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HEADLINE Economic, Financial & Global News...
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Tuesday 10.18.2011
Enter the Dragon:
China Offers World's Very First RMB Gold Contract
BY CRIS SHERIDAN - FinancialSense.com
Why is this important? First, a bit of background. Gold, as with most other commodities, is commonly priced around the world in US dollars since it currently acts as the world reserve currency — a relic of the Bretton Woods System established after World War II to restore order to the global financial system under America's newly recognized economic and financial strength. In order for other nations to agree to this US-centric based system of finance and global trade, however, there was a stipulation made to enforce responsibility on the US to maintain the dollar's value by allowing other nations to freely exchange their dollar holdings for a fixed amount of gold. That is, the US dollar would be gold-backed.
China Currency Message
May be Stronger Than Likelihood of U.S. Sanctions
By James Rowley - Bloomberg.com
The U.S. Senate’s vote to punish China for depressing its currency to promote cheap exports is the latest legislative ritual in which the message may be as important as the proposed sanction.
U.S. House Speaker John Boehner practically declared the measure dead on arrival in the Republican-run chamber after the Senate's 63-35vote last week to let U.S. manufacturers seek duties on Chinese imports if they prove they were harmed by manipulation of the renminbi. Boehner, of Ohio, voiced "grave concerns" the measure may trigger a trade war.
China Will Write Off $3 Trillion,
Says Das of 'Extreme Money'
By James Pressley - Bloomberg.com
If Satyajit Das is right, China will end up writing off its $3.2 trillion in foreign reserves. Europe is shambling toward Japanese-style growth. And a day of reckoning is at hand for creditors and debtors alike.
"Europeans are going to have to recapitalize their banks," Das said as we discussed the sovereign-debt crisis and his new book, "Extreme Money," over coffee in a Brussels hotel. "You have made bad loans; you’re going to have to write them off. That is the one axiomatic law of making a bad loan."
Misery Index drives gold demand
by Michael J. Kosares - USAGold.com
The Misery Index was first popularized by Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential campaign. It combined the inflation rate and the unemployment rate. Reagan used it as a barometer for how well the country was doing economically. During Jimmy Carter's presidency the Misery Index hit an all-time high-- almost 22%. Near the end of Reagan's tenure in the White House, he had reduced the unemployment and inflation rates meaningfully -- to 7.7% by 1986. Barrack Obama's Misery Index now stands at almost 13% and we all know things are getting worse not better. We also know that things might be quite a bit worse than what we are led to believe.
Gold and Economic Decline
by Gregor Macdonald - ChrisMartenson.com
Reminiscent of the media's coverage of oil in the 2000-2008 period, gold has produced a multi-year stream of thoughtless op-eds and repetitive storytelling. If readers can recall how many times the bull market in oil was dubbed "over" leading up to the crisis of 2008, then gold has been in a "bubble" for at least as many years, if not longer.
The seminal piece to this genre was Willem Buiter's November 2009 Financial Times of London essay, Gold - A Six Thousand Year Bubble. That piece would be used as a template by other, lesser writers in the two years that followed. Consider this 2010 tracker-chart of opinion, emanating this time from New York:
Gold and Economic Decline
By Chris Martinson - Zerohedge.com
Gold and Economic Decline
Reminiscent of the media's coverage of oil in the 2000-2008 period, gold has produced a multi-year stream of thoughtless op-eds and repetitive storytelling. If readers can recall how many times the bull market in oil was dubbed "over" leading up to the crisis of 2008, then gold has been in a "bubble" for at least as many years, if not longer.
The seminal piece to this genre was Willem Buiter's November 2009 Financial Times of London essay, Gold - A Six Thousand Year Bubble. That piece would be used as a template by other, lesser writers in the two years that followed. Consider this 2010 tracker-chart of opinion, emanating this time from New York:
U.S. bank failures climb to 80 in 2011
By Maya Jackson - MaarketWatch.com
- This year's national tally of collapsed banks now at 80
- Piedmont Community Bank in Gray, Ga., is the state's 20th failure of the year
- Regulators also shuttered First State Bank of Cranford, N.J., the Garden State's first bank failure this year
- Country Bank of Aledo, Ill., was that state's eighth failure of the year.
