Category: zerohedge

“We’re an easy target for recruiters,” one homeless man explains. “We turn up here with all our bags, wheeling them around and we’re easy to spot. They say to us, are you looking for work? Are you hungry? And if we haven’t eaten, they offer to find us a job.” As Reuters exposes, 3 years after the earthquake and tsunami that caused the meltdown at Fukushima’s nuclear facility, Northern Japanese homeless are willing to accept minimum wage (from yakuza-based entities) for one of the most undesirable jobs in the industrialized world: working on the $35 billion, taxpayer-funded effort to clean up radioactive fallout across an area of northern Japan larger than Hong Kong.

 

 

Via Reuters,

Seiji Sasa hits the train station in this northern Japanese city before dawn most mornings to prowl for homeless men.

 

He isn’t a social worker. He’s a recruiter. The men in Sendai Station are potential laborers that Sasa can dispatch to contractors in Japan’s nuclear disaster zone for a bounty of $100 a head.

 

“This is how labor recruiters like me come in every day,”

 

…

 

It’s also how Japan finds people willing to accept minimum wage for one of the most undesirable jobs in the industrialized world: working on the $35 billion, taxpayer-funded effort to clean up radioactive fallout across an area of northern Japan larger than Hong Kong.

 

…

 

In January, October and November, Japanese gangsters were arrested on charges of infiltrating construction giant Obayashi Corp’s network of decontamination subcontractors and illegally sending workers to the government-funded project.

 

In the October case, homeless men were rounded up at Sendai’s train station by Sasa, then put to work clearing radioactive soil and debris in Fukushima City for less than minimum wage, according to police and accounts of those involved. The men reported up through a chain of three other companies to Obayashi, Japan’s second-largest construction company.

 

Obayashi, which is one of more than 20 major contractors involved in government-funded radiation removal projects, has not been accused of any wrongdoing. But the spate of arrests has shown that members of Japan’s three largest criminal syndicates – Yamaguchi-gumi, Sumiyoshi-kai and Inagawa-kai – had set up black-market recruiting agencies under Obayashi.

 

“We are taking it very seriously that these incidents keep happening one after another,” said Junichi Ichikawa, a spokesman for Obayashi. He said the company tightened its scrutiny of its lower-tier subcontractors in order to shut out gangsters, known as the yakuza. “There were elements of what we had been doing that did not go far enough.”

 

…

 

Reuters found 56 subcontractors listed on environment ministry contracts worth a total of $2.5 billion in the most radiated areas of Fukushima that would have been barred from traditional public works because they had not been vetted by the construction ministry.

 

…

 

“If you started looking at every single person, the project wouldn’t move forward. You wouldn’t get a tenth of the people you need,” said Yukio Suganuma, president of Aisogo Service, a construction company that was hired in 2012 to clean up radioactive fallout from streets in the town of Tamura.

 

…

 

“There are many unknown entities getting involved in decontamination projects,” said Igarashi, a former advisor to ex-Prime Minister Naoto Kan. “There needs to be a thorough check on what companies are working on what, and when. I think it’s probably completely lawless if the top contractors are not thoroughly checking.”

 

…

 

“I don’t ask questions; that’s not my job,” Sasa said in an interview with Reuters. “I just find people and send them to work. I send them and get money in exchange. That’s it. I don’t get involved in what happens after that.”

 

…

 

“The construction industry is 90 percent run by gangs.”

It would seem, perhaps, that France (and the US) need their own nuclear accident to unleash an employment boom…

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

Submitted by James H. Kunstler of Kunstler.com,

If being wealthy was the same as pretending to be wealthy then people who care about reality would have a little less to complain about. But pretending is a poor way for a society to negotiate its way through history. It makes for accumulating distortions which eventually undermine the society’s ability to function, especially when the pretending is about money, which is society’s operating system.

The distortion that even simple people care about is that the gap between the rich and the poor is as plain, vast, and grotesque as at any time in our history — except perhaps during slavery times in Dixieland, when many of the poor did not even own their existence. We’ve had plenty of reminders of that in pop culture the last couple of years, including Quentin Tarantino’s fiercely stupid movie Django Unchained and the more recent melodrama 12 Years a Slave. But you have to wonder what young adults weighed down by unpayable college debt think when they go to see them, because without a rebellion that millennial generation will not own their own lives either. They must know it, but they must not know what to do about it.

