by Ed Stoddard - Reuters/Common Dreams
SOUTHLAKE, Texas - Real estate agent Lisa DeWaal serves coffee at a Starbucks outlet for four hours every morning before she goes to the office to start her "day job."
The reason has little to do with the state of the housing market and everything to do with the one big perk that 20 hours a week at the coffee counter provides: affordable health insurance for her and her three children.
While health experts say there are no statistics available, analysts say there are many Americans like DeWaal: people who have taken or stick to a job just for the health insurance.
It is a situation most Europeans, Canadians and others who enjoy national health services would find bewildering if not appalling and is one factor fueling the drive to reform the hugely expensive U.S. healthcare system.
"People will even stick with a job they feel boxed in on because of the healthcare benefits, especially if those benefits cannot be matched elsewhere," said Andrew Sum, a labor economics professor at Northeastern University.
U.S. company healthcare plans are usually subsidized by the employer. They are much more affordable and comprehensive than private plans that can exceed a $1,000 a month for a family, a huge burden for most households.
LOW WAGE BUT HEALTH COVER
As a result, company plans can make even a low-wage job an attractive option.
Starbucks says its most economical plan, available to part- or full-time staff, costs the employee about $25 a month.
Such plans, of course, also have an impact on companies' bottom lines and are part of the rising price tag of U.S. healthcare.
Half Price Books, a privately held retail chain based in Dallas with 2,500 employees nationwide, says over the past few years the costs of providing the same coverage to its workers has risen about 9 percent per year.
Its employees pay nothing for its base plan just to insure themselves and they pay $183 a month to cover a family.
President Barack Obama and the Democratic-led Congress are working on a fundamental restructuring of the healthcare system this year, aiming to sharply reduce the total of 46 million Americans who now have no health insurance.
DeWaal, a realtor for Prudential Texas Properties in the affluent town of Southlake near Dallas, has avoided the ranks of the uninsured -- but she has to sweat for it.
"I probably work 60 hours a week because I'm a full-time realtor ... I get up at around 4 a.m. every week day," said DeWaal, 44, a South African immigrant and widow, who begins her Starbucks shift at 5 o'clock each morning.
DeWaal said her plan, which includes her children, cost her $46 a week or close to $180 a month.
"Health insurance is exactly the reason why I have taken the extra job. It's company health insurance, which is a lot better than a private plan. I would put these extra hours into real estate if I had affordable health insurance," she said.
June data from the U.S. Department of Labor showed about 7.1 million Americans were "multiple job holders," well down from 7.7 million in June 2008 as the job market shrank with the economy.
FAREWELL RETIREMENT
The need for affordable health insurance has forced some Americans out of retirement, especially if they left the work force before they reached an age where government programs like Medicare are available.
Patti Sutton, 58, used to work with the City of Phoenix and came out of retirement to whip up espressos at Starbucks for the same reason as DeWaal -- the health insurance.
Her husband Scott, who was laid off by the construction company he worked for, is awaiting a heart transplant.
"When he got sick, the costs skyrocketed," she said.
Patti went for two years without insurance and they used savings to cover health costs.
Scott Duncan, 43, said health benefits were one of the reasons he is sticking to his job at Half Price Books in Dallas, which sells second-hand books and magazines.
"I've worked here off and on for 10 years and the benefits made me inclined to stay," he said.
Duncan said his real estate agent wife was the main bread winner in the family but his job provided the health benefits for her and his three children.
"We could get private health insurance but it would take most of our paycheck," he said.
(Additional reporting by Tim Gaynor in Phoenix, Editing by David Storey)
by Norman Solomon - Common Dreams
The president has set a limit on the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. For now.
That's how escalation works. Ceilings become floors. Gradually.
A few times since last fall, the Obama team has floated rising numbers for how many additional U.S. soldiers will be sent to Afghanistan. Now, deployment of 21,000 more is a done deal, with a new total cap of 68,000 U.S. troops in that country.
But "escalation" isn't mere jargon. And it doesn't just refer to what's happening outside the United States.
"Escalation" is a word for a methodical process of acclimating people at home to the idea of more military intervention abroad -- nothing too sudden, just a step-by-step process of turning even more war into media wallpaper -- nothing too abrupt or jarring, while thousands more soldiers and billions more dollars funnel into what Martin Luther King Jr. called a "demonic suction tube," complete with massive violence, mayhem, terror and killing on a grander scale than ever.
As war policies unfold, the news accounts and dominant media discourse rarely disrupt the trajectory of events. From high places, the authorized extent of candor is a matter of timing.
