Links 12/15/15

People who are really good at swearing have an important advantage Independent. What a [fill in crude expression] this article is! They have what looks like a video in the middle that will help improve your vocabulary, but all it has are still images.

We need a category header along the lines of “Embarrassed to be an American” or “Yes, These People Vote.” Latest example: US town rejects solar panels amid fears they ‘suck up all the energy from the sun Independent (Plutoniumkun). Margarita points out: “She was a science teacher.”

Urine-Powered Socks Could Fuel Mobile Devices Discovery (Jeff W)

Did World Leaders Sign a “Death Warrant for the Planet” at COP21? teleSUR

Taking anti-depressants during pregnancy linked to autism: study Newsweek

Are You Eating Frankenfish? New York Times. The fact that the Grey Lady would run a headline like that, even for an op-ed, is a breakthrough of sorts.

China?

Obama Trades Against China American Conservative (resilc)

Great Graphic: Large Yuan Devalution in 2016? Marc Chandler

Europe crushed by the fascists, islamofascists, bureaufascists and their masters failed evolution

France vows to tackle unemployment after far right surge France 24

As Poland Lurches to Right, Many in Europe Look On in Alarm New York Times

Italian banking system in serious trouble Business Insider

Refugee Crisis

Germany to ‘noticeably reduce’ migrant influx, says Merkel euronews (furzy mouse)

Merkel pours oil on troubled CDU waters over refugee crisis DW

Syraqistan

US-Russia try to narrow Syria divisions BBC

Getting Real: An ISIL Strategy  Michael Brenner, Huffington Post (Chuck L)

Ribal al-Assad (cousin) on “Mornin’ Joe” kaffee klatch today Sic Semper Tyrannis (resilc)

Naming Our Middle East Enemy American Conservative (resilc)

Why Washington ignored torture by Iraqi militias Reuters

NATO’s got a brand new (Syrian) bag RT

Plumber sues Ford dealer after truck with company logo was used by extremists in Syria Washington Post

Big Brother is Watching You Watch

In Rahm Emanuel’s Chicago Surveillance State, Controlling the Data Is Key Intercept

Game for privacy is gone, mass surveillance is here to stay – Assange RT (furzy)

2016

To Those Fleeing President Trump: Welcome to Canada! New Yorker (furzy). A revisiting of what has become a meme around presidential election time.

Trump hits new high in poll The Hill

Pro-Clinton group sends Trump-style hats to GOP candidates The Hill

Trump: Hillary has ‘killed hundreds of thousands of people’ The Hill (EM). Hillary understands that this is part of the job! She’s showing she’s got plenty of experience.

Republicans Have Nothing to Fear But the Fear of Shifting Demographics Charles Pierce, Esquire (resilc)

How Colorado Voters Could Usher in the Future of Healthcare in America Vice (reslic)

Voter Outrage Over Political Money Continues to Escalate American Prospect (resilc)

Passions in overdrive on plan to allow rolling stops for bikes SF Chronicle (Jeff W)

Police State Watch

Secrets and Lies in the Chicago Police Department New Yorker

First Trial in Freddie Gray Case Goes to the Jury New York Times

Cop Blasts Unarmed Man as He Tries to Exit Overturned Car: Daily Cop Freak Show Ring of Fire (furzy)

Gunz

Congress Hasn’t Done Anything’: Obama Talks Gun Laws on Sandy Hook Shooting Anniversary (palindrome)

Poll: 71% believe mass shootings are now just a normal part of American life Boing Boing

Bond investor anxiety ahead of Fed move Financial Times

Market Instability Won’t Deter a Fed Rate Hike Mohamed El-Erian, Bloomberg

Why Very Low Interest Rates May Stick Around New York Times

Oil tumbles towards crisis-era lows Financial Times

$30 Oil Will Accelerate Much Needed Rebound OilPrice

Why the oil price slump hasn’t kickstarted the global economy Guardian (margarita)

Wells Fargo warns of energy ‘stresses’ Financial Times. The FT’s John Dizard predicted either at the end of last year or early this year that the US fracking industrial complex would keep pumping until the money sources cut them off.

