Free Republic

Great point - true multipliers don’t come from Uncle Sugar spending money willy-nilly, they come from folks building, investing and spending. As you allude, prob ~ 30% tax fall when it’s all said and done. Good luck, Simsbury, your pain is only beginning :(

The Hartford has been one of the worst performing ins firms in the last 5 yrs. They actually asked for TARP and have been cost cutting since the crisis started, so this consolidation is not surprising. I used to live in Hartford and as they say: The three best things about living in ‘Fartford’ are 1) Montreal is 5 hrs away, 2) Boston is 2 hrs away and 3) New Yawk is 3. What a bland, socialist dump.

Hell, I live in GA and can’t carry in SC :(

It sickens me to admit that you're correct. I'd guess within 20 yrs we'll see the first step of overt control, as you described.
I left the (relatively) socialist shores of New Zealand about 10 years ago. I never thought that I would second guess my choice - but the degree of fascism that has emerged (or has been revealed) since then has me pondering a return to what is clearly a lesser of two evils. They have higher taxes and a ‘bigger government’, but AFAIK they don't consider Tea Party type folks an existential threat.
BTW, FU Dick Cheney. I wish you would wipe the arse of every paralyzed serviceman at least once daily.

expat’s got it right —> ratchet up those rolling stops when things get toppy and don’t get shanghai’d by the downdrafts like we’ve seen in gold, equities etc.

An uber crap overnight:

03:30 The Swedish Central Bank (Riksbank) kicked things off with a downward revision on about everything with a downward forward bias on rates. SEK fell about 1% on that news and is currently down -2.3%. *Pow!* <- with best John Madden voice

04:30 Not to be outdone, the Brits came in with higher than expected unemployment and the Bank of England see higher than expected short and medium term inflation...the kicker: the UK had the slowest earnings growth on record. Inflation growth >> earnings growth *Wap!*

10:00 The Bank of Canada basically said the same thing as the Swedes earlier. *Boom*

Finally, there's good ole Jans Weidmann, the head of our fave European central bank - the Buba - saying that there's possible downside to EU rates b/c of growth concerns etc. (I'm running out of sound effects).

The DX Jun is up > 100 bps.

News from Europe overnight:
The Good: French Industrial Output (sequential) surprised to the upside @ 0.70%
The Bad: Italian Industrial Output (YoY) beat expectations @ -3.8%
The Ugly: Spanish Industrial Output (YoY) remains an open chest wound @ -6.5%

In other news, zee Germans sold 2yr paper today for 2 bips. 0.02%. 2 bips for keeping your money for 2 years. Yipes.

Yes, all of those job holders have been making large salary demands since QE started. They have true inflation over there - caused by food/energy prices and perpetuated by rising incomes. The Bernanke has been in holding their feet to the fire to revalue. Payback may well be a b!tch.

I see it in simpler terms - China has been uber-peeved at the US for exporting inflation to China. Japan is the strongest US ally in the region, has a bad history with China to begin with and has now begun QE in earnest (due to its negative current account). In concert, this crossed the line with TPTB in China, so it’s go time with all sorts of bluster out of their puppet Norks in an attempt to get the Japanese back in line.
The Japanese PM was in the States awhile back. I thought they were talking about securing NG shipments long term post Fukushima. Evidently there was a lot more being discussed!!

The day started out good for Norway - Manuf PMI beat expectations (> 50) and unemployment hangs in @ 3.6%. It's good to see the Vikings are bucking the Euro-trend.

For the UK, not so much - housing prices came in under expectations and PMI (Construction) will probably do the same. Be sure to read the Bank of England's Credit Conditions Survey for Q1. IMO. this pub gives you some good read through into Europe.

The US has Services ISM. Manuf ISM crapped out (51.4 vs Expect of 54), payroll tax drag may cane this as well.

Big Deal of the Day (BDD): Bank of Japan's mtg. We get to see what plans Kuroda has to delay Japan's eventual financial supernova.

Good luck to all!

And Sinclair was right.

That was the most blatant display of ‘we need a world cup rematch to boost ratings’ officiating I've ever seen in any sporting event. NBC needs that much larger target audience, therefore the refs gave the US the GK delay penalty and then gave Wombach that goal kick.

I've watched all of the US women's games thus far, and the US has been in complete control up until yesterday. It was a very physical, back-and-forth awesome game, the best of any team event in the Olympics IMO. However, to see AW and others crow about their win after the game and not mention that they won solely because of 2 back-to-back extremely questionable calls was very untoward. It wasn't their grit, determination etc that kept them in the game, it was the norwegian? ref.

If I was Merkel I think I'd be telling Sarkozy to STFU and jump when I say frog.
That's what happened today. Mrs. Frog was giving birth, Merkel called -- Sarkozy left, hopped on a plane to Frankfurt to await further orders. Their 'summit' this weekend will not produce the desired outcome - bad week for the stock market, I fear.

I think there is a simpler explanation. My memory is a bit dodgy on the specifics, but here goes... Early in the credit crisis, a ton of folks had $$ in money market accounts which were not FDIC insured. If the markets truly cratered, folks could have lost that money and the calamity from that event would have been devastating. The Feds came in and said that people weren’t going to lose the money they had in such accounts to calm folks down - but a change had to be made some day.

