Study estimates nearly 500,000 Iraqis died in war

Study estimates nearly 500,000 Iraqis died in war - latimes.com:
"In a study published Tuesday in the journal PLOS Medicine, researchers concluded that at least 461,000 "excess" Iraqi deaths occurred in the troubled nation after the U.S.-led invasion that resulted in the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein. Those were defined as fatalities that would not have occurred in the absence of an invasion and occupation."

Big Banks Manipulate Every Market They Touch

Big Banks rig every market they touch  | The Big Picture

"The big picture is simple:

• The big banks manipulate every market they touch

• Too much interconnectedness leads to financial instability

• The government has given the banks huge subsidies … which they are using for speculation and other thingswhich don’t help the economy. In other words, propping up the big banks by throwing money at them doesn’t help the economy

• Top economists, financial experts and bankers say that the big banks are too large … and their very size is threatening the economy. They say we need to break up the big banks to stabilize the economy

• The big banks own the D.C. politicians … so Congress and the White House won’t do anything unless the people force change"

Worldwide, 13% of Employees Are Engaged at Work

Worldwide, 13% of Employees Are Engaged at Work
"Only 13% of employees worldwide are engaged at work, according to Gallup's new 142-country study on the State of the Global Workplace. In other words, about one in eight workers -- roughly 180 million employees in the countries studied -- are psychologically committed to their jobs and likely to be making positive contributions to their organizations."
"The bulk of employees worldwide -- 63% -- are "not engaged," meaning they lack motivation and are less likely to invest discretionary effort in organizational goals or outcomes. And 24% are "actively disengaged," indicating they are unhappy and unproductive at work and liable to spread negativity to coworkers. In rough numbers, this translates into 900 million not engaged and 340 million actively disengaged workers around the globe."

Why U.S. Health Care Is Obscenely Expensive, In 12 Charts

"U.S. leads the world in health care spending, but we don't live very long, and going to the doctor is so expensive that we don't do it very often. So where is the money going?
Not toward obesity-related diseases or unnecessary tests and treatments,  .. From Lipitor to childbirth to colonoscopies -- everything just costs a whole lot."

Infographics by Jan Diehm for The Huffington Post.

Business Groups See Loss of Sway Over House G.O.P. - NYTimes.com

Business Groups See Loss of Sway Over House G.O.P. - NYTimes.com:
While both parties have extreme elements, he suggested, only in the G.O.P. did the extreme element exercise real power. “The extreme right has 90 seats in the House,” Mr. Echevarria said. “Occupy Wall Street has no seats.”

Moreover, business leaders and trade groups said, the tools that have served them in the past — campaign contributions, large memberships across the country, a multibillion-dollar lobbying apparatus — do not seem to be working.

World likely to have 11 trillionaires within two generations: Credit Suisse - The Tell - MarketWatch

World's wealthiest 0.7% hold 41% of the world’s wealth: Credit Suisse 
Two-thirds of the world’s adults have wealth of less than $10,000, while the wealthiest 0.7% hold 41% of the world’s wealth.

The JP Morgan apologists of CNBC | Felix Salmon

Great piece by Felix Salmon and awesome interview of Alex Pareene of Salon on CNBC!

The JP Morgan apologists of CNBC | Felix Salmon:

"The whole segment is well worth watching, but the tone is perfectly set at the very beginning:

Maria Bartiromo: Alex, to you first. Legal problems aside, JP Morgan remains one of the best, if not the best performing major bank in the world today. You believe the leader of that bank should step down?

Alex Pareene: I think that any time you’re looking at the greatest fine in the history of Wall Street regulation, it’s really worth asking should this guy stay in his job. In any other industry — I can’t think of another industry. If you managed a restaurant, and it got the biggest health department fine in the history of restaurants, no one would say “Yeah, but the restaurant’s making a lot of money. There’s only a little bit of poison in the food.”

"This is a very strong point by Pareene — and it’s a point which was well taken by Barclays. When the UK bank was fined $450 million last year for its role in the Libor scandal, its CEO duly resigned. After all, a $450 million fine is prima facie evidence that the CEO really isn’t in control of his bank.

But $450 million is a rounding error with respect to the kind of fines that Dimon is now talking about paying — $4 billion, $11 billion, $20 billion, who knows where this will stop. Tim Fernholz has a good roundup of all the various things that JP Morgan is in trouble for; Libor manipulation is at #5 on his list of seven oustanding investigations — on top of another four settled investigations. If Libor manipulation alone was enough to mean the end of Bob Diamond, it’s hard to see how Jamie Dimon should be able to survive this tsunami of litigation.

Unless, it seems, you work for CNBC. In which case you just ignore Pareene’s question, and get straight onto the important stuff:

Duff McDonald: It’s preposterous. The stock’s touching a ten-year high. It’s a cash-generating machine.

Maria Bartiromo: Should we talk about the financial strength of JP Morgan? The company continues to churn out tens of billions of dollars in earnings and hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue. How do you criticize that?

This view — that profits cleanse all sins, and that so long as you’re making money, nothing else matters — is not normally expressed quite as explicitly as it was here. After all, there are licit and illicit ways of making money, and surely if your profits fall into the latter category, you should not be able to remain comfortably ensconced as a celebrated captain of industry. Besides, banksshouldn’t be obscenely profitable: they’re intermediaries, and in an efficient economy their profits should be quite easily competed away. When bank profits are high, that’s a sign that the bank in question is extracting rents from the economy, rather than helping it to grow.

The rest of the interview is a glorious exercise in watching CNBC anchors simply implode in disbelief when faced with the idea that JP Morgan in general, and Jamie Dimon in particular, might be anything other than a glorious icon of capitalist success. In the world of CNBC, the stock chart tells you everything you need to know, while the New York Times is a highly untrustworthy organ of dissent and disinformation.

Eventually, Bartiromo asks Pareene, with a straight face, who would be the best CEO of JP Morgan “from a shareholder perspective”. Since, clearly, the shareholder perspective is the only one that matters. Except, of course, it isn’t. JP Morgan’s balance sheet shows assets of $2.4 trillion and liabilities of $2.2 trillion, leaving $200 billion in total stockholder equity. Sure, the shareholders matter — but even in terms of the balance sheet they only matter about 8.6%. And in terms of the systemic importance of JP Morgan to the nation as a whole, its shareholders matter even less. The country was seriously damaged by JP Morgan’s lies and misrepresentations about its mortgages — much more than it would be damaged if the share price went down instead of up. And the public has every reason to want the individuals running JP Morgan to be held accountable when it gets into serious regulatory trouble over and over again.

Right now, the banks aren’t lending money to homeowners — the government remains the only game in town, when it comes to mortgages, and that isn’t healthy at all. JP Morgan’s shareholders might be happy with Jamie Dimon, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us should be. Jesse Eisingerwants the banks executives to face personal charges; whether that happens or not, it still behooves them to take responsibility for the long series of egregious errors that JP Morgan has made. Shareholders might not want to see Dimon go. But if JP Morgan does end up paying an 11-digit fine, then resignation would surely be the honorable thing to do."

