Tuesday December 9 Housing and Economic stories

TOP STORIES:

1,200 Years of History Can’t Make Germans Trust Hollande - (www.bloomberg.com) In the ancient German city that first symbolized European unity, the French government has an image problem. Aachen, the capital of Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire from the year 800, is steeped in the history of a unified European identity. French pleas for understanding as they seek to fix their economy and narrow the deficit are testing the patience of Aachen’s people, echoing the concerns of many Germans over what they see as their neighbor’s foot-dragging. “I don’t trust the French at all,” said Pazashk Ali in the narrow bar he owns in the shadow of Aachen’s imposing octagonal cathedral, where Charlemagne is buried. “If someone doesn’t do their homework, you have to put the pressure on.”

Drug Batch Tainted? Just Hit Delete and Ship It to the U.S. - (www.bloomberg.com) In a lab in an Indian village during the height of monsoon season in 2011, a technician hit a delete button -- a keystroke that would have consequences three years later. The quality-control employee of Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. had run high-powered chemical analyses on a drug sample to check for impurities that day. A certain level of impurity means the whole batch is supposed to be thrown out. That’s not what happened. Instead, the results of the failed tests were deleted, according to a previously undisclosed account detailed in a November 2013 FDA document obtained by Bloomberg News. The following day, workers used a sample from the same batch that passed the test. That result got entered, and the entire batch was declared clean and ready to ship abroad, eventually to be used by patients in the U.S. The FDA’s computer forensics experts eventually found 5,301 additional deleted results from chromatography tests at the facility.

There Are 300,000 Iraqi Barrels Signaling Oil Glut to Deepen - (www.bloomberg.com) Not only is OPEC refraining from cutting oil output to stem the five-month plunge in prices, it’s adding to the supply glut. Just five days after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries decided to maintain production levels, Iraq, the group’s second-biggest member, inked an export deal with the Kurds that may add about 300,000 barrels a day to world supplies. In a global market that neighboring Kuwait estimates is facing a daily oversupply of 1.8 million barrels, the accord stands to deepen crude’s 38 percent plunge since late June. Or as Carsten Fritsch, a Frankfurt-based analyst at Commerzbank AG, put it: There’ll be “even more oil flooding the market that nobody needs.”

Ferguson 2.0? Grand Jury Fails To Indict White NYPD Cop In Chokehold-Death Case - (www.zerohedge.com) A Staten Island grand jury has decided not to indict white NYPD officer Daniel Panateleo, according to NY1, who allegedly used a banned chokehold and killed Eric Garner, a 400lb black man, who was stopped on suspicion of selling loose cigarettes. Eric Garner's son has called for peace and hopes there is no Ferguson-like response...  As RT reports, A New York City grand jury has decided not to indict the New York Police Department officer accused of killing a Staten Island man by putting him in an illegal chokehold. The NYPD is now preparing for more protests stemming from the decision. Early Wednesday afternoon, CNN, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post all reported that a grand jury declined to indict the officer.

$178 Billion In Government Kickbacks: Meet The World's Biggest Organized Crime Syndicate - (www.zerohedge.com) Once upon a time it was the Sicilian, or Russian, or Japanese, or Chinese mob that were some of the biggest sources of funding for corrupt government officials (incidentally, most of them). After all, the government is smart enough to realize that it is more lucrative to "cooperate" with the world's biggest criminal syndicates than to wipe them out and cut off a major source of funding (of course, when it comes to populist optics and reelection, there is always an easy low-level perp walk every week or so to keep the peasants in place... and Diebold). So while the underlying symbiotic principle between the government and the world's biggest criminal enterprise remains the same, the counterparty has changed. So who, in simple numeric terms, is the world's biggest organized crime syndicate? The answer, courtesy of a new report by the Boston Consulting Group, which shows the transfer of some $178 billion in litigation costs into the pockets of government appartchiks in the past 6 years, is clear.

OTHER STORIES:

Euro zone risks return to contraction, China outlook smoggy - (www.reuters.com)
Russia’s Services Industry Slumps to Lowest Since May 2009 - (www.bloomberg.com)
Taiwan's ruling party in crisis as China factor looms large - (www.reuters.com)
Euro-Area Economy Weakens as ECB Considers Stimulus - (www.bloomberg.com)

Top Independent Adviser With $3.5 Billion Once Lived on Credit

Oil, the Ruble and Putin Are All Headed for 63. A Russian Joke -- for the Moment

There Are 300,000 Iraqi Barrels Signaling Oil Glut to Deepen