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Regulators on Friday closed banks in Georgia, North Carolina, New Jersey and Illinois, pushing this year's national tally of collapsed banks to 80.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said the Georgia Department of Banking and Finance closed Piedmont Community Bank in Gray, Ga., the state's 20th failure of the year. State Bank and Trust Co. of Macon, Ga., will assume all of Piedmont's deposits, the agency said.
Jim Rogers warns of bond bubble,
stagflation and emerging markets
CommodityOnline.com
NEW YORK (Commodity Online): Jim Rogers believes that the US will experience stagflation so much worse than the 1970's that he is betting on commodities and currencies while shorting stocks and emerging markets.
This should come as no surprise for those whoo follow Rogers, since he has been a long time commodity bull.
"As the inflation numbers get worse and as governments print more money and as governments have to issue many, many more bonds - somewhere along the line we get to the point when (bond prices) go down. Bernanke is obviously backing the market again and the Federal Reserve has more money than most of us - so they can drive interest rates down again. As I say they are making the bubble worse", Jim Rogers said in a CNBC interview adding that he wouldn't advise anybody to buy bonds.
Lacker Says Fed’s Attempts to Boost GDP Growth
May Risk Stoking Inflation
By Joshua Zumbrun - Bloomberg.com
Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond President Jeffrey Lacker said the central bank risks stoking inflation by trying to boost growth because the recovery is hampered by conditions that are unaffected by monetary policy.
"The factors likely to be restraining growth -- from empty houses to prospective tax rates -- are nonmonetary and largely beyond the power of the central bank to offset through easier monetary conditions," Lacker said today in the text of a speech to be delivered in Salisbury, Maryland. "History has repeatedly demonstrated that if a central bank attempts to add monetary stimulus to offset nonmonetary disturbances to growth, the result is higher inflation."
Fed's Evans favors more 'out of the box' easing
By Greg Robb
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - The Federal Reserve can't sit on its hands with unemployment stuck at such high levels and should consider new "out of the box" easing steps, said Chicago Federal Reserve Bank President Charles Evans on Monday. Even though the Fed has already taken the unprecedented step of saying that it anticipates short-term rates remaining low until mid-2013, Evans wants the Fed to go further and commit to keeping short-term rates at zero until the unemployment rate falls below 7% or the outlook for inflation over the medium term goes above 3%.
Fed's Evans suggests raising inflation target
until unemployment falls below 7%
by CalculatedRisk
From Chicago Fed President Charles Evans: The Fed's Dual Mandate Responsibilities: Maintaining Credibility during a Time of Immense Economic Challenges. In his speech, Evans notes two significant Fed policy errors - one in the 1970s that led to inflation, and one in the 1930s that led to deflation. He argues the current situation is more like the 1930s. Here is an excerpt on a proposed policy, from Charles Evans:
I believe that we can substantially ease the public’s concern that monetary policy will become restrictive in the near to medium term and, hence, reduce the restraint in expanding economic activity. This can be done by clearly spelling out in our policy statements the conditionality of our dual mandate responsibilities.
What the world most needs now is growth, not austerity
Debt cannot be magicked away.
Reducing it is bound to have consequences.
By Roger Bootle - Telegraph.co.uk
In the case where the Government uses economic growth combined with fiscal restraint to eat away the debt gradually, those who bear the direct costs are just about all citizens, who pay higher taxes than they would have to without the need to work down the debt (and/or those who do not benefit from the higher government expenditure which would have been possible; without the debt).
In the case of default, it is the holders of government bonds, who lose all or part of their wealth. Under the inflation solution, it is the holders of all assets whose prices do not rise commensurately with the rise in the general price level.
Banks Ready to Kill Greek Bailout
247WallSt.com
Several large banks, with Deutsche Bank in the lead, are prepared to kill a bailout of Greece. Well-known DB chief Josef Ackermann says new plans to have banks take a greater burden of the aid package would cripple the industry just as it is needed most as a pillar of stability in the region. Banks hold enough Greek sovereign paper that they could end rescue efforts completely.