Merck CEO rewards workers with pink slips - Al Lewis - MarketWatch

Merck CEO rewards workers with pink slips - MarketWatch

"Kenneth Frazier, the chief officer executive of Merck & Co. MRK -0.78%  , makes $15 million a year firing people.

On Tuesday, as Americans awoke to a partially shuttered government and a confusing new health care system, he put out a press release promising to lay off 8,500 more people. On top of a previously announced plan to slash 7,500 employees, this represents a 20% trim to Merck’s current workforce of about 81,000."

"Merck will be “better positioned to drive innovation,” Frazier said.

The fewer brains one applies to a complicated problem like human suffering, the better, he would have us believe. And the smaller the sales force, well, you know, the bigger the sales."

"“Today’s announcement further underscores that we are committed to improving our performance in the short term while also investing for the long term,” Frazier said in the release.

Investing for the long term? Doesn’t he mean divesting for the long term? A very bleak long term?"

UN Report: Hunger Affects 1 In 8 People Around The World

UN Report: Hunger Affects 1 In 8 People Around The World
"In their latest report on food insecurity, the U.N. agencies estimated that 842 million people were suffering chronic hunger in 2011-13, or 12 percent of the world's population, down 17 percent from 1990-92."

Housing Market Is Heating Up, if Not Yet Bubbling

Housing Market Is Heating Up, if Not Yet Bubbling - ROBERT J. SHILLER - NYTimes.com

Robert Shiller's piece in New York Times 

"We asked the respondents how much they thought home prices would rise both in the next year and in the longer term — each of the next 10 years.

The short-term expectations were somewhat high, with respondents saying they anticipated a 5.7 percent increase, on average, in the next year. (That’s close to the implied home price appreciation of 5.6 percent in the home price futures market at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.)

These projections were much higher than those in 2011, when respondents anticipated only a 1.6 percent increase, and somewhat above those of 2012, when the expectation was 4.0 percent. Still, in 2004, just before the peak in home prices, short-term expectations were far loftier, at 8.7 percent.

What’s more, long-term expectations in the current survey remained relatively modest, at 4.2 percent a year for the next 10 years. At that rate, if consumer inflation is modest, at, say, 2 percent a year, real prices would rise only about 2.2 percent annually, and we wouldn’t return to the December 2005 peak in real home prices until 2031."

"In reading the most recent answers, I see no signs that home buyers have learned the lesson I tried to convey in the second edition of my book “Irrational Exuberance” in 2005. That message was that existing-home prices have shown virtually no tendency to trend upward in real, inflation-corrected terms over the last century. While land is limited, it’s only a small component of home value in most places. New construction often brings down the value of older homes, which wear out and go out of fashion, dragging down prices.

IT’S as if people are applying to housing an idea described by Frederick Lewis Allen in his 1931 book, “Only Yesterday.” Before the stock market collapsed in 1929, he said, people thought that “every crash of the past few years had been followed by a recovery, and that every recovery had ultimately brought prices to a new high point. Two steps up, one step down, two steps up again — that was how the market went.”

Well, people have certainly been right that there will always be steps up and down. Unfortunately, there is no certainty that the ups will outnumber the downs."

The CEO Who Didn’t Know Too Much - WSJ

The CEO Who Didn’t Know Too Much - MoneyBeat - WSJ
"At BofAa there is a rare glimpse into how those executives slip away from culpability. Mr. Moynihan ran a major division, served on credit committees and integration committees and eventually was tapped to become CEO, but in recalling one of the biggest and transformational deals in the bank’s history, his memory was painfully short.
When presented a financial report, Mr. Moynihan is unsure if he’s seen it or if the numbers are correct. He asks the questioner to direct the question to whoever prepared the report.
“Somebody reported to somebody that reported to me would have been the people working on this,” Mr. Moynihan said. “This is very small part of what they did. I was on the steering committee, I was one of the direct reports, but it was not something that I was involved in day-to-day.”
On and on it goes like this. Dates are forgotten. Documents are sketchy. Decisions were made by someone else. Discussions? What discussions. The transcript is a tangled and frustrating mess of amnesia."
"..., there is something disturbing about Mr. Moynihan’s inability to recall even the most basic information about the Countrywide deal and its integration. For instance, when asked if he knew that Countrywide Bank originated all of the mortgages for Countrywide Financial, Mr. Moynihan said, “I don’t recall that, no.”
Big banks seem to place a premium on forgetfulness. They settle fraud cases stemming from the financial crisis for billions of dollars and hope investors will forget, if not forgive."
"Since Mr. Moynihan ascended to the role of chief executive in 2010, Bank of America has paid out more than $50 billion in settlements, the vast majority of them tied to its mortgage business or those of Countrywide."

Bespoke Investment Group - "Confidence Gap" Widens to Record Levels

Bespoke Investment Group  - "Confidence Gap" Widens to Record Levels
"..on a six-month moving average basis, the spread between the two income groups is now at a record high of 27.85."

JPMorgan in talks to settle government cases for $11 billion, person says - The Washington Post

JPMorgan in talks to settle government cases for $11 billion, person says - The Washington Post: "JPMorgan Chase is in talks to pay state and federal authorities $11 billion to resolve investigations into its sale of shoddy mortgage securities during the financial crisis, a person familiar with the talks said Wednesday."
"Yet it amounts to a sliver of the losses incurred by investors who purchased mortgage securities that turned sour when the housing market crashed in 2008."

JPMorgan Set to Pay More Than $900 Million in Fines - NYTimes.com

JPMorgan Set to Pay More Than $900 Million in Fines - NYTimes.com
"JPMorgan Chase is expected to pay more than $900 million in fines to government authorities in Washington and London and make a rare admission of wrongdoing on Thursday, a pact that will settle a range of investigations over a multibillion trading blunder the bank suffered last year"

46.5 million Americans living in poverty

Poverty rate 15% 

"Years after the Great Recession ended, 46.5 million Americans are still living in poverty, according to a Census Bureau report released Tuesday."
"But taking a wider view reveals a larger problem: Income has tumbled since the recession hit, and is still 8.3% below where it was in 2007."
"This long-term decline in income is troubling to economists, especially as the middle and lower classes have fared considerably worse than the rich. Since 1967, Americans right in the middle of the income curve have seen their earnings rise 19%, while those in the top 5% have seen a 67% gain. Rising inequality is seldom a sign of good social stability."
 "The recession also pushed many more people into poverty. In 2010, the poverty rate peaked at 15.1%, and has barely fallen since then. This is the first time the poverty rate has remained at or above 15% three years running since 1965."

