Typing error sends Tel Aviv Stock Exchange plummeting

A typing error caused the value of one of Israel’s largest companies to instantly drop over 99% in value Sunday, dragging the Tel Aviv stock exchange down several points before the mistake was discovered and fixed.
The Israel Corporation saw its value plummet by 99.88% in a matter of minutes around noon on Sunday, bringing the TA-25 index down by 2.5% and triggering an automatic fail safe that shut down trading for a short time.
The catastrophic mistake was apparently caused during a transaction by a trader who wanted to sell shares in another company but accidentally entered Israel Corp. shares instead, Globes reported.

The transaction was canceled, but in the meantime trading ground down to just 84% of the daily average.

Israel Corp. is Israel’s largest holding company, primarily dealing in fertilizers and specialty chemicals.

As of 2:45 p.m. the TASE-25 had made an almost complete recovery.

New York Attorney General sues Trump "University"

$40 million taken

Five thousand students paid up to $35,000 to get trained by Trump in how to get rich through real estate.

Instead, they got to have their picture taken in front a life-sized picture of him.

You could say these people were idiots to trust this overblown moron, but you can also say that organizations that promise people "riches through education" should not make exaggerated or false promises.

According to the lawsuit, Trump didn't have even a single instructor at the school and had not created the course when he he advertised "a handpicked faculty and curriculum."

Trump is nothing if not a good litigator. That and making a spectacle of himself seem to be his only skills. It will be interesting to see where this leads.

When customers tried a class action lawsuit, he bloodied them with legal retaliation.

What does the New York AG say about the case?

"Trump University engaged in deception at every stage of consumers' advancement through costly programs and caused real financial harm...with Donald Trump's knowledge and participation."

$40 million taken
Five thousand students paid up to $35,000 to get trained by Trump in how to get rich through real estate.

Instead, they got to have their picture taken in front a life-sized picture of him.

You could say these people were idiots to trust this overblown moron, but you can also say that organizations that promise people "riches through education" should not make exaggerated or false promises.

According to the lawsuit, Trump didn't have even a single instructor at the school and had not created the course when he he advertised "a handpicked faculty and curriculum."

Trump is nothing if not a good litigator. That and making a spectacle of himself seem to be his only skills. It will be interesting to see where this leads.

When customers tried a class action lawsuit, he bloodied them with legal retaliation.

What does the New York AG say about the case?

"Trump University engaged in deception at every stage of consumers' advancement through costly programs and caused real financial harm...with Donald Trump's knowledge and participation."
- See more at: http://www.realecontv.com/videos/us/new-york-attorney-generalsues-trump-university-.html#sthash.lX8lrIaj.dpuf

Asian stocks, currencies start new week on calmer note

By Ian Chua

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Asian stocks rose and gold hit a near three-month high on Monday, extending a move started late last week when a steep drop in U.S. new home sales tempered expectations the Federal Reserve will soon reduce stimulus.
Trading was subdued, particularly in the currency markets, as investors awaited fresh offshore leads amid a lack of market-moving economic news out of Asia.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> climbed 0.5 percent, adding to Friday's 0.8 percent gain.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng index (.HSI) advanced 0.7 percent, Australia's S&P/ASX 200 index (.AXJO) edged up 0.2 percent and South Korea's KOSPI (.KS11) put on 1.0 percent.
European stocks were seen tracking gains in Asia. IG markets predicted Germany's DAX (.GDAXI) will open 0.3 percent higher and France's CAC 40 (.FCHI) will rise 0.6 percent.
Tokyo's Nikkei (NIK:^9452) closed just a touch lower, partly weighed by concerns about whether the government will raise the consumption tax as planned.
Monday's gains for most Asian markets came as a welcome relief after the MSCI index suffered a hefty 2.9 percent drop last week.
Much of the heat was felt in the region's emerging markets as investors pulled out of crowded trades in preparation for a post-stimulus world.
Last week Indonesian stocks (.JKSE) posted an 8.7 percent slide in their biggest fall since September 2011. They were flat in late trade on Monday, having climbed as much as 0.6 percent earlier.
India, Indonesia and Brazil have scrambled to try to stem the destabilizing outflows that have slammed their currencies sharply lower, with the rupee skidding to record lows recently.
Global central bankers at the Fed's annual Jackson Hole policy conference were warned that global financial stability is at risk as ultra-easy policies that have flooded the world with cash are slowly unwound.
Uncertainty about when and how these policies will be phased out meant that market volatility will likely remain high, analysts said.
Data out on Friday showed sales of new U.S. single-family homes fell to their lowest in nine months, raising doubts about whether the Fed can afford to start to pull back next month -- giving investors an excuse to buy back severely beaten-down assets.
"We still think the markets are overemphasizing their concerns on (Fed) tapering. Tapering is only likely to be put in place if the U.S. economy is in good shape," said Martin Lakos, division director at Macquarie Private Wealth.
While Friday's U.S. housing data is helping stocks and gold to recover for now, it weighed on the dollar. The dollar index (.DXY), which tracks the performance of the greenback against a basket of major currencies, was flat at 81.355, having slipped 0.2 percent on Friday.
Against the yen, the dollar traded at 98.56 off Friday's peak of 99.15, while the euro bought $1.3382, having climbed as high as $1.3410.
Spot gold briefly popped above $1,400 an ounce for the first time since early June, extending Friday's 1.5 percent rally. It last stood at $1,396.54.
U.S. crude was bid at $106.91 a barrel, while Brent crude extended gains above $111 a barrel as rising tensions in Syria added to concerns of increased unrest in the Middle East that could disrupt supply.
Shanghai copper rose to its highest in over four months on optimism about global growth and in the absence of London markets due to a UK holiday.

