Tag: finance

Imagine, if you will, that you and your 15 closest unarmed, civilian friends are celebrating a young couple who has just started their lives together, and are on your way to their wedding party, when all of a sudden a remote-controlled US killing machine drops several air-to-surface tactical missiles on your group and kills you before you have a chance to blink. Macabre as it sounds, this is precisely what happened in the conflict-torn (courtesy of the CIA) republic of Yemen last month when a US drone mistakenly killed 15 people.

The US justification: the 15 civilians were mistaken for an Al Qaeda convoy (good thing this was not in Syria, where such an Al Qaeda convoy would have received US arms and funding), and in keeping with the US “superpower” walkthrough, the missiles were launched first, and questions would be asked later if ever. And while this happens daily around the globe (remember: they hate America for its freedoms, not because it rains hellfire on civilians without reason), this time the United Nations human rights watch actually had the temerity of calling out the US on its latest act of mass murder.

Reuters has the full story:

United Nations human rights experts told the United States and Yemen on Thursday to say whether they were complicit in drone attacks that mistakenly killed civilians in wedding processions this month.

 

The independent experts questioned the legitimacy of drone attacks under international law and said the governments should reveal what targeting procedures were used.

 

Local security officials said on December 12 that 15 people on their way to a wedding in Yemen were killed in an air strike after their party was mistaken for an al Qaeda convoy. The officials did not identify the plane in the strike in central al-Bayda province, but tribal and local media sources said that it was a drone.

 

Stressing the need for accountability and payment to victims’ families, the U.N. statement issued in Geneva said that two attacks, on two separate wedding processions, killed 16 and wounded at least 10 people.

 

“If armed drones are to be used, states must adhere to international humanitarian law, and should disclose the legal basis for their operational responsibility and criteria for targeting,” said Christof Heyns, U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.

Poor Yemen, unclear that others’ sovereignty does not matter to the US, voiced a feeble protest: “Yemen cannot consent to violations of the right to life of people in its territory,” he added.” Good luck with non-consenting.

However, it was the UN that surprised onlookers with one of the harshest condemnations of what is essentially unaccountable murder by an American remote-control plane, controlled from thousands of miles away:

Juan Mendez, U.N. special rapporteur on torture, voiced concern about the legitimacy of the airstrikes. Each state was obliged to undertake due investigation into the reported incidents, including their effect on civilians, he said.

 

“A deadly attack on illegitimate targets amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment if, as in this case, it results in serious physical or mental pain and suffering for the innocent victims,” Mendez said.

Wait, so cruel, inhuman and degra…. oh look, another all time high for the S&P! Quick BTFATH, and ignore all this irrelevant “stuff.”

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/uVo2hVw2zoY/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Submitted by Michael Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg,

Apparently having 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of its prisoners simply isn’t good enough for neo-feudal America. No, we need to find more creative and archaic ways to wastefully, immorally and seemingly unconstitutionally incarcerate poor people. Welcome to the latest trend in the penal colony formerly known as America. Debtors’ prisons. A practice I thought had long since been deemed outdated (indeed it has been largely eradicated in the Western world with the exception of about 1/3 of U.S. states as well as Greece).

From Fox News:

As if out of a Charles Dickens novel, people struggling to pay overdue fines and fees associated with court costs for even the simplest traffic infractions are being thrown in jail across the United States.

 

Critics are calling the practice the new “debtors’ prison” — referring to the jails that flourished in the U.S. and Western Europe over 150 years ago. Before the time of bankruptcy laws and social safety nets, poor folks and ruined business owners were locked up until their debts were paid off.

 

Reforms eventually outlawed the practice. But groups like the Brennan Center for Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union say it’s been reborn in local courts which may not be aware it’s against the law to send indigent people to jail over unpaid fines and fees — or they just haven’t been called on it until now.

 

The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law released a “Tool Kit for Action” in 2012 that broke down the cost to municipalities to jail debtors in comparison with the amount of old debt it was collecting. It doesn’t look like a bargain. For example, according to the report, Mecklenburg County, N.C., collected $33,476 in debts in 2009, but spent $40,000 jailing 246 debtors — a loss of $6,524.

Don’t worry, I’m sure private prisons for debtors will soon spring up to make this practice a pillar of GDP growth.

