Gold futures are tumbling amid concerns about dysfunction in Washington and the government shutdown, while stocks and bonds seem to be largely ignoring it. The dollar also fell, touching an eight-month low as buyers moved into euros and other currencies. Stocks were higher and bond prices were lower, with Treasury yields edging slightly higher. Gold…
Published on Oct 1, 2013
It’s been 17 years since the last time the US government partially ceased its work – but it’s actually the 18th time in US history it’s taking a so called ‘spending gap’. In 1977, the government was shut down three times in as many months. Jim Rogers, author of Street Smarts, Adventures on the Road and in the Marketsand believes this vicious cycle is nowhere soon to end.
Dear government workers: welcome to the private sector. This is what it feels like to have job insecurity. For the past 7 hours, some 800,000 suddenly idle Federal workers received furlough notices but were told they will still have to report to work for about four hours Tuesday even though the government is shutting down.…
By Felix Salmon SEPTEMBER 29, 2013
I don’t know which producer at CNBC had the genius idea of asking Alex Pareene on to discuss Jamie Dimon with Dimon’s biggest cheerleaders, but the result was truly great television. What’s more, as Kevin Roose says, it illustrates “the divide between the finance media bubble and the normals” in an uncommonly stark and compelling manner.
The whole segment is well worth watching, but the tone is perfectly set at the very beginning:
Maria Bartiromo: Alex, to you first. Legal problems aside, JP Morgan remains one of the best, if not the best performing major bank in the world today. You believe the leader of that bank should step down?
Alex Pareene: I think that any time you’re looking at the greatest fine in the history of Wall Street regulation, it’s really worth asking should this guy stay in his job. In any other industry — I can’t think of another industry. If you managed a restaurant, and it got the biggest health department fine in the history of restaurants, no one would say “Yeah, but the restaurant’s making a lot of money. There’s only a little bit of poison in the food.”
This is a very strong point by Pareene — and it’s a point which was well taken by Barclays. When the UK bank was fined $450 million last year for its role in the Libor scandal, its CEO duly resigned. After all, a $450 million fine is prima facie evidence that the CEO really isn’t in control of his bank.
But $450 million is a rounding error with respect to the kind of fines that Dimon is now talking about paying — $4 billion, $11 billion, $20 billion, who knows where this will stop. Tim Fernholz has a good roundup of all the various things that JP Morgan is in trouble for; Libor manipulation is at #5 on his list of seven oustanding investigations — on top of another four settled investigations. If Libor manipulation alone was enough to mean the end of Bob Diamond, it’s hard to see how Jamie Dimon should be able to survive this tsunami of litigation.
Unless, it seems, you work for CNBC. In which case you just ignore Pareene’s question, and get straight onto the important stuff:
Duff McDonald: It’s preposterous. The stock’s touching a ten-year high. It’s a cash-generating machine.
Maria Bartiromo: Should we talk about the financial strength of JP Morgan? The company continues to churn out tens of billions of dollars in earnings and hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue. How do you criticize that?
Read the full article at Reuters
Published On: Sun, Sep 29th, 2013 World News | By Robert Herriman Russia and Kazakhstan expanded their gold reserves for an 11th straight month in August as they added 12.7 metric tons, according to a recent Bloomberg report. Image/CIA Russia’s holdings of the precious metal has topped 1,000 tons at 1,015.5 tons, according to the report. In addition, Kazakhstan’s reserves rose 2.5 tons to 134.5 tons…
Published on Sep 27, 2013
As the government creeps closer to a potential shutdown next week, party unity is beginning to fracture among Republicans on Capitol Hill. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) spoke on the Senate floor on Thursday, criticizing his fellow Republican senators Ted Cruz from Texas and Mike Lee from Utah for grandstanding and delaying the votes necessary to avert a government shutdown. Despite Cruz’s and Lee’s tactics, Friday afternoon the Senate passed its plan to keep the government – and Obamacare – funded. Now House Republicans face a choice by this Monday: Cave on Obamacare and accept the Senate’s bill to keep the government funded or dig their heels in and stand firm on defunding Obamacare, plunging the government into a shutdown. And once the government funding is figured out, Congress then faces a fight over raising the debt ceiling. RT’s Sam Sacks talks to Peter Schiff, CEO and chief global strategist at Euro Pacific Capital, about the current congressional debates.
Watch more of Peter’s commentaries on his YouTube channel SchiffReport
https://www.youtube.com/user/SchiffRe…
By Randy Hilarski 26 September 2013 This morning the National Bank of Panama announced that it was suspending all services until Tuesday the 1st of October. The National Bank of Panama says that the reason is to upgrade systems. The Banking Holiday in Panama was announced this am. This system wide shutdown has country wide implications. The National Bank…
Today King World News is reporting breaking news that the CFTC has just stonewalled 42-year market veteran John Hathaway’s request for information about suspicious trading activity in the gold market. This news comes on the heels of the CFTC dropping its 5-year investigation into silver manipulation, despite the fact that two JP Morgan whistleblowers came…
Published on Sep 26, 2013
http://usawatchdog.com/weekly-news-wr… – Some Republicans want to stop Obama care. Senator Ted Cruz filibustered for 21 hours to argue his point against it. Truth be known, many Democrats are afraid the negative impact the Affordable Care Act is going to have on the economy. Meanwhile, the fight over the budget and the debt ceiling rages on. I know many I have interviewed think Congress will get it together and at least kick the budgetary can down the road for at least a few months but This time I am a little worried the government will shut down. Speaking of global image, the new President of Iran Hasan Rouhani just turned down President Obama’s offer to have a face to face meeting over its nuclear program. Former president of Iran would have jumped at this what gives? Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he gives his analysis of these stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up.
