TOP
STORIES:
Killer
employee under Obamacare: No. 50 or 51? - (money.cnn.com) The employer mandate under
Obamacare is clear: Starting in 2014, "large employers" with 50 or more
full-time employees must start providing insurance. "Small employers"
near the cutoff have a name for the hire that subjects them to the employer
mandate: The killer employee. Worker No. 50 is the one to watch. But many keep
putting the blame on Worker No. 51."It is 50-plus employees,"
confirmed Joanne Peters, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services. It's a small mistake, but widespread. In a Washington Times editorial,
Sam Graves (R-Mo.), chair of the House Small Business Committee, wrote:
"Businesses that cannot afford the fine won't hire a 51st employee."
NY
State Court Halts Judge Shopping in RMBS Putback Cases - (www.teribuhl.com) Banks looking to judge shop
in RMBS putback cases filed in New York State court are going to get shut out
of the process. Apparently there are so many cases to litigate against banks,
like JP Morgan and Credit Suisse selling billions of garbage mortgage
securities to investors, that administrative judge Sherry Heitler has decreed
all RMBS cases as of March 2013 now go to one judge. Roberta McClinton,
Heitler's law clerk, confirmed this today giving the reason that similar cases
need to go to one judge now because it's for `judicial economy'.
Bubblenomics is back. Markets have become completely detached
from economic reality - (www.telegraph.co.uk)
Make no mistake. Bubblenomics
is back. Stock markets are at dotcom highs – that goes for the FTSE 250
domestic index as much as the FTSE 100 global one. House prices are rising.
Yields on “junk” bonds are at record lows. Dangerous “covenant-lite” lending is
enjoying a renaissance, just four years after being declared extinct. Markets
are convinced interest rates will remain at 0.5pc until late 2016, even though
the economy is forecast to be growing at annual rate of 2pc by the back end of
next year. And a single month’s surprise fall in inflation sends sterling
tumbling by a cent against the dollar, on expectations that the central bank
will load up the printing presses once again. None of it makes any sense, but
it is the current juncture. Short-term financial hedonism has replaced rational
long-term decision making. Persistently low rates are now the markets’ status
quo, and traders can only see evidence of more quantitative easing in the
runes.
Gold, Silver, Massive Leverage & Super Wealthy Panicking
- (www.kingworldnews.com) Given the massive contract
dump that we saw a few Fridays ago, who are the likely visible victims?
The reports indicate that it was the group known as the speculative
longs. Many of these are traditional hedge funds. Hedge funds play
in these commodity markets not for taking delivery of the commodities or
metals, but to simply bet on the direction against their fellow
speculators. Like the betting parlor of old, the bets can be made using
extreme leverage. No doubt, the perpetrators of the smash down made billions
of dollars from those with long positions as the short selling ensued. The
hedge funds are funded by the very wealthy, pension funds and endowments.
There is a small percentage of the hedge funds that do very well, but the
majority lag far behind. When billions of losses occur, the real losers
are the retirees and the schools that gave them the funds in the first
place. Despite the losses, the hedge funds are recapitalized as we saw
after the 2008 debacle. Consultants have been known to give even more
money to the losing funds under the guise of asset allocation and rebalancing. For
the operators of the funds, there is contractual incentive is to take risk and
lots of it. For the successful fund, great fortunes have been made
between the annual management fee and the carried interest on profits.
The investors in the funds are gambling, too. The sponsors know they
cannot make the actuarial defined benefit payments required in the future with
traditional investing, so they believe that ‘alternative assets’ will solve
their problem. It is just desperation and hope with a fancy name.
Too-Big-To-Jail
Dogs Obama's Justice Department As Government Documents Raise Questions - (www.huffingtonpost.com) Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress in March that
some banks were “too large,” impeding attempts to bring criminal prosecutions.
Holder's comment is perhaps the most explicit public admission of concern by a
senior Obama administration official regarding big banks. Though Holder has
since attempted to walk back those comments,
at the time he said that the size of large financial institutions “has an
inhibiting influence -- impact on our ability to bring resolutions that I think
would be more appropriate.” He further told lawmakers: “And I think that is
something that we -- you all -- need to consider.” DOJ officials have
previously defended the lack of criminal charges against banks suspected of
wrongdoing in large part by pointing to the so-called “collateral consequences”
associated with filing a criminal indictment against a leading financial
institution. Two examples occurred in December, when HSBC, the U.K. banking
giant, settled allegations that it violated U.S. sanctions and facilitated the
movement across the U.S. financial system of tainted money by Mexican drug
cartels, and UBS, the Swiss bank, settled claims it manipulated world interest
rates.
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