Lots of recent spin from Washington has promoted the assumption that President Obama wants to stick with the current limit on deployments to Afghanistan. Soon after pushing supplemental war funds through Congress, he's hardly eager to proclaim that 68,000 American troops in Afghanistan may not be enough after all.
But no amount of spin can change the fact that the U.S. military situation in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate. It would be astonishing if plans for add-on deployments weren't already far along at the Pentagon.
Meanwhile, the White House is reenacting a macabre ritual -- a repetition compulsion of the warfare state -- carefully timing and titrating each dose of public information to ease the process of escalation. The basic technique is far from new.
In the spring and early summer of 1965, President Lyndon Johnson decided to send 100,000 additional U.S. troops to Vietnam, more than doubling the number there. But at a July 28 news conference, he announced that he'd decided to send an additional 50,000 soldiers.
Why did President Johnson say 50,000 instead of 100,000? Because he was heeding the advice from something called a "Special National Security Estimate" -- a secret document, issued days earlier about the already-approved new deployment, urging that "in order to mitigate somewhat the crisis atmosphere that would result from this major U.S. action . . . announcements about it be made piecemeal with no more high-level emphasis than necessary."
Forty-four years later, something similar is underway with deployments of U.S. troops to Afghanistan.
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Tuesday that no limit has been set. Speaking to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, he sounded an open-ended note: "There is not a ceiling on troop levels in Afghanistan."
Mullen's comment was scarcely reported in U.S. media outlets. It has become old news without ever being news in the first place.
The war planners in Washington are bound to proceed carefully on the home front. News of further escalation will come "piecemeal" -- "with no more high-level emphasis than necessary."
The Rude Pundit
Some things are just cut and dried, no matter how much others try to complicate, obfuscate, or bloviate. So, just to get this right:
On May 14, 2009, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi accused the CIA of lying about who was told what when at which briefing on waterboarding. She added, "They mislead us all the time." "They" is the CIA; "us" is the Congress.
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who, it needs to always be mentioned, scampered away from Congress in disgrace, said back in May, "To have the person third in line to be president say that the CIA misleads us all the time is so utterly irresponsible and such an attack on the men and women who are risking their lives...that she disqualifies herself for being speaker of the House."
Fox "news" host Bill O'Reilly barely said (in an "interview" with Gingrich), "The unintended consequences of the Speaker of the House basically saying to the world, hey, the U.S. government is corrupt. You know, the CIA is a bunch of liars. And they misled the Congress and all of these terrible things, that's got to play out in a much bigger - you know, much more important role than just Pelosi versus the CIA."
Also on Fox "news," Sean Hannity said that Pelosi is "undermining our national security. She's emboldening our enemies, and it is reckless and irresponsible for somebody in that position."
There's endlessly similar blustering in print, on the radio, and on TV.
Here's a letter from yesterday, June 26, 2009, to CIA Chief Leon Panetta from seven Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee: "Recently you have testified that top CIA officials have concealed significant actions from all Members of Congress, and misled Members for a number of years from 2001 to this week. This is similar to other deceptions of which we are aware from other recent periods." This is vague because the House members are dealing with classified material.
Or, in other words, "They mislead us all the time." Oh, by the way, the "us" there could also be the American people.
by Anthony Mirhaydari - msn.com
Really, how hard is it to find a job? Was June's horrid numbers, in which 467,000 people lost their jobs compared to 345,000 in May, a one-time fluke? Or does it mean that all those Wall Street economists who believe the economic recovery is starting are dead wrong?
Not to scare you, but the situation is actually worse than it seems.
Over the years, the government has changed the way it counts the unemployed. An example of this is the criticized Birth-Death Model which was added in 2000. The model is designed to account for the birth and death of businesses and the resultant lag in survey data. Unfortunately, the model doesn't work that well during economic contractions (like we have now) and consistently overstates the number of jobs being created each month.
John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics specializes in removing these questionable tweaks to the government's statistical data to better align current numbers with the methodology used to gather historical data. After reviewing the data, Williams believes that "the June jobs loss likely exceeded 700,000." David Rosenberg of Gluskin Sheff notes that the fall in the number of hours worked in June (to a record low of 33 per week) is equivalent to a loss of more than 800,000 jobs.
There are similar issues with the way the unemployment rate is measured. The headline rate only jumped from 9.4% to 9.5% because of a drop in the number of people in the workforce. The more inclusive "U-6" measure of unemployment, which includes discouraged workers, jumped from 16.4% to 16.5%. But even this doesn't adequately capture the situation on the ground: Back in the Clinton Administration, the definition of discouraged worker was changed to only include those that had given up looking for work because there were no jobs to be had within the last year.
