==Woodrow Wilson after creating the Federal Reserve said

“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world. No longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men“.
~ Woodrow Wilson

==========================

-----sctocks here, no idea if he actually said it, just found it here, down a ways:-------

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/4-reasons-why-ahe-smart-money-has-it-wrong-this-time-2014-09-09?siteid=yhoof2

Fed: US consumers have decided to 'hoard money'

Jeff Cox | @JeffCoxCNBCcom
2 Hours Ago
CNBC.com

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101963821?__source=yahoo%7Cfinance%7Cheadline%7Cheadline%7Cstory&par=yahoo&doc=101963821#.

One of the great mysteries of the post-financial crisis world is why the U.S. has lacked inflation despite all the money being pumped into the economy.

The St. Louis Federal Reserve thinks it has the answer: A paper the central bank branch published this week blames the low level of money movement in large part on consumers and their "willingness to hoard money." The paper also cites the Fed's own policies as a reason for consumers' unwillingness to spend..


Though American consumers might dispute the notion that inflation has been low, the indicators the Fed follows show it to be running well below the target rate of 2 percent that would have to come before interest rates would get pushed higher.

That has happened despite nearly six years of a zero interest rate policy and as the Fed has pushed its balance sheet to nearly $4.5 trillion.

Much of that liquidity, however, has sat fallow. Banks have put away close to $2.8 trillion in reserves, and households are sitting on $2.15 trillion in savings—about a 50 percent increase over the past five years.

"So why did the monetary base increase not cause a proportionate increase in either the general price level or (gross domestic product)?" economist Yi Wen and associate Maria A. Arias asked in the St. Louis Fed paper. "The answer lies in the private sector's dramatic increase in their willingness to hoard money instead of spend it. Such an unprecedented increase in money demand has slowed down the velocity of money."

Monetary velocity—or the force to which money is put to work in the economy—is widely considered a key metric in measuring inflation.

Under normal circumstances, according to the Fed analysis, when the money supply increases at a faster rate than economic output, which has been the case since the Fed has instituted its aggressive easing practices, prices should keep pace. Factoring in the growth in the money supply against output, inflation should have grown at a whopping 33 percent annually, when in fact it has been rising less than 2 percent.

The reason that inflation hasn't kept up with gains in the money supply simply has been that people are sitting on cash rather than spending it, which has kept money velocity at historically low levels. Yi and Arias explained:


During the first and second quarters of 2014, the velocity of the monetary base was at 4.4, its slowest pace on record. This means that every dollar in the monetary base was spent only 4.4 times in the economy during the past year, down from 17.2 just prior to the recession. This implies that the unprecedented monetary base increase driven by the Fed's large money injections through its large-scale asset purchase programs has failed to cause at least a one-for-one proportional increase in nominal GDP. Thus, it is precisely the sharp decline in velocity that has offset the sharp increase in money supply, leading to the almost no change in nominal GDP.


The hoarding of money, then, is attributed to two factors:


A (gloomy) economy after the financial crisis.

The dramatic decrease in interest rates that has forced investors to readjust their portfolios toward liquid money and away from interest-bearing assets such as government bonds

The Fed pair go on to make a fairly stunning indictment of sorts about Fed policy:


In this regard, the unconventional monetary policy has reinforced the recession by stimulating the private sector's money demand through pursuing an excessively low interest rate policy (i.e., the zero-interest rate policy).


Read More › The poor get poorer: Low-wage jobs still dominate


They make one final point in regard to interest rates.

Fed policy, in which it has expanded its balance sheet to nearly $4.5 trillion by buying various debt instruments, including Treasurys, has driven interest rates lower. Under normal circumstances, the decline in 10-year Treasury rates would have pushed monetary velocity lower by 0.085 percentage points. Instead, it has declined 5.85 percentage points, fully 69 times more than models would suggest, the paper states.


This happened because the nominal interest rate on short-term bonds has declined essentially to zero, and, in this case, the best form of risk-free liquid asset is no longer the short-term government bonds, but money.


The findings, of course, beg the question of what happens once the Fed takes its foot off the throat of bond yields, people start spending again, and the velocity of money, at least theoretically speaking, runs wild.

Economist Michael Pento, a frequent and harsh Fed critic, believes the St. Louis group has some of its assumptions wrong, particularly its understanding of why people aren't spending money. He sees it more as a function of high levels of debt that are constraining spending.

Read More › Investors spending the summer on the sidelines


While Pento believes rates should rise, he thinks the initial reaction is going to be painful for the economy and unlikely to unleash a torrent of new spending.

"They're hard-money guys and I like them," Pento said of the St. Louis Fed. "I think they're trying to make an argument for interest rates to go up. But if they think rising rates are going to be good for the economy in the short term, they're mistaken."

Christopher Whalen, senior managing director at Kroll Bond Rating Agency, believes the Fed will come to regret how much it expanded its balance sheet and how long it kept rates low.

"The risks of continued low interest rates when measured against market benchmarks such as corporate bond spreads and volatility suggest to us that the longer the (Fed Open Market Committee) continues current policy, the more likely we are to see an adverse event in the financial markets when interest rate policy does change," Whalen said in a note. "We believe that the Fed's refusal to normalize interest rates now, during a time of high investor demand for assets, and relative economic stability and growth, could lead to adverse market conditions in the future."


—By CNBC's Jeff Cox.

China Banks Boost Precious Metals Hoard Amid Lease Demand

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-01/china-banks-boost-precious-metals-hoard-amid-lease-demand.html?cmpid=yhoo

By Bloomberg News Sep 2, 2014 3:46 AM ET

The value of precious metals held by China’s biggest lenders surged 66 percent from a year ago as banks lease more gold to customers because tighter borrowing rules make it harder to lend funds.

Precious metals held by Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. (1398), China Construction Bank Corp., Agricultural Bank of China Ltd. (1288) and Bank of China Ltd., the country’s four biggest lenders, were worth 378 billion yuan ($62 billion) at the end of the second quarter, according to financial reports. The growth since last year outpaced the gain in benchmark bullion prices, which rose 7.5 percent over the same period.

China is seeking to rein in credit by raising borrowing costs and cutting off lending to sectors considered at risk of default amid a property slump and rising number of bad loans. That’s prompting banks to hold more precious metals as they expand their gold-leasing business because it’s not subject to loan caps and is considered off-balance sheet lending, according to Industrial Bank Co.

“Gold-based financing has grown a lot in the past year,‘‘ Duan Shihua, a partner at Shanghai Leading Investment Management Co., said by phone from Shanghai Aug. 29. ‘‘It’s clear from banks’ statistics that lots of companies in China still can’t get enough financing.’’

Precious metals assets at banks are valued against the Shanghai Gold Exchange prices on the last day of the reporting period and most of the banks’ holdings are in gold, Jiang Shu, a senior analyst at Industrial Bank Co., said by phone from Shanghai.

Gold Reserves

The lenders’ holdings were the equivalent of about 1,445 metric tons of gold, based on June 30 prices, up 55 percent from the year before. That’s more than the 1,054 tons that China’s central bank has in reserves, according to World Gold Council data.

Bullion of 99.99 percent purity, the benchmark spot contract on the Shanghai Gold Exchange, was at 261.86 yuan per gram on June 30, compared with 243.50 yuan a year earlier. It traded at 252.80 yuan at 3:29 p.m. local time today.