How Goldman Sachs Made Money Mid-Crisis - Businessweek

How Goldman Sachs Made Money Mid-Crisis - Businessweek
"Of Lloyd Blankfein’s 3 hours and 28 minutes before the U.S. Senate’s permanent subcommittee on investigations on the afternoon of April 27, 2010, the most memorable moment came when Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, for the umpteenth time, held up an e-mail that had been written nearly three years earlier by two of Goldman Sachs’s (GS) most senior traders. The e-mail described a Goldman-underwritten collateralized-debt obligation, or CDO, as “one sh-‍-‍-y deal.” It was the end of a long day, and as Levin bore down on Blankfein, he wanted to know if it was ethical for Goldman to sell a security that its traders thought was bad while Goldman, as a principal, bet against those very same securities in order to make a profit.
It was not the chief executive officer’s finest response. He winced. He perseverated. He parsed. He looked uncomfortable. Finally, he lamely defended Goldman’s behavior. “In the context of market-making, that is not a conflict. What the clients are buying, or customers are buying, is—they are buying an exposure. The thing that we are selling to them is supposed to give them the risk they want.”
...
"..Goldman driving down the price for many illiquid and hard-to-value mortgage securities at a time when the firm had implemented its “big short”—thereby sticking it to those who were exposed. A range of Goldman’s counterparties, from Bear Stearns to American International Group (AIG), have argued subsequently that in 2007 Goldman began manipulating the price of these illiquid securities, knowing full well that it alone was in a position to benefit because of its short position. Competitors contend that Goldman’s marked-down prices exacerbated their financial problems by forcing them to lower the value of these securities on their books, vastly reducing their equity and calling into question their financial viability."

Top 1% take biggest income slice on record

Top 1% take biggest income slice on record 
"The top 1% of earners in the U.S. pulled in 19.3% of total household income in 2012, which is their biggest slice of total income in more than 100 years, according to a an analysis by economists at the University of California, Berkeley and the Paris School of Economics at Oxford University.
The richest Americans haven't claimed this large of a slice of total wealth since 1927, when the group claimed 18.7%."
"..the top 1% of earnings posted 86% real income growth between 1993 and 2000. Meanwhile, the real income growth of the bottom 99% of earnings rose 6.6%."

Why Is One-Sixth of U.S. on Food Stamps? - Real Time Economics - WSJ

Why Is One-Sixth of U.S. on Food Stamps? - Real Time Economics - WSJ
"Food-stamp use grew 2.3% in June from a year earlier, with nearly one-sixth of the U.S. population receiving benefits."

Labor Recovery Leaves More Workers Behind - WSJ.com

Participation rate at lowest level since 1978 - WSJ.com

"The long, slow recovery in the U.S. job market is leaving ever-more Americans on the sidelines—and complicating the calculus for Federal Reserve policy makers weighing when the economy can get by with less help."
"At the recent pace of hiring, the economy won't get back to prerecession levels of employment, adjusting for population growth, for more than eight years.
The unemployment rate, meanwhile, fell not because people found jobs but because they gave up looking. "
"As a share of the population, fewer Americans are working or looking for work than at any time in the past 35 years."
"The share of the population that is working or looking for work—a measure known as the participation rate—fell to its lowest level since 1978, when women were still under-represented in the workforce and manufacturing accounted for more than a quarter of private-sector jobs."

Yale Professor Robert Shiller: Is this Housing Boom Going to Last? I Think Not - YouTube

Yale Professor Robert Shiller: Is this Housing Boom Going to Last? I Think Not - YouTube:
Yale Professor Robert Shiller says, “People who were thinking about buying a house last year are kicking themselves.  Prices are up 12% in a year.  As the market tightens, the attractiveness diminishes, but it’s still attractive.”  Professor Shiller, who is one of the founders of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, sees two big possible headwinds for housing.  One is the Federal Reserve ending or “tapering” its $85 billion a month bond buying program.  Shiller contends, “I think people were really surprised at how much the mortgage rate reacted to the Fed merely talking about tapering off this bond buying program.  Just the talk pushed up interest rates the better part of a percent.”  The other headwind, Dr. Shiller says, “We might slip into another recession.  China, India, Brazil and Russia are all slowing down.  People are getting edgy about that may be just as big of a risk as the pull-back of Fed stimulus.”  Dr. Shiller goes on to say, “The really big question on everybody’s mind is-is this something big, this home price boom over the last year.  Is this boom going to last 9 years?  I think not.



'via Blog this'

On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs | Strike! Magazine

On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs | Strike! Magazine
"Ever had the feeling that your job might be made up? That the world would keep on turning if you weren’t doing that thing you do 9-5? David Graeber explored the phenomenon of bullshit jobs ... – everyone who’s employed should read carefully…"
...
"In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by century’s end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour work week. There’s every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn’t happen. Instead, technology has been marshaled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. In order to achieve this, jobs have had to be created that are, effectively, pointless. Huge swathes of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul. Yet virtually no one talks about it."
...
"
So what are these new jobs, precisely? A recent report comparing employment in the US between 1910 and 2000 gives us a clear picture (and I note, one pretty much exactly echoed in the UK). Over the course of the last century, the number of workers employed as domestic servants, in industry, and in the farm sector has collapsed dramatically. At the same time, “professional, managerial, clerical, sales, and service workers” tripled, growing “from one-quarter to three-quarters of total employment.” In other words, productive jobs have, just as predicted, been largely automated away (even if you count industrial workers globally, including the toiling masses in India and China, such workers are still not nearly so large a percentage of the world population as they used to be).
But rather than allowing a massive reduction of working hours to free the world’s population to pursue their own projects, pleasures, visions, and ideas, we have seen the ballooning not even so much of the “service” sector as of the administrative sector, up to and including the creation of whole new industries like financial services or telemarketing, or the unprecedented expansion of sectors like corporate law, academic and health administration, human resources, and public relations. And these numbers do not even reflect on all those people whose job is to provide administrative, technical, or security support for these industries, or for that matter the whole host of ancillary industries (dog-washers, all-night pizza deliverymen) that only exist because everyone else is spending so much of their time working in all the other ones.
These are what I propose to call “bullshit jobs.”
..

"How can one even begin to speak of dignity in labour when one secretly feels one’s job should not exist? How can it not create a sense of deep rage and resentment. Yet it is the peculiar genius of our society that its rulers have figured out a way, as in the case of the fish-fryers, to ensure that rage is directed precisely against those who actually do get to do meaningful work. For instance: in our society, there seems a general rule that, the more obviously one’s work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it.  Again, an objective measure is hard to find, but one easy way to get a sense is to ask: what would happen were this entire class of people to simply disappear? Say what you like about nurses, garbage collectors, or mechanics, it’s obvious that were they to vanish in a puff of smoke, the results would be immediate and catastrophic. A world without teachers or dock-workers would soon be in trouble, and even one without science fiction writers or ska musicians would clearly be a lesser place. It’s not entirely clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity CEOs, lobbyists, PR researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs or legal consultants to similarly vanish. (Many suspect it might markedly improve.) Yet apart from a handful of well-touted exceptions (doctors), the rule holds surprisingly well.
Even more perverse, there seems to be a broad sense that this is the way things should be. This is one of the secret strengths of right-wing populism. You can see it when tabloids whip up resentment against tube workers for paralysing London during contract disputes: the very fact that tube workers can paralyse London shows that their work is actually necessary, but this seems to be precisely what annoys people. It’s even clearer in the US, where Republicans have had remarkable success mobilizing resentment against school teachers, or auto workers (and not, significantly, against the school administrators or auto industry managers who actually cause the problems) for their supposedly bloated wages and benefits. It’s as if they are being told “but you get to teach children! Or make cars! You get to have real jobs! And on top of that you have the nerve to also expect middle-class pensions and health care?”
If someone had designed a work regime perfectly suited to maintaining the power of finance capital, it’s hard to see how they could have done a better job. Real, productive workers are relentlessly squeezed and exploited. The remainder are divided between a terrorised stratum of the, universally reviled, unemployed and a larger stratum who are basically paid to do nothing, in positions designed to make them identify with the perspectives and sensibilities of the ruling class (managers, administrators, etc) – and particularly its financial avatars – but, at the same time, foster a simmering resentment against anyone whose work has clear and undeniable social value. Clearly, the system was never consciously designed. It emerged from almost a century of trial and error. But it is the only explanation for why, despite our technological capacities, we are not all working 3-4 hour days.