By adding these folks back in, William's SGS-Alternate Unemployment Measure rose to a jaw-dropping 20.6%. Separately, the Center for Labor Market Studies in Boston puts U.S. unemployment at 18.2%. Any way you cut the numbers, the situation is very bad. According to David Rosenberg, one-in-three among the unemployed have been looking for a job for more than six months and still can't find one.
This brings us to another issue: expiring unemployment benefits. Continuing unemployment claims fell 53,000 to 6.7 million last week, but Deutsche Bank's chief U.S. economist Joseph LaVorgna wonders how much of this decline is due people exhausting their standard 26-week benefit. He says: "We are concerned about what will happen when a significant share of out-of-work individuals' benefits completely expire, because this could lead consumer spending to re-weaken, hence jeopardizing a fragile recovery."
Unless the economy starts getting traction here in the third quarter, we could face a situation where people find that they have no job and no unemployment benefits. For these people, 2009 will feel an awful lot like 1932. As a result, spending cuts will be deep and dramatic.
My positions
The ongoing job losses will continue to weigh on the retail sector -- which was one of the best performing groups coming out of the March low. I've added short positions in Target (TGT), Macy's (M), and Office Depot (ODP) to my portfolio. Besides penny-pinching consumers, retailers face a federal minimum wage increase as well as a tough back-to-school and holiday shopping season.
By Joe Conason - TruthDig.com
The new senator from Minnesota is a comedian, writer and actor who lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and raised a lot of money from friends in Hollywood. The departing governor of Alaska is a hockey mom from a small backwoods town who likes to hunt and fish. Yet today, Al Franken looks wholesomely mainstream, while Sarah Palin seems headed for the tabloid fringe.
That unexpected contrast reveals much about the current configuration of Republicans, Democrats and politics in America—a story of two parties that crossed paths while traveling in opposite directions over the past dozen years or so.
Before he entered politics, Franken had a long and highly successful career in television, wielding a sense of humor that could be wicked, outrageous and even offensive. He was an urban denizen with liberal sensibilities who counted professional wrestlers, college professors, scruffy journalists (including this one) and members of the Grateful Dead among his friends. Even after he signed on as the star host of the progressive Air America radio network, he was primarily an entertainer.
Back around the time that Franken quit “Saturday Night Live” for the second time, Sarah Palin entered public life as a civic activist and candidate for local office in Wasilla, Alaska, where she was soon elected mayor. She was a populist of the right-wing variety, a fundamentalist churchgoer and a scourge of politics-as-usual. Concerning herself with such conservative staples as government spending, tax cuts, term limits and gun rights, she was a textbook Republican officeholder.
But somewhere along the line, everything changed for both them and their parties. Franken left showbiz behind to prove himself a serious policy wonk as well as a devoted family man; Palin transformed herself and her family into a reality television show.
The entertainer became a public servant—and the public servant became entertainment.
How this all came to pass is a complicated story that actually begins long before the political decisions that led to his rise and her fall. The bookish, wise-guy Al always had a political streak dating back to his college years at Harvard, where he switched from mathematics to political science and graduated with honors. The telegenic, athletic “Sarah Barracuda” embarked on a career as a TV sportscaster in Alaska’s biggest city before eloping with Todd and moving home to Wasilla.
The reversal of the parties’ trajectories, in style and substance, may have begun during the 2002 election, a stunning midterm defeat for the Democratic opposition that Republican strategist Karl Rove predicted to be the start of decades of unchallenged rule for GOP conservatism. That was also the moment when Paul Wellstone, the Democratic senator from Minnesota who had become a national icon of progressive politics, died in a terrible plane crash along with his wife, Sheila, his daughter Marcia and three aides, as he was campaigning for re-election.
In the bitter aftermath of his death, turncoat Democrat Norm Coleman won a special election to succeed Wellstone, and joined the Republican majority in the Senate. And Franken, a Minnesota native, began to think about whether he might someday run for that same seat to vindicate the legacy of Wellstone, one of his closest friends.
In victory, the Republicans grew increasingly extreme and overconfident, encouraging figures such as Palin to follow their most extreme instincts. In defeat, the Democrats at last began to refurbish their progressive ideology, reconnect with working American families and rediscover their will to fight.