The problems with the attempts to save Greece have seesawed back and forth between those nations that will have to fund much of the new loans to the southern European country and financial firms that have been asked to take write-offs on old loans. The trouble becomes more complex because banks may have to be bailed out themselves if their balance sheets are hurt badly enough by the latest proposed Greek bailout.
G20 tells euro zone to fix debt crisis in eight days
By Catherine Bremer and Jan Strupczewski
(Reuters) - The world's leading economies pressed Europe on Saturday to act decisively within eight days to resolve the euro zone's sovereign debt crisis which is endangering the world economy.
In unusually direct language, finance ministers and central bankers of the Group of 20 major economies said they expected an October 23 European Union summit to "decisively address the current challenges through a comprehensive plan".
French Finance Minister Francois Baroin, who chaired the meeting, said Berlin and Paris, the leading euro zone powers, were well on the way to agreeing a plan to reduce Greece's debt, stop contagion and protect Europe's banks.
JIM ROGERS INTERVIEW 14 OCT 2011
Berlin experts fear euro break-up from bail-out escalation
Plans to increase the firepower of Europe's bail-out machinery with extra leverage threaten France's AAA rating and risk setting off a dangerous chain of events, a top German institute has warned.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Telegraph.co.uk
Berlin’s DIW institute, one of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s five official advisers, said attempts to boost the €440bn (£384bn) EFSF bail-out fund – possibly to €2 trillion – with guarantees to shore up southern Europe would be "poisonous" for France's credit worthiness.
Dr Ansgar Belke, the group’s research chief, said the leverage proposal emerging as part of the EU's "Grand Plan" to restore confidence is self-defeating. "It counteracts efforts made so far to stabilise the eurozone debt crisis, which are premised on the AAA rating of a sufficiently large number of strong economies. In extremis, it would probably cause the break-up of the eurozone", he told newspaper Handelsblatt.
UK economy brought to grinding halt by euro crisis
British taxpayers may be dragged into a rescue package for the eurozone after a leading forecaster warned that the crisis has brought this country's economy "grinding to a halt".
By Robert Winnett - Telegraph.co.uk
The Ernst & Young ITEM Club, which uses the Treasury's forecasting models, warns today that the economic situation is "worse than we thought".
It concludes that the “bright spots” in Britain’s economic recovery have "dimmed to a flicker" because of the ongoing crisis in the single currency.
George Osborne, the Chancellor, and Tim Geithner, the US Treasury Secretary, are becoming increasingly exasperated at the lacklustre response of European leaders to the ongoing single currency crisis.
Europe is expected to finalise plans for a two-trillion euro bailout for the single currency area over the next week.
Yet Another Reason Why the Euro Is Doomed
By Charles Hugh Smith - OfTwoMinds.com
I have previously discussed the many profound financial reasons why the euro is doomed. But there is another political/financial reason why the euro's unraveling is inevitable. To understand this dynamic, we must start with this reality: in the wealthy countries of the north, the crisis is abstract; there is so much wealth and apparent financial stability, the notion that some sort of real-world hardship could actually spread from the southern Eurozone to the north is simply impossible to grasp.
In the nations impacted directly by the crisis, there is nothing abstract about the unraveling; it is now part of everyday experience.
China makes 'secret eurozone commitment'
(AFP) – Google.com
LONDON — China has made a "secret commitment" to prop up the crisis-hit eurozone in return for budget reforms and public sector cuts, the Sunday Times reported, amid ongoing turmoil over the region's debt crisis.
The paper said Chinese representatives at the Paris G20 finance gathering on Saturday had indicated that Beijing was willing to pump tens of billions into the eurozone to purchase infrastructure assets from debt-plagued nations.
The Sunday Times, which quoted a source close to the talks, added that Chinese banks could also increase their purchases of eurozone sovereign debt.