Fraud, failure and bankruptcy pay well for CEOs - Al Lewis - MarketWatch

Fraud, failure and bankruptcy pay well for CEOs - Al Lewis - MarketWatch
"Fuld is among the cast of characters enumerated in a retrospective report released by the Institute for Policy Studies: “Executive Excess 2013. Bailed Out, Booted, Busted: A 20-Year Review of America’s Top-Paid CEOs.” Before 2008, he made the list of America’s top 25 highest-paid executives for eight years in a row.

“To be in the top 25 for eight consecutive years before you crash and burn the economy, it’s just unbelievable,” said Sarah Anderson, one of the report’s authors.

Her study analyzed 500 corporate executive positions that have been listed in The Wall Street Journal’s annual executive pay surveys over the past 20 years.

When she began this research, she expected bailed-out, booted and busted CEOs would make up maybe 15% of the sample. But no, it tallied 38%. 

“These poorly performing chief executives either wound up getting fired, had to pay massive settlements or fines related to fraud charges, or led firms that crashed or had to be bailed out during the 2008 financial crisis,” the report says.

• CEOs whose firms received taxpayer bailouts or ceased to exist held 22% of these 500 slots over the past two decades.

• CEOs who were forced out of their jobs made up 8%. (This is not bad work, if you can get it: The average golden parachute was valued at $48 million.)

• CEOs who led companies paying significant fraud-related fines or settlements comprised another 8% of the sample. (Most of these settlements totaled more than $100 million.)

This isn’t even counting what the study calls “The Taxpayer Trough Club,” or CEOs who make their living with companies landing enormous government contracts. These firms — mostly defense related — garnered $255 billion in taxpayer-funded contracts. Their CEOs made up 12% of the sample.

The tally also didn’t count notoriously overpaid ne’er-do-wells such as Angelo Mozilo, former CEO of Countrywide Financial; Bernie Ebbers, the imprisoned founder of WorldCom; and “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap, who fired thousands of people at Scott Paper and other companies, and whose reign at Sunbeam ended in the company settling accounting fraud charges. They didn’t make The Wall Street Journal’s annual reports, so they weren’t in this study, Anderson said."

After Syria vote, soul-searching stirs Britain - The Washington Post

After Syria vote, soul-searching stirs Britain - The Washington Post
Lap dogs no more!

Best paid CEOs are often fired or fined, study says - NBC News.com

Best paid CEOs are often fired or fined, study says - NBC News.com:
"About 40 percent of the highest-paid CEOs in the United States over the past 20 years eventually ended up being fired, paying fraud-related fines or settlements, or accepting government bailout money, according to a study released on Wednesday.
The report by the Institute for Policy Studies, a left-leaning think tank, said that chief executives for large companies received about 354 times as much pay as the average American worker in 2012. That gap has soared since 1993, when CEOs for big companies received about 195 times as much.
But the best-paying companies do not necessarily receive the best performance from their CEOs, the report said."

oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: The Recession That Never Ended: 2008 -2013 (and Counting)

The Recession That Never Ended: 2008 -2013 (and Counting) - oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith:
The reality is that the recession never ended for 95% of U.S. households, and by many metrics the recession has deepened. The trick is to not measure those metrics; what isn't measured doesn't exist, especially recession.

An Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg: Is Facebook a Human Right? | Jen Schradie

An Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg: Is Facebook a Human Right? | Jen Schradie
".. the Internet in and of itself will not solve the structural problems in the developing world. Think about it this way – the economic advantages that the developed world has, often on the back of the developing world, could be fostering Internet growth, rather than the other way around.
Neoliberalism, the free market capitalist system that Facebook needs to expand globally without restrictions or taxes, is also, unfortunately, the same system that will never allow the egalitarian participatory system that you envision. These economic systems need inequality, unemployment and poverty to survive. Economics 101. For all of the 5 billion people that you describe as lacking connectivity to have equal levels of access and usage would require a more socialized economy. Market forces can not make that happen alone."

How Microsoft Lost Its Mojo: Steve Ballmer and Corporate America’s Most Spectacular Decline | Vanity Fair

