WOW Check this out.. Dead Market Exhibit A: January Volume

Kinda like Cotton Candy...

Dead Market Exhibit A: January Volume

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/31/2012 16:58 -0500

• New York Stock Exchange

Presented with little comment except to say that the total lack of volume (and massive concentration of what volume there is at the close) is hardly reflective of a market that is anything other than broken and dying. Last January (2011) the average number of stocks traded on the NYSE per day was 891mm shares vs 661mm for this January (a 26% drop YoY!) and this is down an incredible 59% from January 2008.

Charts: Bloomberg

Phony Obama attacks Senate for insider Trading ?? Really look at these------Obama releases list of top money ‘bundlers’

 

 

By JIM KUHNHENN Published: 3:59 PM 01/31/2012 | Updated: 1:06 AM 02/01/2012

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FILE - (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign identified its top fundraisers on Tuesday, including 61 people who each raised at least half a million dollars. Altogether, the more than 440 fundraisers collected at least $75 million to help Obama win a second term.

Among them are embattled former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine. Obama’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee late last year returned $70,000 in contributions from Corzine and his wife following questions about the collapse of MF Global, the financial firm Corzine ran.

Corzine is no longer raising money for the re-election, campaign officials said.

The campaign divided the list into four groups based on how much money donors raised: $50,000-$100,000, $100,000-$200,000, $200,000 to $500,000 and those who raised more than $500,000 apiece.

The donors represent a broad network of contributors, many of them longtime Democratic Party stalwarts.

The list includes two fundraisers linked to Solyndra LLC, the California solar company that received a $528 million federal loan and then later declared bankruptcy, prompting a federal investigation. Steve Spinner, an Energy Department adviser, raised at least $500,000 and Steve Westly, a venture capitalist who was an unpaid adviser to the department, raised between $200,000 and $500,000.

The disclosure came as Obama headed back out on the money trail, speaking Tuesday night at two high-dollar fundraisers in the Washington area where donors paid $35,800 per ticket to see him. At an event at the posh St. Regis Hotel, the president told donors that Republicans have “the wrong vision for America,” though he didn’t mention any of his opponents by name or reference the voting under way in Florida, where polls were closing in the state’s GOP primary.

Obama said voters needed to know “that this is not an abstract ideological argument, that this is a practical concrete argument,” and that the election is about whether they’ll be able to find a good job with a living wage and get health care for their families. “They’ve got to feel that we are actively advocating on their behalf.”

Though Obama rejects contributions from lobbyists, his top fundraisers include individuals involved in the business of influencing government.

Michael Kempner, among those who raised more than $500,000, is president and CEO of MWW Group, a public relations firm with a large lobbying business. Kempner himself is not a registered lobbyist.

Sally Susman, another fundraiser in the $500,000-plus category, is executive vice president for policy, external affairs and communications at Pfizer Inc., a job that includes directing the pharmaceutical giant’s government relations operations.

California figured most prominently on Obama’s roster of big money “bundlers.” Sixteen are from California and 13 are from New York.

Top fundraisers include movie producers Jeffrey Katzenberg and Harvey Weinstein, and Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. Actress Eva Longoria was in the second highest tier, bundling $200,000 to $500,000 for Obama’s re-election.

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Associated Press writer Erica Werner contributed to this report.

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US GOVERNMENT MORE THREATENING THAN HITLER TO THIS SWISS BANK

by SIMON BLACK · 4 COMMENTS

US GOVERNMENT MORE THREATENING THAN HITLER TO THIS SWISS BANK

January 31, 2012
Nassau, Bahamas

Wegelin & Co used to be Switzerland’s oldest private bank. Founded in 1741, they managed to survive every threat across three centuries: revolution, financial disaster, and war… from being invaded by Napoleon to the Sonderbundskrieg civil war to Adolf Hitler.

Every threat except for one, that is: the United States Government.

I say that Wegelin “used to be” Switzerland’s oldest private bank because they’re now finished, courtesy of Uncle Sam. They had no office in the United States, no employees in the United States. They were 100% Swiss, and violated no Swiss law whatsoever.