The boom, the bust, the darkness: suicide rate soars in wake of Canada’s oil crisis Guardian (furzy)

Class Warfare

The Corporate Takeover of the Red Cross ProPublica (Brooklyn Bridge)

Thousands more bank jobs under threat Financial Times

Uber drivers win union ‘breakthrough’ Financial Times

Antidote du jour:

snow-leopard_1332024885

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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120 comments

    1. so

      Ha Ha! The Doctor. Not bad but he dosn’t come close to the guys in my furniture shop in Brooklyn. The word F@@k has to be the most expressive in the language. Don’t get me started on the F sake stuff. After British tv my wife can’t stop.

    2. Plenue

      All of the Armando Iannucci creations (The Thick of It, In the Loop and Veep) are amazing. He’s claimed he doesn’t really think modern politics is like that, but whether by accident or design I very much suspect that governments on both sides of the Atlantic are as petty, vapid, and shallow as they are portrayed to be in his works. He never even specifies what party his characters are part of, it’s always kept vague and the other side is just ‘the opposition’. This vagueness effectively ties into the fact that all the major parties these days are essentially the same, the only differences being about PR imaging, which the characters in Iannucci shows are obsessed with above all else. Veep also portrays American politicians as essentially big stupid children, constantly shepherded by their aides. That’s in stark contrast to that ridiculous House of Cards show.

      Also, In the Loop revolves around the run-up to a US/UK invasion of an unnamed Middle-east country, and a key analysis paper that weighs the pros and cons of invading. At one point a character has an aid simply highlight the entire con section and delete it out of existence. The dismissive condescension of the US towards the UK very much rings true, and Tucker is shocked by the number of baby-faced college kids filling the halls of power.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLIP0ZtoiO4

    3. ekstase

      “it is a common assumption that people who swear frequently are lazy, do not have an adequate vocabulary, lack education, or simply cannot control themselves.”

      It’s also a common assumption among Southerners, that the swearer has come from New York.

    1. vlade

      I guess it’s the way to give us all an advantage by improving our swearing vocabulary at the lack of links..

    2. Vatch

      On the topic of swearing: I’ve read that General George Patton swore so much because he was compensating for his high pitched voice. In the macho world of the military, a man with a Mickey Mouse voice had trouble being taken seriously, so he would show how tough he was by punctuating his sentences with profanity.

      1. neo-realist

        George C. Scott, in as great a performance as it was, had a much more gravelly voice than the Real McCoy, presumably.

        1. JTMcPhee

          When the goalof the drama is to apotheosize the protagonist and confirm the idiot mythology, there can be no intimation of weakness…

  1. allan

    Dow, DuPont eye big tax savings in rare merger of equals

    The tax-free treatment of the spin-offs Dow Chemical Co and DuPont plan to carry out after they merge their businesses is a prime driver of the deal, potentially saving tens of billions of dollars, industry experts said. …
    Typically, companies that have been through a change of control are liable to pay capital gains taxes on subsequent spin-offs, under section 355 of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. If both companies, however, do not formally undergo a change of control, the spin-offs can be tax-free.

    So, after this triumph of financial engineering, the American people will end up with three near-monopolies
    and have the privilege of helping fund it through the corporate tax system. Is this a great country or what?

    1. participant-observer-observed

      And will bear the brunt of the risk of their liabilities; for chemical industries!

      1. Praedor

        And when the GOPs pass their criminal sentencing “reforms” they will make the CEOs of these criminal corporations immune to prosecution for pollution and negligent homicide.

    2. James Levy

      Who has standing to sue under the Clayton Anti-Trust Act? I mean, what the hell point is there having anti-trust laws on the books since Sherman in 1890 if you are going to let Dow and DuPont merge? Where are all those lovers of Adam Smith, that angry denouncer of monopolies, when you need them? Whither the free marketeers singing their odes to competition? Aren’t a lot of businesses suddenly going to discover that they have but one possible supplier left, and draw the obvious conclusion? Why don’t they open their mouths? We seem to have become a nation of catatonics.

      1. allan

        Speaking of anti-trust:

        “The reason why health insurance for the privately insured is expensive is because the prices from hospitals with a lot of market power are higher,” said Zack Cooper, an assistant professor of economics and health policy at Yale University, and the paper’s lead author.

        Several prominent researchers who read the paper said they had become convinced that policy makers needed to do more to address the high prices charged by some health care providers. …

        Martin Gaynor, a health economist at Carnegie Mellon University and one of the authors of the paper, has spent many years studying how market competition influences the cost and quality of health care. He says the new data is strong evidence that the federal government needs to enforce antitrust laws vigorously to prevent health care markets from becoming monopolies.

