Greece Warns It Will Soon Be In "Condition Of Absolute Poverty"
And while the bankers (on both sides of the table) haggle about how to best leech Greece even dryer (with a solution due any hour, day, week now), the actual people are starting to wave the white flag of surrender. Because the opportunity cost of every additional coupon payment is having a direct, immediate and increasingly more dire impact on virtually every aspect of the economy. Kathimerini reports that "about 160,000 jobs will be lost this year in the commerce sector, according to the National Confederation of Greek Commerce (ESEE) as the constant decline in disposable income has led to a sharp drop in turnover and a steep rise in the number of enterprises shutting down." Indicatively, the latest Greek employment figures per the IMF, show that 4.156MM people are employed. So commerce alone is about to lead to a 4% drop in total jobs. As the chart below shows, net of just this sector, Greek jobs are about to go back to 2010 levels. What this means for the Greek unemployment rate, and for GDP we leave to our readers, although the ESEE does a good job of summarizing what to expect: the "ESEE warns that soon Greece will be in a condition of absolute poverty." And that, ladies and gents, is how Europe slowly but surely reentered the Feudal age, and what every other country in the European periphery that has a massive debt load, and no surplus (actually make that every country in the world), has to look forward to: absolute poverty, aka debt slavery.
Country music goes Ron Paul. reverbnation.com/georgejohnsonm…
Judge Martin Glenn of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York rejected an attempt by investment firm Sapere Wealth Management LLC and other commodities customers with segregated accounts to be moved ahead of other creditors.
“Under the Bankruptcy Code, the court does not have the power to grant the relief requested, and Sapere has failed to allege any facts to support its motion,” Glenn wrote. And even if it did, Glenn wrote, the court would decline to do so.
Sapere wanted MF Global Inc.’s commodities customers that held segregated accounts to be treated as a customer class of parent company MF Global Holdings Ltd., which is in Chapter 11. Those accounts are the same, with an estimated shortfall of at least $1.2 billion, according to the trustee unwinding MF Global’s brokerage.
Read More @ Blogs.WSJ.com
US Adds $120 Billion In Debt Since Debt Ceiling Hike On Friday, $310 Billion More On Deck In Next Two Months
Remember when the US hiked its debt ceiling on Friday courtesy of a formulaic 52 affirmative votes in the Senate, giving the Treasury $1.2 trillion in dry debt powder to attempt to grow the economy one more time according to the algorithmic fantasies of voodoo priests with pieces of Ivy League parchment on their walls? Well, two days later, the dry powder is less than $1.1 trillion. In other words, in the past two days, total US debt increased by $120 billion, along the lines of our expectations, as the Treasury filled up all the G-fund cash it had pillaged to continue issuing debt throughout the month of January even though it was formally above the debt ceiling. What is more concerning, is that as the chart below shows, the trendline of US debt since the beginning of 2011 is no longer a straight line, but has slowly transformed into a parabola, the very same word used as the root in such other infamous words as, for example, parabolic.
CNBC Video: Facebook, Interest Rates, US Dollar
Admin at Jim Rogers Blog - 1 hour ago
Latest CNBC video interview with Larry Kudlow.
*Jim Rogers is an author, financial commentator and successful
international investor. He has been frequently featured in Time, The New
York Times, Barron’s, Forbes, Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, The
Financial Times and is a regular guest on Bloomberg and CNBC.*
Facebook Files IPO Prospectus
The most eagerly awaited IPO of the decade has just filed its S-1 statement (link). Some real time observations:- Symbol: FB
- Proposed maximum aggregate offering price: $5 Billion
- 845 million monthly active users (MAU)
- 483 million daily active users (DAU)
- Users generated on average 2.7 billion Likes and Comments per day in Q4 2011. Er..."liking" is monetizable?
- 100 billion friendships
- 250 million photos uploaded per day
- FB generated $3.7 billion in Revenue in 2011, up from $2 billion in 2010
- FB generated $1 billion in net income in 2011, up from $606 billion in 2010, a 40% growth rate, compared to the 165% growth rate from 2009's $229MM.
- EBIT margin peaked at 52.3% in 2010 ($1MM in EBIT on $2 billion in revenue), has since declined to 47.3% or $1.756Bn on $3.711Bn in Revenue
- $3.9 billion in cash and marketable securities
- Peaked model? - MAU additions peaked in 2010 when FB added 248MM to a total of 608MM; in 2011 it added 237MM to 845MM
Harvey Organ at Harvey Organ's - The Daily Gold and Silver Report - 2 hours ago
Good
evening Ladies and Gentlemen:
Gold closed up today up $11.10 to finish the session at $1747.10 Silver
paid no attention to the knockdown yesterday and shot right back up to
close at $33.78 gaining 70 cents on the day. The gold and silver shares
were lagging the price again which suggests another raid tomorrow which
of course is prior to the jobs reports. These crooks continue to use
the
SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Facebook Cometh, Some Day
from The Daily Bell:
The End of Health Insurance Companies … Here’s a bold prediction for the new year. By 2020, the American health insurance industry will be extinct. Insurance companies will be replaced by accountable care organizations — groups of doctors, hospitals and other health care providers who come together to provide the full range of medical care for patients … Accountable care organizations will typically be paid a fixed amount per patient, along with bonuses for achieving quality targets. The organizations will make money by keeping their patients healthy and out of the hospital and by avoiding unnecessary tests, drugs and procedures. Thus, they will actually have a financial incentive to hire that nurse for follow-ups. – New York Times
Dominant Social Theme: The US Fedgov has re-engineered health care in the United States. It is a massively exciting and bold plan, and we can’t wait to see how it will end up.