The value of precious metals held by ICBC, the country’s biggest bank by market value, more than doubled to 91 billion yuan over the period, according to its financial report. That’s the equivalent of about 347 tons of gold, based on June 30 prices, up from about 158 tons a year earlier.

ICBC had rapid growth in both its precious metals leasing business and a gold accumulation program whereby individuals put aside a fixed sum of money each month to buy bullion, the company said in its earnings release Aug. 28. Wang Zhenning, a spokesman for ICBC in Beijing, declined to comment when contacted by Bloomberg News.

Leasing Deals

There are two types of gold leasing deals. In the first, a customer borrows the metal from the bank and simultaneously enters a forward agreement to hedge price risks, according to ICBC’s website. That allows the company to obtain cheaper credit because the lending fee is lower than the interest rate of a loan of the same tenure.

In physical leasing, the customer in a gold-related industry borrows the metal for business needs and repays it at the end of the lease period, according to the bank’s website.

China Construction Bank, the country’s second-largest lender, held 51 billion yuan of precious metals as of June 30, the equivalent of about 194 tons of gold. That compares with 33 billion yuan a year earlier, according to its second-quarter financial report, or 137 tons of gold. Nobody answered two calls to its press office in Beijing.

Physical Demand

Agricultural Bank of China, the country’s third-largest lender, held 21 billion yuan of precious metals as of June 30, the equivalent of about 81 tons of gold. That compares with 17 billion yuan, or 70 tons of gold, a year earlier, according to its second-quarter financial report. A Beijing-based spokeswoman for the bank declined to comment.

Bank of China’s precious-metals holdings were 215 billion yuan at the end of June, or the equivalent of about 823 tons of gold, compared with 570 tons a year ago, financial data show. Nobody answered two calls to the bank’s press office in Beijing.

Holdings may be capped as physical demand slows and the use of commodities to raise financing is scaled back, according to Na Liu, a China strategy adviser to Scotiabank. The nation’s gold consumption plunged 52 percent to 192.5 tons in the second quarter from a year earlier as buyers purchased fewer bars, coins and jewelry amid a clampdown on corruption, the World Gold Council said Aug. 14. As much as 1,000 tons of gold may have been used in financing deals in China, the WGC said in April.

Investigations into the fraudulent use of raw materials as collateral in loans may also reduce demand for precious-metals leasing, according to Liu Xu, a Beijing-based analyst at Capital Futures Co. Banks are increasing scrutiny of commodities financing as public security officials probe whether copper and aluminum were pledged multiple times at the port of Qingdao

===The Dodd-Frank Act looks to the banking industry to meet any losses in excess of what equity and debt are capable of absorbing. This is a recipe for panic.=====


September 1, 2014 4:54 pm

Financial reforms will make the next crisis even messier

By John Plender

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/25d98538-2fa6-11e4-83e4-00144feabdc0.html


Unlike a bailout, bailing in creditors will inflict losses on other institutions, writes John Plender

There is a time-honoured way of protecting taxpayers from picking up the bill for the failure of a systemically important financial institution. It involves central banks and finance ministries pressing a better capitalised bank to absorb the ailing business through an arranged merger. Yet it is becoming clear that this tool of crisis management can no longer be put to use, raising questions about the authorities’ ability to stabilise the financial system in a crisis.

Nothing better illustrates the point than Bank of America’s $16.7bn payment last month to resolve allegations that it misled investors in its mortgage-backed securities. This was a curious form of justice. The allegations arose not from BofA’s activities but from those of Merrill Lynch and Countrywide, which it acquired in 2008. Of course, if the rules of the game had been set by the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury these pre-merger transgressions might not have been punished, which would have raised a different set of questions about justice, or the lack of it. But because the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission and six state attorneys-general had a splendid opportunity to put all four feet in this potentially lucrative trough, the rules conformed to a different logic. The message for the financial community – as with the punishment of JPMorgan Chase for the misbehaviour of Washington Mutual before it was absorbed by the bigger bank in 2008 – is that due diligence on a crisis merger would now take too long to be practicable.

The same applies in Europe, though for different reasons. The experience in the UK with Lloyds’ acquisition of HBOS showed how the hurried acquisition of a weak bank could destroy a strong acquirer. Royal Bank of Scotland was similarly damaged by parts of ABN Amro.

Equally important is the problem of banks that are not only too big to fail, but too big to rescue because their liabilities are so big that the government lacks the fiscal capacity to stand behind them. The devastation wrought by oversized banks in Ireland and Iceland offers a stark lesson.

Big bank mergers in the advanced countries are dead. Yet since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, the disadvantages of conventional bankruptcy have been all too apparent. In the US, government bailouts have been outlawed by the Dodd-Frank legislation. So new sources of finance have to be found to recapitalise systemically important banks that are in trouble.


When governments fear a crisis could precipitate a depression, they find ways of returning to past bailout habits

The current consensus is that this should come from “bailing in” creditors so that they share the losses, while mechanisms for orderly resolution, or unwinding, are put in place. As Charles Goodhart, emeritus professor at the London School of Economics, has pointed out, creditors facing greater risk will either demand a higher return or place funds with banks in the form of deposits so as to be immune from bail-in. To prevent this, the authorities are likely to mandate that banks hold a required buffer of loss-absorbing capital over and above their equity. The unanswered question is what would happen when the buffer of loss-absorbing debt is used up.

In the US, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation this month rejected as inadequate the living wills of the biggest American and European banks. These are a central mechanism for the orderly resolution of banks that fail in a crisis. Despite Europe’s attempt to move to banking union, its Single Resolution Mechanism leaves considerable discretion to national authorities.

A paradox at the heart of this new approach to systemic crises is that bailing in creditors is likely to have far-reaching effects because, unlike a bailout, it will inflict losses on other systemically important financial institutions. The Dodd-Frank Act looks to the banking industry to meet any losses in excess of what equity and debt are capable of absorbing. This is a recipe for panic.

When governments fear that a systemic crisis could precipitate a depression, they may find ways of returning to the bailout habits of the past. In 2008-09, that proved messy. Yet the impossibility of arranged mergers in the US and UK, and the untried regulatory structure, suggests that when that happens crisis management may prove even messier.

I think he used to say that he liked plain, black and white, no high gloss, annual reports, as the fancy ones he would often overlook based purely on the company trying to make itself look better than it was. But this coming from a 20 year memory, so it might be off based, could have been Buffet that said it........

I think a lot of decent div payers are "big, boring," type companies. I like your thoughts on ten year charts. It's nice to see what they do in both up, and down, markets.

I was raised that if you buy one share of stock, you are buying a belief in that companies management, but that was before this seemingly endless free money period for the large money centers.

Reminds me of musical chairs, just waiting for the music to stop.

Take Care.

he would listen to this daughters and her friends to see where they shopped when they went to the mall, then invest BIG magellen funds bucks into those companies, or so he once wrote......

yea, the fact it was kind of a curt press release led me to sell within a minute of reading it, somehow lucking out, and noticing they had news within just a few minutes of it coming out.

put all in to sell at .50, took little less than half I think, then changed order to sell balance at .47, no action for about a minute, then changed that order again to sell at .45 and the rest went within seconds. then within what seemed like only a couple minutes max from that trade, it was down to .20, guessing the mm took notice of all the sell orders and checked news.

