder of the Hollywood Stock Exchange.
The unconventional monetary policies of global central banks makes the current economy resemble the game of Monopoly, but the players must remember that in this board game there can be only one winner, with all the rest going bankrupt.
In the game of Monopoly, when you pass ‘Go’ you collect $200.
This keeps the game going by adding liquidity into the system. The
bank in the game is increasing the money supply and this keeps
people rolling the dice; buying up property and paying taxes.
Eventually, due to the luck of the dice, the player who is able to
land on the most expensive properties on the board ends up being
able to extract crippling amounts of rent from the other players
until everyone goes bust except for the lone Monopolist who is
declared the winner. Notice that in the Monopoly economy nobody
works. The only activities are rolling dice and shopping for real
estate, houses, and hotels.
In today’s global game of Monopoly we have Quantitative Easing to
replace the free money give away that occurs when players pass
‘Go.’ But instead of the token $200, players (those who work in the
FIRE economy of Finance, Insurance and Real Estate) get $85 billion
a month from the Federal Reserve Bank in America and similar gifts
of cash from the central banks in Japan, Britain, and most of the
G20.
The asset prices of the houses and hotels keep going up as the free
money given away by the bank: whether in the game of Monopoly or
the game of the Fed is pumped into the economy. Again, nobody who
has wealth in these economies works for a living. They speculate by
rolling the dice and buying up assets knowing that the infusion of
cash will guarantee asset price inflation.
AFP Photo / Mladen Antonov
If you play Monopoly you know that eventually the player who
chanced on the opportunity to buy the most expensive real estate on
the board eventually wins as the rent-seeking that comes with that
real estate bankrupts the rest of the players who keep collecting
their free $200 each time they pass ‘Go,’ money that works its way
to the Monopolist with the most powerful monopoly.
Similarly in the global economy we have a situation where none of
the sizeable wealth of the players was garnered through work. A
list of the wealthiest in the world shows virtually all the players
having
This article originally appeared on : RT

Money Confiscation Legal? Keep YOUR Money OUT of the Banks!!

Money Confiscation Legal? Keep YOUR Money OUT of the Banks!!

A Serious Gold And Silver Market Event About To Happen And This Is So Much Talk Which Will Fail To Contain The Metals

The Shanghai Gold Exchnange has been delivering 200 tons /month for 20 months and the physical pull from LBMA is relentless.
Scroll down to see the enormous gold draw on Shanghai over the past two years:
http://www.goldminerpulse.com/v/shanghaiGoldExchangePhysicalDelivery.php
LBMA / Comex collapsing:
http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2013/5/10_Maguire_-_Perfect_Storm_In_Gold_As_LBMA_%26_COMEX_Collapsing.html
Quote:
One thing is certain today, the bullion banks are on the long side of all of this selling.  We are seeing cracks appearing in the fractional reserve LBMA and COMEX price setting mechanisms.  It’s really thanks to the most recent paper market discount that we are evidencing this accelerated migration of bullion from the West to the East…
…And even though this activity (intervention) bought a little more time for these guys, the immediate and unanticipated but accelerated bullion demand (all over the world), actually ended up digging an even deeper hole for the Fed, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), and the agent bullion banks.  They have actually shot themselves in the foot.

By simply tracking the movements in the international wholesale market, it’s clear that a major supply problem is brewing.  Where has this bullion gone?  It is clearly Fed and Bank for International Settlements borrowed bullion.  What they are doing is seeking to avert a fractional reserve delivery default.  These are in the price setting centers of London and the COMEX.  And it is further extenuated by arbitragers who are moving bullion out of the COMEX and reselling it at higher, real global prices.
So you have a perfect storm here.  This (Western gold) bullion is not coming back.  It’s being re-melted, cast into kilobars, and it’s ending up directly in Eastern hemisphere central bank and sovereign vaults.  And all of this time the bullion banks are calling for lower prices, and the mainstream media is touting a bear market.  The bullion banks are fully aware of this threat, and they are exiting these mismatched short positions.