How Microsoft Lost Its Mojo: Steve Ballmer and Corporate America’s Most Spectacular Decline | Vanity Fair
 "In December 2000, Microsoft had a market capitalization of $510 billion, making it the world’s most valuable company. As of June it is No. 3, with a market cap of $249 billion. In December 2000, Apple had a market cap of $4.8 billion and didn’t even make the list. As of this June it is No. 1 in the world, with a market cap of $541 billion."
“I see Microsoft as technology’s answer to Sears,” said Kurt Massey, a former senior marketing manager. “In the 40s, 50s, and 60s, Sears had it nailed. It was top-notch, but now it’s just a barren wasteland. And that’s Microsoft. The company just isn’t cool anymore.”
Cool is what tech consumers want. Exhibit A: today the iPhone brings in more revenue than the entirety of Microsoft.
No, really.
One Apple product, something that didn’t exist five years ago, has higher sales than everything Microsoft has to offer. More than Windows, Office, Xbox, Bing, Windows Phone, and every other product that Microsoft has created since 1975. In the quarter ended March 31, 2012, iPhone had sales of $22.7 billion; Microsoft Corporation, $17.4 billion."
 ..
"At the center of the cultural problems was a management system called “stack ranking.” Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees. The system—also referred to as “the performance model,” “the bell curve,” or just “the employee review”—has, with certain variations over the years, worked like this: every unit was forced to declare a certain percentage of employees as top performers, then good performers, then average, then below average, then poor.
“If you were on a team of 10 people, you walked in the first day knowing that, no matter how good everyone was, two people were going to get a great review, seven were going to get mediocre reviews, and one was going to get a terrible review,” said a former software developer. “It leads to employees focusing on competing with each other rather than competing with other companies.”
Supposing Microsoft had managed to hire technology’s top players into a single unit before they made their names elsewhere—Steve Jobs of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Larry Page of Google, Larry Ellison of Oracle, and Jeff Bezos of Amazon—regardless of performance, under one of the iterations of stack ranking, two of them would have to be rated as below average, with one deemed disastrous.
Outcomes from the process were never predictable. Employees in certain divisions were given what were known as M.B.O.’s—management business objectives—which were essentially the expectations for what they would accomplish in a particular year. But even achieving every M.B.O. was no guarantee of receiving a high ranking, since some other employee could exceed the assigned performance. As a result, Microsoft employees not only tried to do a good job but also worked hard to make sure their colleagues did not.
“The behavior this engenders, people do everything they can to stay out of the bottom bucket,” one Microsoft engineer said. “People responsible for features will openly sabotage other people’s efforts. One of the most valuable things I learned was to give the appearance of being courteous while withholding just enough information from colleagues to ensure they didn’t get ahead of me on the rankings.”
Worse, because the reviews came every six months, employees and their supervisors—who were also ranked—focused on their short-term performance, rather than on longer efforts to innovate.
“The six-month reviews forced a lot of bad decision-making,” one software designer said. “People planned their days and their years around the review, rather than around products. You really had to focus on the six-month performance, rather than on doing what was right for the company.”
There was some room for bending the numbers a bit. Each team would be within a larger Microsoft group. The supervisors of the teams could have slightly more of their employees in the higher ranks so long as the full group met the required percentages. So, every six months, all of the supervisors in a single group met for a few days of horse trading.
On the first day, the supervisors—as many as 30—gather in a single conference room. Blinds are drawn; doors are closed. A grid containing possible rankings is put up—sometimes on a whiteboard, sometimes on a poster board tacked to the wall—and everyone breaks out Post-it notes. Names of team members are scribbled on the notes, then each manager takes a turn placing the slips of paper into the grid boxes. Usually, though, the numbers don’t work on the first go-round. That’s when the haggling begins.
“There are some pretty impassioned debates and the Post-it notes end up being shuffled around for days so that we can meet the bell curve,” said one Microsoft manager who has participated in a number of the sessions. “It doesn’t always work out well. I myself have had to give rankings to people that they didn’t deserve because of this forced curve.”
The best way to guarantee a higher ranking, executives said, is to keep in mind the realities of those behind-the-scenes debates—every employee has to impress not only his or her boss but bosses from other teams as well. And that means schmoozing and brown-nosing as many supervisors as possible.
“I was told in almost every review that the political game was always important for my career development,” said Brian Cody, a former Microsoft engineer. “It was always much more on ‘Let’s work on the political game’ than on improving my actual performance.”
Like other employees I interviewed, Cody said that the reality of the corporate culture slowed everything down. “It got to the point where I was second-guessing everything I was doing,” he said. “Whenever I had a question for some other team, instead of going to the developer who had the answer, I would first touch base with that developer’s manager, so that he knew what I was working on. That was the only way to be visible to other managers, which you needed for the review.”
I asked Cody whether his review was ever based on the quality of his work. He paused for a very long time. “It was always much less about how I could become a better engineer and much more about my need to improve my visibility among other managers.”
In the end, the stack-ranking system crippled the ability to innovate at Microsoft, executives said. “I wanted to build a team of people who would work together and whose only focus would be on making great software,” said Bill Hill, the former manager. “But you can’t do that at Microsoft.”
..
"When Apple introduced the iPhone, Steve Ballmer laughed. “No chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share,” he said in 2007, adding that same year, “iPod is a hot brand—not Apple.”
He pooh-poohed the iPad when it came out, in 2010, and it has been busting down the barn doors ever since, selling more than 55 million units. As for Google, Ballmer’s predictions were equally off base—according to court records, in 2005 he proclaimed, “Google’s not a real company. It’s a house of cards.”
Plenty of people can make predictions that prove boneheaded. But Ballmer’s bad calls have been particularly damaging for him inside Microsoft. Until his dying days, Steve Jobs could not only predict the direction the marketplace would be heading, but help drive it there. Google continues to pop out feature after feature and is now shooting directly at Microsoft’s main business lines: Google Docs is a free Web program competing with Microsoft Office. Google Chrome OS is a free operating system targeted at Windows.
With the competitors showing that kind of success—and winning so many accolades—Ballmer’s confidently proclaimed errors have been hugely embarrassing for Microsoft’s technical specialists, fueling muttered complaints that their C.E.O., a man with little technological background, was undermining them within the techie community."

Mark Zuckerberg: Internet missionary, Facebook colonizer | Internet & Media - CNET News

Mark Zuckerberg: Internet missionary, Facebook colonizer - CNET:
"Facebook's CEO wants to create a path to Internet access for the 5 billion people still unconnected. How nice. Of course, eventually those people will turn into a revenue stream for his company.
Mark Zuckerberg, not yet 30 but already the conquistador of 1.115 billion Facebook users, has a seemingly unquenchable imperial urge to engulf everyone on Earth via the Internet.  "

Steve Ballmer's Exit Sets Microsoft on New Path - WSJ.com

Steve Ballmer's Exit Sets Microsoft on New Path - WSJ.com:
"Mr. Ballmer, 57 years old, along with his college buddy and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, built the company into a profit machine whose Windows operating system will still power nearly all the 305 million personal computers expected to be sold globally this year, according to research firm Gartner Inc.  But it will run just 15% of all computing devices, if PCs, smartphones, tablet computers and other gadgets connected to the Internet are lumped together, given the rise of rivals such as Apple Inc and Google Inc.
Investors cheered the news of Mr. Ballmer's departure, sending Microsoft shares up 7% to $34.75 on the Nasdaq Stock Market."

Sales of New U.S. Homes Fell More Than Forecast in July - Bloomberg

Sales of New U.S. Homes Fell More Than Forecast in July - Bloomberg:
"Purchases of new U.S. homes plunged 13.4 percent in July, the most in more than three years, raising concern higher mortgage rates will slow the real-estate rebound.

Sales fell to a 394,000 annualized pace, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. The reading was the weakest since October and was lower than any of the forecasts by 74 economists Bloomberg surveyed."

King’s Dream Remains an Elusive Goal; Many Americans See Racial Disparities | Pew Social & Demographic Trends

King’s Dream Remains an Elusive Goal; Many Americans See Racial Disparities | Pew Social & Demographic Trends: "
Five decades after Martin Luther King’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C., a new survey by the Pew Research Center finds that fewer than half (45%) of all Americans say the country has made substantial progress toward racial equality and about the same share (49%) say that “a lot more” remains to be done.

Blacks are much more downbeat than whites about the pace of progress toward a color-blind society. They are also more likely to say that blacks are treated less fairly than whites by police, the courts, public schools and other key community institutions."

Recession’s pain reaching deep into the economic recovery - The Washington Post

Recession’s pain reaching deep into the economic recovery - The Washington Post:
“Median income is affected by trends in inequality, and you are seeing that to the extent there has been income growth in the past decade, it has disproportionately gone to those at the top and very top,” said Gregory Acs, director of the Income and Benefits Policy Center at the Urban Institute, a research organization.