As an author and radio personality, Franken made a significant contribution to his party’s renewal. He was ready for prime-time politics in ways that Palin, the sudden star who could barely utter a coherent paragraph, was not.
Beneath the glittering surface, she exhibited profound weakness. Behind the joking persona, he showed moral and intellectual strength.
ThinkProgress
“CIA Director Leon Panetta recently testified to Congress that the agency concealed information and misled lawmakers repeatedly since 2001, according to a letter from seven House Democrats to Panetta made public Wednesday.” But the letter “contained no details about what information the CIA officials allegedly concealed, or how they purportedly misled members of Congress.”
“President Obama threatened to veto the pending Intelligence Authorization Bill if it included a provision that would allow information about covert actions to be given to the entire House and Senate Intelligence Committees, rather than the so-called Gang of Eight.” The White House claimed an expansion would undermine “a long tradition spanning decades of comity between the branches regarding intelligence matters.”
The state of Massachusetts sued the U.S government yesterday over the federal Defense of Marriage Act, a law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, arguing that it “interferes with the right of Massachusetts to define and regulate marriage as it sees fit.” Massachusetts was the first state to legalize gay marriage.
As the G8 met yesterday, the “world’s biggest developing nations, led by China and India” refused at a separate meeting to “commit to specific goals for slashing heat-trapping gases by 2050.” Instead, negotiators “embraced a goal of preventing temperatures from rising more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, and developing nations agreed to make ‘meaningful’ if unspecified reductions in emissions.”
Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and an occasional economic adviser to President Obama, said he thinks a second stimulus may be necessary. “I think that a second one may well be called for,” he told Good Morning America today. But, he added, “you hope it doesn’t get watered down in many ways.”
Although two-thirds of country “lives in large metropolitan areas, home to the nation’s worst traffic jams and some of its oldest roads and bridges,” these cities and their surrounding regions are “getting less than half the money from the biggest pot of transportation stimulus money.” Urban advocates worry that the disparities could “hurt the nation’s economic engines.”
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) “knew more than a year ago” that Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) was “having an affair with a staffer –- and he reportedly urged Ensign to end the relationship and pay a substantial sum of money to the staffer and her husband.” When asked about the allegation, “Coburn’s office confirmed that the he knew about Ensign’s affair and had urged him to end it.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is “looking to force a vote as early as this week on the stalled nomination of Robert Groves to lead the Census Bureau,” despite the fact that Sens. Richard Shelby (R-AL) and Tom Carper (D-DE) continue to have holds on his nomination.
President Obama has selected Dr. Francis Collins, a scientist who led the Human Genome Project, to be the next director of the National Institutes of Health. He has been a champion of “personalized medicine,” which hopes to harvest the fruits of the genomics revolution in the form of better and safer clinical care.
And finally: The Daily Show’s John Oliver excoriated the media at yesterday’s Campus Progress National Conference. When some students insisted that the Daily Show was more valuable than cable news, Oliver replied that the statement was “not a compliment to us, it’s a well-aimed insult to them.” He subtly dinged MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, and said that Fox News’s Glenn Beck and right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh were “almost a joke within themselves…beneath contempt.”
msnbc.com
Brit ‘looked like a tramp’, ‘had a disagreeable smell’, police told
MADRID - A British man who arrived at a Spanish airport on Wednesday after having too much to drink was taken into custody — not for bad behavior but for being too generous.
Turns out the tourist had recently received an inheritance, and he had started to give away $72,285 he was carrying in cash and travelers checks.
Spain's Interior Ministry said people at Son Sant Joan Airport in Palma de Mallorca first alerted police because the disheveled man "looked like a tramp" and "had a disagreeable smell."
Police determined he was giving away thousands of euros, without realizing what he was doing.
"Having arrived at the airport terminal he began handing out cash while laughing," a ministry statement said.
The ministry said the man — identified as James B.N., from Manchester, England — was taken in custody and soon persuaded to put his wallet away and fly home.
The British Foreign Office was informed but consular officials did not have to intervene to coax the 59 year-old man back aboard a return flight.
By Megan O'Neill, Rodale.com - msn.com
A new survey reveals that pool-peeing is uncomfortably common, but you can take steps to protect yourself.
Public pools across the country are open for the summer season, but a recent survey could make you think twice about jumping in. According to the poll, almost half of swimmers admit to one or more behaviors that contribute to an unsanitary pool. And you've probably suspected as much, since the poll also shows 84 percent of us believe our fellow swimmers participate in unhygienic pool behavior.