Yet US authorities believed that a handful of Wegelin’s US clients were hiding assets and not paying taxes. The fact that the bank wasn’t subject to US law was irrelevant. The fact that the bank has zero legal responsibility in ensuring their customers filed tax forms was irrelevant.

The government crushed Wegelin regardless.

By threatening them with lawsuits, investigations, IRS penalties, and criminal charges (levied personally against the bank directors), the US government succeeded in its mission. The scare tactics were enough to chase away the bank’s customers, and Wegelin is now selling what little of its business remains.

It’s another despicable example of the US government doing whatever it wants, wherever it wants without any legal basis of any kind. It gets worse.

On top of this, there’s the new FATCA legislation– Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. The law effectively requires every bank in the world to make a choice:

1) Accept Americans as customers, but agree to share information with the US government;

2) Close the door to all US citizens and residents forever; or

3) Thumb your nose at the law, but risk becoming the next Wegelin & Co.

Needless to say, most banks are opting for #1 in order to avoid unnecessary scrutiny and disclosures.

This is why it’s getting harder and harder for Americans to do business overseas. Many foreign companies now don’t even want US citizens (or residents) as shareholders, officers, or directors. It’s just too much hassle, too much risk.

As FATCA is rolled out, it will be commonplace for foreign banks to give the ole’ heave-ho to their US customers. And as we have discussed so many times before, having a foreign bank account is one of the most important steps in declaring your financial independence. Briefly,

1) a foreign account takes your hard-earned savings out of the direct control and supervision of your home government’s kleptocrats.

2) A foreign account allows much easier diversification outside of your home currency.

3) And perhaps most importantly, a foreign bank is likely to be safer and better capitalized, devoid of the toxic assets that plague US and European banks.

But are there any options left? You bet. As the saying goes, whenever one door closes, another one opens. OK not exactly. But for every few dozen banks that are closing their doors to US customers, one or two are happy to welcome Americans with open arms.

The US market is huge. And a few banks out there are willing to do the extra work and crawl in bed with Uncle Sam in order to get a slice of that pie. Some of them are right here in the Bahamas, or in nearby Turks & Caicos.

While I’m not at liberty to mention any bank names in this public forum (they really freak out about this), suffice it to say that you won’t have too many problems opening an account with the major international banks in either location.

Just make sure you have your passport, driver’s license, utility bill (or other proof of address) and two bank reference letters (or one letter plus a professional reference from a lawyer or accountant).

It’s a short flight that’s well worth the time and effort.

As a reminder, US taxpayers with foreign accounts are required to file form TDF 90-22.1 to the Treasury Department (not the IRS) each year by June 30th, as well as Schedule B (1040) with their usual return by April 15th. Starting this year, some filers may have to submit form 8938 as well… I’ll write more on that soon.

CBO: Taxes Will ‘Shoot Up by More Than 30 Percent’ Over Next 2 Years

By Terence P. Jeffrey

January 31, 2012

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President Barack Obama, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

(CNSNews.com) - The amount of money the federal government takes out of the U.S. economy in taxes will increase by more than 30 percent between 2012 and 2014, according to the Budget and Economic Outlookpublished today by the CBO.

At the same time, according to CBO, the economy will remain sluggish, partly because of higher taxes.

“In particular, between 2012 and 2014, revenues in CBO’s baseline shoot up by more than 30 percent,” said CBO, “mostly because of the recent or scheduled expirations of tax provisions, such as those that lower income tax rates and limit the reach of the alternative minimum tax (AMT), and the imposition of new taxes, fees, and penalties that are scheduled to go into effect.”

The U.S. economy, CBO projects, will perform “below its potential” for another six years and unemployment will remain above 7 percent for another three.

“The pace of the economic recovery has been slow since the recession ended in June 2009, and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) expects that, under current laws governing taxes and spending, the economy will continue to grow at a sluggish pace over the next two years,” said CBO. “That pace of growth partly reflects the dampening effect on economic activity from the higher tax rates and curbs on spending scheduled to occur this year and especially next. Although CBO projects that growth will pick up after 2013, the agency expects that the economy’s output will remain below its potential until 2018 and that the unemployment rate will remain above 7 percent until 2015.”