        1. Benedict@Large

          So the solution to high prices in the individual market (where there is poor price control) will be to raise prices in the group market (where there is better price control). Exactly how is this to be done when the individual and group markets are under different corporate structures? And note that these two structures cannot be simply folded back into each other, as the two structures developed completely separately almost from the outset (at least a half century).

    3. vidimi

      i don’t know exactly how, but i’m sure this has something to do with du pont’s liability for the chemicals in teflon

  2. Dagnarus

    Article is poppy cock (what is policy on swearing hear?). The study didn’t measure how frequently people used swear words, just their swearing vocabulary. It doesn’t follow that someone who swears extensively has an extensive vocabulary of swear words. Nor does it necessarily follow that a person with an extensive swearing vocabulary swears all the time.

      1. Inverness

        Where would that put the Québécois? Tabernak, ostie, câlisse, maudit….Standing near a construction site in Montreal affords you rare pleasures, as well as an intimate look into Catholic rituals.

        1. Ian

          A little Cantonese I picked up as a dealer at a casino. Doh Mah and Do lay lo Mah. Doh is like Homer, Mah is like Ma, Lo is Low. Everything sounds as is and not correct spelling. I would not recommend saying the 2nd one too a Chinese person as it is quite personally offensive, where the first one I believe is just general.

    1. Praedor

      Nah. It falls in with a slew of other studies that show benefits of swearing. Swearers are healthier, happier than prudish pussies that foreswear the swear.

      I am a long-time purveyor of liberal swearing. I’m GOOD at it. I picked it up in grade school and polished it in university and the military.

      Swear proud and loud.

    2. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

      One day, robots will be better at swearing than humans because robots.

      There is no escape. We humans are superfluous.

      1. Ian

        Till all the AI’s combine into 1 massive interconnected AI. Creating one sentient AI that is akin to God. It will then decide to fracture itself, into billions of pieces recognizing the futility of being God Like in omnipotence and omniscience. Imbuing various different emotions, functions and thought processes within the billions of it’s fractured consciousness and watching how they evolve and interact with each other as separate entities that are part of a fractured whole.

  3. jgordon

    Capitalism’s Cult of Human Sacrifice, Chris Hedges

    A solution? Regulation isn’t going to do it, since the regulators and the corporate entities that perform such misdeeds are basically the same entity. I think decentralization, moving power away from the distant corporate/government elites into the hands of locals, is a good solution. Sure it won’t work out everywhere, but it’s better than things not working anywhere like now.

    1. Steve H.

      Hm. This was a reply to a post that was deleted.

      There should be a word for it, like ‘catfishing,’ maybe ‘tablecloth pull.’

      see: i.imgur.com/7hkHPly.jpg

    1. trinity river

      Dershowitz. This is an opinion piece in the business pages. Notice that the NYT tilts the article to say that Dershowitz’s is innocent. No alleged mentioned here.

      This article has been revised since my letter to them. Missing is this sentence:
      “… they were drug users or had lied to Mr. Epstein about their age.” What does using drugs have to do about having sex with a minor? Yes, I see an attorney using this shady issue in a court case, but is the NYT’s using it to defend Epstein and Dershowitz?

      They left in this sentence that I complained about: Also, “At 77, he is struggling to absorb a bitter lesson — that choosing the wrong client can exact its own cost.”

      Let’s let the jury decide.

      1. Carolinian

        Admittedly I saw this the other day so not up on the latest version. However to my mind the fact that in order to defend himself Dersh has to resort to something his opponent Boies said to him in confidence (and which Boies vehemently denies) is itself quite sleazy. Doubtless it will never see a jury.

  4. PhilK

    Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

    The hacking collective showed Mirror Online details of the IP addresses used by a trio of separate digital jihadis to access Twitter accounts, which were then used to carry out online recruitment and propaganda campaigns.

    At first glance, the IP addresses seem to be based in Saudi Arabia, but upon further inspection using specialist tools they appeared to link back to the DWP.

    Hackers trace ISIS Twitter accounts back to internet addresses linked to [UK] Department of Work and Pensions

    1. Clive

      Well, that would certainly explain why the DWP can’t get my National Insurance payments record correct! They’ve been too busy sock puppet’ing ISIS’s Twitter accounts.