European Woes Knock Stocks Back Down
[Google title for Free Article Pass]
By BRENDAN CONWAY - WSJ.com
Stocks staged their steepest drop in two weeks, as fresh European sovereign-debt worries helped knock the market off a 2 ½-month closing high.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average on Monday lost 247.49 points, or 2.13%, to 11397.00, closing near the session's lows and wiping out all of Friday's gains. The loss pushed the blue-chip index back into negative territory for 2011, which it briefly escaped on a closing basis on Friday.
Default Swaps Fall Most Since 2009
Beating Europe, U.S.: Australia Credit
By Sarah McDonald - Bloomberg.com
Corporate bond risk in Australia is dropping at the fastest pace in two years, beating declines in Europe and the U.S. as investors bet a global financial crisis will be averted.
The Markit iTraxx Australia index of credit-default swaps fell 27 basis points last week to 189 basis points, the biggest weekly drop since July 2009, after rising to a more than two- year high on Oct. 4, CMA prices show. Contracts on European company debt declined 16 to 172, while the U.S. corporate bond risk benchmark dropped 9 to 130, the data show.
The Truth and Financial Meltdown
BY JR NYQUIST - FinancialSense.com
Today’s anti-Wall Street protests show that many citizens are blaming Wall Street for the country’s economic difficulties. Even the President of the United States has expressed sympathy for the protestors. In recent days police and protestors have battled in Manhattan – with protestors shouting "Hell no! We won't go!" These children of America apparently feel that the traditional wellspring of American prosperity is den of iniquity. This view was summarized in a 2010 documentary film titled Inside Job. The film outlines "the systemic corruption of the United States by the financial services industry…." Most critics gave the film high ratings. But Barrons economics editor Gene Epstein warned readers in an Oct. 2010 review that the documentary’s outrage was "misdirected." Those who watch the film, wrote Epstein, "will still be left with a dim understanding of the root causes of what happened, and thus a dim grasp of what should be done to prevent it from happening again." The people who made the film were not financial experts.
Lindsey Williams - Jeff Rense 13 October 2011
Signs of Dissent: The Debt Crisis Is Haunting the World
By Derek Thompson - TheAtlantic.com
Welcome back to The Atlantic's Signs of Dissent Project, where we bring economic context to some of the most provocative signs of the Occupy Wall Street movement. To date, we've used OWS signs to explainthe student-loans crisis, the runaway wealth of the top 1%, and the 47 percent of Americans who don't pay federal income taxes, who are targeted in the backlash movement "We Are the 53 Percent." Yesterday, we also documented the globalization of the OWS movement, which sprung up in various forms of protests around the world, including New Zealand, South Korea, Hungary, Mexico, and Canada.
Volcker Rule Divides Regulators
By: Ben Protess, NYTimes - CNBC.com
Regulators have faced a barrage of complaints from lawmakers and financial industry lobbyists in their 14-month-long quest to constrain risky trading on Wall Street, an effort known as the Volcker Rule.
Now, as regulators begin a push to produce a final draft of the rule, they face hurdles from an unexpected group: themselves.
Though several federal agencies agreed last week to propose the initial version of theVolcker Rule , they are divided over some of its crucial details.
Ron Paul proposes $1T in specific budget cuts
By DAN HIRSCHHORN | Politico.com
Ron Paul's opinions about cutting the budget are well-known, but on Monday, he got specific: The Texas congressman laid out a budget blueprint for deep and far-reaching cuts to federal spending, including the elimination of five Cabinet-level departments and the drawdown of American troops fighting overseas.
There’s even a symbolic readjustment of the president’s salary to put it in line with the average American salary.
Ron Paul Plan To Restore America Press Conference
Central Banks Sell Most U.S. Bonds Since 2007
By Daniel Kruger - Bloomberg.com
International central banks are selling the most Treasuries since the credit crisis began just as institutional investors load up on U.S. government bonds.
The Federal Reserve said its holdings of U.S. government debt on behalf of central bankers and institutional investors outside America has plunged $76.5 billion in the last seven weeks, the most since August 2007. At the same time, bond mutual funds are adding Treasuries, banks have increased their holdings 45 percent in the past five years and the Fed has added $656 billion to its balance sheet this year.