THE DETAILS: The poll of 1,000 adults was conducted in late April and early May of this year by the Water Quality and Health Council, a body of scientific and other experts who advise the American Chemistry Council, an industry trade association. One in five respondents (17 percent) admitted to urinating in the pool, while almost eight in ten (78 percent) are convinced that their fellow swimmers are guilty of this act. Plus, about a third (35 percent) jump in without showering first, and three-quarters (73 percent) think other swimmers do the same. Even though most people seem wary of the hygienic standards of the swimmers around them, only 36 percent say that pool water cleanliness is on their mind when they take the plunge.
WHAT IT MEANS: Besides being just plain gross, filthy pool practices can lead to unsafe swimming conditions. Urine—as well as sweat and even sunscreen—contain nitrogen, which eats up a pool's free chlorine. Free chlorine is what kills waterborne germs that could make you sick if ingested. So if too many people are peeing in the pool or diving in while sweaty, that could mean less chlorine's available to wipe out nasty critters.
Even when chlorine levels are at proper levels, some illness-causing organisms can survive. For example, about two-thirds of all recreational water illnesses (or RWIs) are caused by Cryptosporidium, a chlorine-resistant microorganism that causes diarrhea. "Crypto can survive for as many as 10 days, even in a well-maintained pool," says Michele Hlavas, epidemiologist in the Division of Parasitic Diseases for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Which is why swimmers need to take on some of the responsibility for maintaining the safety of their pools. "Pool operators can't do it all by themselves, as it's the swimmers who bring the parasites into the water," says Hlavas. "Swimmers have to get invested in keeping their pool clean and keeping themselves healthy."
Here are a few tips to help you protect yourself, and other swimmers, from pool-related illness:
Don't swim if you have diarrhea.
It sounds like common sense, but it bears repeating. And don't send your kids to the pool if they've been having stomach problems.
Get to know your pool operator.
Showing you care about pool cleanliness can ensure that certain standards are met. Ask pool management about the training employees receive to operate and keep the pool clean, and how often they check the chlorine and pH levels of the water (both should be checked at least twice per day, more often on crowded days). You can also ask about how they fared on the most recent inspection, and how they're correcting any problems that were uncovered.
Test the water yourself.
Inspectors aren't on site every day, so what's happening when they aren't around? To find out, the CDC recommends purchasing easy-to-use testing strips at a local hardware or pool supply store, and measuring the pH and chlorine levels before swimming. The pH should be between 7.2 and 7.8, and there should be 1 to 3 parts per million of free chlorine in the water, according to CDC standards.
Don't swallow pool water.
Don't even swish it around in your mouth! You don't have to swallow large amounts of contaminated water to get sick.
Shower before swimming.
Shower with soap and water before entering the pool so you don't bring anything unhealthy in to the water. Don't think you need to? Consider this fun fact: The average person has about 0.14 grams of feces on their bottom! Parents should also wash their children before swimming.
Check diapers often.
And make sure older children take regular bathroom breaks when swimming. It's also important to change diapers in the bathroom, or other designated changing areas, and never on the pool deck or anywhere near the water.
Know the signs of a clean pool.
These include clear water, smooth pool sides (no sticky or slippery tiles), and no strong odors. A well-maintained pool should have little smell of chlorine, as a strong chemical smell can actually indicate a maintenance problem. You should also be able to hear the sounds of properly functioning pool equipment, such as pumps and filtration systems.
Brent Budowsky - thehill.com
Sure seems to me that certain Republicans appear to be taking unseemly joy as more Americans lose their jobs. The party of Bush and the Party of No is dangerously close to being the party that hopes America fails!
Right here, on The Hill’s Pundits Blog, in recent hours, consider this: One Republican, Cheri Jacobus, looks like she can barely contain her glee as more Americans lose jobs while she yearns for the glory days of yesteryear, when Republicans attacked Bill Clinton over sex. Another, John Feehery, looks like he does math with a calculator about how many jobless elect how many Republicans.
Meanwhile, a third, Ron Christie, appears to be questioning the president’s patriotism when he says, inexplicably and falsely, that the president does not sufficiently proclaim his admiration for those who served during the Cold War. Excuse me? The president pushes more support for veterans than the Bush administration. I suppose when previous attacks on Obama from this source, such as the “Messiah” attack and the Muslim-roots attack, failed, why not try patriotism again?
Perhaps Ron would applaud if the president stood on an aircraft carrier costumed in a “Top Gun” flight suit, right?