I will likely start buying again if it gets to single digits over the next weeks/months, and slowly dollar cost ave a cheap position, just because they still have been granted the spa here.

hello stark12, I know you have been following this one for some time so I wanted to pop a heads up on your mailbox. I can't pm any more directly.

after news came out I was able to get sell orders in pretty quick, by shear luck. it traded down with lots of trades at .20, then 19 shares at .24, and 1000 at .377, where it has stood for quite a while now.

my level two, not sure how accurate it is in this kind of stock, shows a bid of .17 and an ask of .29, so it looks like the .377 was tossed in there to stem the tide and it seems to have worked so far, but my guess is selling any now would be difficult as the bid I show says .17 at 1 million shares and .29 ask at 350,000 shares, again not sure how accurate my system is on this kind of stock.

I just wanted to thank you for keeping the posts up over here and wish you the best....oops, just traded 60 shares at .29 with another 350,000 aval.......ouch.

I just don't know where they are going to get the funds to pursue the spa in the usa with that CEO that used to be on the board passing away......

may start buying again if it gets down into single cents as I seem to be a little hooked on this one and hate having all that radiation in me for tests.

add on==== it just traded down to .17 with 2,500,000 shares now on the bid at .10, and an ask of .20 with 250,000 shares. big day for this one.

my long shot just withdrew its mma app in Europe and I finally sold out and was able to get .45-.50 for my remaining shares, not too many, but now price is already .20. just happened to be online and looking at it when I saw a couple trades at .60 and then checked for news. look out below......got thousands back instead of hundreds, by shear luck. dropped like stone.

http://ih.advfn.com/p.php?pid=nmona&article=63404450&symbol=ACUS

====Acusphere Withdraws its European Marketing Authorization Application for Imagify=====

Acusphere Withdraws its European Marketing Authorization Application for Imagify

Date : 08/28/2014 @ 12:25PM
Source : Business Wire
Stock : Acusphere, Inc. (PN) (ACUS)
Quote : 0.6 -0.065 (-9.77%) @ 12:25PM

Acusphere Withdraws its European Marketing Authorization Application for Imagify

http://ih.advfn.com/p.php?pid=nmona&article=63404450&symbol=ACUS

Acusphere, Inc. (USOTC:ACUS)
Intraday Stock Chart

Today : Thursday 28 August 2014
Click Here for more Acusphere, Inc. Charts.
Acusphere, Inc. (ACUSD.PK) announced today the strategic decision to voluntarily withdraw its Marketing Authorization Application (MAA) submitted to the European Medicines Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) for Imagify™ (Perflubutane Polymer Microspheres for Injectable Suspension). The Company intends to continue working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on the development of Imagify.

“The withdrawal of the MAA is a difficult but necessary decision at this time. We are choosing to focus our resources on a pivotal trial in the U.S. to strengthen Imagify’s total data package for future partnering discussions and global regulatory submissions,” said Mark Leuchtenberger, President and Chief Executive Officer of Acusphere. “The withdrawal of the MAA in Europe does not affect the status of Imagify’s Special Protocol Assessment with the FDA and we remain committed to completing its clinical development.”

In May 2011, Acusphere reached an agreement with the FDA, under a Special Protocol Assessment (SPA), on the design of a placebo controlled trial to demonstrate that stress ultrasound with Imagify has superior efficacy to stress ultrasound without Imagify.

About Acusphere, Inc.
Acusphere, Inc. (ACUSD.PK) is a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on the development and regulatory approval of our lead product candidate, Imagify™ (Perflubutane Polymer Microspheres for Injectable Suspension). Imagify is a cardiovascular drug for the detection of coronary artery disease, the leading cause of death in the United States and Europe. Imagify was created using proprietary technology that enables Acusphere to control the porosity and size of nanoparticles and microparticles, which were customized to control the delivery of gas needed for ultrasound myocardial perfusion assessment. For more information about Acusphere visit the Company’s website (www.acusphere.com).

just sold my last remaining shares on this news that they pulled their mma. didn't have much but figured .45-.50 cents was bettr than where I think it is headed, at least short term.

now with that said and done and after all these years of having some, they may come out of left field with some news, but i'll leave that on the table for the next investor.

best of luck to you all who took a flyer on this one.

China’s falling real-estate prices trigger protests, clashes

Published: Aug 26, 2014 1:13 a.m. ET

By Laura He

Asia markets reporter

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/chinas-falling-real-estate-prices-trigger-protests-clashes-2014-08-26?dist=afterbell


HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — The sharp drop in China’s housing prices has led to an outburst of anger among property owners, leading to violent clashes in some cases, according to local media reports Tuesday.

In one case, scores of property owners surrounded a Shanghai sales office of Greentown China Holdings Ltd. 3900, +8.58% GTWCF, -33.19% to protest the developer’s 25% cut to prices within a five-day period, according to a report on the NetEase NTES, +0.65% news portal site 163.com.

Protesters held banners with slogans such as “You cheated us!” and “300,000 yuan [$48,750] worth of assets evaporate within five days — years of work in vain!” according to photographs of the demonstration posted on the site.

The report quoted a sales manager from Greentown as saying that the price-cut was aimed to boost sales and “cope with competition” from rival China Vanke Co. 2202, +1.48% the nation’s largest residential property developer.

In other Chinese cities, such confrontations between buyers and developers have turned violent.

In the eastern city of Jinan, banner-carrying owners blocked a street to protest another 25% price cut for a local housing development, this one conducted over the space of two weeks, according to the local-government-run Life Daily newspaper.

The protesters clashed with a group of counter-protestors suspected to have been hired by local developers, injuring some of the demonstrators and forcing the police to break up the fight, 163.com said in a separate report.

-we love it out there, great choice. years ago we went to my nephew's wedding out there near the roaring fork canyon about 3 hours west of Denver and we absolutely loved it. we half jokingly told them we would move there tomorrow if we could just have their friends. REALLY NICE PEOPLE. every single groomsman looked the same, full facial hair. new wife has some kind of degree in low water agriculture, how important is that becoming, and it was just great fun all around. stopped in gun shop while there and talked about how to transfer weapons leagally as my nephew had indiated he wanted to try hunting, most outdoors type people I ever met.

anyway he bought his own .270 and went elk hunting by using a farmers permit that the farmer had gotten as the elk were ruining his crops, farmer even had a backhoe he was able to use to move the massive beast, they ate every part of it they could and found uses for other parts as that's the way the are, kind of native American like in that way. don't kill for sport, but food. last I knew his wife wanted to try it but thought the experience might be a little overwhelming for her.

we ate breakfast everyday in this town where the roaring fork river roars through and we could sit outside just feet from the river looking up the canyon walls, never forget it.

we even had to cross a small stream to get to the actual outdoor wedding site on a tiny dirt road, rockies in the background. we just backed up and floored it with our huge rental car, most every body else had 4 wheelers.......

who knows, maybe we will see you up there some day. I read that something like 65 of the 75 county sherrifs came out against lower mag limits and weapons choices with them lowering their magazine limit, saying they just could not in good faith say they could protect such a large area in time and the people should have right to defend themselves. I also read they have already impeached some of those that voted for the restriction in the home of the American West.

will check out your site as I am looking to get a little longer to off set some my dollar cost averaging shorts/paper losses. thanks for sharing.

take care.

I can imagine. I spent 3 years of my younger life in the great northest/busselton ave, block for bucks county area. first night in town I hired some uhaul guys to help unload the truck into the nicest apartment (3rd floor) I had ever had up until that point.