(Additional reporting by Maggie Lu Yueyang in Sydney; Editing by Eric Meijer)

Thanks To Budget Cuts, The Forest Service Is Out Of Money To Fight Wildfires

The U.S. Forest Service has nearly depleted its budget for fighting wildfires at the peak of wildfire season, a development which has forced the agency to divert $600 million in funds from timber and other areas to continue fighting fires.
As of Wednesday, the agency was down to $50 million after spending $967 million this year on fighting wildfires. So far in 2013, 33,000 wildfires have burned in the Western U.S., spanning 5,300 square miles and destroying 960 homes and 30 commercial buildings.
This year is the second consecutive year and the sixth year since 2002 that the Forest Service has had to divert funds for fighting fires. The Forest Service’s wildfire fighting budget was slashed by $115 million by automatic, across-the-board sequester cuts that went into effect earlier this year. In addition, a wildfire reserve fund created in 2009, known as the FLAME Act has dropped from $413 million in 2010 to $299 million this year after sequestration. These cuts come as costs to fight wildfires each year are soaring: during the 1990s, the federal government spent less than $1 billion a year fighting wildfires, but since 2002, it’s spent a yearly average of more than $3 billion.
These cuts and the trend of the Forest Service’s depleting funds are made all the more troubling by warnings that wildfires will only become more intense and more frequent and as the climate warms — already, wildfire seasons last about two months longer than in previous decades.
Despite a tragic wildfire in Arizona, the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history, and major fires in Alaska and Idaho, this wildfire season has been less severe than last year in terms of acres burned. So far, wildfires have burned through about 3.5 million acres in the U.S., compared to last year’s 7.1 million acres burned at the same point. But large, explosive fires like the one that killed 19 firefighters in central Arizona earlier this summer are already becoming more common, and as climate change brings higher temperatures, severe drought and expanded insect infestations in many parts of the U.S., conditions are becoming more and more conducive to wildfires.
Despite this year’s relatively small loss of acreage to fires, 51 large, uncontained active wildfires are still burning in the U.S. today — in Idaho, Montana, Oregon and an out-of-control fire in California that’s grown to 165 square miles and entered a remote area of Yosemite National Park on Friday. The blaze, known as the “Rim” wildfire, has prompted California Gov. Jerry Brown declare a state of emergency in Tuolumne County on Thursday, and has cost $5.4 million so far.

Britain's child poverty 'social apartheid': Problems faced by the young are worse than 1960s claim researchers

• The report was carried out by leading charity National Children's Bureau
• Warns that Britain is at risk of becoming a place where rich and poor children live in separate, parallel worlds
• The report compares data collected from a study called Born To Fail published in 1969 

A report has found that child poverty is now a bigger problem than during the 1960s

Child poverty is now a bigger problem than during the 1960s, a damning report to be published this week has found. 
The report was carried out by the National Children's Bureau and warns that Britain is at risk of becoming a place where 'children's lives are so polarised that rich and poor live in separate, parallel worlds.'
It blames a 'failure of political will' has resulted in poorer children having fewer chances in life today.
The report compares children's lives with data collected from a study called Born To Fail published in 1969. 
It found that around 3.6million children are now living in relative poverty today compared with 2million in the late 1960s.
According to the report, a child from a disadvantage background is less likely to develop as quickly by the age of four than a child from a more affluent family. 
Children living in deprived areas are also more likely to be the victim of an unintentional injury or accident at home and are nine times less likely to have green spaces to play.
While boys living in deprived areas are three times more likely to be obese than boys growing up in affluent areas compared with girls who are twice as likely to be obese.

 

It also notes that 63 per cent of children living in poverty have at least one parent or carer who is working.  
The report reads: 'Today, although there have been some improvements, overall the situation appears to be no better, and in some respects has got worse.' 
The charity says that if Britain tried to be more like other European countries, there would be less children dying from unintentional injuries, 320,000 more teenagers would be in education or training and nearly 45,000 11-year-olds would not be obese.