It is odd that Republicans yearn for yesteryear, the campaign tactics of Gingrich and Rove and the economic policies of Bush and Cheney, and do so with an almost gleeful joy when bad news happens to good Americans. Imagine if unemployment reaches 10 percent. Will they chant, “Yippie!”? And shout, “Yabadabadoo”? Will they roar, “Hooray, let’s bring back the Bush years”?
Don’t get me wrong. I am critical of certain Obama policies on the economy (in my opinion, more cogently than my Republican friends). And I try to offer concrete solutions. I have warned both parties that if this continues, there could be an anti-incumbent wave in 2010, in which the party that rules, and the Party of No, both lose members.
But would someone point out a solution offered in these Republican hee-haws about higher joblessness? More Bush policies?
Meanwhile, a little advice to my Republican friends: Don’t look so gleeful, so happy, so joyous when bad things happen to good people in the American heartland. Keep it up, and the only glory days Republicans will return to will be more elections like 2006 and 2008.
by Danny Schechter - Common Dreams
There’s New Evidence to Suggest That Crime in the Financial Markets Is Rife
Everyone has heard of the Wikipedia but not everyone knows about the Investopedia, a Forbes website, that monitors finance for market players. One of the issues it is concerned about is market manipulation, actions by rogue and not so rogue players who, working alone or together, unduly influence the way our supposed "free" markets function.
It is a fascinating source of information for the uninitiated who hear the daily reports on the ups and downs of the Dow and believe that somehow it is all part of the natural order of the universe.
It isn't.
Thanks to an even more informative web site, Gamingthemarket.com, we learn that in fact markets are subject to, prone to, and characterized by all sorts of manipulative practices. Here's one you may not have heard of.
"Ghosting: An illegal practice whereby two or more market makers collectively attempt to influence and change the price of a stock. Ghosting is used by corrupt companies to affect stock prices so they can profit from the price movement.
This practice is illegal because market makers are required by law to act in competition with each other. It is known as 'ghosting' because, like a spectral image or a ghost, this collusion among market makers is difficult to detect. In developed markets, the consequences of ghosting can be severe." -Investopedia
It looks like we have gone from the age of the trustbuster to the era of the ghost buster as fiction once again turns into "faction."
Last week, the price of oil mysteriously shot up. There were reports of yet another "rogue" trader. The New York Times later reported:
"Reacting to recent swings in oil prices, federal regulators said they were considering limits on 'speculative' traders in markets for oil and other energy products." Of course, the big banks and Wall Street firms are expected to zealously oppose more oversight.
Some things don't change. Anyone remember Nicholas Leeson, a one-man engine of speculation who lost over a billion dollars and brought down his own bank before going to jail? He later gloated on his website: "How could one trader bring down the banking empire that had funded the Napoleonic Wars?"
On July 4th, Bloomberg News reported:
"Sergey Aleynikov, an ex-Goldman Sachs computer programmer, was arrested July 3 after arriving at Liberty International Airport in Newark, New Jersey, U.S. officials said. Aleynikov, 39, who has dual American and Russian citizenship, is charged in a criminal complaint with stealing the trading software. At a court appearance July 4 in Manhattan, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Facciponti told a federal judge that Aleynikov's alleged theft poses a risk to U.S. markets. Aleynikov transferred the code, which is worth millions of dollars, to a computer server in Germany, and others may have had access to it, Facciponti said, adding that New York-based Goldman Sachs may be harmed if the software is disseminated."
The next sentence is particularly eye-opening:
"The bank has raised the possibility that there is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets in unfair ways," Facciponti said.
J.S. Kim who runs an independent investment research and wealth consultancy firm commented on the financial site, Seeking Alpha:
"It's curious to note that Goldman Sachs has admitted that it has developed trading software that could be used to, in their own words, 'manipulate markets in unfair ways,' yet nobody in the mainstream media has questioned whether Goldman Sachs was / and is using its proprietary trading platform to manipulate markets in unfair ways. Only extremely naive investors with zero understanding of how global stock markets operate would deny that there has been continual and excessive intervention into US stock markets to prop them up over the past several months."
I spoke with Christian Angelich, the founder or GamingtheMarket.com, a former airline pilot turned trader, who told me that in recent years efforts to manipulate markets have become pervasive and, yet, are mostly illegal.
He too cited Goldman when I asked how it often works.
Without prodding, he came up with one possible scenario involving a firm like Goldman Sachs that had millions of shares of Intel it wanted to offload. So they issue a report predicting it will sell for $50 a share. As a major player at the New York exchange where they do 1 out of every ten shares, and have become even more powerful now that competitors like Bear, Lehman and others are out of business, their recommendations are given lots of weight even though in this case they really want to just dump the shares.