  5. Carla

    This is so ironic. While Dave Dayan does great work, I was glad to see that Yves was back today, because she always gives us a more generous portion of links than Dave does. Well, the laugh’s on me.

    It’s over to The Automatic Earth for a morning fix of links with Illargi’s Debt Rattle.

    1. Inverness

      Something tells me that Yves and Lambert are overworked or not feeling well. Hope that’s not the case, both of you. If it is: feel better.

    2. knowbuddhau

      Thanks for mentioning that, Carla. This is what I’m always on about: Absolute Good -Us- vs Absolute Evil -Them- (Crooke) I like the AE title better. Crooke is talking about the Western worldview, which is its mythology. The language of mythology is metaphor. The privileged metaphor? Holy War.

      Too many Western world leaders believe life to be a holy war. It’s the number one religious test for high office. Sympathy for the Devil is the ultimate heresy. As such, peace is anathema; how can you make peace with the devil? No, on the contrary, making life a living hell for presumptive “evil” others, they believe, is the epitome of the “good” life.

      This is why they believe the world to come into being through military action. God is envisaged as cosmic tyrant, who himself makes the world by force of will and kinetic action. It doesn’t come into being of its own nature, through kenosis, that’s for pussies (get it?). War god cults are preeminently phallocentric; it’s a dick thing.

      So the non-stop dicking of the world with ever so manly kinetic action aka war isn’t an aberration, isn’t a temporary situation that they all long to end with the ushering in of peace; it’s how they believe the world to have been made by the Biggest Man Up the Highest Stairs to work. The universe is god’s own perpetual motion holy war cash machine, an infallible justice-dispensing mechanism, of which we were placed in charge by the Big Man himself (and you better believe god not only has balls, but the biggest of them all, lest you be anathematized with that ultimate epithet, “pussy”).

      On the principle of “as above, so below,” what could be more natural than that we wage perpetual war against the forces of ee-vil? It’s what god would do.

  6. PhilK

    Hmmmm, not so fast. The IP addresses in question may have been originally assigned to the UK, and subsequently sold to Saudi Arabia.

    “If you knew that everyone from a specific pool of IP addresses used to be based in a specific region, you now need to keep up to date with where that pool of IP addresses now belongs, as it may have been resold outside the domain of the original RIR responsible for its deployment,” says Sion Lloyd, Researcher at Nominet UK, a nonprofit that runs the .uk registry and manages the UK’s internet infrastructure.
    . . .
    So which countries/regions are buying up ‘old’ IPv4 addresses? Between October 2012 and May 2015, Iran bought over 1.4 million IPv4 addresses, and exported just 1,280, while Saudi Arabia imported over 1.9 million and exported just 6,144, according to RIPE NCC. That makes them the two leading IPv4 purchasers in the service region, though the traders of IP addresses are mostly telecoms companies and ISPs, rather than nations.

    What are the consequences of the great IP address sell-off?

    1. Praedor

      No doubt the Saudi’s are passing along their straw-purchased IP addresses to their pets ISIL or Al Qaeda.

        1. ambrit

          Today is “Crowdsource Links” day. “Y” and “L” deserve a day off now and then.
          I hope this doesn’t mean that “Jade Blog” has been made operational.

          1. JohnnyGL

            I figure Yves is off having one of those epic Lord of the Rings-style battles with senior managers as Calpers. Show no mercy, Yves!

          2. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

            What is the ‘Jade Blog?’

            It’s not a jaded blog. I look up the etymology of the word ‘jaded,’ it seems it has to do with broken down horses, not some rocks from Myanmar.

            1. ambrit

              The Jade system is an American military system designed to introduce an AI type program to manage crises and military deployments. As in the infamous ‘Jade Helm’ of Libertarian Conspiracy theories ‘fame.’ So, Jade Blog would be the cyber warfare part of the “Government Singularity” exercise. (I wonder if Word Press is now under ‘advisement’ by the Feds?) “We are placing your thoughts in the Wit Protection Program. For your good, of course.”
              For Jade see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JADE_(planning_system)

              1. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

                I was OK before, but I am worried, after reading up on it in Wiki.

                Recently closes Walmarts to stockpile supplies for Chinese troops who will be arriving to disarm Americans???

