Fatboy Sez

2012-12-30

The Bernanke Put

French food aid NGO reports ‘explosion’ in demand
http://www.france24.com/en/20121229-france-poverty-restos-du-coeur

[a]fter an increase in duty has seen the price of heating oil double in two years.
Smog hits Athens as cash-strapped residents choose fire over fuel

Some 300,000 Brits had to choose between heat or food this Christmas season, while 9 million more are at risk of falling into 'fuel poverty' by 2016, a government advisory group has warned, calling on the PM for swift action.
http://rt.com/news/fuel-poverty-uk-rise-179/

Austerity Britain is experiencing a nutritional recession, with rising food prices and shrinking incomes driving up consumption of fatty foods, reducing the amount of fruit and vegetables we buy, and condeming people on the lowest incomes to an increasingly unhealthy diet.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/nov/18/breadline-britain-nutritional-recession-austerity

2012-12-27

New Home Sales Surge

New Home Sales Climb to Highest Rate Since April 2010

But wait...

New Home Circa 1963

2012-12-25

What About Food Inflation, Bernanke?

[B]ut while the Fed moves on with its bond bonanza assuming rapidly rising prices won't be a problem, or at least not any time soon, it will be hard to convince shoppers at the grocery aisle.
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Producer food prices are up 2.6% from a year earlier, compared with an annual gain of just 1.5% for all goods. In particular, chicken prices have surged 14.3% during the last year and wholesale beef and veal prices rose 8.2% in November, the biggest monthly gain since 2008.
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For months, the US Department of Agriculture has warned about higher food prices. Next year, U.S. consumers may pay 3% to 4% more for food, the agency forecasts. The price of beef may rise as much as 5% amid tighter supplies of corn, which is used to feed cattle. Since June, the price of grain, the country's biggest crop, rose by more than 50%.
What About Food Inflation Bernanke?

[T]he study showed British families are buying up to 20 percent less fruit and vegetables in order to cut costs since 2007, saying that households are buying less food but paying far more for it.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/12/14/278015/households/

2012-12-24

Re-Post from 11/02/10

Twas the night before QE2, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a Wall St banker louse

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care
In hopes that Ben Shalom soon would be there

Blankfein and Dimon were nestled all snug in their beds
While visions of free money danced in their heads

Twitter#AGhettoSantaWould

first have to talk to his Probation officer about traveling out of state

not come down the chimney cuz' he aint trying to scuff his new J's.

have pitbulls pulling the sleigh instead of reindeer

Show up December 28th

wrap your presents up in aluminum foil

check to see if the police was in the neighborhood before he stopped at you house

fly with a suspended license

pick the lock instead of going down the chimney

give you food stamps instead of toys

give you the gift of life. His condom broke and he ain't paying no child support. Merry Christmas.

turn down the radio when he parallel park his sleigh"
http://twitter.com/search?q=%23AGhettoSantaWould&src=tren

Hashtag belongs to a black man. No racist intent.

2012-12-14

168 Pakistan Children Killed by U.S. Drone Strikes over the Last Seven Years

This count as of August 2011
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/8695679/168-children-killed-in-drone-strikes-in-Pakistan-since-start-of-campaign.html

"Just one in 50 victims of America’s deadly drone strikes in Pakistan are terrorists – while the rest are innocent civilians, a new report claimed today.
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And the authors lay much of the blame on the use of the ‘double-tap’ strike where a drone fires one missile – and then a second as rescuers try to drag victims from the rubble
/

Investigators also discovered that communities living in fear of the drones were suffering severe stress and related illnesses. Many parents had taken their children out of school because they were so afraid of a missile-strike.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2208307/Americas-deadly-double-tap-drone-attacks-killing-49-people-known-terrorist-Pakistan.html

Every reported U.S. drone strike from 2002-2012

"I've been tweeting for 12 hours and we're only at March 2010."
https://twitter.com/dronestream

Barrosso Channels Clemenceau

"The next elections must not serve as a pretext for putting in doubt how indispensable these measures are,"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9732586/Barroso-Italy-elections-must-not-stop-reform-drive.html

"The graveyards are full of indispensable men."

2012-12-13

Retail Sales Rebound and Initial Claims Decrease?