We finished at 8pm, called super and asked where I could park the truck for the night as I was returning it in the morning, his reponse, you can park it anywhere, we have no reserved parking here. so I parked truck out front of unit.

around 10 pm I started hearing people banging on the side of this empty truck and yelling. I thought i'm not going down there and getting killed on my first night in philly.

so the next morning I go down to truck and find a msg on the windshield, never forget it, it started, "due to your blistful ignorance you have taken up the spot of 3 high paying rent payers, ect..ect. not a great welcome. then first supermarket trip that night, the women behind me crushed my left hand as I was unloading the cart with my right. I looked at her, she looked right into my eyes and showed no expression at all. there is no question she knew what she had done as I yelped at the pain. I heard her speaking English to the check out person after I had gone through, so my initial thoughts were true, she was just a bitch, with a thick Russian accent, not to even say excuse me! or sorry about that, or SOMETHING!

I often referred to those 3 years as being the worst of my life, but the company I worked for, starting as a delivery boy/truck driver at 19 or so, so hired me up the ladder, changing company names several times, lastly only bring 3 of 150 to philly, and I was lucky enough to be one of them. on my way to the final salary meeting for salary, was in philly, and the cabbie just happened to mention about to 5% philly city tax, even if you work there and live outside of city limits 5% still came out of your check, so because of him I was able to get 5% more than their "final offer." ha. worked my tail off combining companies often sleeping of conference room table for a few hours. no life.

then they told me they were nominating me for the board but after looking me over the found out I only had a high school education at that point and there in house by-laws were college grads only on could join the board.

so it turned out to be the best thing that could have ever happened to me, quitting there to pursue an education, finance major, and moving to the south were no one leaves nasty notes, (unless they are Yankees and just don't know any better, (i'll always be a Yankee no matter how long I live here,) ha,) or slam fingers with an I'm so sorry.) found serenity here and new GREAT LIFE. Thank you philly.

turns out that guy banging on truck was part of Larry Holmes's entourage, or so they told me, so am glad I didn't go down there!

tough place, heads up, and breakdown makes perfect sense not to draw attention for just going to range.

take care.

ps - add on. here when you go to addy's harbor dogdge's website, it says, buy a RAM, get a gun. slightly different than big city experience. ha.

yea, I had seen those 10/22 takedown before and have a stainless steel full size, non take down, one. really nice when used with oem mags, near zero misfeeds, fun plinking. guessing that stock has done well the last several years as I was on wait list with them for extra mags for a while.

haven't seen 1 round of .22lr in our local walmart inventory in a year or more, but I am starting to see more and more way overpriced stuff online so it may finally be coming back.

think I paid 299 for last 5000 round case, maybe 2 years ago, still have tons from gathering in 2008-09. got email today for 5000 rounds for 999, but like I said, they are starting to show up show up and parity may be coming back in that round, finally. they sell out in minutes at Cabella's Sports store online, as they seem to be the last one with any earthly pricing when they do get some in stock, 23.99 plus shipping, limit one box of 500, still with most other rounds, once I started seeing them on line, they were back on our walmart shelf before too much longer. now have about everything in there except the .22lr.

still looking for posp scope for the vepr. usa now has a ban on importing those rifles from Russia, not sure about scopes, but they were all gone on line when I went to get one, I think non Russian inventory is still ok. we got our rifle just weeks before the ban, built like brick out house. 7.62x54r.

haven't looked at the other video, but have a 30-30 lever action full sized that we love.

don't really have need for take down's, just toss the full sized ones into hard cases, toss in truck, and out to plink. I used to think when I saw the take downs, "those look cool," kind of like an old timey darranger, not to practical for us, but fun looking.

thanks for the heads up, still dollar cost averaging short, little at a time, small real metals, few longs, and of course, the hail mary, ha.

take care.

Fed says SEC money-market rule could spark, not reduce, runs

==scstocks- funny how we are even having these talks, I just wonder what ever could they be worried about, ha. end scstocks===

August 18, 2014, 4:08 PM ET

http://blogs.marketwatch.com/capitolreport/2014/08/18/fed-says-sec-money-market-rule-could-spark-not-reduce-runs/

Bloomberg Securities and Exchange Commission headquarters
A new Securities and Exchange Commission rule designed to reduce runs in the money-market mutual-fund industry could instead spark them, the New York Federal Reserve said Monday.

At issue is part of the new SEC rule giving funds the ability to limit outflows — through gates or restrictions to redemptions — when liquidity runs short.

New York Fed economists, in a blog post, said that a study of academic literature concludes these gates may ultimately just make investors run sooner.


“The possibility of a fee or any other measure that is costly enough to counter investors’ strong incentives to run amid a crisis will give investors a strong incentive to run preemptively to avoid such measures.”

A spokeswoman for the SEC said the agency had no comment on the blog post. One SEC commissioner, who ultimately voted against the rule, raised concerns about a rush to redemption in the debate.

Fed officials do like other parts of the SEC rule, especially the fluctuation in net asset values of shares for some of the funds instead of a fixed value of $1 a share.

Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren last week called that part of the new rule a “meaningful improvement.”

FLECKENSTEIN: There’s 'No Chance' That This Ends Well

By Mamta Badkar
22 hours ago

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/fleckenstein-no-chance-happens-next-183428164.html

Bill Fleckenstein, President of Fleckenstein Capital, told King World News that he anticipated big problems for stocks and bonds down the road.

Fleckenstein said that easy monetary policy has led to a misallocation of capital and that no one has seen what happens when central banks print as much as they have since the financial crisis.

"Bonds are a joke, yes, and stocks are a joke, and which one is going to crack first and which one is going to lead to more trouble, I can't tell you, other than both are going to be big problems somewhere down the road," he said. From Fleckenstein:

There’s no chance that the outcome in the financial markets in America is a pleasant one because we’ve gotten here because of the printed money. And so either we have a boatload of inflation and at some point the bond market really gets wrecked and the Fed’s credibility is undermined and we do something about them ...

This can’t possibly end well. This has gone on for so long. It’s still not possible to say when it’s going to change and what’s going to be the catalyst. The important thing to understand is that this is a very fragile structure. The market is very crash-prone. There’s not going to be any liquidity on the downside because of what’s happened in the banks — the algorithms and all that other stuff.

But none of that matters until it matters. So you just have to understand what the mosaic is and what the facts are, but you can’t try to act on them until it starts to matter if you are going to express a view that is going against the printing of the central banks.

Fleckenstein also said Yellen might have to start QE4 if the stock market "cracks" as the Fed winds down its asset-purchase program this year

I read a headline about creating your own etf but haven't looked into it yet.

thanks for the work/thoughts.

have picked some longs in the last several weeks, one paying nearly 4% on a downturn, still mostly short though, it's almost like the longs are for protection, ha.

One-fourth of U.S. families "just getting by"

By/Alain Sherter/MoneyWatch/August 7, 2014, 5:59 PM

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fed-one-fourth-of-families-just-getting-by/

New data from the Federal Reserve highlight how many Americans continue to struggle financially more than five years after the end of the Great Recession.

As of September 2013, when the central bank conducted the poll, a quarter of families said they were "just getting by," while an additional 13 percent were struggling to make ends meet.