The pretense and distortions start at the top of American life with a President who broadcasts the message that some kind of “recovery” has occurred in the economic affairs of the country. Either he just wants the public feel better, or he is misled by the people and agencies in his own government, or perhaps he just lies to keep the lid on. To truly recover from the dislocations of 2008, we would have to make a consensual decision to start behaving differently in the process of adapting to the new circumstances that the arc of history is presenting to us. We’d have to decide to leave behind the economy of financialization, suburban sprawl, car dependency, Wal-Mart consumerism, and prepare for a different way of inhabiting North America.

The dislocations of 2008 when the banking system nearly imploded were Nature’s way of telling us that dishonesty has consequences. The immediate dishonesty of that day was the racket in securitizing worthless mortgages ­— promises to pay large sums of money over long periods of time. The promises were false and the collateral was janky.  It got so bad and ran so far and deep that it essentially destroyed the mechanism of credit creation as it had been known until then, and it has not been repaired.

Since then, we have pretended to repair the operations of credit by falsely substituting bank bailouts and Federal Reserve “quantitative easing” (QE) or digital money-printing for plain dealing in borrowed money between honest brokers at the local level. The unfortunate consequence is that in the process we have distorted — and possibly destroyed — the value of our money and the various things denominated in it, especially securities, bonds, stocks and other money-like paper.

The crash of the mortgage racket occurred not just because of swindling and fraud among bankers; in fact, that was only a nasty symptom of something larger: peak oil. I know that many people have come to disbelieve in the idea of peak oil, but that is only another mode of playing pretend. Peak oil, which essentially arrived in 2006, undermined the basic conditions of credit creation in an advanced techno-industrial society dependent on increasing supplies of fossil fuels. Most people, including practically all credentialed economists, fail to understand this. There is a fundamental relationship between ever-increasing energy supplies > economic growth > and credit-based money (or “money,” if you will). When the energy inputs flatten out or decrease, growth stops, wealth is no longer generated, old loans can’t be repaid, and new loans can’t be generated honestly, i.e. with the expectation of repayment. That has been our predicament since 2008 and nothing has changed. We are pretending to compensate by issuing new unpayable debt to pay the interest on our old accumulated debt. This pretense can only go on so long before our economic relations reflect the basic dishonesty of it. Reality is a harsh mistress.

In the meantime, we amuse ourselves with fairy tales about “the shale oil revolution” and “the manufacturing renaissance.” 2014 could be the year that the forces of Nature compel our attention and give us a reason to stop all this pretending.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/BB4QIf0fKYI/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Draghi’s ECB and Carney’s BoE have put in place plans for bail-ins and deposit confiscation. Yellen’s Fed is quiet allowing the FDIC to do the controversial bail-in ‘dirty work’ by stealth. Bail-ins cometh … Prepare … http://info.goldcore.com/protecting-your-savings-in-the-coming-bail-in-e…

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/7CNsOwoiKNU/story01.htm GoldCore

"It's going to put my family and me out on the streets," is a perspective shared by many of the 1.3 million Americans about to lose their emergency unemployment claims. The program, started during the recession, was intended to help jobless people after they exhausted state benefits, typically lasting six months. House Republicans resisted continuing the benefits without budget cuts elsewhere to cover the cost. As Bloomberg reports, opponents say the extended benefits discourage the unemployed from accepting jobs and that the program should be curtailed, given the recovery in the nation’s labor market.

Via Bloomberg,

“It lacks compassion for the victims of the recession and, economically, it’s shooting ourselves in the foot,” said Lawrence Mishel, the president of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, which backs policies that help low-income workers. “The timing is very premature. The evidence is that people who want work can’t find it.”

 

…

 

“The economy has now been out of a recession for more than four years,” said Chris Edwards, an economist with the Cato Institute in Washington, which argues for scaling back the role of government. “These unemployment benefits are emergency benefits, but the economy is no longer in an emergency situation. People can find jobs if they are willing to moderate their wage demands and make compromises.”

 

…

 

“Not all of us have savings and a lot of us have to take care of family because of what happened in the economy,” said Walker, of Santa Clarita, who said she has applied for at least three jobs a week and shares an apartment with her unemployed son, his wife and two children. “It’s going to put my family and me out on the streets.”

 

…

 

There were 3.9 million job openings across the U.S. at the end of October, according to the Labor Department. That same month, 11.3 million people were looking for work but couldn’t find it, a gap advocates say underscores the need to keep benefits flowing.

