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U.S. Stocks Gain on Prospects for Bailout of Greece by EU - Bailout 2.0 coming soon

Open Intelligence says:

Buy your tickets for Bailout 2.0, coming to an economy near you.

Amplify’d from www.businessweek.com
U.S. stocks rose, recouping yesterday’s losses, as a European Union official held out the prospect of bailing out Greece in return for progress in reducing its budget deficit.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index climbed to its highest level of the session after Olli Rehn, who takes over as EU economic affairs commissioner tomorrow
The Dow Jones Industrial Average increased 185.39 points, or 1.9 percent,
U.S. stocks retreated yesterday amid concern that deteriorating European government finances will derail the economic recovery. TRead more at www.businessweek.com
 
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Posted by Open Intelligence  55 min ago

Consumer Stocks Stall Amid Surprising Earnings - Wealthy splash out

Amplify’d from www.businessweek.com
the consumer discretionary sector
is posting earnings 348% higher than a year ago and 30% above what analysts had predicted.
In 2009, the S&P Consumer Discretionary index advanced 38.8%, rebounding from a 34.7% drop in 2008. This year, O’Rourke says, investors are looking not just for profit growth, but for sales expansion.

While all consumers still feel some economic pinch, wealthy and upper-middle-class consumers are growing more confident, says Lisa Walters, principal at research and consulting firm Retail Eye Partners in New York. Lower-income consumers—many living “paycheck-to-paycheck,” Walters says—continue to favor value retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) and Target (TGT).

Read more at www.businessweek.com
 
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Posted by Open Intelligence  1 hour ago

The defence budget: The Pentagon dodges the bullet - Not much change left over

Open Intelligence says:

It is not possible to have guns and butter with debt at current levels. So the decision will have to be between guns and butter … or both but less of each. The body politic would be much fitter without all the excess fat.

Amplify’d from www.economist.com

Barack Obama is spending more on defence than his predecessors

The idea is to free up money for, among other things, more drones (see picture) and helicopters. Electronic warfare and cybersecurity would also be beefed up. With other countries, notably China, finding new ways to sink ships and shoot down planes and satellites, the QDR considers a new generation of long-range weapons such as unmanned bombers launched from aircraft carriers and long-range cruise missiles fired from submarines.

The Pentagon was exempted from the administration’s spending freeze;
America will spend more money on defence than it did during the Korean or Vietnam warsRead more at www.economist.com
 
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Posted by Open Intelligence  1 hour ago

Exploring “uncivilisation” - Rethinking assumptions

Open Intelligence says:

Trend alert: Here is an example of an emerging trend -
From EGO-CENTRED; To ECO-CENTRED.
This new perspective of the Other goes well beyond traditional environmentalism and is about the whole of life, not just a lifestyle or a belief system.

Amplify’d from www.leadershiponline.co.za
We believe that the obstacles we face as a civilisation are not purely physical, political or economic, but cultural; obstacles of the imagination. We believe that the stories we tell ourselves as a society are part of the reason for our rush towards a brick wall: stories about the ineffable march of progress, of our isolation from “nature”, of our uniqueness as a species, of the ability of our machines to save us from the consequences of our hubris.
Uncivilisation”: a process of unpicking the narratives of our culture and examining the threads they were woven from. What, we asked, would writing look like if it took the future seriously? It would be writing which:
sets out to paint a picture of homo sapiens which a being from another world or, better, a being from our own – a blue whale, an albatross, a mountain hare – might recognise as something approaching a truth
to tug our attention away from ourselves and turn it outwards; to uncentre our minds
result was the Dark Mountain Project Read more at www.leadershiponline.co.za
 
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Posted by Open Intelligence  2 hours ago

Idahoans and other Americans are turning to trading instead of spending - Barter markets growing

Open Intelligence says:

The question is whether to go for local / complementary / mutual credit currencies, such as LETS or Time Dollars, or go for barter markets. Perhaps, it’s ‘horses for courses”, and there’s lots of problems with both approaches. Nevertheless, “needs must”,

(Thanks for the Recommend, Elle. For more on this subject, see Barter under Markets in Categories at bottom of Right Bar)

Amplify’d from www.idahostatesman.com

Bartering - the trading of goods or services without using cash - is making a comeback in a troubled economy. It can be as simple as trading baby-sitting with another family or as complex as an exchange with strangers assisted by one of several Web sites that have sprung up to connect barterers.

Traffic is also up at local organizations like the Midwest Barter Exchange, a Kalamazoo, Mich.-based outfit that acts as a go-between for about 1,000 business clients.