LBMA had 40 tons gold purchased today:
http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2013/5/10_Maguire_-_Stunning_40+_Tons_Of_Gold_Bought_On_Price_Dip.html

Pinto Currency

David Cameron: A British-American Tax and Trade Agenda

The Europe-U.S. trade talks are a precious opportunity, but they must include fairer taxes and more transparency.

 

Britain and America have a proud history of working together to meet the great challenges of the day. Ours is a partnership without parallel, rooted in our values of freedom and enterprise—advancing not just Britain's and America's interests but the good of people around the world.
Today, our greatest challenge is to restore strong and sustainable growth to the world economy.
When times are tough, some want to put the barriers up, to look inwards, and to protect themselves from the world. But Britain and America stand for a better way. We have a precious opportunity to transform the global economy—not by less openness and less free trade, but by more. And we must do everything possible to seize it.
Trade is not a zero-sum game where one nation's success is another's failure. Trade makes the cake bigger so everyone can benefit. Take the free trade area between Europe and the U.S. on which we hope to launch negotiations when President Obama is in Northern Ireland for the G-8 next month. This deal could add as much as £10 billion to the British economy and £63 billion ($97 billion) to U.S. GDP. But the rest of the world would benefit too, with gains that could generate €100 billion ($132 billion) world-wide.
That's why the next five weeks are so important as we set the playing field for the negotiations. Too often in trade, the voices defending special interests shout loudest. But it makes no sense to exclude vital parts of the economy. Everything must be on the table. And we must tackle the really tough regulatory issues so a product approved on one side of the Atlantic can immediately enter the market on the other. We will only reap the benefits if we keep the ambition high. Now is the time for business and political leaders to be making the case for this once-in-a-generation prize.
An EU-U.S. deal is just one building block of a more dynamic world economy. If G-8 countries complete all of their current trade deals and those in the pipeline, it could boost the income of the whole world by more than $1 trillion.
Trade between developing countries is growing too. An Africa that can trade will be a lion of global growth. But a single truck still needs to carry up to 1,000 documents just to travel between the countries of the Southern African Development Community. So there is a huge prize to be won if we can sweep away trade bureaucracy, and a deal to do this at the WTO Bali conference in December could be worth $70 billion to the global economy.
But as we free up the world economy, we must make sure openness delivers the benefits it should for rich economies and developing countries alike. That means consistent and fair rules for the global economy. When countries open up to cross-border trade, and global supply chains, they need to know that they will see the benefits in jobs, fair tax revenues and economic growth. So we need global rules that prevent tax evasion and aggressive avoidance, and enable governments to collect the taxes they are owed.
We also need to make sure that mineral wealth in developing countries becomes a blessing, not a curse. It is to the shame of the whole world that a lack of transparency allowed the illicit diamond trade to fuel appalling conflicts in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Today, we have a duty to make sure that resource wealth does not fuel conflict, corruption and crime.
So at the G-8 next month in Northern Ireland I will push for fairer taxes and greater transparency alongside more open trade.
First, tougher tax transparency rules. We must fight the scourge of tax evasion by promoting a new global standard for automatic information exchange between tax authorities. And we must tackle aggressive tax avoidance by encouraging better global reporting to tax authorities in both the developed and developing world; and by letting tax collectors and law enforcement find out who really owns and controls each company.
Second, we must lift the veil of secrecy that too often lets corrupt corporations and officials in some countries run rings around the law. The G-8 must move toward a global common standard for resource-extracting companies to report all payments to governments, and in turn for governments to report those revenues. This will encourage more investment in resource-rich countries and level the playing field for business.
This is a pro-business and pro-development agenda. In Britain we are cutting corporation tax to just 20%, the lowest rate in the G-7. And I am proud to be a low-tax, free-enterprise politician.
But low taxes are only sustainable if what is owed is actually paid. We simply cannot have the situation where a small business is working hard to pay taxes but unable to compete fairly with rivals playing the system to avoid tax. Laying down the rules of the game and being prepared to enforce them is a vital foundation for open economies, low taxes and free enterprise.
This unique agenda can help the developed and developing world to grow together. But it cannot be delivered by governments alone. We need business to make the case for new openness about who really owns and controls every company. And we must all work harder to secure and fully implement the new standard that will see oil, gas and mining companies reporting project by project payments across the world without exception.
I am meeting President Obama at the White House Monday to get America's full support for this agenda. By promoting more trade, fairer taxes and greater transparency, Britain and America can once again lead the way in meeting the greatest challenge of our time: securing the growth and stability on which the prosperity of the whole world depends.
Mr. Cameron is prime minister of the United Kingdom.
A version of this article appeared May 13, 2013, on page A15 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: A British-American Tax and Trade Agenda.

