Readers: Yves is either packing for the road or on the road, and so she may well do some post-Links posting later this morning. –lambert
Obie the formerly obese dachshund, who once weighed 77lbs, has over two pounds of loose skin removed after shedding half his body weight Daily Mail. Anti-antidote.
Protein Complex Found in Human Breast Milk Can Help Reverse Antibiotic Resistance in Superbugs Science Daily
Austerity is not the only answer to a debt problem R-R, FT. Now they tell us! Fixed it for ya. Also: more straw, vicar?
Obama picks Pritzker for commerce post FT. Used to be a bribe only bought you an ambassadorship.
ObamaCare Clusterf*ck: New 3-page eligibility form may scr*w states that are farthest ahead on their exchange software Corrente (and see Aliens Among Us).
The Oregon Experiment — Effects of Medicaid on Clinical Outcomes NEJM. Medicaid makes poor people less depressed and more secure financially (more). Can’t have that!
Misunderstanding Oregon Health Care Blog. Health care isn’t health.
Regulators Blame Libor Fixing On The Sex, Drugs, And Lavish Perks Of London Banking Business Insider. As opposed to control fraud.
VIX Clings to Stocks Like It’s 2007 as S&P 500 Peaks Bloomberg
Massive Bitcoin Business Partnership Devolves Into $75 Million Lawsuit Gawker
The Ghetto Is Public Policy Ta-Nehisi Coates. Important.
Jeffrey Sachs: Banking Abuses ‘Can’t Get More in Your Face’ WSJ
Turns out much-hyped settlement still allows banks to steal homes David Dayen, Salon
CASHING IN ON NATURAL GAS: How The Shale Boom Has Transformed One Rural Pennsylvania County Business Insider
Appeals court says NY towns can ban fracking Elmira Star-Gazette (commentary).
Enbridge Expansion Could Turn Into Keystone-Like Fight Bloomberg
Just How Many Climate “Sceptics” Are There? Desmogblog
May Day ostriches Beppe Grillo
Why Not Target a 3% Unemployment Rate? Businessweek. Why not a jobs guarantee?
Americans Most Upbeat in Five Years as Firings Slow: Economy Bloomberg. So will the beatings stop now?
The lost generation Economist
12 Latin American Governments Gather to Confront Extreme Investor Privileges Regime Public Citizen
Italy should use its gold reserves to force a change in EMU policy Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph
US drone strikes being used as alternative to Guantánamo, lawyer says Guardian
The Klown Quotient Increases Power of Narrative. Boston (cf. “we all very voluntarily did what had been asked of us”).
Principal fires security guards to hire art teachers — and transforms elementary school NBC
Motivated Reasoning Above the Market
Six Ways to Separate Lies From Statistics Bloomberg
The rise of big data, big brother mathbabe (cf. for geeks).
With Great Power Baseline Scenario. Excel and data corruption in bioinformatics.
Messages From the Future: The Fate of Google Glass The Interactivist (ScottS)
Where Did All The Search Traffic Go? BuzzFeed
The Shape of Time The Archdruid Report
Antidote du jour (furzy mouse):
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roseatte spoonbill! sweeeet
Of what is real I say,
Is it the old, the roseate parent or
The bride come jingling, kissed and cupped, or else
The spirit and all ensigns of the self?
~wallace stevens
(a truly grateful dead pause when this creature fly’s at sunset’)
It would be a far, far better world if all corporate lawyers can turn poets full-time.
For the matter, it would be a even far, far, better world if all stockbrokers can turn Impressionist painters full time…maybe even all migrate to Tahiti.
I don’t know about that Beef, there’s already too much to read as it is. :)
Agreed.
Make that haiku poets.
“It would be a far, far better world if all corporate lawyers can turn poets full-time.”
Even if they’re still conservatives?
RE: Enbridge Expansion Could Turn Into Keystone-Like Fight
These refineries tend to be in nonattainment areas of poor air quality. In addition to daily air pollution, there are other problems with putting more polluting industries along the shores of the body of lakes that hold 20% of the world’s fresh water. Consider the following:
1. Explosion Rocks Marathon Refinery, Black Smoke Pollutes Southwest Detroit http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/story/22097831/explosion-rocks-marathon-refinery
Massive explosion rocks Marathon Detroit Refinery http://rt.com/usa/explosion-refinery-detroit-tanker-520/
Fire put out at Marathon refinery in Detroit http://www.freep.com/article/20130427/NEWS01/304270093/Marathon-Refinery-Fire
2. Petcoke, the filthy byproduct of tar sands refining, is even dirtier than coal AND cheaper. Besides offending the senses, it contaminates air and water, especially if burned.