 

…

 

Failure to extend the program will affect 1.9 million people who are forecast to use up their state benefits in the first half of 2014 before they can find work, according to the White House.

 

…

 

The effect will be especially pronounced in the most-populous U.S. states. In New York, 102,700 people were expected to lose their benefits on Dec. 28, said Chris White, a spokesman for the state’s labor department. In New Jersey, about 90,300 will do the same, according to estimates from Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee. More than 222,000 Californians will likewise see their benefits disappear.

 

…

 

“I understand the government doesn’t want to pay for people who are taking advantage of it,” she said. “But I am not, and many other people are not.”

 

“I just don’t know what to do, except pray.”

Of course, as we discussed in detail previously, this will mean a notable drop in the unemployment rate (for what that is worth)…

 

This has profound implications for the oh-so-important unemployment rate that  the Fed is so dependent upon…

JPM's Feroli: One observation that could set an upper bound on thinking about a participation effect is to hypothesize that all 1.3 million EUC claimants exit the labor force after benefits expire in 1Q (again, should Congress allow that to happen). In that case, the unemployment rate would fall by 0.8%-pt, obviously an extreme example. Some of the Fed studies can help to narrow the range of outcomes.

 

One of the more recent works (Farber and Valletta from the San Francisco Fed) indicates that about a fifth of long-term unemployment is due to extended benefits. With just over 4 million long-term unemployed recently, this would imply that the absence of extended UI benefits could lower the unemployment rate by 0.5%-pt.

This will directly impact the Fed's credibility to manage the economt in a "data-dependent" manner:

JPM's Feroli: Setting aside the normative aspect of whether from a public policy perspective this is a desirable or undesirable outcome, such a fall in the unemployment and participation rates could create some tricky choices for Fed policymakers as they assess the health of the labor market.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/e0VPsSXtibw/story01.htm Tyler Durden

For the 5th month in a row, pending home sales missed expectations (though a silver lining is a positive print MoM – breaking a 5-month streak). Year-over-year, home sales collapsed at 4% – its worst drop since April 2011, and that even after prior data was revised lower. Still, despite this ongoing plunge, there is always hope – as engendered by NAR’s chief economist who states (somewhat unconfidently), “we may have reached a cyclical low.” Cylical low indeed – just don’t look at the chart?!!

Sure doesn’t look like a cyclical low…

 

as data misses for the 5th month in a row…

 

There is always hope… (via NAR)

Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, said the market is flattening. “We may have reached a cyclical low because the positive fundamentals of job creation and household formation are likely to foster a fairly stable level of contract activity in 2014,” he said. “Although the final months of 2013 are finishing on a soft note, the year as a whole will end with the best sales total in seven years.”

…

Total existing-home sales this year are expected to reach 5.1 million, a gain of almost 10 percent over 2012, but should stay at that level in 2014, and then rise to 5.3 million in 2015. The national median existing-home price for all of this year will be close to $197,300, up nearly 12 percent from 2012, but is projected to rise at a more moderate pace of 5 to 5.5 percent in 2014, and grow another 4 percent in 2015.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/a4g6wFPfNkI/story01.htm Tyler Durden

 

“And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Debt…”

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/qableR4uP68/story01.htm williambanzai7

For the second time in its brief life as a publicly-traded stock, the latest exhibit in 2013’s FOMO meme has hit a bear market. At $59.78, Twitter has dropped 20% from its all-time high and must – must – be a bargain here?

 

 

It seems the fast-mony has greatly rotated from TWTR to CROX +14% (buying on the back of Blackstone’s ‘investment’ in preferreds which could highly dilute the current common stock)…

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/JmfiihWVu1I/story01.htm Tyler Durden

From Paula Dean and twerking to Drones and Duck Dynasty with a peotic sprinkling of Mandela, Thatcher, “if you like it you can keep it”, and government shutdown; UBS’ avuncular floor director Art Cashin unleashes his latest ode with a subtle reminder of the most important ‘word’ for 2013 – FOMO – “fear of missing out.”