"None of this is new," he told me, "it's been going on for years. Even the founding Fathers warned about it, but is more egregious today in part because of all the technology these firms have." He says it is illegal and has been winked at, citing one example: former Senator Phil Gramm attaching a plan to kill the Glass-Steagall act as an amendment to a bill that then sailed through the Congress while his wife was on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
"We will only have a real bottom," he believes, when the masses are out in the streets like they are in parts of Europe. "For change, pressure from below is needed."
Sometimes unexpected events can take over markets too, as Michael Jackson's untimely demise's meteoric impact on the music market shows. His sales went from nowhere to everywhere confirming one jaded pundit's cynical comment that "he was more valuable dead than alive."
In making a new film on the financial crisis as a crime story, I spoke with Moe Saceriby, a former lawyer and VP of Standard and Poors who went on to become a UN Ambassador. I knew him as a credible analyst of current affairs, an experienced professional. We spoke on Wall Street.
He told me:
"I think we had a transition from what truly was a free-market system to something now that is out of control and probably what I would define as a predatory system where we are not so much dealing anymore about the notion of fair prices, and the notion of markets that -- that work transparently an open late but in fact frequently markets that are manipulated for the end of maybe a few out there -- a few investors, mega-investors. It's even -- even that's very difficult to tell. "
This was new to me -- the whole system being described as predatory, which smacks of criminal.
He went on:
"And these market movements may not be necessarily reflective of the underlying value of that real asset whether it be a commodity or whether it be in equity. What I mean by that is frequently you see prices wildly fluctuating. As an example: how could oil be at $147 in July of 2008 and all of a sudden fall to below $40 a barrel at the end of that same year? We all knew that in fact the whole economic system was in trouble over a year ago. But the price of oil kept rising sharply. The price of foods kept rising sharply."
Question: "Manipulated?"
Answer: "I think it was manipulated. There is a lot of debate whether it's about speculation or manipulation but there is an old expression among traders which is ‘the trend is your friend.' What that means is that in fact a few people can use significant resources, financial resources, freely as a weapon."
Umm, weapons on Wall Street? Already credit default swaps have been compared to financial hydrogen bombs as financial terms merge with military language. Does anyone doubt that these Wall Street manipulations have become form of warfare and that, until now, the wrong side has been ahead.
Surely, all this demands a serious investigation and serious regulation. Will it happen?
By John Byrne - The Raw Story
Believes New Testament consists of ‘first hand accounts’
The scientist chosen by President Barack Obama to lead the National Institute of Health has a controversial history of mixing politics with faith.
Dr. Francis Collins was a leading pioneer in human genome research and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush in 2007. He led the government’s successful efforts to decode the human genome.
Obama nominated Collins to lead the NIH on Wednesday.
But his history of mixing God and science has left some on the left with a sour taste in their mouth.
The New York Times notes that many object to his “very public embrace of religion.”
“He wrote a book called ‘The Language of God,’ and he has given many talks and interviews in which he described his conversion to Christianity as a 27-year-old medical student,” the Times article continues. “Religion and genetic research have long had a fraught relationship, and some in the field complain about what they see as Dr. Collins’s evangelism.”
Profiled in Bill Maher’s acerbic anti-religion documentary, Religulous, Collins asserts that the same level of evidence needed to assert a proof in science isn’t necessary for Jesus and the resurrection, and defends his faith using the New Testament as a basis — referring to it as “first hand accounts.”
Collins criticized his depiction in the film: “I thought my interview with him was going to be about the so-called controversy between science and faith, and whether someone could both believe in God and evolution. I was willing to discourse on that. But in a rambling discussion, Maher migrated into other territory where I am hardly an expert (like the historicity of the Gospels). As you could see, that was the part he chose to include, though he presented a very limited excerpt.”
Collins is also the author of a book that posits that science can provide the foundation for religious belief. The book, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, argues that “God is most certainly not threatened by science; He made it all possible.”
“In my view,” Collins later writes, “DNA sequence alone, even if accompanied by a vast trove of data on biological function, will never explain certain special human attributes, such as the knowledge of the Moral Law and the universal search for God.”
Collins’ marriage of science and faith within the same individual has also drawn praise.
“This marvelous book combines a personal account of Collins’s faith and experiences as a genetics researcher with discussions of more general topics of science and spirituality, especially centering around evolution,” Publisher’s Weekly wrote. “Following the lead of C.S. Lewis, whose Mere Christianity was influential in Collins’s conversion from atheism, the book argues that belief in a transcendent, personal God—and even the possibility of an occasional miracle—can and should coexist with a scientific picture of the world that includes evolution.”