The Gov’s Plan from Hell: Disgusted With Wall Street Fees Eating Into Your 401(k), You Can Move It To Even Higher Fees At an Insurance Company

By Pam Martens: May 13, 2013 
Did you just find out your 401(k) is leaking 8 percent in a hodgepodge of Wall Street management fees, transactions costs, sales commissions, and marketing schemes. Maybe you did the math and realized your account value, without your new additions, is still where it was in 2007. Or did you just check BrightScope and find out that your 401(k) is so abysmal that you’ll need 18 additional years of work to make up for the $215,500 in lost retirement savings.
Or maybe you tuned in to the April 23 Frontline documentary on PBS to learn that it is quite possible for Wall Street to gobble up two-thirds of your retirement savings in your 401(k) while keeping you in the dark for the next 50 years.
If so, there’s no reason to seethe in silence. The U.S. Department of Labor wants to hear from you about a potential plan to move you from the clutches of Wall Street to the warm embrace of the insurance industry where companies like AIG – that needed a $182 billion bailout from the U.S. taxpayer to avoid defaulting on its annuity payouts to widows and orphans around the world – would be able to take over the slimmed down assets in your 401(k) in exchange for the promise of a fixed income stream in retirement.
The U.S. Department of Labor is nothing if not persistent. It rolled out this same idea back in 2010 and received a flood of hate mail for its effort. On February 2, 2010, the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Treasury published a notice in the Federal Register asking for public comment on a multitude of issues pertaining to 401(k) plans. Three of the requests for comment were posed as follows:
“Should some form of lifetime income distribution option be required for defined contribution plans (in addition to money purchase pension plans)? If so, should that option be the default distribution option, and should it apply to the entire account balance? To what extent would such a requirement encourage or discourage plan sponsorship?
“Should an individual benefit statement present the participant’s accrued benefits as a lifetime income stream of payments in addition to presenting the benefits as an account balance?
“If the answer to question [above] is yes, how should a lifetime stream of income payments be expressed on the benefit statement? For example, should payments be expressed as if they are to begin immediately or at specified retirement ages? Should benefit amounts be projected to a future retirement age based on the assumption of continued contributions? Should lifetime income payments be expressed in the form of monthly or annual payments? Should lifetime income payments of a married participant be expressed as a single-life annuity payable to the participant or a joint and survivor-type annuity, or both?”
The government received 793, mostly vitriolic, responses with the common refrain that the government should keep its “grubby” hands off private savings. The government, however, was not suggesting that it would take over the accounts, it was asking if the insurance industry should issue an immediate annuity (fixed income stream) as the default option on a 401(k) when the retiree made no other election.
More reasoned responses went like this May 19, 2010 one from William Galvin, the highly respected Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts:
“We note that, at this time, an annuity may not be an effective tool to create a stream of revenue to support retirees. The payouts from fixed annuities are substantially based on prevailing interest rates, and in the current low interest rate environment those payouts will tend to be low. Annuities can also be problematic because they are often complex, high commission, and high-fee products. The Securities Division has seen multiple instances where securities salespeople and advisers have sold older customers annuity products, particularly variable annuities, that were unsuitable for them. My office has taken enforcement action in several such cases. All too often, the high selling compensation payable for these annuities drove these inappropriate recommendations.”
An anonymous commenter from the state of Washington posted the following comment on February 21, 2010:
“I don’t believe requiring an annuity distribution option to 401k plans will result in consumer change. I have been managing benefits for large employers for more than 20 years. A lifetime annuity was an option in a number of the plans I managed; not once has an employee elected the annuity. Employees have two primary concerns that stand in the way of purchasing an annuity: (1) insurer insolvency (insurer may be stable now but what about 20 years from now?) (2) Desire to leave unused 401k balance to beneficiaries.”
Despite the overwhelming outpouring of responses against this idea, like the Dracula option that is never really dead, the Labor Department has tweaked and resurrected the proposal in a May 8, 2013 request for comment in the Federal Register. The tweak reads like this:
“…the Department is considering the following ideas: A participant or beneficiary’s pension benefit statement would contain that individual’s current account balance. In addition, the current account balance would be converted to an estimated lifetime income stream of payments. The conversion illustration would assume the participant or beneficiary had reached normal retirement age under the plan as of the date of the benefit statement, even if he or she is much younger.
“For participants who have not yet reached normal retirement age, the pension benefit statement would show the projected account balance, as well as the lifetime income stream generated by it.
“A participant or beneficiary’s current account balance would be projected to normal retirement age, based on assumed future contribution amounts and investment returns. The projected account balance would be converted to an estimated lifetime income stream of payments, assuming that the person retires at normal retirement age.
“Both lifetime income streams (i.e., the one based on the current account balance and the one based on the projected account balance) would be presented as estimated monthly payments based on the expected mortality of the participant or beneficiary. In addition, if the participant or beneficiary has a spouse, the lifetime income streams would be presented based on the joint lives of the participant or beneficiary and his or her spouse.”
The Labor Department admits in its background statement that the idea is to force workers to look at how inadequately prepared for retirement they are and save more. That benefits Wall Street now as it lives off the high fees embedded in darkness in the 401(k). (The expense ratios the Labor Department required to appear on statements beginning last Fall fail to capture all the hidden commissions, fees and transaction costs eating away at 401(k) balances like a swarm of locusts.) Down the road, the insurance industry will get the final bite of what’s left as uninformed retirees, mentally brainwashed for decades to expect that lifetime income stream option, take the road of least resistance.
None of this addresses the real issue: that the 401(k) has proven itself as a get rich scheme for Wall Street and a poverty driver for retirees. Even JPMorgan admitted in a comment letter that one of its own studies in 2009 found that “Two-thirds of 401(k) plan participants admitted they don’t read the plan information they receive from their employers or providers” and that “58% of participants indicated they did not have enough time to pay attention to their retirement investments on a regular basis.”
You can follow the instructions here to post your comments on the latest proposal.

