Too Big To Jail…

Couldn’t see this coming…

JP Morgan – Banking’s Enron

…when everything seemed like smooth sailing ahead, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) showed up on March 13, the day before Carl Levin’s committee released its latest report on JPM’s prop trading blunder, and according to the NYT, alleged that JPM in the past several years, quietly became nothing short than the next Enron.

Under “pressure to generate large profits,” the agency’s investigators said, traders in Houston devised a workaround. Adopting eight different “schemes” between September 2010 and June 2011, the traders offered the energy at prices “calculated to falsely appear attractive” to state energy authorities. The effort prompted authorities in California and Michigan to dole out about $83 million in “excessive” payments to JPMorgan, the investigators said. The behavior had “harmful effects” on the markets, according to the document.

Well, JPM can hope that its guy at the SEC, Andrew Ceresney, who happens to be in charge of the porn-addicted agency’s “enforcement” division, has just enough clout to make that other regulator, the FERC forget all about its inquiry, and its factually-justified allegations.

Zero Hedge

 

 

Obamanomics in Action…

Working as planned….

ADP Private Jobs Plunge, Miss; Fall For Fifth Month In A Row

Concurrently he (Zandi) also announced that the just released April ADP was a huge miss to expectations of 150K, printing at just 119K, or a 31K miss. This was the 5th month in a row of declines excluding the small bounce in February data. It also means that the combined miss to expectations including March (original estimate +200K) and April (estimate 150K) is precisely 100K.

Oh yes, anyone looking for seasonally unadjusted ADP data, good luck – keep on looking.

Zero Hedge

 

You Can Take The Black Democrats Out of the City…

Oh… No You Can’t

Once upon a time, the United States was a place where free enterprise thrived and the greatest cities that the world had ever seen sprouted up from coast to coast.  Good jobs were plentiful and a manufacturing boom helped fuel the rise of the largest and most vibrant middle class in the history of the planet.  Cities such as Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Philadelphia and Baltimore were all teeming with economic activity and the rest of the globe looked on our economic miracle with a mixture of wonder and envy.  But now look at us.  Our once proud cities are being transformed into poverty-stricken hellholes.

By corrupt mostly Black Democrats….vote early and often

Zero Hedge

Boston – We Have Met the Enemy…

…And He is Us…

Marathon bombings mastermind Tamerlan Tsarnaev was living on taxpayer-funded state welfare benefits even as he was delving deep into the world of radical anti-American Islamism, the Herald has learned.

In addition, both of Tsarnaev’s parents received benefits, and accused brother bombers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan were recipients through their parents when they were younger, according to the state.

Boston Herald

QE at Work… Britons turn to food banks

Paul Krugman is thrilled!

More hard-up Britons turn to food banks

The Trust has launched food banks at a rate of three a week in recent months, and now operates 345 branches across the UK. Part of the rise in referrals can be attributed to the network’s rapid growth, but while food bank branches have risen by 76 per cent in a year, referrals have increased by 170 per cent. “It’s a more much intense use,” Mr Mould added. “The fundamental thing is that more and more people are living an increasingly precarious life financially.”

During the Great Depression, the desperation was graphically evident with long lines of families waiting for soup; in the new depression, the record levels of starving and needy are hidden by a blanket of EBT cards and direct transfers from government. The situation is no less terrible – no matter how hidden from view.

But hey – the Stock Market is up!…

FT, Zero Hedge, NBC

When Merkel says “Europe” she means Germany…

Merkel To Europe: “Prepare To Cede Sovereignty”

“We seem to find common solutions when we are staring over the abyss,” Merkel said. “But as soon as the pressure eases, people say they want to go their own way.

“We need to be ready to accept that Europe has the last word in certain areas. Otherwise we won’t be able to continue to build Europe,” she added.

What could possibly go wrong…

Zero Hedge

EU – “Nothing they say is true…”

Cyprus bail-out vote

Green MP George Perdikis told the Cyprus Mail that he would vote against it to uphold the “freedom” of his country. “It is a crime to deliver Cyprus into the hands of the troika and allow it to become a colony.”

It is also a crime to steal people’s money…

Meanwhile the EU slips further into depression…

In a defiant statement, an alliance of the ECB, Commission and Eurogroup said the “evidence is clear” that EMU crisis policies have been a success and recovery is in sight.

Steen Jacobsen from Saxo Bank accused EMU leaders of dangerous complacency. “Nothing they say is true. Reality has never been further away. It’s scary,” he said. “We think the eurozone is in far worse shape than they realize. We will see contraction of 1pc this year but it could be as bad as 2pc.”

Citigroup cut its forecasts drastically, warning that EMU will shrink both this year and next, with a quasi-slump dragging on until 2017.

Socialism at work…

Telegraph

Housing Surges — Down

It’s Never Different This Time…

Goldman’s housing swirlogram shows that the revisions from an exuberant few months into January 2013 have dragged the reality of the ‘recovery’ rotating into full-blown ‘expansion’ to a crumble back into ‘contraction’.

 

The Fed …doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result…

Zero Hedge

Fasten your seat belt in Europe

France: “the world’s last truly Communist country is about to implode”

Things are unfolding about as expected…

France has economic problems that are particular to its political culture. While speculative excesses in Spain and Ireland were concentrated in an over-built, over-geared real estate sector, French exuberance was a civil service affair. (Remember the adage: too many houses in Spain, too many factories in Germany, too many civil servants in France). This out-of-control public sector machine used easy funding conditions through the 2000s to bolster the ranks of an already bloated bureaucracy – the assumption was that such captive groups would vote for their ultimate pay -masters come election time…

Which they did…and elections, apparently, have consequences…

Zero Hedge

“I’ve grown old waiting for the promised global warming”

Global Warming: Was It Just A Beautiful Dream After All?

So where’s the warming? Where are the gondolas pulling up to the Capitol? Where are the encroaching seas in Florida? Or anywhere? Where is the climate change which, for 33 years, has been just around the corner?

A generation and a half into climate change, née global warming, you can’t point to a single place on earth where the weather is noticeably different from what it was in 1979. Or 1879, for that matter.

… maybe it was a huge left wing conspiracy…

Forbes