The IRS considers barter dollars as identical to real currency for tax reporting, and barterers must obtain a special form, the 1099-B.
“The human element and the relationship between buyers and sellers becomes more important when we get involved in bartering transactions,”
Professor Andrew Whinston at the University of Texas-Austin, who has written about bartering, said the Internet has made bartering easier,
said nobody knows for sure what’s going to happen next with the markets that rely on credit and currency.Read more at www.idahostatesman.com
 
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Posted by Open Intelligence  4 hours ago

UK sales fall prompts fears of ‘double-dip’ recession - Enter the era of degrowth

Amplify’d from www.telegraph.co.uk

The VAT increase and unprecedented blizzards last month contributed to a sudden and unexpected collapse in retail sales, according to the British Retail Consortium. Its sales monitor registered a 0.7pc drop in like-for-like sales last month, compared with a year before – the steepest January fall since the survey began in 1995, and in stark contrast to economists’ expectations of an increase of 0.5pc.

The figures come amid concern about Britain’s capacity to finance itself in the international capital markets, with the spread between interest rates on benchmark UK gilts and German bunds widening, and arrive only days after the Bank of England signalled an end to its Quantitative Easing programme.

With the temporary VAT tax cut having been withdrawn and the car scrappage scheme finishing at the end of March, economists put a significant probability on Britain dipping back into contraction early this year. Read more at www.telegraph.co.uk
 
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Posted by Open Intelligence  7 hours ago

Climate change impact of soil underestimated - Much bigger error than glacier melt

Open Intelligence says:

All dealings with reality are error prone. The thing is to correct them when they are found, and be open to the changes in beliefs which the corrections suggest.

Amplify’d from news.yahoo.com
Finnish researchers called for a revision of climate change estimates Monday after their findings showed emissions from soil would contribute more to climate warming than previously thought

“The error is serious enough to require revisions in climate change estimates,” it said, adding that all climate models used soil emission estimates based on measurements received using an erroneous method.

This showed “carbon dioxide emissions from the soil will be up to 50 percent higher than those suggested by the present mainstream method,” if the mean global temperature rose by the previously forecasted five degrees Celsius before the end of the century, and if the carbon flow to soil did not increase.

The institute said a 100 to 200 percent increase of forest biomass was needed to offset the increasing carbon emissions from soil, whereas previous estimates called for a 70 to 80 percent increase.

Read more at news.yahoo.com
 
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Posted by Open Intelligence  8 hours ago

Sterling weakens as eurozone’s problems unsettle the markets - What is Soros doing this time?

Open Intelligence says:

Joseph Stiglitz says the speculators and hedgers should be “burned” by a sudden hike in interest rates. No elected government would be able to do that, but the ECB just might. The consequences would be very difficult for Europeans, but it might save the common currency … whether it is worth saving is another question.

Amplify’d from business.timesonline.co.uk

Sterling tumbled to an eight-and-a-half-month low against the dollar yesterday as investors, worried about the continuing fiscal difficulties of some eurozone countries, fled to the safety of the greenback.

The pound has plummeted by nearly ten cents since mid-January amid mounting fears over how countries, including Greece and Spain, will meet their debt obligations.

In a further sign of the concerns surrounding the UK economy, the spread between ten-year gilts and German government bonds hit a two-and-a-half-year high yesterday.

The euro rose by 0.5 per cent against the pound to 87.98p, its strongest in two weeks, before falling back to 87.60. There were concerns about demand at today’s 25-year gilt auction after the Bank of England decided last week to end quantitative easing.

Read more at business.timesonline.co.uk
 
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Posted by Open Intelligence  8 hours ago

The Worst of the Pain - Higher than in the Great Depression

Amplify’d from www.nytimes.com

What you’re not hearing from the politicians and the talking heads is that the joblessness and underemployment in America’s low-income households rival their heights in the Great Depression of the 1930s — and in some instances are worse. The same holds true for some categories of blue-collar workers. Anyone who thinks this devastating problem is going away soon, or that the economy can be put back on track without addressing it, is deluded.

There has been talk about income inequality over the past several years, but what is happening now is catastrophic.
the unemployment rate of the lowest group, which had annual household incomes of $12,499 or less
was a staggering 30.8 percent. That’s more than five points higher than the overall jobless rate at the height of the Depression.

The next lowest group, with incomes of $12,500 to $20,000, had an unemployment rate of 19.1 percent.

the group with household incomes of $40,000 to $49,000 had a jobless rate of 9 percentRead more at www.nytimes.com
 
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Posted by Open Intelligence  9 hours ago

Seven States of Energy Debt - More brinkmanship

Amplify’d from gregor.us
Because the step change to higher energy prices played, and continues to play, such a large role in the developed world’s financial crisis it’s instructive to identify those US states that will struggle for years against the rising tide of higher energy costs.

The seven states to make my list are California, Florida, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina, and New Jersey. Each has a population above 8 million people. Each has had to borrow more than a billion dollars, so far, to pay claims out of their now bankrupt unemployment insurance fund. Also, each state currently registers broad, underemployment above 15% as indicated by the U-6 measure for the States. And finally, each state is a large net importer of either oil, natural gas, electricity, or all three of these energy sources.

Not only have states such as these permanently lost key sectors that once drove their economies, but, residents in these states are over-exposed to structurally higher energy costs.Read more at gregor.us
 
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Posted by Open Intelligence  20 hours ago
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