Growing mounds of petroleum coke raise fears along Detroit River http://www.freep.com/article/20130313/NEWS01/303130118/Growing-mounds-of-petroleum-coke-raise-fears-along-Detroit-River
Petcoke site in Detroit lacks proper zoning, permits http://blogs.windsorstar.com/2013/05/02/petcoke-site-in-detroit-lacks-proper-zoning-permits/
re Bitcom’s WideWorld of Incoming Lawsuits…blogger comment:
“I know, right? Never trust a currency that isn’t backed by nuclear weapons”
Ha ha.
I love my imperial currency.
Ding!! That’s why it’s called ‘imperial currency’!!!
To Dacian- , Parthian- and other slaves, the value of the Roman currency derived, not from taxation, but from the fact that, to migrate to and survive in sunny, prosperous Rome, after their homes had been destroyed by Roman legions, they had no choice but to use it.
U.S. adds 165,000 jobs in April; jobless rate falls
DOW 15,000 HERE WE COME
We’re Lost, But We’re Making Good Time!!!
Berra
14,990 so far … but the morning’s young. It’s the standard ‘dance of the round number’ tease.
Such milestones bring a big toothless grin to the geezer faction, who recall the legendary ‘Dow Thou’ ceiling that haunted the market from the mid-Sixties to 1982. On 9 Feb 1966 the Dow closed at 995.15 … but that was it.
For sure, it could happen again. But dedicated public servants are toiling night and day in the bowels of the Eccles Building to keep this bubble on the boil.
there it is 15,008
I always thought that record would stand until it was broken.
(its fittingly a Yogi day)
When the economy comes to a fork in the road, it should take it.
bahahahaha TK love your twist to one of my favs
lets do it…
If you don’t know where your portfolio is going, it could end up some place else.
A bankster would – even if the fork was nailed down.
It’s like déjà vu all over again.
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is.
Ha! I’m not sure I even understand what that means! Wait, is this the philosophy behind the U.S. economy right now?
heheheee an this one must be the philosophy of the economist…
90% of the game is half mental
I am not sure I fully comprehend the rationale beyond that statement, but there is not doubt about its irrationale.
I imagine the “dance of the round number” is because momentum is up, but smart people are heading towards the exits.
Morning in the Jobs Paradise, comrades:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-stock-futurse-rally-after-jobs-report-2013-05-03?siteid=bigcharts&dist=bigcharts
The Yellen Bubble is inflating apace … and she’s not even nominated yet!
Apparently the austere Ben Bernanke, who’s put the U.S. economy on a hair-shirt regime of only $85 billion a month in fresh money, is worth more dead than alive. And Wall Street’s celebrating his imminent departure.
S&P 2K by the time of Janet’s Senate coronation looks doable.
I’m Yellen’ for Janet!
holy cow Oil just shot from 92.56 to 95.71
5day chart bounce(s)…http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/future/crude%20oil%20-%20electronic
Hey, good one…
Jim,
Re: … “S&P 2K by the time of Janet’s Senate coronation looks doable.
I’m Yellen’ for Janet!”
Interesting that S&P 2k stock index number you cited is exactly 300 percent of the March 6, 2009 intraday low of the S&P 500 stock index. Although Fed policy has fueled an enormous rise in financial asset prices, “The Wealth Effect” of QE-ZIRP and its effectiveness in realizing the Fed’s dual mandate has – like the work of Reinhardt & Rogoff – gone largely unquestioned and unchallenged by prominent economists for many years.
Meanwhile, we are looking at the real effects of QE-ZIRP coupled with Austerity-Sequester federal fiscal policies on everything from the price of Oil – as Aby noted, to the 46 million Americans now on food stamps, to reductions of socially beneficial programs like education and infrastructure spending, to low job formation and rising rates of substance abuse and suicide: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/us-suicide-rate-rose-sharply-among-middle-aged
Wonder how the American 0.1 Percent are faring in the global “Very High Net Worth” contest?
Speaking of round numbers, the Argentine press is watching excitedly today as the ‘dólar informal’ closes in on 10.00 pesos even (it reached 9.97 so far).
http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1578564-en-el-cierre-de-la-sema-el-dolar-blue-avanza-y-se-acerca-a-los-10
In Dec. 2001, the peso was pegged one-to-one with the USD. Now it’s worth a dime.
During the 20th century, Argentina knocked 13 zeroes off its currency due to hyperinflation.