The Coming Contraction
By Dr. Robert R. Owens - PatriotPost.us
The party's over and it's time to pay the bill. Our government has been on a spending binge for as long as I can remember. With Clinton and Newt's slight-of-hand accounting back in the late 90s notwithstanding, which wouldn't withstand the level of scrutiny we give a tab at our local burger joint, there have been yearly deficits every year since I was born back in the 40s. The debt piled up to a record amount under Bush the Younger, and under Obama it has sky rocketed to the point where people have actually begun to notice that the emperor has no clothes.
Steve Rattner,
Card Carrying Member of Top 1%,
Tells Us We Should Lie Back and
Enjoy Much Lower Wages Resulting From Globalization
NakedCapitalism.com
A corollary to Upton Sinclair’s famous saying, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends on his not understanding it" is "People promote ideas that help them secure or preserve a privileged position on the totem pole."
A glaring example of these observations came in an op ed in the Sunday New York Times by Steve Rattner, former Lazard mergers & acquisition partner, later head of the private equity firm, Quadrangle Partners. He is best known as the chief negotiator in the auto bailouts (and he was criticized for not involving any auto industry experts). He paid $10 million to settle a kickbacks investigation and agreed not to work for a public pension fund in any role for five years. I happened to see Rattner on a panel at a Financial Times conference earlier this week and he elaborated on some of the themes in this piece, "Let's Admit It: Globalization Has Losers," which reader Brett asked me to debunk line by line. I'll spare you and focus just on the most critical and bald-facedly dishonest bits.
The Dawn of Late Fascism
Mises Daily: by Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.
The downgrading of US debt this summer didn't have huge economic consequences, but the psychological ones were truly devastating for the national elites who have run this country for nearly a century. For a state that regards itself as infallible, it was a huge blow that market forces delivered against the government, and it is only one of thousands that have cut against the power elite in recent years.
Solid Evidence That Occupy Wall Street
Is A Communist Movement
Run By Socialists Who Wish To Bring Down
The Free Enterprise System
EndOfTheAmericanDream.com
Is Occupy Wall Street a communist movement? Is it being run by socialists who wish to bring down the free enterprise system? As you will see in this article, the answer to both questions is yes. Of course many of the people participating in these protests want nothing to do with either socialism or communism. Many of the protesters are simply angry at the big banks or they just want something to be done about the economy. But the truth is that when you take a close look at the "organizers", the literature and the stated goals of this movement, you see socialism and communism everywhere. As our economic system crumbles, an increasing number of Americans are coming out of the woodwork and are proudly declaring that they are socialists or communists. An increasing number of Americans truly believe that the free enterprise system needs to be brought down and that the answer to our problems is to fully embrace socialism and/or communism. Sadly, this puts Occupy Wall Street in direct opposition to what our founding fathers intended.
Communist Party U.S.A. in Solidarity with Occupy Chicago
Occupation, Anarchy, and Greed
by ART CARDEN - Mises.org
This Chronicle of Higher Education piece on anarchism and its influence on the Occupy Wall Street protests is a pretty interesting read that gets at some of the complexities of a movement that’s obviously much more than spoiled rich kids upset that they don’t have the cash to upgrade to the new iPhone but obviously much less than a thoughtful criticism of systematic distortions in the banking system.
Expecting a recession, Gartner urges 'creative destruction'
By 2016, one in eight people on the planet will have a tablet computer
By Patrick Thibodeau - Computerworld.com
ORLANDO -- Gartner Inc. sees another recession coming that will lead to tightened IT budgets at the same time that technology is being forced to respond to social and collaborative computing trends.
At its annual Symposium/ITxpo here, Gartner analysts offered a generous dose of warnings and predictions, backed up with data, to make a case that IT managers are facing a period of "unprecedented uncertainty," as Gene Hall, Gartner's CEO, described it.
This uncertainty may begin with the economy.
"The second recession is about to hit," said Peter Sondergaard, Gartner's global head of research, who said IT budgets will feel a recession's impact next year.