The report compares children's lives with data collected from a study called Born To Fail published in 1969

The charity is calling on the government to do more to stop the widening gap between children living in poverty and children from more affluent families.
The report says: 'The government made a commitment to protect pensioner benefits but there has been no equivalent commitment to protect children living in the poorest families or to tackle child poverty.' 
Dr Hilary Emery, chief executive of the National Children’s Bureau, said: 'Our analysis shows that despite some improvements, the inequality and disadvantage suffered by poorer children 50 years ago still persists today.
'There is a real risk that as a nation we are sleep walking into a world where children grow up in a state of social apartheid, with poor children destined to experience hardship and disadvantage just by accident of birth, and their more affluent peers unaware of their existence.
'All our children should have the opportunity to fulfil their potential regardless of their circumstances. We cannot afford to let them grow up in such an unequal ‘them and us’ society in which the talents of the next generation are wasted, leaving them cut adrift to become a costly burden to the economy rather than a productive asset.
'This is a critical moment of opportunity to tackle the child poverty and inequality that has been a permanent feature in our country for five decades.
'Government has a major role to play in leading the way to address this but there must also be a wider mobilisation of efforts and resources led by politicians from every party and involving charities, businesses and communities all playing a part in having greater expectations for every child.'

Did cocaine use by bankers cause the global financial crisis?

Coked-up bankers caused the credit crunch, according to the former drug tsar David Nutt. One former City worker can well believe it

Cocaine: usage among bankers has been said to be commonplace in the City and Wall Street. Photograph: Rex Features/Simon Webster

"Wall Street got drunk" was George W Bush's typically incisive take on the main cause of the emerging financial crisis in July 2008. Two years later the governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, explained in his Mansion House speech that "the role of a central bank in monetary policy is to take the punch bowl away just as the party gets going" (something that he admitted had not occurred). But perhaps the wrong intoxicant was being blamed. The controversial former drug tsar David Nutt told the Sunday Times this weekend that cocaine-using bankers with their "culture of excitement and drive and more and more and more ... got us into this terrible mess".
I'm inclined to agree. Cocaine is (I'm reliably informed) a drug that results in intense bouts of over-exuberance as well as a tendency to talk extremely convincingly about stuff you know nothing about. Everyone accepts that a credit bubble occurred in the mid-noughties and that it was a direct result of what the former US Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan has referred to as "irrational exuberance". It could also be argued that traders would be better able to sell absurdly complicated financial weapons of mass destruction after taking a confidence-boosting narcotic such as cocaine. Furthermore, surely only cocaine-ravaged buffoons would actually buy billions of dollars worth of mortgage-backed securities when they were so clearly doomed to explode the minute the property boom stalled.
I certainly saw my fair share of sniffly noses and gurning jaws at City bars every Thursday night. I also heard overconfident gibberish being spouted by brash wide-boys throughout my 12-year banking career. There were also lots of stories about some of the big swingers in New York enjoying a line or 10 of an evening. Bernie Madoff's office was apparently known as "the North Pole" such were the gargantuan quantities of "snow" to be found there and most bankers are aware of the published allegations that Jimmy Cayne (former CEO of Bear Stearns) had an anti-acid medication bottle that was filled with cocaine.
Dr Chris Luke, an A&E specialist based at Cork University Hospital, Ireland, who has studied the effects of cocaine on bankers, has stated that "prominent figures in financial and political circles made irrational decisions as a result of megalomania brought on by cocaine usage". He concludes that "people were making insane decisions and thinking they were 110% right … which led to the current chaos."
Greed, selfishness, ignorance and ruthlessness also played their part, of course, but I think it would be foolish not to see the role that the drug played in creating the bubble. Herd mentality, which thrives during times of uncertainty, is certainly much more explicable when you factor in the trembling insecurity and depleted discernment that go hand in hand with a coke habit.
There is, I'm pleased to say, a happy ending to this sorry tale: my ex-colleagues and clients who still work in the Square Mile tell me that many City boys are now too scared to keep snorting the Bolivian marching powder. This may mean bankers are having less fun but, surely, it can only lead to a more restrained and sensible financial system.
@cityboylondon

Mike Maloney on the Fed's Gold Trap and the End of the Dollar

Money as Debt 3 – Evolution Beyond Money (Full Version)

What are the problems with our current money system? Part 1 of Money as Debt III – Evolution Beyond Money, takes a critical look at the fundamentals of today’s money system, conceptually and in terms of its design arithmetic
Part 1 is a review, and an expansion upon, information provided in Money as Debt, and Money as Debt II – Promises Unleashed. It is advantageous to have seen the first two movies of the Trilogy because it is quite unfamiliar material for most people.
Also see Money as Debt 1 and Money as Debt 2.