 

Via Art Cashin,

‘Tis two days yet to New Year

but despite what you’re hopin’

The folks in the Board Room

say “the full Eve we’ll stay open”

 

So we’ll buy and we’ll sell

as the tape crawls along

And though “Bubbly’s” verboten

we may still sing a song

 

Two Thousand Thirteen

had some spots of high hopes

They may get fumbled away

by those Washington dopes

 

A brief government shutdown

pushed sides further apart

Let’s all hope things improve

as the New Year we start

 

“If you like it you can keep it”

we heard the President quip

When that didn’t work out

in the polls he did slip

 

We lost special people

as we seem to each year

It just makes us treasure

each one that’s still here

 

Mandela and Thatcher

they reshaped their times

They’ll now regale the angels

backed by heavenly chimes

 

And Peter O’Toole

with his steely blue eyes

Joined the great Joan Fontaine

in God’s still bluer skies

 

Jean Stapleton’s “Edith”

has joined Archie on high

And author Tom Clancy

chose October to die

 

Ed Koch now asks angels

his set quote, “How’m I doin”

Gone is Hugo Chavez

who brought his nation to ruin

 

Helen Thomas asks questions

of St. Peter these days

Also Frank Lautenberg

left his senator’s ways

 

Jim Hall, jazz guitarist,

played his final great note

Richie Havens, quite different

is now in the same boat

 

Ray Harryhausen, who

created creatures unreal

Joined Jonathan Winters

every scene he would steal

 

Van Cliburn’s piano

angels hear without faults

As Patti Page sings them

the old Tennessee Waltz

 

And Frost re-met Nixon

midst the clouds they’ll debate

While Tony Soprano

while in Rome met his fate

 

Scott Carpenter and angels

now together will sup

Roger Ebert gave the harp

a quite hearty thumbs up

 

Esther Williams swam off

Eydie Gorme took a bow

And Annette Funicello

has joined them both now

 

And Doctor Joyce Brothers

bid her clients goodbye

While “Dear Abby” Van Buren

gives advice from on high

 

In Boston, two brothers

put some bombs in a crowd

Although hundreds were injured

that great town stayed unbowed

 

Wild fires aplenty

burned in state after state

Elsewhere came tornadoes

seems Mother Nature’s irate

 

The Philippines saw a cyclone

winds of 200 miles

Caused immense devastation

to those once lovely isles

 

A Bangladesh building

did collapse in the spring

Though a thousand folks died

few reforms did it bring

 

In Syria, chemicals

wiped out a whole town

In a mall in Nairobi

scores of folks were mowed down

 

FOMO is a slogan

it’s “fear of missing out”

Now we’re all self-absorbed

that’s what that’s all about

 

Wall Street saw stocks soar

but Main Street stayed slow

As the Fed starts to taper

we’ll see just how things go

 

Jeff Bezos announced

a new delivery drone

Edward Snowden revealed

that we’d tapped Merkel’s phone

 

Prince George did arrive

of pictures there was no lack

and sweet tooths were quite pleased

to see Twinkies come back

 

Paula Deen fell from grace

for some things she once said

The Duck Dynasty guy

made some people turn red

 

Former Hannah Montana

shocked some fans with a twerk

In Toronto the mayor

some folks called a jerk

 

Let not this year’s memories

of sadness or sleaze

Disturb you this day

just give your heart ease

 

Have faith that this New Year

will bring a new sign

And believe in yourself

it will all work out fine

 

Just lift up your spirits

and some fruit of the vine

And kiss ye a loved one

and sing Auld Lange Syne

 

And late Tuesday evening

as you watch the ball fall

Wish yourself all the best

Happy New Year to All!!

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/ZvdHyoteC8Q/story01.htm Tyler Durden

From Paula Dean and twerking to Drones and Duck Dynasty with a peotic sprinkling of Mandela, Thatcher, “if you like it you can keep it”, and government shutdown; UBS’ avuncular floor director Art Cashin unleashes his latest ode with a subtle reminder of the most important ‘word’ for 2013 – FOMO – “fear of missing out.”

 

Via Art Cashin,

‘Tis two days yet to New Year

but despite what you’re hopin’

The folks in the Board Room

say “the full Eve we’ll stay open”

 

So we’ll buy and we’ll sell

as the tape crawls along

And though “Bubbly’s” verboten

we may still sing a song

 

Two Thousand Thirteen

had some spots of high hopes

They may get fumbled away

by those Washington dopes

 

A brief government shutdown

pushed sides further apart

Let’s all hope things improve

as the New Year we start

 

“If you like it you can keep it”

we heard the President quip

When that didn’t work out

in the polls he did slip

 

We lost special people

as we seem to each year

It just makes us treasure

each one that’s still here

 