Now, the feds are changing the rules for money market accounts, so people are moving their $$ out, hence the steep drop off. Now, they may be buying gold, bullets and dried food, I don’t know, but I don’t think this is as bad as the article suggests.

There’s some additional information here:
http://www.bankingandfinancelawreport.com/2010/02/articles/bank-regulation/regulatory-changes-for-money-market-funds/

This the guy?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Michael_Langan

In general, NZ is soft on crime. Also, there has been a mass exodus that continues to occur (brain drain to Aus, the US and the UK). So you have a country with high prices, high taxes, low wages, loads of welfare and an incredible amount of bureaucracy at every turn. Add in a load of liberal white guilt and that's Kiwiland. The average bloke is having a tough time raising a family there.

It's truly a shame b/c with a small population like that, they could really create some novel programs to stimulate growth and innovation. They have a good start in that there's no capital gains tax for long term investments, but the other ones on the book more than make up for that.

New Zealand {20.5%} [14.5%]

Yeah, right. I lived there for a year and a half and I can tell you that the 21% figure is crap. They have a progressive tax system where the highest rate (42%) kicks in at 66k! The sales tax alone is 12.5%.

The numbers are hard to understand because they're not often broken down by domestic/international status of the student, but here are the rough numbers:
Each year in the US, there are about 1000 new math PhDs, 1000 new physics PhDs, and about 3000 engineering PhDs (all fields).

Again, round figures, and there's no telling how many go back to Peking or Buenos Aires or who knows where. The point is that demand in academia (including low paying post docs, etc) is about 1/10th of the above numbers. Given that 1/2 or more might go home, you still have a huge glut of geeks out there that the finance industry slowly absorbs.

Folks in other less marketable fields are in much worse shape. So there may be a problem with undergrad degree numbers, but the technical fields are bulging at the top end.

You have FReepmail.

Even that route takes a lot of patience and a ton of luck to land a job like that in the first place. I have a PhD in finance and a CFA. I know a lady with an MBA, domestic and international experience, and she speaks fluent Japanese. We've both sent out 200-300 resumes on a nationwide job hunt and have been looking for jobs for 5 months.

The key statement (IMO) in the article is:

" But often it seems as if the job market isn't able to absorb all the advanced-degree holders at the pace colleges and universities are churning them out"

The fact is that the US is cranking out way too many PhDs. The demand's just not there. A few departments know this and take students every other year, but most just rake in the $$ from the state/fed govt and save a TON of money getting teachers on the cheap.

Here's a small one:
My father in law moved to Phx three years ago. His neighbor bought a house next to his 18 mos ago for 260k and sold it 4 mos ago for 390k. The guy who bought it says that he will be very lucky to break even. From what my FIL says, the houses around him drop about 10k every two weeks they're on the market and usually sell after the second or third drop.

WD,

Re: Anakin's fall.
You're completely right. I was amazed that at the end of the movie two things stuck out about Sith 1) GL never convinced me that Anakin was a good guy. Not from TPM when he was a kid (the child was ambitious, was a glory hound/adrenaline junkie and thought second about his mother -- supposedly a key to his 'falling' to the Dark Side). He was petulant and dangerously over confident - he almost got himself and Obi-Wan killed in AOTC, and he wasn't THAT strong -- he got himself b!tch slapped inside of 5 seconds when he fought a skilled warrior (Dooku). I never liked the guy, never thought he loved his wife, and thought he was a fair weathered friend to his mentor, Obi-Wan.

You can't have a fall if there's no room to fall. He was not a good guy: Obi-wan was, Yoda was, Luke et al were, but Anakin got what he asked for. That all seems, kinda dumb.

2) GL crammed about 3:15 worth of movie into 2:20. He really needed to chill and let the movie tell itself. He left out a few key scenes that would have added sooo much to the storyline and to character development. But his pace throughout the PT was awful. TPM was about an hour worth of movie and AOTC about 1.5 hours -- he could have done that in one movie a heck of a lot better and then showed things crumbling in the second movie and then ended with a drama consisting of politics and (at least perceived) personal betrayal. Wouldn't have made for too many sword fights, but you would have connected with the people to the same degree or depth (but in a vastly different way) that folks did in the OT.

ClearBlueSky:
Ah yes, the OT had the kids saving the day (yeah 60s! mentality) and had all of the hope and excitement of a true believer's perception of a revolution. the PT had 'the man' as an undeniable force that would cruch all in it's way. All of the goodness in the galaxy wiped off the map by one (insane) man's ambition. If I were to get hit in the head any harder, I'd have to bring some advil. Ugh!

The staggering absurdity of a Jedi espousing moral relativism in the face of plain and simple evil was beyond the pale. While I do contend that GL has areas where he is supremely talented, I get the feeling that if you were to engage him in a conversation about politics, he would sound like a 9 year old.

My overall thoughts: GL has to be one of the larger control freaks in Hollywood. If he had let Kasden (sp?) write the PT and someone with talent direct and edit the movies, he would probably have not only twice the scratch, but also an incredible artistic gift to humanity-- an theatrically solid and emotionally meaningful intergenerational allegory that blended ancient myth with stunning visuals. Instead, as other posters pointed out, we're left with what we have, IMO the greatest could've been/what ifs in the history of movie making.