“We’re off to a fairly strong holiday-spending season,” said Millan Mulraine, senior U.S. strategist for TD Securities in New York.
Bloomberg Pumps a Whole Lot of Nothing

Covered employment, those employed that are eligible to file for unemployment benefits:
7/7/2001: 128,116,562
11/17/2012: 128,066,082
http://workforcesecurity.doleta.gov/unemploy/claims.asp

Eleven years later and there are less employed that are eligible to file for unemployment insurance. Widely stated estimates for new entrants into the US workforce put that number at 1.8 million per year. 1.8 million times 11 = 19.8 million workers unaccounted for and missing.

2012-12-10

Gérard Depardieu

has fled France's 75% income tax and moved to the bucolic tax shelter Belgian border town of Néchin. In 2011, Mr. Depardieu urinated in the aisle of an Air France flight forcing the plane to turn back.
http://www.france24.com/en/20121210-gerard-depardieu-tax-shelter-belgium-france-wealth-hollande-nechin

2012-12-04

The State Department's Top Pick for Cultural Ambassador to Bahrain

"[H]e had said earlier that the State Department had asked him to be a cultural ambassador to Bahrain, a religiously conservative Muslim country, “promoting music, freedom and positive party power.” "

[Warning: the longest 2 minutes and 29 seconds of your life]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xxFegl6JvY

2012-12-02

Initial Impression - a Vague Idea in Which Some Confidence is Placed Based on a First Look, a Cursory Glance

Change You Can Believe In

MEXICO CITY (AP) - Enrique Pena Nieto took the oath of office as Mexico's new president Saturday vowing to restore peace and security and take on the vested interests that have hindered economic prosperity.
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Pena Nieto marked the return of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.
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"Mexico has not achieved the advances that the population demands or deserves," Pena Nieto said in an inaugural speech
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20121202/DA2TC0Q02.html

Newly elected President Nieto's party, the PRI, held power from 1929 until 2000.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_Revolutionary_Party

2012-12-01

基督。 7年的大学付诸东流。不如加入和平队该死的。

2012-11-28

Christ. Seven Years of College Down the Drain. Might as Well Join the Fucking Peace Corps.

"[D]oes this mean that the prospects for student loan delinquencies are similar to those for the household debt in general, and thus no special attention is warranted? Unfortunately, this is not the case—some special accounting used for student loans, not applicable to other types of consumer debt, makes it likely that the delinquency rates for student loans are understated.
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From this exercise, we find that as many as 47 percent of student loan borrowers appear to be in deferral or forbearance periods, and thus did not have to make payments as of third-quarter 2011. Specifically, 17.6 percent of borrowers had exactly the same balance in the third quarter as in the second quarter of this year, and 29.1 percent increased their overall student loan balance by taking on new originations or accruing interest to the balance.

We then recalculate the proportion of borrowers with a past due balance excluding this group of borrowers. We find that 27 percent of the borrowers have past due balances, while the adjusted proportion of outstanding student loan balances that is delinquent is 21 percent—much higher than the unadjusted rates of 14.4 percent and 10 percent, respectively
http://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2012/03/grading-student-loans.html

2012-11-23

Who Shot First?

[G]eneral Dayan interrupted: ''Never mind that. After all, I know how at least 80 percent of the clashes there started. In my opinion, more than 80 percent, but let's talk about 80 percent. It went this way: We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance farther, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was.''
http://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/11/world/general-s-words-shed-a-new-light-on-the-golan.html

2012-11-19

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Speaks

Speaking in Thailand Sunday, President Obama defended Israel's counter-assault on Hamas in the Gaza Strip by saying, "There's no country on Earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders.
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That is a very interesting thing to say at a time when the U.S. is regularly raining missiles down on Pakistan and Yemen.
http://reason.com/blog/2012/11/19/no-country-on-earth-would-tolerate-missi

Lloyd Continues Doing God's Work

BLANKFEIN: You're going to have to undoubtedly do something to lower people's expectations -- the entitlements and what people think that they're going to get, because it's not going to -- they're not going to get it.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57552173/goldman-sachs-ceo-entitlements-must-be-contained/

Income inequality in the US is higher than Russia and equal to China

Wages paid as percent of GDP