A Rising Share of Young Adults Live in Their Parents’ Home | Pew Social & Demographic Trends

A Rising Share of Young Adults Live in Their Parents’ Home | Pew Social & Demographic Trends: "In 2012, 36% of the nation’s young adults ages 18 to 31—the so-called Millennial generation—were living in their parents’ home, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. This is the highest share in at least four decades and represents a slow but steady increase over the 32% of their same-aged counterparts who were living at home prior to the Great Recession in 2007 and the 34% doing so when it officially ended in 2009.

A record total of 21.6 million Millennials lived in their parents’ home in 2012, up from 18.5 million of their same aged counterparts in 2007. Of these, at least a third and perhaps as many as half are college students."

American Dream Slipping as Homeownership at 18-Year Low - Bloomberg

American Dream Slipping as Homeownership at 18-Year Low - Bloomberg
"The U.S. homeownership rate, which soared to a record high 69.2 percent in 2004, is back where it was two decades ago, before the housing bubble inflated, busted and ripped more than 7 million Americans from their homes."
"First-time buyers and minorities are among the groups that have seen the sharpest declines since the crash. While property ownership among senior citizens was little changed at about 81 percent, the share below age 35 that own a home fell to about 37 percent from almost 42 percent five years earlier.

The rate for blacks reached almost 50 percent in the second quarter of 2004 from about 43 percent in 1995, Census Bureau data show. By the second quarter of this year, it had dropped to 42.9 percent. The rate for whites fell to 73.3 percent in the second quarter, from 76.2 percent in 2004."

Tom Friedman: A New Ayn Rand for A Dark Digital Future | Richard (RJ) Eskow

Tom Friedman: A New Ayn Rand for A Dark Digital Future | Richard (RJ) Eskow
Well written piece on Tom Friedman.
"If Thomas Friedman didn't exist, America's high-tech entrepreneurs would have had to invent him.  Come to think of it, maybe they did. The dark science-fiction vision he celebrates serves them well, at pretty much everyone else's expense.
Friedman's vision is worth studying, if only because it reflects the distorted perspective of some very wealthy and influential people. In their world the problems of the many are as easily fixed as a line of code, with no sacrifice required of them or their fellow billionaires."
.. .
"Friedman glorifies globalization and the destruction of good jobs. He's indifferent to the loss of social mobility and infatuated with mediocre or at best mildly clever web enterprises. Friedman is the praise singer of Palo Alto, the griot of Los Gatos, and he's never met a Internet billionaire he didn't like.
Thomas Friedman is the perfect mirror for the undeserved self-infatuation which has infected our corporate, media, and political class. He's the chief fabulist of the detached elite, the unfettered Id of the global aristocracy, the Horatio Alger of self-deluded, self-serving, self-promoting techno-hucksterism.
But give the man his due: When it comes to "building your brand reputation," Friedman's a master of the art."

JPMorgan Accused of Gaming Energy Bids as FERC Deal Looms - Bloomberg

JPMorgan Accused of Gaming Energy Bids as FERC Deal Looms - Bloomberg
"A JPMorgan trading unit gamed wholesale electricity markets from September 2010 to June 2011, leading to overpayment of “tens of millions of dollars at rates far above market prices” in California alone, FERC staff said in a Notice of Alleged Violations yesterday."
“These schemes are very complex, and it seems that the banks and the manipulators are always 10 steps ahead of the regulators,” Slocum said. “We need to have a review to determine whether or not these markets are working as advertised.”

4 in 5 in USA face near-poverty, no work

4 in 5 in USA face near-poverty, no work
"Nationwide, the count of America's poor remains stuck at a record number: 46.2 million, or 15% of the population, due in part to lingering high unemployment following the recession. While poverty rates for blacks and Hispanics are nearly three times higher, by absolute numbers the predominant face of the poor is white.
More than 19 million whites fall below the poverty line of $23,021 for a family of four, accounting for more than 41% of the nation's destitute, nearly double the number of poor blacks."
"In 2011, that snapshot showed 12.6% of adults in their prime working-age years of 25-60 lived in poverty. But measured in terms of a person's lifetime risk, a much higher number — 4 in 10 adults — falls into poverty for at least a year of their lives.
The risks of poverty also have been increasing in recent decades, particularly among people ages 35-55, coinciding with widening income inequality. For instance, people ages 35-45 had a 17% risk of encountering poverty during the 1969-1989 time period; that risk increased to 23% during the 1989-2009 period. For those ages 45-55, the risk of poverty jumped from 11.8% to 17.7%.
Higher recent rates of unemployment mean the lifetime risk of experiencing economic insecurity now runs even higher: 79%, or 4 in 5 adults, by the time they turn 60."

Royal baby birth on the cheap? Why US births can cost much more. - CSMonitor.com

Royal baby birth on the cheap? Why US births can cost much more.
"For women without insurance in the United States, or for the 62 percent of women in private insurance plans that lack maternity coverage, the cost of maternity care could range from $4,000 to $45,000.
Comparatively, the cost of delivery at the duchess’s posh birthing suite, the same place where Princes William and Harry were born in the 1980s, reportedly costs up to £10,000, or about $15,300."

It’s Not Everyone’s Time to Buy a Home - NYTimes.com

It’s Not Everyone’s Time to Buy a Home - NYTimes.com

Carl Richards

"John Paulson doesn’t know me or my situation.

There is absolutely no reason I should be making decisions based on something he said. The same is true for any other “expert” who decides to share his guess about what he thinks will happen next in the housing market.

The same holds true for the other three people who just happened to express similar concerns to me about buying right now. Two were convinced that if they didn’t buy a house now, they’d be priced out of the market, and maybe they will be. But I heard that argument a lot in 2005-6."

"So if you’re struggling with this decision to buy (or sell), take a minute to think through these questions and write down the answers, because I suspect you’ll need to refer back to them the next time somebody decides to share what he thinks will happen with housing market. This list is not meant to be prescriptive. It is meant to get you thinking about something other than forecasts and guesses.

■ Can you afford it, and do you have enough saved for a down payment? Make sure you include the cost for things like property taxes, homeowner association fees and utilities.

■ Can you qualify for a loan? If the answer right now is no, then you can stop torturing yourself, because it doesn’t matter if the market is about to take off. You can’t buy a house.

■ How long do you plan to live in the home? There’s some debate about the minimum time you should live in a home for it to be worthwhile, but if it’s less than five years, forget about it.

■ What guess are you making about housing prices? It is a painful reality that the one variable that makes a huge difference in this decision is unknowable. What is going to happen to housing prices in the short term is anyone’s guess. But for your own sanity, just assume that housing prices will continue to increase by about the long-term average of inflation, or 3 percent. You really can’t afford to buy a house if the decision depends solely on what the house might one day be worth."