Many jurisdictions have taken to hiring private collection/probation companies to go after debtors, giving them the authority to revoke probation and incarcerate if they can’t pay. Research into the practice has found that private companies impose their own additional surcharges. Some 15 private companies have emerged to run these services in the South, including the popular Judicial Correction Services (JCS).

 

In 2012, Circuit Judge Hub Harrington at Harpersville Municipal Court in Alabama shut down what he called the “debtors’ prison” process there, echoing complaints that private companies are only in it for the money. He cited JCS in part for sending indigent people to jail. Calling it a “judicially sanctioned extortion racket,” Harrington said many defendants were locked up on bogus failure-to-appear warrants, and slapped with more fines and fees as a result.

 

Repeated calls to JCS in Alabama and Georgia were not returned.

 

The ACLU found that seven out of 11 counties they studied were operating de facto debtors’ prisons, despite clear “constitutional and legislative prohibitions.” Some were worse than others. In the second half of 2012 in Huron County, 20 percent of arrests were for failure to pay fines. The Sandusky Municipal Court in Erie County jailed 75 people in a little more than a month during the summer of 2012. The ACLU says it costs upwards of $400 in Ohio to execute a warrant and $65 a night to jail people.

 

Mark Silverstein, a staff attorney at the Colorado ACLU, claimed judges in these courts never assess the defendants’ ability to pay before sentencing them to jail, which would be unconstitutional.

Full article here.

On a related note, I strong suggest everyone read the following article from The Atlantic called: I Got Myself Arrested So I Could Look Inside the Justice System.

You’ll never see the “justice” system in the same light again.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/LqUUiGJAsJI/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Submitted by Michael Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg,

Apparently having 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of its prisoners simply isn’t good enough for neo-feudal America. No, we need to find more creative and archaic ways to wastefully, immorally and seemingly unconstitutionally incarcerate poor people. Welcome to the latest trend in the penal colony formerly known as America. Debtors’ prisons. A practice I thought had long since been deemed outdated (indeed it has been largely eradicated in the Western world with the exception of about 1/3 of U.S. states as well as Greece).

From Fox News:

As if out of a Charles Dickens novel, people struggling to pay overdue fines and fees associated with court costs for even the simplest traffic infractions are being thrown in jail across the United States.

 

Critics are calling the practice the new “debtors’ prison” — referring to the jails that flourished in the U.S. and Western Europe over 150 years ago. Before the time of bankruptcy laws and social safety nets, poor folks and ruined business owners were locked up until their debts were paid off.

 

Reforms eventually outlawed the practice. But groups like the Brennan Center for Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union say it’s been reborn in local courts which may not be aware it’s against the law to send indigent people to jail over unpaid fines and fees — or they just haven’t been called on it until now.

 

The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law released a “Tool Kit for Action” in 2012 that broke down the cost to municipalities to jail debtors in comparison with the amount of old debt it was collecting. It doesn’t look like a bargain. For example, according to the report, Mecklenburg County, N.C., collected $33,476 in debts in 2009, but spent $40,000 jailing 246 debtors — a loss of $6,524.

Don’t worry, I’m sure private prisons for debtors will soon spring up to make this practice a pillar of GDP growth.

Many jurisdictions have taken to hiring private collection/probation companies to go after debtors, giving them the authority to revoke probation and incarcerate if they can’t pay. Research into the practice has found that private companies impose their own additional surcharges. Some 15 private companies have emerged to run these services in the South, including the popular Judicial Correction Services (JCS).

 

In 2012, Circuit Judge Hub Harrington at Harpersville Municipal Court in Alabama shut down what he called the “debtors’ prison” process there, echoing complaints that private companies are only in it for the money. He cited JCS in part for sending indigent people to jail. Calling it a “judicially sanctioned extortion racket,” Harrington said many defendants were locked up on bogus failure-to-appear warrants, and slapped with more fines and fees as a result.

 

Repeated calls to JCS in Alabama and Georgia were not returned.

 

The ACLU found that seven out of 11 counties they studied were operating de facto debtors’ prisons, despite clear “constitutional and legislative prohibitions.” Some were worse than others. In the second half of 2012 in Huron County, 20 percent of arrests were for failure to pay fines. The Sandusky Municipal Court in Erie County jailed 75 people in a little more than a month during the summer of 2012. The ACLU says it costs upwards of $400 in Ohio to execute a warrant and $65 a night to jail people.

