how
American society unravelled - (www.guardian.co.uk) Youngstown,
Ohio, was once a thriving steel centre. Now, the industry has all gone and the
city is full of abandoned homes and businesses. In or around 1978, America's
character changed. For almost half a century, the United
States had
been a relatively egalitarian, secure, middle-class democracy, with structures
in place that supported the aspirations of ordinary people. You might call it
the period of the Roosevelt Republic.
Wars, strikes, racial tensions and youth rebellion all roiled national
life, but a basic deal among Americans still held, in belief if not always in
fact: work hard, follow the rules, educate your children, and you will be
rewarded, not just with a decent life and the prospect of a better one for
your kids, but with recognition from society, a place at the table. This
unwritten contract came with a series of riders and clauses that left
large numbers of Americans – black people and other minorities, women, gay
people – out, or only halfway in. But the country had the tools to correct its
own flaws, and it used them: healthy democratic institutions such as Congress,
courts, churches, schools, news organisations, business-labour partnerships.
Exit
From the Bond Market Is Turning Into a Stampede - (www.nytimes.com) Wall Street never thought it would be this bad.
Over the last two months, and particularly over the last two weeks, investors
have been exiting their bond investments with unexpected ferocity, moves that
continued through Monday. A bond sell-off has been anticipated for years, given
the long run of popularity that corporate and government bonds have enjoyed.
But most strategists expected that investors would slowly transfer out of
bonds, allowing interest rates to slowly drift up. Instead, since the Federal
Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, recently suggested that the strength of the
economic recovery might allow the Fed to slow down its bond-buying program,
waves of selling have convulsed the markets. The recent pain has spilled over
into stock markets, pushing the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index down an
additional 1.2 percent on Monday. But the real pressure has been felt in the
bigger and more closely watched bond market. The value of outstanding United
States government 10-year notes has fallen 10 percent since a high in early
May.
All those inflation predictions were
disastrously wrong - (www.businessinsider.com) Remember
back when QE started and we saw charts of high powered money going vertical all
over the place and everyone who didn’t understand modern banking said that the
reserves would flood out into the economy causing high inflation or even
hyperinflation? And do you also remember how most of those same people
also said that the only way you’d be able to protect yourself from this
hyperinflation was by owning hard assets like gold or silver? Well, the
inflation never came. The most recent reading of 1.7% pretty much proves
that we’re much more Japan than we are Weimar (and yes, even independent gauges confirm the low inflation story).
And now the portfolio recommendations are falling apart as well…. It’s
one thing to be wrong about the way banking works and the way inflation might
spread. But most of these people were explicitly recommending a substantial
overweight in gold and silver as well. And they’ve been annihilated
in recent years. Gold is down 33% from its 2011 highs. And silver is down
a staggering 60% since the time I started
referring to it as a bubble.
U.S.
Civil Charges Against Corzine Are Seen as Near - (www.nytimes.com) Federal
regulators are poised to sue Jon S. Corzine over the collapse of MF Global and the brokerage firm’s misuse of customer
money during its final days, a blowup that rattled Wall Street and cast a
spotlight on Mr. Corzine, the former New Jersey governor who ran the firm until
its bankruptcy in 2011. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal agency that regulated MF Global,
plans to approve the lawsuit as soon as this week, according to law enforcement
officials with knowledge of the case. In a rare move against a Wall Street
executive, the agency has informed Mr. Corzine’s lawyers that it aims to file
the civil case without offering him the opportunity to settle, setting up a
legal battle that could drag on for years. Without directly linking Mr. Corzine
to the disappearance of more than $1 billion in customer money, the trading
commission will probably blame the chief executive for failing to prevent the
breach at a lower rung of the firm, the law enforcement officials said. If
found liable, he could face millions of dollars in fines and possibly a ban
from trading commodities, jeopardizing his future on Wall Street.
Greece's
government: Wobbling along - (www.economist.com) On
June 11th Antonis Samaras, the prime minister, eager to show that his fractious
coalition could push through public-sector reform, shut the overstaffed state
broadcaster ERT without warning and sacked its 2,650 employees. Few Greeks
watch ERT's four television channels; its programmes are dull and its news
anchors are political stooges (a leaked list found dozens of employees earning
six-figure salaries). And the European Union and the IMF, who oversee Greece's
bail-out, were waiting impatiently for the government to come up with the names
of 2,000 public-sector workers to be sacked by June 30th. Mr Samaras pledged to
have a lean new public broadcaster, with only 1,200 employees, up and running
by August. But hundreds of protesters camped outside ERT's headquarters... Then
a ruling by Greece's highest court, in response to an appeal by the ERT's trade
union, said the broadcaster should reopen, though it backed the government's
right to restructure it.
No comments:
Post a Comment