Crap, there goes another one!
meanwhile in America http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/03/opinion/krugman-not-enough-inflation.html
Haygood sure seems to enjoy a lot of schadenfreude considering Argentina was once conservative heaven-allied with the US, haven for unreconstructed Nazis fled down the ratline provided by the Vatican and CIA, and fodder for musicals.
Speaking of numbers in general, it always amazes to no end that one can buy an Infiniti with a finite number of dollars.
It’s always puzzling that there are more than one Infiniti. How does Nissan do it?
Perhaps they have mastered Transfinity.
Re: The Ghetto is Public Policy
Why is he using the past tense? ISTM this is still a public policy goal, and one that is being successfully pursued.
Dear diptherio;
It’s not just for Black folks either. Poor White Trash has been the ‘evil twin brother/sister’ of the oppressed Nieblank population for as long as Ol Massa has been around. The Race Wars has been the most successful divide and conquer strategy America, indeed, the World, has ever seen. See “Gangs of New York” for a slice of American Nativeism at work in an earlier era.
Dear ambrit, speaking of squares from yesterday, there is at least one more square than before.
Before, people would say, I love my heart, or I love heart.
Today, it’s ‘I heart heart’ or ‘I heart squared.’
Yipe, 747 just falls out of the air.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2013/may/01/747-cargo-plane-crash-bagram-airbase-video
Military cargo plane, carrying armored vehicles. The theory is that the restraints on one of the vehicles broke and caused a load shift.
This is not likely to happen on a passenger 747.
The video should not be viewed by sensitive people.
RE: Misunderstanding Oregon
Pretty thin gruel here.
It’s not just getting care, it’s gettingHIGH Qu
Oops, Lo ciento!
Disagree that the boston manhunt shows incompetence. Silber has chosen, maybe rhetorically, to look at it from the public safety perspective. Everybody knows that’s bullshit.
Look at past high-profile armed attacks on civilians: JFK. RFK. MLK. OKC. WTC bombing. Anthrax attacks. 9/11. The facts show US government exploitation or complicity in every case. More of the same is your rebuttable presumption here.
So what are the usual suspects up to? What is the outcome of the manhunt? One suspect is dead. Nothing will come out at trial (this is your basic Lee Harvey Oswald).
The other suspect is alive. But the circumstances of the charged person’s apprehension leaves his reported confession entirely under state control. And in fact interrogators unlawfully coerced any such confession (this is a modified James Earl Ray – instead of obtaining a confession by treachery, you obtain it in coercive custodial interrogation.)
Pro: There’s no tricky choreography or psychological manipulation of the sort that was required to frame Sirhan Sirhan for murder. Less to go wrong.
Con: Much depends on short-circuiting trial in an independent court. This court case will undergo closer scrutiny than the shambolic Malvo trial in CIA’s home district. And any competent attorney could blow the roof off. Just think what a William Pepper could do.
We’ll have to see how Mary Margaret Graham is going to handle the kangaroo court, but so far so good.
I’m so confused. The Atlantic Wire says the economy is full of good news (! they say) (? I say). Isn’t the dropping unemployment rate due to more people falling off the unemployment insurance benefit list? Am I spoilsport pessimist…or is the Atlantic Wire delusional? Maybe I should stop reading the news before I start thinking I must have left Planet Earth at some point? Help.
” Isn’t the dropping unemployment rate due to more people falling off the unemployment insurance benefit list?”
I would say so. The number of jobs created was barely enough to cover new entrants into the work force, let alone cut into the already unemployed. Of course, I’m just waiting for that jobs number to be revised downward like they usually are.
It’s like rubbing salt in the wound when you can’t even get a job interview to hear the unemployment rate is dropping.
It must be something wrong with you then.
VIX clinging to stocks…
If the movement is weird, it could be that it’s like trying to see a four dimensional object in a 3 D world.
Thanks for Public Citizen on “free trade” tribunals. This is NAFTA even. No wonder Australia, et. al. are not joining the TPP (this extrajudicial tyranny, plus the fact that it is going to trade in renminbi… so if all the Pacific countries actually begin using renminbi how is it that we are isolating China from our trading network?). We are only trying to accomplish one thing with these Investor-State trade contracts – getting around our own public interest policies. We are, after all, manufacturing overseas and bringing all that crap in as trade. Not that we haven’t hurt social policy in Latin America. Of course we have. I betcha Obama just went to Mexico, not to delicately discuss immigration, but to bludgeon Mexico into signing the TPP. I do hope Mexico joins the rest of Latin America for an intergovernmental commission to impose social controls on the “Bilateral” Investment Treaty tribunals.