Asked to compare their current financial situation with how they were faring five years ago, as the housing crash was wreaking havoc on the economy, 34 percent of respondents said they were doing "somewhat or much worse" than in 2008. The same percentage reported essentially treading water, while 30 percent said they were doing better.

"Given that respondents were being asked to compare their incomes to 2008, when the United States was in the depths of the financial crisis, the fact that over two-thirds of respondents reported being the same or worse off financially highlights the uneven nature of the recovery," the Federal Reserve said in the report.

The Fed found that more than 60 percent of U.S. families were either "doing OK" or "living comfortably."

The survey of 4,100 households was conducted between September and October of last year. Since then, economic growth has been inconsistent. The nation's GDP shrank 2.1 percent over the first three months of the year, when harsh winter weather slowed consumer spending and dented the housing sector. But GDP surged to an annualized 4 percent between April and June, while the job market has strengthened in recent months.

Americans' biggest financial concerns centered on three issues, the Fed found: retirement, education and jobs. And even with the economy seemingly on the mend, other findings from the Fed survey highlight the financial challenges many Americans still face.

For instance, a third of households who had applied for credit in the previous 12 months reported being turned down or getting less than they asked for. Meanwhile, 10 percent of households said their income fluctuates significantly from month to month, largely because of an irregular work schedule or because respondents are unemployed.

Wage growth has been soft throughout the recovery, which officially began in June 2009. That has strained household budgets and damped consumer spending, slowing the pace of recovery. Average hourly earnings for all private nonfarm employees was essentially flat last month. Wages are now growing at an annualized rate of only 2 percent, barely keeping earners ahead of inflation this year.

Other key findings from the Fed survey:
31 percent of nonretired respondents said they have no retirement savings or pension.
26 percent of households expected the value of their homes to rise less than 5 percent over the next 12 months.
24 percent reported having some form of education debt as of September 2013, with 18 percent of this group indicating they were behind on payments.
Over 50 percent of renters said they had to curb their spending over the prior 12 months in order to pay the rent.
57 percent of respondents with credit cards reported paying off their balances in full each month.

Italy shows euro zone may never have left recession

Aug. 6, 2014, 11:25 a.m. EDT

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/italy-shows-euro-zone-may-never-have-left-recession-2014-08-06?dist=afterbell

By William Watts, MarketWatch

NEW YORK (MarketWatch)—For U.S. investors who piled into European equities last year, Italy’s unexpected second-quarter contraction raises the question of whether the euro zone itself ever actually left recession.

Italy’s 0.2% quarter-on-quarter contraction (which made for a year-on-year drop of 0.4%) is being widely billed as the third dip into recession territory since 2007. But in reality, the Italian economy has managed to eke out only one paltry quarter of growth in the past three years.

So rather than lament a triple dip, Italians could be forgiven for feeling they never escaped a recession in the first place.

The notion of an Italian triple dip rests on the technical definition of a recession as at least two consecutive quarters of contraction. For economists, however, a recession is a significant fall in activity across the economy that lasts more than a few months. The National Bureau of Economic Research is the arbiter of the U.S. business cycle and doesn’t necessarily need to see two straight quarters of contraction to call it a recession.

Europe doesn’t have a similarly recognized referee. But in June, the business cycle dating committee of the London-based Center for Economic Policy Research think tank argued that it was premature to say the euro zone recession had ended.

Instead, they said the region “may be experiencing since early 2013 a prolonged pause in the recession that started” after the second quarter of 2011. That’s in contrast to the headlines cautiously heralding the euro zone’s breakout from its slump following the release of second-quarter GDP data for the region last August.

While Europe’s recession may or may not simply be in the midst of a “long pause,” the euro-zone debt crisis remains dormant. But growth troubles for Italy will only make it harder for the country, which stands as the key battleground in the region’s debt crisis, to get its fiscal house in check.

Meanwhile, European equities outperformed U.S. stocks in the second half of 2013, cheered on by the slight but long-delayed return to growth in the euro zone and worries the U.S. stock rally had become stretched.

But it has been a different story this year, with Europe’s major indexes underperforming their U.S. counterparts. The pan-European Stoxx 600 index XX:SXXP -0.88% is down nearly 4% since the start of the second quarter and is virtually flat for the year to date. The S&P 500 SPX +0.00% has logged a 2.1% drop since the beginning of June and is holding on to a 3.8% year-to-date gain.

Investors will get a first look at euro-zone GDP for the second quarter later in the month. But with fears over the West’s confrontation with Russia over Ukraine putting the hurt on German economic sentiment, U.S. investors might find it more difficult to keep Europe on the back burner.

India central bank chief warns of another market crash

Wed, Aug 6, 2014, 5:37pm EDT - US Markets are closed

AFP 2 hours ago

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/india-central-bank-chief-warns-another-market-crash-190447924--finance.html

New Delhi (AFP) - India's central bank governor, renowned for forecasting the 2008 financial meltdown, has warned that the world economy faces risk of another market crash as asset prices surge.

Increasing global financial instability stems from investors chasing ever higher yields, Raghuram Rajan, a former International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief economist, told the Central Banking Journal.

"True, it (another financial sector crisis) may not happen if we can find a way to unwind everything steadily," Rajan, who is famed for predicting the 2008 markets crash years in advance, said in the interview posted late Wednesday on the journal's website.

"But it is a big hope and prayer," said the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor, adding there is a risk of sudden price reversals and sharp spikes in financial volatility.

Rajan, author of the acclaimed 2011 book Fault Lines on how hidden financial fractures threaten the world economy, added he feared central banks globally "may be exhausting room" in their monetary-easing arsenal to cope with any economic crisis.

Rajan compared today's state of affairs as similar to the 1930s which was the era of the Great Depression.

"We are back to the 1930s, in a world of 'competitive easing',", Rajan said, referring to ultra-low interest rate policies pursued by the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan and the Bank of England in a bid to stimulate their economies and spur growth.

"Back then, it was competitive devaluation (of currencies), but competitive easing could lead to competitive devaluation," says Rajan.

"If there were no consequences to competitive easing (to spurring economies), fine; but there are consequences," he warned.

Rajan left his post as professor at the prestigious University of Chicago's Booth School of Business and returned to India in 2012 to serve as government financial advisor and last September took over the Reserve Bank

More than a billion online accounts breached by Russian gang: report

Aug. 5, 2014, 4:57 p.m. EDT

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/more-than-a-billion-online-accounts-breached-by-russian-gang-report-2014-08-05?dist=afterbell

By Priya Anand, MarketWatch

A Russian gang has stolen 1.2 billion user names and their passwords as well as more than 500 million email addresses, the New York Times reports.

The information came from more than 400,000 websites, according to the Times , which says researchers at Milwaukee-based Hold Security discovered the cyber heist.

Hold Security did not immediately return MarketWatch’s request for comment. The Times says the security company would not name the companies whose websites were infiltrated.

“The hacking ring is based in a small city in south central Russia, the region flanked by Kazakhstan and Mongolia. The group includes fewer than a dozen men in their 20s who know one another personally — not just virtually. Their computer servers are believed to be in Russia,” the Times story reads.

ahh, that makes much more sense, thx, EOM

One-third of Americans are delinquent on their debt

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/more-than-one-in-three-americans-has-debt-in-collections-033649637.html

Tue, Jul 29, 2014, 12:43 PM EDT - U.S. Markets close in 3 hrs 17 mins

1/3 of Americans now in debt

If you’ve been on the receiving end of an unsolicited phone call from a debt collector, you’re far from alone.