Most in US say nation is headed off track: NBC-WSJ poll - Yahoo! Finance

Most in US say nation is headed off track: NBC-WSJ poll
"Some 61 percent of Americans polled say the nation is headed off on the wrong track compared to 29 percent who say it's headed in the right direction; that compares to the 53 percent and 41 percent, respectively, findings last December in the wake of President Obama's re-election.
Mr. Obama's own job approval has declined to 45 percent, with 50 percent disapproving; that's down from 53-43 percent in December. Congress drew its worst approval score in the quarter-century history, with just 12 percent approving and 83 percent percent disapproving. Americans rate House Speaker John Boehner negatively by a two to one margin, with 36 percent expressing negative views and 18 percent positive."
"In the wake of the Zimmerman trial for the shooting deal of Trayvon Martin, some 52 percent of Americans call U.S. race relations good, 44 percent bad. But that conceals an enormous racial disparity, since 58 percent of African-Americans describe race relations as bad. While 59 percent of whites say the U.S. is a place where people are judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, on 19 percent of blacks agree."

Detroit, and the Bankruptcy of America’s Social Contract

Detroit, and the Bankruptcy of America’s Social Contract - Robert Reich
"It’s roughly analogous to a Wall Street bank drawing a boundary around its bad assets, selling them off at a fire-sale price, and writing off the loss.  Only here we’re dealing with human beings rather than financial capital. And the upcoming fire sale will likely result in even worse municipal services, lousier schools, and more crime for those left behind in the city of Detroit. In an era of widening inequality, this is how wealthier Americans are quietly writing off the poor."

Goldman and Other Big Banks Should be Banned from Commodities Trading

Goldman and Other Big Banks Should be Banned from Commodities Trading

"Name me one market these banks haven`t tried to manipulate or Rig? Whether it is the recent settlements or future settlements in the Power Industry or the many manipulative practices discussed regarding “Metals Warehousing” to outright manipulation of key commodities by artificially taking supply off the market which has happened many times in the history of the oil markets.

The point is these firms cannot be trusted, their past behavior in anything market related from CDS, MBS to levering up their balance sheets by 40 to 1 ratios, should serve as a warning to any critical regulative body that it is a bad idea to let them “play” around in any essential commodity that consumers rely on for daily living purposes."

Middle class still left behind in U.S. economic recovery, data show - The Washington Post

Middle class still left behind in U.S. economic recovery, data show - The Washington Post
“It’s a pathetic recovery,” said Thea Lee, an economist and the union’s deputy chief of staff. “It really is extraordinary that four years ago we declared the recession over, but we’re not even within spitting distance of full employment.”

Detroit’s half-century of steady decline - The Washington Post

Detroit’s half-century of steady decline - The Washington Post
"Once known as the “Paris of the West” and home to America’s bustling auto industry, Detroit filed for bankruptcy after fighting steady decline for half a century.
In the 1950s, Detroit, known worldwide as the Motor City, had one of the highest per capita incomes in the country when auto plants were hiring wholesale. Now it has the highest rate of violent crime among the nation’s big cities. Average police response time is almost an hour. Nearly 80,000 buildings are abandoned or seriously blighted, and 40 percent of the city’s streetlights do not work. The jobless rate is above 18 percent, more than twice the national rate."

7 Ways the Zimmerman Mindset Permeates America's Criminal Justice System | Alternet

7 Ways the Zimmerman Mindset Permeates America's Criminal Justice System 
"The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid."

Two Sentences that Explain the Crisis and How Easy it Was to Avoid | The Big Picture

Two Sentences that Explain the Crisis and How Easy it Was to Avoid | The Big Picture
“From 2000 to 2007, [appraisers] ultimately delivered to Washington officials a petition; signed by 11,000 appraisers…it charged that lenders were pressuring appraisers to place artificially high prices on properties. According to the petition, lenders were ‘blacklisting honest appraisers’ and instead assigning business only to appraisers who would hit the desired price targets” (FCIC 2011: 18).

It’s Not Just Thomson Reuters – Elite Investors Get Tons of Unfair Advantages: Blodget | Daily Ticker - Yahoo! Finance

Elite Investors Get Tons of Unfair Advantages  - Yahoo! Finance
“The market will never, ever be safe for the little guy,” says Blodget. “So anything we do that makes it appear a little bit safer…is actually worse because then people think they are on the same playing field as the little guy.”

Where Are the Libor Cases Against U.S. Banks? - Bloomberg

Where Are the Libor Cases Against U.S. Banks? - Bloomberg
"It would look awfully strange if the U.S. government wound up targeting only foreign banks as part of its investigation into the manipulation of the London interbank offered rate. It’s too soon to say if that will be the end result. But time is marching quickly."

Homebuilders Hurt by Housing Hangover | The Big Picture

Homebuilders Hurt by Housing Hangover | The Big Picture
"Bottom line, the distressed market was “the” housing market for years. It’s what everybody wanted. It has been absolutely responsible for the short squeeze in housing over the past 18 months and a large percent of house price gains (of course, the 30-year fixed mortgage rate being forced down in QE3 from 5% to 3.5% was worth 15% to house prices as well). And the artificial lack of distressed due to loan mods, new anti-foreclosure laws, and perma foreclosure timeline extending — coupled with rates back to pre-QE3 levels — will be responsible for “Hangover 2″ that follows."

Who killed the American dream? - Rex Nutting - MarketWatch

Who killed the American dream? - Rex Nutting - MarketWatch
"Corporate executives receive millions in excess compensation because of rent-seeking. Many executives are mediocre at their jobs, yet receive extravagant pay packages, regardless of their performance. CEO pay increased by 14 times from the late 1970s to 2000, more than twice as fast as stock prices did, ....

CEOs in other countries earn half as much for doing the same job. And we manage to find qualified people to lead other complex organizations without paying them an average of $14 million a year: The president of the United States makes $450,000 a year, including expenses. The chairman of the Federal Reserve makes just under $200,000. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff makes about $250,000."

CEO Pay in 2012 Was Extraordinarily High Relative to Typical Workers and Other High Earners | Economic Policy Institute

CEO Pay in 2012 Was Extraordinarily High Relative to Typical Workers and Other High Earners | Economic Policy Institute

"Depending on the CEO compensation measure, U.S. CEOs of major companies earned 20.1 or 18.3 times more than a typical worker in 1965; this ratio grew to 29.0-to-1 or 26.5-to-1 in 1978 and 58.5-to-1 or 53.3-to-1 by 1989 and then surged in the 1990s to hit 383.4-to-1 or 411.3-to-1 by the end of the recovery in 2000. The fall in the stock market after 2000 reduced CEO stock-related pay (e.g., options) and caused CEO compensation to tumble until 2002 and 2003. CEO compensation recovered to a level of 351.3 times worker pay by 2007, almost back to its 2000 level using the option-realized metric. The CEO-to-worker compensation ratio based on options-granted, however, returned only to 244.1-to-1 in 2007, still far below its height in 2000 (yet still substantially higher than the 1995 ratio of 136.8). The financial crisis in 2008 and accompanying stock market decline reduced CEO compensation after 2007–2008, as discussed above, and the CEO-to-worker compensation ratio fell in tandem. By 2012 the stock market had recouped much of the value it lost following the financial crisis. Likewise, CEO compensation has grown from its 2009 low, and the CEO-to-worker compensation ratio in 2012 had recovered to 272.9-to-1 or 202.3-to-1, depending on the measurement of options."