 

Mark Silverstein, a staff attorney at the Colorado ACLU, claimed judges in these courts never assess the defendants’ ability to pay before sentencing them to jail, which would be unconstitutional.

Full article here.

On a related note, I strong suggest everyone read the following article from The Atlantic called: I Got Myself Arrested So I Could Look Inside the Justice System.

You’ll never see the “justice” system in the same light again.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/LqUUiGJAsJI/story01.htm Tyler Durden

To think it was just two weeks ago, on December 13, when the S&P was being supported by the “Independence Day” barrier of 1776. It was also on that day that Goldman’s strategist David Kostin updated his most recent forward S&P500 price targets for both 6 months ahead (i.e. June), and December 31, 2014. The numbers were 1850 and 1900 respectively.

What is just a little bit concerning, is that the S&P, following yet another 10+ point move today on what can only be characterized as “hilarious” volume, will hit Goldman’s S&P500 June price target some time tomorrow (or maybe today if the NY Fed trading desk sends the VIX to a 10, or single-digit, handle).

What is even a little bit more concerning is that applying the Birinyi rule of forecasting, the S&P will hit Goldman’s full year 2014 price target by Wednesday, or the latest Friday of the first week of 2014.

One just has to sit back and laugh at what the central planners have done.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/D9xw27g9UtI/story01.htm Tyler Durden

To think it was just two weeks ago, on December 13, when the S&P was being supported by the “Independence Day” barrier of 1776. It was also on that day that Goldman’s strategist David Kostin updated his most recent forward S&P500 price targets for both 6 months ahead (i.e. June), and December 31, 2014. The numbers were 1850 and 1900 respectively.

What is just a little bit concerning, is that the S&P, following yet another 10+ point move today on what can only be characterized as “hilarious” volume, will hit Goldman’s S&P500 June price target some time tomorrow (or maybe today if the NY Fed trading desk sends the VIX to a 10, or single-digit, handle).

What is even a little bit more concerning is that applying the Birinyi rule of forecasting, the S&P will hit Goldman’s full year 2014 price target by Wednesday, or the latest Friday of the first week of 2014.

One just has to sit back and laugh at what the central planners have done.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/D9xw27g9UtI/story01.htm Tyler Durden

When it comes to screening for stocks, one traditionally uses CapIQ, Factset or the Bloomberg Terminal. However, in a welcome development, the Bloomberg website has launched its own free screener of companies titled the Bloomberg Industry Leaderboard, which this day and age of visual learning, has the added benefit of breaking down the data in an easily digestible, visual format. It allows the sorting of industry leaders by virtually every economic metric of relevance, and while it will never replace paid screeners, it does provide a useful first step in understand who the world leaders in any given industry are.

The big picture breakdown can be seen on the chart below.

Those who wish to analyze the underlying Industry Leaderboard data, can do so here.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/-SJfwvBzY-M/story01.htm Tyler Durden

When it comes to screening for stocks, one traditionally uses CapIQ, Factset or the Bloomberg Terminal. However, in a welcome development, the Bloomberg website has launched its own free screener of companies titled the Bloomberg Industry Leaderboard, which this day and age of visual learning, has the added benefit of breaking down the data in an easily digestible, visual format. It allows the sorting of industry leaders by virtually every economic metric of relevance, and while it will never replace paid screeners, it does provide a useful first step in understand who the world leaders in any given industry are.

The big picture breakdown can be seen on the chart below.

Those who wish to analyze the underlying Industry Leaderboard data, can do so here.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/-SJfwvBzY-M/story01.htm Tyler Durden

We wondered previously what happens when there are no more greater fools to sell to? But, US investors have turned the euphoria dial to 11 this week as the percent bullish is the highest since the peak in Fall 2007 and bears are at their lowest percentage since Spring 1987. Thus, the Bull-bear spread (based on AAII’s survey) has never been wider (and don’t forget, even Cliff Asness knows the unbridled idiocy of the ‘money-on-the-sidelines’-meme).

 

And remember, we don’t need to worry about record high margin debt as along as stocks keep going up…

As – over the long-term – the bull-bear spread has never been wider (by a long way)…

 

h/t @Not_Jim_Cramer

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/Kg_7r8onRSQ/story01.htm Tyler Durden

By EconMatters

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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/V0U-NX0rePQ/story01.htm EconMatters