                Might as well disarm now to save them the trip so far from their homes in the Middle Kingdom.

                “You don’t need to come. We gave up already.”

                1. ambrit

                  Sorry for the fearmongering. Inadvertant. One need not posit a “conspiracy” to intuit how badly this could turn out. I think of it as the “Titanic Syndrome.”
                  Who cudda knowed, what could go wrong, we’re the best there ever was, etc.
                  It’s almost as if some ‘big shots’ in the Military Industrial Complex watched the Terminator movies and decided that Skynet was a really good idea.
                  The “Middle Kingdom” will have its’ own problems when sea level rise starts cutting down that kingdoms’ food growing capacity. Resource wars, here we come!

  7. JohnnyGL

    http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ap-global-supermarkets-selling-shrimp-020422210.html

    Good to see the AP doing real reporting on this. The story is painful to read.

    I’m sure Obama will proceed with cutting a deal to get TPP through, with Thailand in it, without lifting a finger to improve any of this. Just like he pushed the State Dept to upgrade Malaysia after they found dead bodies stuck in cages in the jungle.

    Of course, the word “TPP” doesn’t appear once in the whole article.

    1. Pat

      Could be because although it has requested to be admitted to the TPP, Thailand is not currently part of the ‘treaty’.

      Mind you the cut outs that were made for Vietnam and the reclassification allowed for Malaysia without it meeting the requirements for said reclassification to curb their use trafficked human labor make it pretty clear that Thailand will be allowed in without having to change a thing.

    1. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

      The middle class body may be disappearing, but the smile, that dining out in fine restaurants, remains, according to some anecdotes posted here a few days ago.

    2. tongorad

      According to Mason:

      Business people in the US are quietly despairing not just about the overtness of the racism, but also about the underlying irrationality of the discourse.

      What??? How does one come up with such crap? Businessmen as divine oracles of reason.

      But wait, it gets worse:

      If fewer people get to work in technocratic jobs, where logic, prudence and care have to be followed every hour of every day, then, sooner or later, the acid of unreason begins to corrode democracy. That’s the fear: that values of science, logic and humanity get left behind as the fragmenting conservative right outshout each other.

      Sooo, the implications are, more concerned businessmen and more technocratic jobs to the rescue…WTF, is this Mason a bot?

    1. Kurt Sperry

      Terrorist fearmongering empowers low effort public monkeywrenching with bomb threats. Who could’ve predicted this? Another self-licking ice cream cone.

      1. cwaltz

        Someone spent a little too much time partying and not enough time studying and wants a sanctioned extension. Santa Claus came early in the form of a “credible(probably at this point every threat is being seen as credible, since San Bernadino apparently peeing your pants is a national past time)threat.”

  8. Jagger

    Alistair Cooke on risking WW3 with Russia.

    Official Washington is awash with tough talk about Russia and the need to punish President Putin for his role in Ukraine and Syria. But this bravado ignores Russia’s genuine national interests, its “red lines,” and the risk that “tough-guy-ism” can lead to nuclear war, as Alastair Crooke explains.

    So which is more dangerous, a Neocon or a Neolib?

    https://consortiumnews.com/2015/12/11/cornering-russia-risking-world-war-iii/

    1. Ignim Brites

      The US is really confronted with two choices when one weighs all the foreign and domestic factors. Go in massively, with 3 to 400 K troops and secure Shite Syria, Sunni Iraq and Syria and probably Yemen and Libya. Not likely. The other is to leave the middle east completely and cut our support to all regimes in the area including Afghanistan and Pakistan. This will at any rate somewhat diminish the rationale for one group or another to launch terror attacks against the US.

  9. HopeLB

    Some Links
    Science/Ornament Making!
    http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/green-tech/conservation/paper-origami-energy-harvesters
    You could use this method to make an origami Christmas tree spiral and by compressing and expanding light the solstice star topper !
    Here is how to make the slinky:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDs97UoCVgE

    Not Thimerasol but Antidepressants! (Or both?)
    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-autism-antidepressants-idUSKBN0TX22C20151214

    I remember Barbara Boxer being incensed that the chemicals/pharmaceticals in the country’s municipal water supplies had been leaked to the public. Antidepressant levels were high here in Pittsburgh’s water. Estrogen in San Fran. I’ll have to search for the hearing on c-span.