According to the CBO report, federal tax revenues equaled $2.302 trillion in fiscal 2011, and will increase to $2,523 trillion in fiscal 2012, $2,988 trillion in fiscal in 2013, and $3,313 trillion in 2014.

As a percentage of GDP, according to CBO, federal tax revenues were 15.4 percent in fiscal 2011, and will be 16.3 percent in 2012, 18.8 percent in 2013, and 20.0 percent in fiscal 2014.

In dollar terms, the anticipated increase in federal tax revenue from fiscal 2011 ($2.302 trillion) to fiscal 2014 ($3.313 trillion) is $1.011 trillion. That is an increase of 43.9 percent.

From just 2012 to 2014, the increase in federal tax revenues from $2.523 trillion to $3.313 trillion equals $790 billion—or 31.3 percent.

The anticipated percentage increase in federal tax revenue is not only large when calculated in dollar terms but also when calculated as a share of GDP. The jump from 15.4 percent of GDP in fiscal 2011 to 20.0 percent of GDP in fiscal 2014 equals an increase of 29.8 percent. The jump from 16.3 percent in fiscal 2012 to 20.0 percent in fiscal 2014 equals an increase over two years of 22.7 percent.

Federal tax revenues have averaged “about 18 percent of GDP for the past 40 years,” according to CBO. So, in the next two years federal tax revenues will rise from a level that is below the modern historical average to a level that is above it.

What do the NAR, Consumer Confidence and CBO forecasts have in common? If you said, "they are all completely worthless" you are absolutely correct. Alas, the market needs to "trade" off numbers, which is why the just released CBO numbers apparently are important... And the fact that the CBO predicted negative $2.5 trillion in net debt by 2011 back in 2011 is largely ignored. Anyway, here are some of the highlights.

• 2012 Deficit: $1.1 trillion; 2013 Deficit: $0.6 - yes, we are cackling like mad too...
• Unemployment to remain above 8% in 2012 and 2013; will be around 7% by end of 2015; to drop to 5.25% by end of 2022.
  • This forecast is utterly idiotic and is completely unattainable unless the US workforce drops to all time lows and the US economy generates 300,000 jobs a month for 10 years
• Needless to say, CBO assumes the best of all worlds in this meaningless forecast
• But here is the kicker: "Had that portion of the decline in the labor force participation rate since 2007 that is attributable to neither the aging of the baby boomers nor the downturn in the business cycle (on the basis of the experience in previous downturns) not occurred, the unemployment rate in the fourth quarter of 2011 would have been about 1¼ percentage points higher than the actual rate of 8.7 percent" translation: CBO just admitted that the BLS numbers are bogus and real unemployment is 10%. Thank you
  

Here is the CBO's alternative forecast which is a little closer to reality:

CBO has developed budget projections under an “alternative fiscal scenario,” assuming—instead of current law—that certain tax provisions that have recently expired or are set to expire (including most of the provisions in the 2010 tax act but excluding the Social Security payroll tax reduction) are instead extended, that the AMT is indexed for inflation after 2011 (starting from the 2011 exemption amount), that Medicare’s payment rates for physicians’ services are held constant, and that the automatic enforcement procedures of the Budget Control Act do not take effect. Under this scenario, deficits from 2013 through 2022 would average 5.4 percent of GDP, compared with the 1.5 percent in the baseline.

Some view on SSN and Medicare:

• At $1.6 trillion in 2012, federal outlays for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other health care programs will make up more than 70 percent of mandatory spending (or 10.4 percent of GDP). Spending for those programs will rise by $1.5 trillion from 2012 to 2022— accounting for nearly all of the growth in mandatory spending over that period. By 2022, spending for those programs will represent more than 80 percent of mandatory spending and 12.8 percent of GDP.
• CBO estimates that, under current law, outlays for Social Security will total $770 billion in 2012, or 5.0 percent of GDP. Over the next decade, spending for Social Security benefits will climb steadily (by an average of about 6 percent per year) as the nation’s elderly population grows and as average benefits rise. By 2022, CBO estimates, Social Security outlays will total $1.3 trillion, or about 5.5 percent of GDP.
• At $856 billion, gross outlays for Medicare, Medicaid, and other mandatory federal programs related to health care accounted for just under 40 percent of mandatory spending (not including offsetting receipts) in 2011.6 CBO estimates that outlays for those programs will dip to$847  billion in 2012, or 5.5 percent of GDP, reflecting a decline in Medicaid spending. In CBO’s baseline projections, spending for health programs more than doubles between 2012 and 2022, rising by an average of nearly 8 percent per year and reaching $1.8 trillion in 2022. That spending is expected to represent 7.3 percent of GDP in 2022, an increase of nearly 2 percentage points from its share this year.

And some thoughts from the excel goal seek geniuses in DC on the collapse of the US welfare state:

Because of the aging of the population and rising costs for health care, the set of budget policies that were in effect in the past cannot be maintained in the future. In CBO’s projections for 2022 under the alternative fiscal scenario, gross outlays for all federal programs apart from Social Security, the major health care programs, and net interest are projected to be 7.8 percent of GDP, lower than in any year during the past 40 years and well below the 11.4 percent of  GDP that such outlays have averaged over that period. Yet the budget deficit in 2022 under that scenario is projected to be 6.1 percent of GDP. Therefore, to keep deficits and debt from causing substantial harm to the economy, policymakers will need to allow federal revenues to increase to a much higher percentage of GDP than the average over the past 40 years, make major changes to Social Security and federal health care programs, or pursue some combination of the two approaches.

So, if everything that is set to happen, happens, there will be "substantial harm" to the economy, and the CBO just happily assumes all these things will be fixed just in time? Brilliant.

But probably the most imporant part is the CBO's discussion on the labor force participation, and the general unemployment rate:

Participation in the Labor Force. The unemployment rate would be even higher than it is now had participation in the labor force not declined as much as it has over the past few years. The rate of participation in the labor force fell from 66 percent in 2007 to an average of 64 percent in the second half of 2011,  an unusually large decline over so short a time. About a third of that decline reflects factors other than the downturn, such as the aging of the baby-boom generation. But even with those factors removed, the estimated decline in that rate during the past four years is larger than has been typical of past downturns, even after accounting for the greater severity of this downturn. Had that portion of the decline in the labor force participation rate since 2007 that is attributable to neither the aging of the baby boomers nor the downturn in the business cycle (on the basis of the experience in previous downturns) not occurred, the unemployment rate in the fourth quarter of 2011 would have been about 1¼ percentage points higher than the actual rate of 8.7 percent. By CBO’s estimates, the rate of labor force participation will fall to slightly above 63 percent by 2017. The dampening effects of the increase in tax rates in 2013 scheduled under current law and additional retirements by baby boomers are projected to more than offset the strengthening effects of growing demand for labor as the economy recovers further.

Don't waste time reading this: none of what is predicted will actually happen. But at 165 pages it makes a good paperweight.

Average:

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Latest Congressional Budget Outlook For 2012-2022 Released, Says Real Unemployment Rate Is 10%

  

Kim Jong-il’s Romantic Rival

Kim Jong-il’s Romantic Rival

By CHRISTOPHER R. BEHA

Published: January 13, 2012

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The title of Adam Johnson’s second novel is a bit misleading. Raised in the Long Tomorrows orphanage in Chongjin, North Korea, his protagonist believes himself to be the son of the Orphan Master rather than some kid dropped off by his desperate parents. But the primary evidence for this belief — “the unrelenting way the Orphan Master singled him out for punishment” — invites other interpretations. Like the rest of the boys, he is given a name from the list of the 114 Grand Martyrs of the Revolution that will mark him as an orphan for the rest of his life. Pak Jun Do (the given name Jun Do is a homonym of “John Doe”) is appropriate for a character with such a shifting identity, someone who will become both the perpetrator and the victim of countless crimes.

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Illustration by Joon Mo Kang

THE ORPHAN MASTER’S SON

By Adam Johnson

443 pp. Random House. $26.