Mandela and Thatcher

they reshaped their times

They’ll now regale the angels

backed by heavenly chimes

 

And Peter O’Toole

with his steely blue eyes

Joined the great Joan Fontaine

in God’s still bluer skies

 

Jean Stapleton’s “Edith”

has joined Archie on high

And author Tom Clancy

chose October to die

 

Ed Koch now asks angels

his set quote, “How’m I doin”

Gone is Hugo Chavez

who brought his nation to ruin

 

Helen Thomas asks questions

of St. Peter these days

Also Frank Lautenberg

left his senator’s ways

 

Jim Hall, jazz guitarist,

played his final great note

Richie Havens, quite different

is now in the same boat

 

Ray Harryhausen, who

created creatures unreal

Joined Jonathan Winters

every scene he would steal

 

Van Cliburn’s piano

angels hear without faults

As Patti Page sings them

the old Tennessee Waltz

 

And Frost re-met Nixon

midst the clouds they’ll debate

While Tony Soprano

while in Rome met his fate

 

Scott Carpenter and angels

now together will sup

Roger Ebert gave the harp

a quite hearty thumbs up

 

Esther Williams swam off

Eydie Gorme took a bow

And Annette Funicello

has joined them both now

 

And Doctor Joyce Brothers

bid her clients goodbye

While “Dear Abby” Van Buren

gives advice from on high

 

In Boston, two brothers

put some bombs in a crowd

Although hundreds were injured

that great town stayed unbowed

 

Wild fires aplenty

burned in state after state

Elsewhere came tornadoes

seems Mother Nature’s irate

 

The Philippines saw a cyclone

winds of 200 miles

Caused immense devastation

to those once lovely isles

 

A Bangladesh building

did collapse in the spring

Though a thousand folks died

few reforms did it bring

 

In Syria, chemicals

wiped out a whole town

In a mall in Nairobi

scores of folks were mowed down

 

FOMO is a slogan

it’s “fear of missing out”

Now we’re all self-absorbed

that’s what that’s all about

 

Wall Street saw stocks soar

but Main Street stayed slow

As the Fed starts to taper

we’ll see just how things go

 

Jeff Bezos announced

a new delivery drone

Edward Snowden revealed

that we’d tapped Merkel’s phone

 

Prince George did arrive

of pictures there was no lack

and sweet tooths were quite pleased

to see Twinkies come back

 

Paula Deen fell from grace

for some things she once said

The Duck Dynasty guy

made some people turn red

 

Former Hannah Montana

shocked some fans with a twerk

In Toronto the mayor

some folks called a jerk

 

Let not this year’s memories

of sadness or sleaze

Disturb you this day

just give your heart ease

 

Have faith that this New Year

will bring a new sign

And believe in yourself

it will all work out fine

 

Just lift up your spirits

and some fruit of the vine

And kiss ye a loved one

and sing Auld Lange Syne

 

And late Tuesday evening

as you watch the ball fall

Wish yourself all the best

Happy New Year to All!!

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/ZvdHyoteC8Q/story01.htm Tyler Durden

As we observed two weeks ago, Europe’s year-end liquidity situation is dire and deteriorating. On December 17, the ECB failed to sterilize its cumulative €184 billion in SMP bond purchases by a whopping €32 billion, the second such failure in one month. Since then things have gotten progressively worse, as banks, already scrambling for year-end liquidity, and eager to preserve their windows well-dressed by having crisp European currency on their balance sheet instead of sterilized ECB bonds on December 31, have led to two more sterilization failures, first a week ago when 103 bidders only indicated interest for €140 billion of SMP bonds, leaving a €39 billion shortfall, culminating with the sterilization failure from this morning, when a tiny 89 banks submit bids for only €104.8 billion in ECB purchased bonds, leaving a record unsterilized gaping hole of €74 billion.

Remember when the ECB’s bond purchases were quote unquote sterilized? If this pace continues, in early 2014 the ECB’s bond purchases may remain on its balance sheet fully unsterilized. But that’s ok – now even Germany is slowly starting to habituate to central bank activity with no fears what this may mean for future inflation. Because it, like subprime, is contained.

Finally, since even the theatrics of ECB’s bond buying sterilization are fading, can it be long before the ECB proceeds to monetize debt outright, and unsterilized? According to BNP, the answer is a resounding no.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/Fcjd43A2_Rs/story01.htm Tyler Durden