More than one-third of Americans (35%) had debt in collections in 2013, putting their credit and job prospects at risk, according to a new study by the Urban Institute, which analyzed credit reporting data for more than 7 million consumers. The report is based on data from TransUnion, one of the three major credit reporting agencies.

In order to be released to debt collectors, unpaid balances have to be more than 180 days past due. Of the 35% of Americans with non-mortgage debt in collections, the average amount owed was $5,178, according to the report. Although researchers weren’t able to break down the types of debt by category, they can include things like credit card balances, student loan debt, medical or utility bills, parking tickets and even gym membership fees.


Delinquent debts are prevalent across the country. Overall debt on things like credit cards, student loans and auto loans increased by $129 billion -- or 1.1% -- in the first quarter of 2014 compared to the previous quarter, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

People from certain states and regions are more likely to wind up on debt collectors’ speed dial than others. In Nevada, nearly half (47%) of consumers had seriously delinquent debt, according to the report, with an average balance of $7,198, the highest of any state. At least 40% of residents in a dozen other states have debt in collections, 11 of which are in the South. States with the fewest number of residents with debts in collections were mostly in the Midwest, including states like North Dakota, which had the lowest rate (19.2%), followed by Minnesota (19.8%) and South Dakota (20.8%).

“Debt in collections is pervasive and threads through nearly all communities,” says Caroline Ratcliffe, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. “This is important because delinquent debt can harm credit scores, limit access to credit and [make credit] more expensive.”'

The long-term effects of debt can be crippling. Past due debts not only make credit more expensive and harder for consumers to access, but it can weaken their chances at getting a job as well. Some employers routinely run background and credit report checks on prospective job candidates.

Dealing with debt collectors

As if the stress of unpaid bills weren’t difficult enough to endure, communicating with debt collectors, who can often be pushy and aggressive, is no cake walk.

Consumers filed 204,000 complaints against debt collectors with the Federal Trade Commission in 2013, up from 199,000 the year prior and the highest level since the agency began keeping track in 1999. The most common complaint filed concerned debt collectors that allegedly lied about the amounts a consumer owed and the nature of their delinquency, followed by firms that called too often.

“This is a major consumer protection problem,” says Chris Koegel, assistant director of financial practices at the FTC. “We devote a significant amount of our resources to trying to clean up the practices in this industry.”

Part of the challenge of reining in unscrupulous debt collectors is that if a borrower is embarrassed or feels guilty about having a delinquent debt, he or she may take abuse from collectors without ever reporting it. Some people have even been tricked into believing they owe debts that don’t exist, an increasingly common ploy the FTC calls “phantom debt collecting.” In the scam, a collections agency will call a consumer, inform them of a nonexistent debt and bully them into making payments, often threatening arrest or other types of legal action.

North Carolina resident Frances Marshall endured more than two years’ worth of harassing calls from debt collectors, according to reports this month, despite the fact that she never had any debt to begin with.

The best thing you can do if you feel you’re being harassed is to file a complaint with either the FTC, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), or both.

The FTC has a handy guide on what to do when debt collectors contact you, including a full list of your rights under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. If you’re a target, you can protect yourself by understanding what debt collectors are and are not allowed to do.

For example, debt collectors aren’t allowed to phone you after 9 p.m. unless you expressly tell them so. They also aren’t allowed to call you at work if you tell them not to. And no, they can’t actually throw you in jail, either.

By far the biggest myth about calls and letters from debt collectors is that you have to put up with them at all. Once you’ve been alerted about your past due debt, you can ask the collector to stop contacting you, even if you haven’t paid your balance.

You just have to do it in writing. The CFPB makes that easy, with a list of sample letters you can use to get collectors off your back. And you should keep a log of your interactions with collectors, including copies of any letters and emails, and notes from phone calls.

Of course, none of this will erase your debt. Once debt goes into collections, it can stay on your credit report anywhere from five to seven years, limiting your chances of getting approved for new credit, not to mention the heavy blow it will deal your credit score. You can improve your odds at getting approved for loans by settling your debts, but it’s next to impossible to get them removed once they show up on you credit report.

You can dispute debts on your credit report and get them removed if you think they are erroneous. Check your credit report at annualcreditreport.com at least once a year to make sure you don’t have any unwarranted collections notices. Then file a dispute using each credit bureau’s dispute submission form.

Australian Regulators Watch as Debt Drives Up Prices

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/australian-regulators-watch-debt-drives-040343061.html

Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 1:39pm EDT - US Markets close in 2 hrs and 21 mins

===scstocks here, I highlighted in red a portion of this story that, in my mind, can not be correct. If 80% of the country owed 400% of their monthly income to live, well, then, this whould be a short problem, as in a few months it would be over and everything repossessed. I am guessing they meant to say 80% have to pay 1/4 of their entire incomes to rent/live, but I thought that was normal, so I really have no idea that they are saying, other that the writer thinks there is a problem in these countries, it's just the numbers don't add in my feeble mind, likely my oversight, but wanted to show it anyway.====end scstocks

Bloomberg
By Nichola Saminather
13 hours ago

Central banks from Scandinavia to the U.K. to New Zealand are sounding the alarm about soaring mortgage debt and trying to curb risky lending. In Australia, where borrowing is surging, regulators are just watching.

Australian household debt is at a 25-year high, according to statistics bureau figures, and a government inquiry this month found housing to be a significant source of risk to the financial system. The average mortgage is at least four times household income in almost 80 percent of the country, research by Digital Finance Analytics shows.

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While the U.K., Denmark and New Zealand introduce measures including loan limits, caps on interest-only mortgages and repayment tests, the Reserve Bank of Australia and the country's banking regulator are holding their fire, saying risky loans haven't increased significantly. The central bank also has said the price gains so far are spurring needed construction, easing housing shortages in some areas.

"If we think there is a need for higher construction, which we do, an environment of declining prices is probably not conducive to that outcome," RBA Governor Glenn Stevens said in a speech in Hobart on July 3. "Some pick-up in housing prices as a result of lower interest rates was to be expected."

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Overvalued Housing
Australia has the third-most overvalued housing market on a price-to-income basis, after Belgium and Canada, according to the International Monetary Fund. The average home price in the nation's eight major cities rose 16 percent as of June 30 from a May 2012 trough, the RP Data-Rismark Home Value Index showed.

In Sydney, the most populous city, where price growth has been strongest, values soared 15 percent over the past 12 months. That compares with a 5.4 percent increase in New York City in April from a year earlier and a 26 percent jump in London prices in June quarter from a year ago.

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"There's definitely room for caps on lending," said Martin North, Sydney-based principal at researcher Digital Finance Analytics. "Global house price indices are all showing Australia is close to the top, and the RBA has been too myopic in adjusting to what's been going on in the housing market."

Australian regulators are hesitant to impose nation-wide rules as only some markets have seen strong price growth, said Kieran Davies, chief economist at Barclays Plc in Sydney.

Home values in cities including Adelaide, Hobart and Canberra rose less than 3 percent over the year to June 30, and house prices in areas outside the major cities gained less than 4 percent in the 12 months to May, according to RP Data.

The central bank has reduced its benchmark interest rate to a record-low 2.5 percent to aid a recovery in non-mining industries, including residential construction, as the nation's resources boom slows.