Forget a gold watch: McKesson CEO is getting a $159M retirement ‘gold mine’ - NY Daily News

Forget a gold watch: McKesson CEO is getting a $159M retirement ‘gold mine’ - NY Daily News: John Hammergren, chairman and CEO of McKesson Corp., has set a mind-boggling record of $159 million for the largest retirement package in U.S. corporate history. But an expert on executive compensation reportedly calls the benefit ‘excessive,’ since Hammergren is paid roughly $50 million annually.

Money Boo Boo - The Canadian Banking System - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - 06/24/13 - Video Clip | Comedy Central

Money Boo Boo - “Daily Show teaches regulation-loving Canadian bankers the advantages of harmless free-market fun” http://bit.ly/137JyCL

How Google hires people - Business Insider

How Google hires people - Business Insider
"Google also used to be famous for posing impossibly difficult and punishing brain teasers during interviews." ... After many employers caught on to this theme, now it says : "Turns out those questions are"a complete waste of time," according to Bock. "They don’t predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart."

Bank of America Bribed Employees Into Screwing Homeowners - Because Finance Is Boring

Bank of America Bribed Employees Into Screwing Homeowners - Because Finance Is Boring

So, instead of helping homeowners through the program DESIGNED to keep them out of foreclosure (HAMP), the program many members of Congress demanded in order to sign up for TARP, which SAVED BANK OF AMERICA from bankrupty, instead of following the rules and NOT BEING EVIL, Bank of America decided, “Nah, let’s just lie and destory docs and fuck homeowners.

Time to Buy a House? Not on Your Life! » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

Time to Buy a House? Not on Your Life! - Mike Whitney 
"Anyone who buys a house in today’s market should be aware of the risks. They should know that current prices are not supported by fundamentals, but by unprecedented manipulation by the Fed, the Obama administration, Wall Street Private Equity investors, and the nation’s biggest banks. If any of these main-players withdraws or even reduces their support for the market (in other words, if the banks release more of their distressed inventory, if rates rise, if PE firms buy fewer homes, or if the Congress curtails current mortgage modification programs), housing prices will fall."

CONVERSABLE ECONOMIST: Labor's Falling Share, Everywhere

CONVERSABLE ECONOMIST: Labor's Falling Share, Everywhere
"The OECD has observed, for example, that over the period from 1990 to 2009 the share of labour compensation in national income declined in 26 out of 30 developed economies for which data were available, and calculated that the median labour share of national income across these countries fell considerably from 66.1 per cent to 61.7 per cent ... Looking beyond the advanced economies, the ILO World of Work Report 2011 found that the decline in the labour income share was even more pronounced in many emerging and developing countries, with considerable declines in Asia and North Africa and more stable but still declining wage shares in Latin America."

Why the Super-Rich Love Bubbles | The Reformed Broker

Why the Super-Rich Love Bubbles | The Reformed Broker
"What you'll see is a regular pattern of stock market crashes followed by the rapid recovery of income share by the top .01%. The super-rich have been benefitting disproportionately from this boom/bust pattern that Alan Greenspan kicked into high gear with his doctrine of defending asset prices at all costs."

Madoff, other felons say markets are unfair - MarketWatch

Madoff, other felons say markets are unfair - MarketWatch

"MarketWatch found that insider trading may be one of the most common crimes on Wall Street and one of the least prosecuted. And that was only the beginning. MarketWatch discovered that the problem for retail investors goes far beyond a failure of regulators to identify insider-trading violations.

The financial criminals we spoke with said that not only do many investors routinely skirt insider-trading laws, but the explosion of computerized high-speed trading in recent years has made the situation even more unfair for the retail investor.

Those retail investors should be careful when relying on audited financial statements because accounting fraud continues unabated, according to one interview. Accounting-fraud cases are complex, and regulators don’t have the resources to enforce the law effectively, according to one felon."

Zillow CEO: Rising Mortgage Rates May Trap You - Yahoo! Finance

Zillow CEO: Rising Mortgage Rates May Trap You
"The reason for the limited supply is that "44 percent of Americans with a mortgage are effectively in a negative equity position," he said. "Meaning if they sold their home, they wouldn't be able to clear their mortgage. They're basically trapped in their home and can't list."
""We're now seeing unsustainably high rates of appreciation," Rascoff said. "In Phoenix, in San Francisco, in Orange County and San Jose, [Calif.], 20-plus percent year-over-year appreciation. Far too high. We've come back too fast. It's concerning."

Inside San Jose's largest homeless encampment, the Jungle - San Jose Mercury News

Inside San Jose's largest homeless encampment, the Jungle - San Jose Mercury News
"If you're out here, the system has failed you...The safety net that was supposed to catch you didn't. I think it's a terrible statement for our community that there are people who believe this is their best option. This is a terrible, terrible place for anyone to live."

U.S. stands out as a rich country where a growing minority say they can’t afford food | Pew Research Center

U.S. stands out as a rich country where a growing minority say they can’t afford food | Pew Research Center

"Despite being the richest country in the survey, nearly a quarter of Americans (24%) say they had trouble putting food on the table in the past 12 months. This is up from just 16% who reported such deprivation in 2007, the year before the Great Recession began.

Americans’ reported level of deprivation is closer to that experienced by Indonesians or Greeks than it is the British or the Canadians. In fact, the percentage of Americans who say they could not afford the food needed by their families at some point in the last year is three times that in Germany, more than twice that in Italy and Canada."

Americans have rebuilt less than half of wealth lost to the recession, study says - The Washington Post

Americans have rebuilt less than half of wealth lost to the recession, study says - The Washington Post
"In addition, the report showed most of the improvement was due to gains in the stock market, which primarily benefit wealthy families. That means the recovery for other households has been even weaker."

The ‘cult of capitalism’ and U.S. moral decline - Paul B. Farrell - MarketWatch

The ‘cult of capitalism’ and U.S. moral decline - Paul B. Farrell - MarketWatch
"Wall Street’s greedy narcissists are unwittingly sabotaging the economy, lost in their silent conspiracy, controlling the invisible hand, in a costly war that will again lead, as in 2000 and 2008, to the fulfillment of the death wish of the cult of capitalism."

Monsanto sows seeds of protest - MarketWatch

Monsanto sows seeds of protest - MarketWatch
"For many protesters, it comes down to this slogan: “Either mankind will stop Monsanto or Monsanto will stop mankind.”
"Monsanto recently short-circuited this process by lobbying Washington lawmakers to slip a provision into a bill that President Barack Obama signed into law. It requires the USDA to ignore court rulings and permit planting of genetically engineered crops — even if courts deem them potentially unsafe — as the agency conducts further reviews. ... Imagine Boeing getting a law passed that allowed airlines to keep flying the Dreamliner while conflicted bureaucrats studied why its batteries caught fire in midflight."