Free-Market Analysis: Ezekiel J. Emanuel and Jeffrey B. Liebman – both of whom have Obama administration ties, apparently – have written a massively economically illiterate article on health care that was recently posted to the New York Times Op-Ed.
The main point of the article is excerpted above and has to do with how the Obama administration has “crafted” accountable care organizations that will have financial incentives to keep people healthy via “prevention” and healthcare monitoring.
Read More @ TheDailyBell.com
The End of Health Insurance Companies … Here’s a bold prediction for the new year. By 2020, the American health insurance industry will be extinct. Insurance companies will be replaced by accountable care organizations — groups of doctors, hospitals and other health care providers who come together to provide the full range of medical care for patients … Accountable care organizations will typically be paid a fixed amount per patient, along with bonuses for achieving quality targets. The organizations will make money by keeping their patients healthy and out of the hospital and by avoiding unnecessary tests, drugs and procedures. Thus, they will actually have a financial incentive to hire that nurse for follow-ups. – New York Times
Dominant Social Theme: The US Fedgov has re-engineered health care in the United States. It is a massively exciting and bold plan, and we can’t wait to see how it will end up.
Free-Market Analysis: Ezekiel J. Emanuel and Jeffrey B. Liebman – both of whom have Obama administration ties, apparently – have written a massively economically illiterate article on health care that was recently posted to the New York Times Op-Ed.
The main point of the article is excerpted above and has to do with how the Obama administration has “crafted” accountable care organizations that will have financial incentives to keep people healthy via “prevention” and healthcare monitoring.
Read More @ TheDailyBell.com
Drones strikes have become taboo among US leaders; allegedly for
security reasons. Still Pakistan and the US have an agreement to
continue drones strikes that are aimed at killing the Taliban, but at
the same time have killed innocent Pakistanis. For the first time Obama
has admitted drones not only kill the enemy, but innocent people.
Michael Maloof, former Pentagon official, gives us his thoughts on the
matter.
by Simon Black, Sovereign Man:
The latest Case-Shiller numbers released yesterday showed that the US residential housing market is still very weak. After three straight months of declines, home prices are now at 2003 levels. Duh.
To some, it was a shocking revelation. The pundits I saw discussing it yesterday practically had a seizure they were in such disbelief. CNBC even ran an article on their website in response, extolling the strong fundamentals of US housing.
Let’s look at those fundamentals:
Read More @ SovereignMan.com
The latest Case-Shiller numbers released yesterday showed that the US residential housing market is still very weak. After three straight months of declines, home prices are now at 2003 levels. Duh.
To some, it was a shocking revelation. The pundits I saw discussing it yesterday practically had a seizure they were in such disbelief. CNBC even ran an article on their website in response, extolling the strong fundamentals of US housing.
Let’s look at those fundamentals:
Read More @ SovereignMan.com
by Gonzalo Lira:
Suppose that I promised to give you free chocolate for the next three years: How much chocolate would you eat today?
A pound? Half a pound? A few ounces? Or would you not eat any chocolate at all, once I made the announcement? After all, you’re going to have free chocolate for the next three years—seems silly to gorge on chocolate today, when you can have as much as you’d like tomorrow, or next week, or whenever you want over the next three years.
So free chocolate for the next three years? Great! . . . uh, only not right now, thanks very much: I’m kinda full.
But then what if I said to you, “Chocolate is free now—but I’m definitely going to raise the price in the near term. In a month, chocolate might be free—or then again, it might cost $1,000 an ounce. So get some while you can, because tomorrow, you never know!”
Read More @ GonzaloLira.Blogspot.com
Suppose that I promised to give you free chocolate for the next three years: How much chocolate would you eat today?A pound? Half a pound? A few ounces? Or would you not eat any chocolate at all, once I made the announcement? After all, you’re going to have free chocolate for the next three years—seems silly to gorge on chocolate today, when you can have as much as you’d like tomorrow, or next week, or whenever you want over the next three years.
So free chocolate for the next three years? Great! . . . uh, only not right now, thanks very much: I’m kinda full.