The interest rate cuts and subsequent home price gains have helped building approvals climb 14 percent in May from a year earlier, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Necessary Evil
"The RBA's probably got at the back of its mind that we're only in the early stages of the adjustment in the mining sector," Davies said. "Mining investment still has a long way to fall, and also the job losses to flow from that. So to some extent, the house price growth is a necessary evil."

The central bank in its quarterly monetary policy update called declining resources investment a "significant headwind," for the economy.

As prices climb, the value of new mortgages also rose 16 percent in May from a year ago, and overall housing credit increased 6 percent in the quarter ended March 31 from 12 months earlier, statistics bureau data show. The average new home loan grew 6.7 percent to A$433,960 in June from a year ago, according to broker Australian Finance Group, which processes about A$4 billion in home loans every month.

The increase in new mortgages, while significant, doesn't appear "imprudent," Stevens said in his speech in Hobart. With total credit growth only slightly above the increase in incomes, "it's hard to mount the soap box to complain about that pace," he said.
Low Rates
Spurring the rise in loans are the lowest mortgage rates in almost five years, after the RBA cut the cash rate by 2.25 percentage points since late 2011. The average rate on variable mortgages, which about 85 percent of Australians borrowers are on, is 5.95 percent, the lowest since September 2009.

Fixed rates are also on their way down. Commonwealth Bank of Australia, National Australia Bank Ltd. and Westpac Banking Corp. last week cut their five-year fixed rates to 4.99 percent, a record low for CBA, the least in 20 years for NAB, and a five-year low for Westpac. Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. cut its five-year fixed rate by 30 basis points to 5.49 percent.
Rising Debt
Stevens this month urged investors in Sydney to be cautious, after loans to buy rental properties in the city's home state, New South Wales, surged 30 percent to a record A$5.2 billion in May from a year ago, doubling from February 2013, according to statistics bureau data. He also warned that loans to investors covering more than 80 percent of a property's value have been climbing.

Australians owed almost 1.8 times their 2013 pretax disposable incomes, higher than Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, U.K. and the U.S., the statistics bureau said in a report last month. Household debt was equivalent to A$79,000 per person at the end of 2013, and has risen at almost double the pace of assets over the past 25 years, it said.
Government Inquiry
Since 1997, when Australia held its last major financial system inquiry, household debt has almost doubled as a proportion of income, with more than 90 percent of that due to housing, the government inquiry found. Mortgages make up two-thirds of banks' loan books, from 47 percent in 1997, it said.

"A large enough disruption to the housing market could have significant implications for household balance sheets, financial stability, economic growth, and the speed of recovery in household spending and broader economic activity following a shock," the inquiry's report said.

New Zealand's central bank last year required loans for more than 80 percent of a property's value to account for less than 10 percent of a bank's new lending. In response, home sales fell 11 percent between October and March, the bank said in May.
Global Measures
The Bank of England last month proposed capping mortgages of 4.5 times a borrower's income at no more than 15 percent of a lender's new home loans, and required banks to reject those who fail a new repayment test. Governor Mark Carney in May called surging home prices the No. 1 risk to the economy, and Deputy Governor Jon Cunliffe this month warned low borrowing costs hide the real extent of Britons' mortgage burden.

Denmark's central bank is pushing to require interest-only loans to be no more than 60 percent of a property's value, from 80 percent. In Sweden, lenders are in talks to require borrowers to cut mortgage debt to less than 70 percent of home values, and have capped borrowing at five times household income.

Across Australia, the average mortgage is at least four times pretax annual income in more than 2,200 postal codes out of a total 2,800, according to Digital Finance Analytics. Loan-to-income ratios are spread between 2.5 times and 8 times, compared with 0 and 6 times in the U.K., the data show.

"So the loan-to-income ratio in Australia is more stretched than in the U.K.," DFA's North said.

The RBA, in response to an e-mailed request for comment, referred to speeches and papers by Head of Financial Stability Luci Ellis.
‘Some Skepticism'
"The RBA has expressed some skepticism and is unlikely" to introduce measures similar to other countries in the near term, Glenn Levine and Fred Gibson, economists at Moody's Analytics, a unit of Moody's Investors Service, wrote in a report last week. "Instead, a microprudential approach is preferred whereby the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority engages in closed-door discussions with individual banks to address risks through bespoke rules such as interest-rate buffers."

APRA, which oversees banks, in May issued draft guidelines urging lenders to conduct mortgage book stress tests, ensure brokers' compensation doesn't encourage risky lending and ascertain borrowers can repay loans, especially when rates rise.

"APRA is seeing increasing evidence of lending with higher risk characteristics and it does not want this trend to continue," the regulator's former chairman, John Laker, said in a statement then.

Requests to large lenders' boards for explanations on how they're monitoring risk have already led to more prudent standards, APRA Chairman Wayne Byres told a parliamentary hearing on July 18. Andrew McCutcheon, a spokesman for APRA, declined to comment further.
Shifting Stance
While regulators haven't yet introduced firm lending controls, their resistance to such measures has softened. The RBA's Ellis in October 2012 said she didn't see a need for "elaborate" rules, and "a culture of cooperation, dialog and mutual respect" is more important than formal arrangements. In contrast, Stevens said after his speech in Hobart that the RBA is "quite happy" for limits on lending and capital requirements on banks to be imposed where they make sense.

The RBA and APRA have acknowledged potential benefits of loan limits "but at this stage they don't believe that this type of policy action is necessary," said David Ellis, a Sydney-based analyst at Morningstar Inc. "If the housing market was out of control and if loan growth, particularly investor credit, grew exponentially then it'd be introduced."

Last time this happened, stocks sold off hard

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/talking-numbers/last-time-this-happened--stocks-sold-off-hard-215406507.html

Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 11:34AM EDT - US Markets close in 4 hrs and 26 mins

Talking Numbers - CNBC | Yahoo Finance

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Talking Numbers

By Lawrence Lewitinn
11 hours ago

Is junk giving a bad signal for the market?

Low grade, high-yield corporate bonds—affectionately called “junk bonds”—are on track for their worst month in nearly a year. Investors junked their junk bond funds to the tune of $4.8 billion last week, according to a report by Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Junk bonds tend to trade closely with stocks. That’s because junk bond prices are closely tied to companies’ ability to repay the debt which, like stocks, depends on the fortunes of the company.

Gina Sanchez, founder of Chantico Global, believes junk bonds are good indicator for stocks.

“When you go down the capital structure, junk bonds are just a tad above stocks in terms of where they stand,” said Sanchez, a CNBC contributor. “Because they are so low in the capital structure, and because their quality tends to be so low, then you would expect that there should be a relationship.”

(Read: Stocks close lower, Dow posts biggest weekly decline in 7 weeks)

Sanchez said investors should pay attention to the spreads between junk bonds and higher-grade debt. “Spreads have gotten so tight in high yield,” she said. “Investors now are sitting up and saying ‘you know, I really think I need to be paid more for the risk that I’m buying.’”

"In the near term, we are also seeing some indications of fatigue that would support that view that these junk bonds are selling off and maybe equities are next,” Wald said. “Looking back since June, there have been fewer stocks making three-month highs. So that’s a little bit of a near-term concern. I think consolidation would be very healthy here.”

(Read: Goldman, other economists shave Q2 GDP expectations)

Wald thinks it’s reasonable to expect a 5 percent pullback soon because there have been four such declines of that magnitude over the last 12 months.