Indeed, it looks like Latin America is shaping up to be the Anti-TPP. It’s a job that will get dirtier – but somebody’s got to do it.
Very heartening to hear that Australia is looking askance at TPP too.
It is, but the pressure is relentless. The SMH has given or has been told to give the US Ambassador (who rejoices in the onomatopoeic name of Jeffery Bleich) a column for gawd’s sake, so that he can scare us into thinking the sky is falling with regard to ‘cloud protectionism’…
‘One way to stop cloud protectionism is through the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP. On Wednesday in Auckland, officials from Australia and the US will work with counterparts from nine other Asia-Pacific countries to craft this ambitious new trade agreement that seeks to integrate the economies of the Asia-Pacific… This is a rare opportunity to set the rules of the road for regional commerce for generations to come.
The road will be divided like the ones they have in the occupied territories, a high road with no speed limit for some drivers and a low road studded with tolls for the rest.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/cloud-agreement-can-bring-blue-skies-20121210-2b5ov.html
war crimes of Tojo – Count 54 (ordering, authorizing, and permitting inhumane treatment of POWs and others) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hideki_Tojo
Wright Brothers Flight Legacy Hits New Turbulence – Aviation periodical proclaims Gustave Whitehead flew the first airplane http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130503-wright-brothers-first-flight-gustave-whitehead-aviation-smithsonian-institution-adventure-world/
Why not a jobs guarantee?
I would go for GDP sharing.
One concern with any jobs guarantee is we are approaching the problem the way we did with world hunger.
We focused on quantity instead of quality. So, by now, the world is filled, when we manage to avoid famines, with toxic food. This is the legacy of decades of trumpeting record tonnages of toxic wheat and/or rice harvests. A quality approach might have directed our attention to the unequal distribution of food and food consumption while making sure food is grown safely.
Again, it’s more important to have quality jobs than just jos; otherwise, we might as well give people the same amount of money for them to stay home and do something they really enjoy, like writing poetry or painting cats. And one way for people to do what they are really passionate about is to make sure wealth is distributed equally; and we can do that via GDP sharing, shared by all, regardless of how you spend your days – that way, people are sure to spend their days doing what they are really passionate about.
I believe we will be all amazed at how much hedge fund managers yearn to sing, dance and play with pink herons.
> like writing poetry or painting cats
How do you get it to hold still long enough to be painted? I tried washing one once and still have the scratches to prove it.
Two words: Spray gun.
>that way, people are sure to spend their days doing what they are really passionate about.
But don’t discount the numbers of people who will spend their days stoned out of their tree, the roving bands in pursuit of abuses against persons and property, the moaners who come to find the truth of Gordon Lightfoot’s wisdom that “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”. In fact all those factions that the ‘Protestant Work Ethic’ was invented to put a lid on.
Me, I will retire to the side farther from Picra and write some poems about the doom of the whole boiling.
One hand full of rest is better than two fists full of labor and striving after wind. Ecclesiastes 4:6
There is far more than enough wealth for everyone to be guaranteed a house, food, basic medical care, and educational opportunities, without noticeable effect on the lifestyle of the wealthy.
But that’s not the point. It’s not about the money, it’s about desperation- to be clear, they WANT us to be desperate. The reason is as diabolical as it is certain: Desperate people will work harder for less. Desperate people don’t try to organize and resist. Desperate people can be bribed into betraying each other. Desperate people will sell what is important in the long-term if it means survival in the short-term. Desperate people can be pushed around.
Sun-tzu said not to attack the enemy’s army, but to attack his strategy. For those who control us, this is accomplished by keeping us as confused, terrified, and exhausted as possible without totally destroying our value as workers- except for those who are naturally inclined to disobedience, who are of course destroyed utterly.
The gas rush…BI
“Heavy trucks now rumble over the area’s rolling hills, and some residents have seen their water impaired by the controversial drilling practice known as fracking (the gas industry denies they’re at fault)”
Impaired? Is this the new corporately acceptable euphemism?
How does one “impair” water?
I tought Blodget was banned from Wall st?
One more- Cabot has spent more than $15 million on roads. This might sound like a lot. It’s not.
blo3job….
No worse that a recent headline stating… Israeli warplanes strike target in Syria, not know if warplanes violated Syrian airspace~?~
skippy… obviously explosive warhead packed missiles or gravity bombs are a violation of sovereign air space… Roflmmao~~~
Impairment of soverign airspace with intent to dissuade?