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"FORE...five...six...seven...."
Back foot position is a frequently overlooked part of the golf setup, but this important fundamental can have a surprisingly huge impact on your swing and performance. Here is how to do it right and how it can benefit your golf game:
Your back foot should be perpendicular to your target line and not flared out like your front foot. If your back foot is not squared with the target line, it can create a number of problems:
A back foot that is flared open will promote over rotation of the hips and excessive weight shift. When your weight is over-shifted on your back swing, (outside the back foot), it becomes much more difficult to recover and swing back to the ball without hitting the shot fat or thin.
- Instead, set up with your back foot square to the target-line, and keep your weight on the inside of the back leg as you turn and rotate on the back-swing. This will prevent the hips from over turning and will lead to a more consistent and controled swing.
When your back foot is not perpendicular to the target line, your back leg will have less bracing strength. This will cause you to over-swing, where your leading arm will bend, resulting in a shorter swing arc with less club speed and power.
- Instead, set up with your back foot square to the target-line. This will give your back leg more bracing strength to deliver power into your swing.
Setting your back foot perpendicular to your target line will:
· Strengthen back leg bracing and increase stored up power in the backswing.
· Discourage over rotation of the hips and excess weight shifting.
· Lengthen your swing arc and increase club head speed.
· Generate a more repeatable back swing that will help increase shot consistency.
· Become part of your reliable routine to ensure you and your club are in proper alignment with the target line.
The Eyes Have It
You can improve your putting by proper use of your eyes during each stage of the putt; here’s how...
Eyes during setup: • When you set up to stroke a putt, one of the first things you must do is position your eyes over the golf ball and over your target line. Doing this will give you the best chance to start the ball headed on the target line.
• To help position your eyes over the ball, most putter heads have a top surface split into two separate elevations, with an indicator placed on each elevation. When used correctly, this mechanism ensures your eyes are directly over the ball.
• If your head/eyes drift outside or inside of the ball, the putter’s bi-level alignment indicators will no longer match up to each other, immediately indicating your eyes are not directly over the ball and target line. For example, if your putter has two indicator lines on the upper level and an indicator on the bottom level, you know your eyes are positioned correctly over the ball and target line when the indicator on the lower level appears between the two lines on the upper level.
Eyes during the stroke:
• Keep your eyes on the ball and over the target line during the stroke.
Eyes after contact:
• Keep your eyes over the target line during the stroke. If you have to peek toward the hole, try your best to only swivel your head down the target line rather then lifting your head, as this will change your spine angle and move your head off the target line.
• Try your best to keep your eyes over the target line by holding your focus on the grass that was under the ball, even long after contact. You’re not going to improve the putt by watching it roll, so don’t be in a rush to look up.
The Key to Eliminating Your Slice
Making a proper “full shoulder turn” is one of the most important fundamentals of the golf swing, yet it's one of the most common mistakes made by golfers; and why so many have slice problems. A proper shoulder turn is when you rotate the shoulders so the leading shoulder comes under your chin, without letting your hips turn much at all. Below we explain the ways this eliminates the slice:
• If your shoulder rotation is stopped too early, your arms will tend to continue by fling across the target line and causing an outside-to-inside swing path, resulting in the dreaded banana-ball. A full shoulder turn will help the club fall “on plane”, which greatly reduces the chance of cutting across the target line and slicing the golf ball.
• A full shoulder turn will promote proper weight shift. Remember too keep your lower body from moving laterally. Do not confuse the full shoulder turn as meaning you must get the club back to parallel at the top of the swing. Many great golfers have a compact swing that comes up far short of parallel at the top, but all great golfers take a full shoulder turn when executing a full shot.
• A full shoulder turn will bring you to the top of the swing and assist in getting the hands and arms into proper position.
• Keep your chin up and off your chest so the leading shoulder can rotate and pass under the chin. If the shoulder hits your chin, it will cut the shoulder rotation short and encourage a slice.
• When a golfer does not utilize a full shoulder turn, they tend to rely more on the small muscles (hands and arms) to swing the golf club. This leads to inconsistent ball striking and shots prone to slicing. With a full shoulder turn, you will use more of your big muscles, which are much more consistent, and help you square the club face and avoid a slice. Don’t be in a rush; taking the club back slow will help you to finish the back swing with a full shoulder turn. More body, less arms.
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