Fears over US mortgage delinquencies
Fresh concern over consumer resilience
By Tom Braithwaite, Shahien Nasiripour
and Ajay Makan in New York - FT.com
Fears about the health of US consumer balance sheets grew on Monday as Citigroup and Wells Fargo joined JPMorgan Chase in reporting new signs that homeowners and credit-card borrowers are falling behind on their payments.
The banks' third-quarter results were hit by expected declines in investment banking, reflecting turbulence in global markets. But the reports also revealed weakness in the consumer side of their businesses – with mortgage delinquency numbers suggesting that record low mortgage rates and government loan modification programmes are failing to help a large swathe of homeowners.
We'd Like to Know a Little Bit About You for Our Files
A new HHS regulation will create a government database of your private health information.
By DAVID CATRON - The American Spectator.org
While armies of attorneys battle the Justice Department over Obamacare's constitutionality, and politicians hold forth about their strategies for repealing and replacing the unpopular law, bureaucrats at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have been working around the clock to assure that the President's "signature domestic achievement" becomes a permanent fixture of your life. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and her accomplice Donald Berwick have been promulgating regulations as quickly as their minions can get them written. The most recent fruit of their combined labor has emerged from the bowels of the bureaucracy in the form of a "proposed rule" that, if permitted to stand, will profoundly change your relationship with government and eliminate what vestiges of personal privacy you still enjoy.
ObamaCare Starts to Unravel
The real story behind the Class program failure, and what to do now. -- WSJ.com - Opinion
Now that one of ObamaCare's major new benefit programs has been scrapped, liberals are trying to make stone soup by claiming that the Obama Administration merely committed an act of "good government." They claim that when this long-term care insurance program proved to be unworkable, the Administration conceded as much, and now it's gone. So let's review the evidence, not least because it so perfectly illustrates the recklessness that produced the Affordable Care Act.
When Democrats were pasting it together in 2009 and 2010, the immediate attraction of the program known by the acronym Class was that its finances could be gamed to create the illusion that a new entitlement would reduce the deficit. Ending the complicated Class budget gimmick erases the better part of ObamaCare's purported "savings," but it's also worth focusing on the program's long-run political goals.
Another Weekend of Mass Layoffs
247WallSt.com
Challenger, Gray said planned layoffs announced in September were up more than 200% from a year earlier to 115,000. That figure appears to be on the rise, and the latest layoffs, or corporate plans that presage them, happened this weekend. That is a bad sign for employment statistics announcements for the balance of the year.
Philips Electronics said it will fire 4,500 people. Its third-quarter figures were below its expectations. Its plans to sell its TV division have failed. The prices of consumer electronics such as TV screens, which have become a commodity, have fallen faster than production costs. It may be that no one wants the Philips business because it cannot be made successful.
Army of unemployed is now entrenched in U.S.
Structural woes in economy creating 'permanent underclass'
By Howard Gold
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Slowly, over the last year, it's begun to dawn on us: The economic recovery isn't really making a dent in unemployment.
The public knew this much earlier than economists or pundits did, and as for politicians — don't ask!
Survey after survey showed Americans didn't believe the economy was recovering. And people who commented on MarketWatch articles have been downright hostile to any notion that either the markets or the economy were getting better.
Philips to Cut 4,500 Jobs as Profit Sinks to Two-Year Low
By Maaike Noordhuis - BusinessWeek.com
Oct. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Royal Philips Electronics NV, the world’s biggest maker of light bulbs, plans to cut 4,500 jobs to revive earnings after quarterly profit fell to the lowest in almost two years and the company predicted no near-term rebound.
The job cuts are part of a plan to save 800 million euros ($1.1 billion), Amsterdam-based Philips said in a statement today. Earnings before interest, taxes and amortization dropped to 368 million euros ($510 million) in the third quarter, from 647 million euros a year earlier. That beat the 341 million-euro average estimate in a Bloomberg survey of analysts. Revenue fell 1.3 percent to 5.39 billion euros, in line with estimates.