The Global House of Cards Are Starting to Crumble: The Fed Looks To Exit Easy Money, Chinese Data Fails To Impress, And Japan And The Yen Are Hitting The Concrete Wall BIG TIME!!!

The Nikkei 225 has gone up like 40% since JANUARY!.
Money is flowing out of the bond market.
The Yen has devalued 25% this year.
25% devaluation when the year is almost halfway over is pointing towards something. I wonder if we will see more of this same trend, only growing exponentially faster.
In Weimar Germany, the stock market was one of the first refuges as people exited cash and bonds.
Let’s put it this way, if you owned Japanese Government Bonds on Thursday last week, (let’s say the 10-year bond for argument’s sake) you’re now ~25% poorer.
For a supposedly ‘risk free’ investment – the Japan government holds the printing press so will never default– this is a huge loss. 
Big insurance companies and pension funds are running like hell. They have TRILLIONS of these bonds and they’re losing value. They are dumping cash into the only assets they know hold some value in a currency crisis.
http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/GJGB10:IND
JGB Futures Halted (Again) For Biggest 2-Day Plunge Since Lehman; 5Y Yields Hit 13 Month Highs
Another night; another Japanese government bond futures halt. The last 2 days have seen JGB prices plunge at the fastest rate since the post-Lehman debacles in Sept/Oct 2008 smashing back to 13 month highs. 5Y yields are surging even more – trading above 34bps now (up from 9.9bps on March 5th). These are simply astronomical moves in the context of JGB history and strongly suggest Abe & Kuroda are anything but in control of the quadrillion Yen domestic bond market as they jawbone inflation expectations into the psychology of the people. Of course, the Nikkei is surging (now up 9% in the last 5 days alone) amid JPY breaking above 102 (but for now it has rallied back to 101.80). Japnese interest rate implied volatility is surging once again also (after its epic collapse last week – which appears the worst-timed lifting of hedges ever, or more like a lifting of hedges into an unwind of actual long positions).
with 10Y JGB Futures prices seeing their biggest 2-day selloff since Lehman…