    Old Larry Summers News
    http://www.alternet.org/economy/larry-summers-and-syria

    Health/ Gluten Allergy News
    http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-10/ehs-gmc100515.php

    Anti-Agnotology News (?)
    http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/32706-this-could-change-everything-about-school-for-kids-teachers-and-everybody-else

    The Obligatory Hat Tip to Cats
    https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/3wiuqz/cat_really_hates_this_tiger/
    Merry Jubilating!

    1. shinola

      Thank you & everyone else for the links!

      I found the truth-out article on education particularly interesting but this sentence caught my eye:

      “Business leaders and politicians finally have to accept that learning—real, mind-changing learning—has almost nothing in common with manufacturing and marketing.”

      I believe the author may be a bit naive. Who really believes that business “leaders” & politicians care about anything other than manufacturing & (especially) marketing?

      Manufacturing complacent consumers is what it’s all about.

      1. hunkerdown

        “What is it about formal schooling that turns so many kids off? It may come as a surprise that the major problem is a lack of mental stimulation. Some of the work is too easy, some of it is simply neither interesting nor useful, and recently, much of what’s being touted as rigorous is merely onerous.”

        Perfectly suited to prepare them for their future as slaves by any other name. Critical thinking is the new reading as far as the masters of the house are concerned.

  10. GlobalMisanthrope

    Are Congressional Republicans Ready to Retake the White House? Bruce Bartlett at The Atlantic


    Irradiated: The hidden legacy of 70 years of atomic weaponry: At least 33,480 Americans dead
    at McClatchy

    Biker melee shows challenge of wielding gun in self defense during a shooting at Houston Chronicle

    Missouri bill aims to strip scholarships from college athletes who refuse to play at The Guardian

    Rahm Emanuel’s Next Nightmare at Mother Jones

     The Ukrainian Crisis: It’s Not All Putin’s Fault Stephen Cohen at The Nation

    In Flint, Mich., there’s so much lead in children’s blood that a state of emergency is declared
    at WaPo

    The Marshall Project’s Holiday Gift Guide

    Antidote du jour?
    Shepherds storm Romanian parliament in protest over sheepdog law

  11. Schnormal

    Christmas mashup over at The Awl: Cormac McCarthy’s ‘Home Alone,’ by Jordan Hall
    http://www.theawl.com/2015/12/the-home

    The kid can smell his reckoning now. The moon is risen full. He exits the attic window across a suspended cable to a wigwam in the trees. The robbers have gained him again and attempt the crossing but the kid won’t give and exhibits a pair of hedgeshears. From what deep well was spawned this genius? Does he not mete out apposite verdicts? With the wise indifference of a middle-aged cow he cuts through the cable and the fools go tumbling downward back upon the hovel face like misstepped trapeze folk. Again the kid implores them and runs to a neighboring shanty, stealing through the basement. Inside is flooded, seems to have been flooded for all time. He runs up the stair and swings wide the door clear into the arms of his forsworn antagonists.

  12. allan

    Trump’s Las Vegas rally draws protesters and nasty conflicts in the crowd

    Buried in the story about the thuggery by Trump’s supporters or security people is this nugget:

    From the designated media work area, which is surrounded by barricades and which is where the campaign requires reporters to remain during events, altercations within the crowd could be heard.

    What kind of self-respecting news organization allows its reporters and photographers to work
    under that kind of restriction?

  13. financial matters

    Italian banking system in serious trouble Business Insider

    “The bailout was carried out under the principles which governed Cyprus’ bailout.”

    So far this doesn’t seem to be a real bail-in of taking deposits and turning them into equity with much less value ala Cyprus but it’s close.

    It looks like it’s more a case of offering higher risk products, subordinated debt, for a slightly higher yield without fully explaining the risk.

    This does bring us back to the money market issue where many people also don’t know the risk they are taking as these funds are involved in tri-party repo activities. We don’t know how the Fed will deal with a melt down of these activities but there seems to be a proclivity to save banks.

    It would be much safer to allow savers to have accounts guaranteed by the Fed at a stable rate of 2 or 3%.

    If they want to reach for a higher yield they should be compensated for the risk and have the knowledge that they won’t be bailed out or in.