Conscripted into the army after a famine devastates the orphanage, Jun Do patrols the dark tunnels beneath the demilitarized zone before being reassigned to a unit that kidnaps Japanese citizens in night raids. For reasons that are never entirely explained, he is taught English, which leads to a job translating foreign radio transmissions and then to a diplomatic mission to Texas, where he makes friends with a senator’s wife. When that trip ends in disaster, he is sent to a labor camp, where he comes face to face with the diabolical Commander Ga, a national hero and Kim Jong-il’s rival for the affections of an actress called Sun Moon. Jun Do’s training in hand-to-hand tunnel combat helps him defeat Ga, whereupon he takes his place in Pyongyang as Sun Moon’s husband and the father of her children.

If all this sounds convoluted, I should note that I’ve described only the first half of “The Orphan Master’s Son,” which more or less serves as a prologue to the book’s real story: Jun Do’s efforts to get Sun Moon and the children out of the country. Yet Johnson’s novel, far from being too labyrinthine, is an ingeniously plotted adventure that feels much shorter than its roughly 450 pages and offers the reader a tremendous amount of fun.

This isn’t entirely a compliment. Should “fun” really be the first word to describe a novel about one of the worst places on earth? Questions of the moral responsibility attendant on certain artistic subjects can be vexing and frankly tiresome, resurrected with the appearance of every summer blockbuster about the Holocaust or some other historical horror. They would seem to be only more vexing in the case of North Korea, where the horror is still going on and so little is revealed to the outside world, even as the country passes from the “Dear Leader” to his untested son. But this matter of responsibility is largely beside the point in the case of Johnson’s novel, since he clearly intends to do his material justice. The better question is why such a talented writer has failed to make good on that intention.

In his story collection, “Emporium,” and a previous novel, “Parasites Like Us,” Johnson specialized in the sort of darkly absurdist satire familiar to readers of George Saunders and Donald Antrim. “Teen Sniper,” a typical story from “Emporium,” depicts a young sharpshooter who works for the city of Oakland, Calif., assassinating dissatisfied tech company employees. In “Parasites Like Us,” an anthropologist in South Dakota disturbs an ancient burial ground, bringing about the near extinction of human life while offering disquisitions on the rapaciousness of contemporary culture.

Johnson has said that his latest book began in a similarly farcical spirit, as a short story called “The Best North Korean Short Story of 2005,” inspired by the “loonier” elements of Kim Jong-il’s regime. But after some research, which included a trip to Pyongyang, Johnson realized that the “gravity” of his subject matter instilled “a sense of duty.” Having learned this, I found it dispiriting to arrive at a brutal interrogation scene in “The Orphan Master’s Son” and recognize the similarities here to the methods used by the police in the dystopian Oakland of “Teen Sniper.” More dispiriting still was seeing Kim Jong-il appear not just as a loony but as a kind of merry prankster. Even the initial conceit of the Best North Korean Short Story survives in the form of interstitial chapters in which the “official” version of Commander Ga and Sun Moon’s story is projected to all citizens by way of loudspeakers. Taken on their own, these interludes are fine exercises in dark wit, but in the context of a novel that seeks to portray a country’s suffering, they’re unconvincing. Though they occupy only a few pages, they mar the book’s overall effect.

Ultimately, the one rule of art is that you’re permitted anything you can get away with. I raise the question of responsibility with respect to “The Orphan Master’s Son” because the book itself seems to raise it, and because Johnson’s prodigious talent and inventiveness aren’t enough to silence it. Johnson’s very sense of duty may have been what led him astray. In his days of tunnel patrol, Jun Do observes that the key to such work is to “never use your imagination. The darkness inside your head is something your imagination fills with stories that have nothing to do with the real darkness around you.” Johnson might have deployed more imagination, or less. In any event, he has written an exceedingly readable book that never quite shows us the real darkness — or the darkness inside his head.

Christopher R. Beha is an editor at Harper’s Magazine. His first novel, “What Happened to Sophie Wilder,” will be published in June.

A version of this review appeared in print on January 15, 2012, on page