More at source:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-13/jgb-futures-halted-again-biggest-2-day-plunge-lehman-5y-yields-hit-13-month-highs
THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE OF JAPAN IS NOW IN PROGRESS – ALL THE ELEMENTS ARE IN PLACE FOR A DEBT CRISIS
http://investmentwatchblog.com/the-economic-collapse-of-japan-is-now-in-progress-all-the-elements-are-in-place-for-a-debt-crisis/
Ex-Soros Advisor Sells “Almost All” Japan Holdings, Shorts Bonds; Sees Market Crash, Default And Hyperinflation
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-04-14/ex-soros-advisor-sells-almost-all-japan-holdings-shorts-bonds-sees-market-crash-defa
This is helpful in explaining the basics of the clusterfuck:
The Fed looks to exit easy money, Chinese data fails to impress
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/opening-bell-may-13-2013-5#ixzz2TAkrnier

Markets Are Sinking
Blame Jon Hilsenrath.
It’s nothing too dramatic, but the start of the week brings sinking markets.

US futures are off on the tune of 0.5%.
European markets are roughly in the same ballpark.
The big story that everyone is talking about is the article by Jon Hilsenrath in the Wall Street Journal about the Fed possibly beginning the first steps to unwind QE.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/morning-markets-may-13-2013-5#ixzz2TAlWliuv

Fed Maps Exit From Stimulus
Timing of Wind-Down Is Uncertain, but Focus Is on Managing Unpredictable Market Expectations
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324744104578475273101471896.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTTopStories
NOMURA: It’s Time To Place Your Bets On The Comeback Of The US Dollar
Nomura currency guru Jens Nordvig writes:
The turn in JPY (yen) has been dramatic and has proven the importance of momentum when a multi-year cycle turns. A similar dynamic could be in store for the dollar. In the scheme of things, the USD REER (Real Effective Exchange Rates) is still trading close to multi-decade lows. Once the turn is evident, we believe momentum could be powerful.
On this basis, we think it is now time to put on some structural positions, looking for meaningful USD gains by year-end. We structure these positions to be resilient to near-term two-way risk. We would also look to add spot exposure should we better entry points be reached over the next one to two months.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/nomura-its-time-to-place-big-bets-on-the-comeback-of-the-us-dollar-2013-5#ixzz2TAkwhUFQ
Andy Xie: Strong Dollar Could Cause Next Global Financial Crisis
As the U.S. economy recovers, a strengthening dollar might cause the next financial crisis, warns Singapore-based economist Andy Xie.
“The first dollar bull market in the 1980s triggered the Latin American debt crisis, the second the Asian Financial Crisis. Neither was a coincidence,” Xie writes for Caixin Online, a website specializing in China’s financial and business news.
When the dollar is in a bear market, liquidity flows into emerging markets, causing their currencies and asset prices to appreciate, which supports domestic demand. 
Read more: http://www.moneynews.com/Economy/Andy-Xie-strong-dollar-crisis/2013/02/08/id/489498
Gold Bears Pull $20.8 Billion
Fund Outflows
Money managers withdrew $1.27 billion from gold and precious-metals funds in the week ended May 8, according to Cameron Brandt, the director of research for Cambridge, Massachusetts-based EPFR Global, which tracks money flows. This year’s outflows of $20.8 billion are the largest withdrawals since the firm began tracking the data in 2000.