  14. Jim Haygood

    CPI rose to 0.5% year-on-year. But conveniently, core CPI (ex food and energy) quickened to 2.0% year-on-year, bringing a big grin to J-Yel’s dour mug.

    Medical care, shelter and services all were inflating at higher than 2 percent. Give me an A, give me a C, give me an A. What’s it spell? ACA!

    * shakes pompoms *

    http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.htm

    1. cwaltz

      Using the substitution principle, you should be perfectly fine with a bottle of aspirin and a box of bandaids, if you aren’t one of the favored few like former President Jimmy Carter.

      1. Jim Haygood

        J-Yel has been making the faith-based claim that CPI, depressed by falling energy prices, will rise again.

        Now that CPI has gone from zero to all of 0.5% year-on-year, she can do a little fist pumping and trash talking at tomorrow’s meeting. ‘See there? Huh, Huh? Smarter than the average economist!’

        But some of us still find the global scene uncomfortably reminiscent of 1937. J-Yel is likely to be surprised by China’s response to her rate hike.

        1. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

          She might have to go and check with the Chinese regarding our sovereign monetary policy, in order to avoid any unpleasant surprises, but I think kow-towing before their emperor is not acceptable to her nor any of us.

      1. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

        Like Dr. McCoy said, ‘put away your butcher’s knife and let me save the patient before it’s too late,’ referring to today’s medicine.

        To curb medical inflation, put away the blunt tools like raising rates hoping to slow down the economy and have more unemployed workers. Go after the industry itself.

        On the other hand, since lowering rates for the last decade has nothing to do with the main street economy, perhaps it’s time to restore them to what they were before.

        Basically, just leave rates out of it and go after whatever industry that is troublesome.

        I’m in the ‘rates have nothing to do with it’ camp and support a return to status prioris.

  15. Carolinian

    Sayeth the Donald in the above Hill link

    “She is the one that caused all this problem with her stupid policies,” Trump said on “Fox News Sunday.” “You look at what she did with Libya, what she did with Syria.”

    “You look, she was truly, if not the, one of the worst secretary of States in the history of the country,” he added. “She talks about me being dangerous; she’s killed hundreds of thousands of people with her stupidity.”

    Clearly this man must be stopped.

    1. cwaltz

      The man wants to register muslims and has the backing of neo Nazis.

      Yeah, he should be stopped.

      For the record, she was an awful Secretary of State but she wasn’t worse than Condeleeza Rice, or for that matter the Secretary of State under Reagan’s second term(which resulted in the indictment of the Assistant Secretary of State.)

      When Trump makes these statement’s about “worst” it makes me wonder if he even bothers to look at history or if he’s just playing his typical cartoon character for his idiotic supporters, who also don’t bother to educate themselves because doing so might make them appear all elite liberal.

  16. Vatch

    US town rejects solar panels amid fears they ‘suck up all the energy from the sun

    Many people are trained from a very early age to believe superstition, and they are strongly discouraged from questioning the tenets of their superstitions. The phenomenon of young Earth creationism, also known misleadingly as “Creation Science” or “Intelligent Design”, is a manifestation of this.

    Note that the town in question is in North Carolina, part of the Bible Belt.

    1. tim s

      There were already several solar farms in the area.

      It’s a horrible clickbait headline that used to be found only in the likes of the National Enquirer.

      Here’s a link embedded in the comments section that includes some of the quotes from the rubes that people just love to look down on, but gives a bit more balance to the issue

      1. polecat

        Christ!….just about ALL media has morphed into the once hallowed realm of the National Enquirer……no offense Yves, but even the links, at times, seem rather risque.

    1. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

      Before I click on it, I just want to say that it sounds like they can control a nation through food and water.

      “Let’s add this wonderful, magical ingredient in our water supply. It will make the drinkers progressive.”

  17. Oregoncharles

    A truly mixed bag – but the occasional bursts of uncomfortable truth are one reason he’s as popular as he is.

  18. aet

    Hey y’all, say “Howdy!” to planet Taphao Thong, and its sibling planet, Taphao Kaew, and to all the other planets and stars newly-named by the International Astronomical Union! Take a bow, planet Amateru and you too, planet Smertios! And how about those new stars, Tonatiuh, Intercrus, and Ogma! Shine on, you crazy diamonds!

    See the whole list of newly-named planets and stars here:

    http://nameexoworlds.iau.org/names

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