But then what if I said to you, “Chocolate is free now—but I’m definitely going to raise the price in the near term. In a month, chocolate might be free—or then again, it might cost $1,000 an ounce. So get some while you can, because tomorrow, you never know!”
Read More @ GonzaloLira.Blogspot.com
from King World News:
Today
Egon von Greyerz told King World News he received an email from his
good friend Alf Field predicting silver would move quickly to the $158
level. Von Greyerz also discussed the initiative in Switzerland to get
the Swiss franc backed by 20% gold. Egon von Greyerz is founder and
managing partner at Matterhorn Asset Management out of Switzerland.
Here is what von Greyerz had to say about Alf Field’s call for $158
silver: “Eric, overnight I received an email from my good friend in
Australia, Alf Field. To his amazement he found the silver chart, from
an Elliott point of view, runs in parallel to the gold chart. His count
is now very clear that silver will, in the next move reach $158.”
Egon von Greyerz continues: Read More @ KingWorldNews.com
Today
Egon von Greyerz told King World News he received an email from his
good friend Alf Field predicting silver would move quickly to the $158
level. Von Greyerz also discussed the initiative in Switzerland to get
the Swiss franc backed by 20% gold. Egon von Greyerz is founder and
managing partner at Matterhorn Asset Management out of Switzerland.
Here is what von Greyerz had to say about Alf Field’s call for $158
silver: “Eric, overnight I received an email from my good friend in
Australia, Alf Field. To his amazement he found the silver chart, from
an Elliott point of view, runs in parallel to the gold chart. His count
is now very clear that silver will, in the next move reach $158.”Egon von Greyerz continues: Read More @ KingWorldNews.com
from The Daily Bell:
United Nations Partnership Framework for Thailand 2012-2016 … The UNPAF is a five-year agreement of cooperation worked out between United Nations agencies and the governments of the countries in which they work. The UNPAF 2012-16 for Thailand was signed by the Royal Thai Government (RTG) and 19 UN agencies on 28 April 2011. The agreement builds on the UNPAF 2007-2011 and guides the preparation and implementation of UN programmes in Thailand during the next five-year period. – UN.org
Dominant Social Theme: Thank heaven for the United Nations. Where would humankind be without it?
Free-Market Analysis: On its surface, this latest UN over-reach doesn’t sound so alarming. The UN is simply stating, via a press release announcing a Thai partnership that as part of its “next” five-year plan (shades of the USSR), its bureaucrats will reach agreements with countries around the world to “guide” UN programs in various nation-states.
Read More @ TheDailyBell.com
United Nations Partnership Framework for Thailand 2012-2016 … The UNPAF is a five-year agreement of cooperation worked out between United Nations agencies and the governments of the countries in which they work. The UNPAF 2012-16 for Thailand was signed by the Royal Thai Government (RTG) and 19 UN agencies on 28 April 2011. The agreement builds on the UNPAF 2007-2011 and guides the preparation and implementation of UN programmes in Thailand during the next five-year period. – UN.org
Dominant Social Theme: Thank heaven for the United Nations. Where would humankind be without it?
Free-Market Analysis: On its surface, this latest UN over-reach doesn’t sound so alarming. The UN is simply stating, via a press release announcing a Thai partnership that as part of its “next” five-year plan (shades of the USSR), its bureaucrats will reach agreements with countries around the world to “guide” UN programs in various nation-states.
Read More @ TheDailyBell.com
by Stephan Dinan, WashingtonTimes.com
After years of delaying big decisions, the federal government faces daunting budget challenges, according to Congress‘ chief scorekeeper, which said Tuesday that a churlish economy, low tax rates, and growing spending on Social Security and health care are creating a volatile mixture.
Under the best of cases, that means a fourth straight year of trillion-dollar deficits, covering all of President Obama’s first term in office, and debt nearing a staggering $20 trillion by the end of this decade.
But if Congress continues to extend tax cuts and higher rates of spending, as it has done for the past two years, the situation will be much worse — a total of $10 trillion more in deficits each year for the next decade.
The bad news doesn’t stop there.
“Beyond the coming decade, the fiscal outlook is even more worrisome,” the Congressional Budget Office said in its report.
Read More @ WashingtonTimes.com
After years of delaying big decisions, the federal government faces daunting budget challenges, according to Congress‘ chief scorekeeper, which said Tuesday that a churlish economy, low tax rates, and growing spending on Social Security and health care are creating a volatile mixture.
Under the best of cases, that means a fourth straight year of trillion-dollar deficits, covering all of President Obama’s first term in office, and debt nearing a staggering $20 trillion by the end of this decade.
But if Congress continues to extend tax cuts and higher rates of spending, as it has done for the past two years, the situation will be much worse — a total of $10 trillion more in deficits each year for the next decade.
The bad news doesn’t stop there.
“Beyond the coming decade, the fiscal outlook is even more worrisome,” the Congressional Budget Office said in its report.
Read More @ WashingtonTimes.com
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