Lowe's to Close 20 U.S. Stores,
Slow North American Openings
By Chris Burritt - Bloomberg.com
Lowe’s Cos., the second-largest U.S. home-improvement retailer, will close 20 U.S. stores, affecting 1,950 workers, and plans to slow its North American expansion next year as it works to improve sales.
Half of the locations closed at the end of business yesterday, and the remaining 10 will be shut within about a month, Mooresville, North Carolina-based Lowe’s said today in a statement. The closings will reduce earnings by about 17 cents to 20 cents a share this fiscal year, the company said.
Manufacturing in New York Fed Region
Shrinks More Than Economists Forecast
By Bob Willis - Bloomberg.com
Manufacturing in the New York region contracted in October at a faster pace than forecast, reflecting a lack of confidence in the U.S. recovery that failed to be confirmed by measures of orders and sales.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s general economic index rose to minus 8.5 from minus 8.8 in September. Economists projected an improvement to minus 4, based on the median of 53 forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey. Readings less than zero signal companies in the so-called Empire State Index, which covers New York, northernNew Jersey, and southern Connecticut, are cutting back.
Postal Workers To Get $2.8 Million -- For Nothing
By Eric Scheiner - CNSNews.com
(CNSNews.com) - In Sioux City, Iowa there are about 40 United States Postal Workers getting paid for doing nothing. What’s more interesting is that their checks may continue to be ‘in the mail’ for the next three-and-a-half years, which with benefits total more than $2.8 million.
The postal processing facility was closed down in early October, but not until after members of the postal union had signed a four-year contract in May, guaranteeing paychecks until 2015.
Clueless AP:
Cain's Philosophical Ties to AFP
and Kochs 'Could Undercut Outsider Image'
By Tom Blumer - NewsBusters.org
The Associated Press's seeming effort to go after every candidate except the guy who used to be governor of Massachusetts -- and imposed CO2 emission caps when he was -- went a different route tonight with a report by the wire service's Ryan J. Foley that Herman Cain, a believer in liberty and free-market capitalism, "has close ties" with the Koch brothers, who believe in liberty and free-market capitalism.
Knock me over with a feather. Here are several paragraphs from Foley's report (bolds are mine):
Long ties to Koch brothers key to Cain's campaign
Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain has cast himself as the outsider, the pizza magnate with real-world experience who will bring fresh ideas to the nation's capital. But Cain's economic ideas, support and organization have close ties to two billionaire brothers who bankroll right-leaning causes through their group Americans for Prosperity.
Cain 'proud' of link with Koch brothers
By MAGGIE HABERMAN | Politico.com
From POLITICO's Juana Summers, Herman Cain talked about his relationship with the Koch brothers in an interview with CNN's John King:
"I know the Koch brothers. The Koch brothers helped to start an organization called Americans For Prosperity and I did some speaking when they were starting that organization. I am very proud of the relationship I have with the Koch Brothers and Americans for Prosperity."
"I don't have a close relationship, but I know them and I respect them and they know me and they respect me."
Raytheon Anti-Missile Warhead Has Guidance Flaw, MDA Says
By Tony Capaccio - Bloomberg.com
The latest model of a Raytheon Co. (RTN) anti-missile warhead failed in the final seconds of a $300 million flight test last December because of a "guidance error," according to the U.S. Missile Defense Agency.
The warhead "successfully selected the correct target object, but a guidance error occurred in the final seconds before the planned intercept," said MDA spokesman Richard Lehner in an e-mail statement.
The guidance system had a fault "related to outer space- related dynamic environments," Lehner said, without elaboration. The specifics are classified, he said.
Raging US pulls no punches on Iran
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi - ATimes.com
TEHRAN - United States officials may be busy plotting the sequences of action against Iran that began with the allegation of a terror plot in Washington last week and has now extended to the nuclear issue. This is in light of President Barack Obama's call on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to go public with its evidence of Iran's alleged proliferation activities - but in Tehran the mood is defiant and many analysts wonder what is behind the new well-orchestrated US offensive against Iran.
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