“And I want to Thank everyone for making this day necessary”
Newser) – With the Kentucky Derby running this weekend, everybody’s rolling out the feature stories in advance. It will be seriously hard to top this one in the New York Times
: It’s the story of Conor Murphy, 29, who was shoveling manure last year as a stablehand in England until he placed a $75 “accumulator” bet on five horses he liked. All five won—defying odds of more than 160,000/1—and the bet paid off at $1.5 million for Murphy.
The native of Ireland immediately moved to Kentucky (he had previously worked there) and bought a stable of his own. Now one of the horses he is training, named Lines of Battle, will run in the derby on Saturday. If you’re looking to cash in on Murphy’s luck, be warned that Lines of Battle is a long shot at 33/1, and long shots never pay off, right…
“It ain’t the heat, it’s the humility.” Go LoB Go
Investigative journalism may be on life support but it’s not dead yet in Australia. A speech by the Sydney Morning Herald’s Kate McClymont to fellow journos about the hazards of threatening the drug lords, crooked pollies and cops and the local 1%. Her byline has graced almost every decent expose in the last 20 years in this town. Tough lady… exemplar of a dying breed? As she says ‘For smaller companies, freelancers and bloggers, freedom of the press is a wonderful concept but the prospect of personally funding a court action against the coffers of a business tycoon is not realistic’
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/where-angels-fear-to-tread-20130503-2iy8a.html#ixzz2SHvYWayp
CANBERRA, Australia — A wealthy Australian who is rebuilding the Titanic plans to do the political equivalent. Clive Palmer said Friday he intends to refloat the United Australian Party, a once dominant force in Australian politics that sank without a trace in the 1940s.
The mining magnate plans to revive the Great Depression-era party and stand candidates for every seat in the House of Representatives and Senate at general elections on Sept. 14. Palmer intends to run himself in the electoral district in Queensland state where he owns a golf resort.
“I’m standing to be the next prime minister of Australia,” he said.
“I have no personal interest. I have made enough money in my life. I’m not seeking any enrichment of wealth for myself, I’m seeking it for the Australian people,” he added.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/26/clive-palmer-united-australia-party_n_3162733.html
skippy… with resource super cycle over… whats body to do about cementing ones… wealth in… but… as always its about the – up to the… People… snicker~
PS. methinks Eddie Obeid should reside in a crocks gullet, rather than on someone else dime…
Isn’t it crocs that like to wait for a few weeks after killing something for it to go rotten before they consume it?
No waiting for Obeid to go off; he’d be fast food!
WoW & thanks!…deserves circulation (i’ll do my wee part)
http://marketwatch666.blogspot.com/2013/05/where-angels-fear-to-tread.html
Thanks Aby
context for the first bit: the woman who wrote to McClymont to complain about her pursuit of Nationals MP Richard Torbay was from Armidale, in the New England region of gentleman farmers (ie; not war-service sharecroppers like my forebears) It is Nationals country (they used to be called the Country Party) and she thinks McC is a lefty journo who chases only rightwing Lib/Nat skulduggery.
But it becomes obvious later in the piece that McC has a long history of chasing Obeid, a corrupt Labour party ‘power-broker’ whose past is catching up to him in a hurry right now in the courts, thanks partly to the efforts of McC and other brave souls like her.
Kate McClymont, more than most, is aware that crime is politically ecumenical.
Re: The Shape of Time–
Fascinating yet still limited in perspective. While the Archdruid considers how our society’s situation affects our “shape of time,” he neglects how our personal situation impacts the same.
Have you ever noticed how us old, white men tend to get apocalyptic? Could it be that we cannot imagine the world surviving beyond the ever closer time of our own demise? James Kunstler is a particulary good example of this kind of thinking along with many of the rest of the Peak Oilers. For that matter, so is the Archdruid.
Human civilization will survive the Baby Boomers, me included. Yes, rock ‘n roll will go on, even though the bodies of those born in the late 40s and 50s will eventually break down and fail to function. Personally, I believe that Capitalism has had it, but that doesn’t mean that the next generations will not only survive its welcomed end, but will thrive once it–and by coincidence we (?)–are gone.
I interact with young folks as alienated as I from the current excuse for a culture and society that we currently endure, yet they are optimistic–not naive but optimistic–that they will live to see a better day. I may not, but my choice is whether to lapse into the hopeless despair of “I am ending, and the world must surely go with me” or to understand my own mortality does not require the world’s end and to work with my young comrades for something better.