“It would be very good for this uptrend,” said Wald, who sees support around the 1,900 to 1,925 level should a decline take place. “But make no mistake: We think this bull’s intact and you’re going to be finding buyers on that pullback.”

To see the full discussion on the S&P 500, with Sanchez on the fundamentals and Wald on the technicals, watch the above video.

HSBC, Deutsche Bank named in US suit for silver price-fix

AFP

July 26, 2014 2:38 PM

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/hsbc-deutsche-bank-named-us-suit-silver-price-183822802.html

New York (AFP) - HSBC, Deutsche Bank and Canada's Bank of Nova Scotia have been accused of conspiring to fix the price of silver in a US lawsuit filed in federal court in New York.

Plaintiff Scott Nicholson, an investor from the northwestern US state of Washington, said the three banks had "abused" their position to rig silver prices to the detriment of investors, according to the suit.

"The extreme level of secrecy creates an environment that is ripe for manipulation," Nicholson's lawsuit, seen by AFP on Saturday, alleges.

"Defendants have a strong financial incentive to establish positions in both physical silver and silver derivatives prior to the public release of silver fixing results, allowing them to reap large illegitimate profits."

The lawsuit accuses the three banks of malpractice stretching back to January 1 2007.

Contacted by AFP, HSBC and Deutsche Bank declined to comment. Bank of Nova Scotia was not immediately available for comment.

Nicholson is hoping other investors who feel they may have been wronged will come forward in order to launch a class-action lawsuit.

Deutsche Bank, HSBC and Bank of Nova Scotia set benchmark prices for silver once every day during a conference call.

The benchmark is used by central banks to assess the value of metals, impacting the price of jewelry as well as revenues from mining companies.

Deutsche Bank had already announced earlier this year it plans to withdraw from the system used to set benchmarks, citing a reduction of involvement in commodities.

Banking sources believe the lawsuit will be dismissed, pointing to a 2013 investigation by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

According to sources, the CFTC probe found no evidence of wrongdoing and concluded that precious metal pricing was conducted transparently.

However the New York lawsuit comes against a backdrop of several legal disputes involving large banks.

In March, an individual filed a suit in New York including five banks - Societe Generale, HSBC, Barclays, Deutsche Bank and Bank of Nova Scotia -- of manipulating gold prices for their advantage.

Germany's Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BAFIN) has also been probing potential price manipulation of gold and silver in London.

Other banks are meanwhile being investigated for possible manipulation of the Libor and Euribor interbank lending rates. Investigations are ongoing in several countries.

This stock bubble is ‘beyond 1929 and 2007,’ says John Hussman

July 27, 2014, 3:58 PM ET

http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell/2014/07/27/this-stock-bubble-is-beyond-1929-and-2007-says-john-hussman/

John Hussman can generally be counted on for a bearish take on the stock market. But his latest weekly commentary letter is a doozy, with some particularly pointed remarks aimed at investors who continue to believe valuations are fair in stocks.

The economist runs Hussman Funds, and since the financial crisis he’s been a prominent critic of Federal Reserve policy. His investment choices are concentrated in “defensive” positions in stocks and U.S. Treasurys. And if you take a look at his writing, it’s no secret why. Here’s the money quote from the latest commentary:


“Make no mistake – this is an equity bubble, and a highly advanced one. On the most historically reliable measures, it is easily beyond 1972 and 1987, beyond 1929 and 2007, and is now within about 15% of the 2000 extreme. The main difference between the current episode and that of 2000 is that the 2000 bubble was strikingly obvious in technology, whereas the present one is diffused across all sectors in a way that makes valuations for most stocks actually worse than in 2000. “

Hussman couches his bubble call in references to the cyclically-adjusted price to equity ratio pioneered by economist Robert Shiller, as well as the ratio of nonfinancial market capitalization to GDP. MarketWatch’s Brett Arends has some more on his investing methodology.

Given what Hussman sees to be such stretched valuations in stocks, he writes, “My sense is that investors have indeed abandoned basic arithmetic here.”

And here’s where the Fed comes in. Investors are willing to abandon what some simple math might otherwise make obvious due to the role of the central bank in the markets. He writes:


“The simple fact is that the primary driver of the market here is not valuation, or even fundamentals, but perception. The perception is that somehow the Federal Reserve has the power to keep the stock market in suspended and even diagonally advancing animation, and that zero interest rates offer “no choice” but to hold equities. Be careful here. What’s actually true is that the Fed has now created $4 trillion of idle currency and bank reserves that must be held by someone, and because investors perceive risky assets as having no risk, they have been willing to hold them in search of any near-term return greater than zero. What is actually true is that even an additional year of zero interest rates beyond present expectations would only be worth a roughly 4% bump to market valuations. Given the current perceptions of investors, the Federal Reserve can certainly postpone the collapse of this bubble, but only by making the eventual outcome that much worse.”

Hussman may be particularly bearish, but he’s not the only one talking about bubbles, as this tweet notes:

Hussman’s funds have missed out on much of the strong equity gains in recent years, prompting some criticism of his investing style. The Hussman Strategic Growth Fund HSGFX is down 1.5% this year, compared to 7.2% gains on the S&P 500 index SPX , according to Morningstar. The other funds have fared a bit better: The Hussman Strategic Total Return Fund HSTRX is up 6.8%. The Hussman Strategic Growth Fund HSIEX is up 1.9%, while the Hussman Strategic Dividend Value HSDVX is up 0.2%.

The investor adds in his commentary: “Though I’ve also always had a tendency to back away from risk too early in conditions where awful consequences have historically followed (and we’ve done a great deal of research to shorten that lead), both our bullish and bearish views have been vindicated in cycle after cycle, and were nicely reflected in our record by 2009.”

– Ben Eisen

Avoid Turning Into a Scary Student Loan Stat

US News
By Susannah Snider
10 hours ago

http://news.yahoo.com/avoid-turning-scary-student-loan-stat-133000993.html

The numbers look downright frightening when it comes to student loan debt.

Some borrowers take on too much debt. Others opt into the wrong repayment plan. And some don't pay off their loans at all. But just because millions of students struggle with college debt doesn't mean that you have to join the club.

Here are five student loan statistics that may scare you into making the right decisions about paying for school.

[Find out which colleges' graduates leave with the least amount of debt.]

1. American borrowers have racked up about $1.2 trillion in outstanding federal student debt, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

One trillion dollars is mind-numbingly huge. But choosing a budget-friendly school will ensure that you're not contributing more than necessary to America's national debt.

Look into good-value schools that cut costs with merit and need-based financial aid. Experts suggest applying for scholarships and on-campus jobs. And remember that many elite colleges meet full financial need if you're competitive enough to gain entry.

Another way to avoid taking on too much debt? Reconsider that pricey graduate degree. Around 40 percent of recent federal loan disbursements are for graduate students, according to a report from the New America Foundation. That means that a large chunk of that trillion dollar figure comes from graduate debt. Consider a certificate, online course or community college courses to continue your education without racking up extra loans.

[Learn about the changes coming to student loan interest rates.]

2. The average undergraduate borrower from the class of 2012 took on $27,183 in student loan debt, according to the 1,006 schools that submitted data to U.S. News in an annual survey.

Nearly $30,000 in loans is nothing to sneeze at when you're starting out. But don't let this statistic scare you too much.

One rule of thumb is to borrow no more than your expected starting salary, says John Collins, managing director of GL Advisor, a financial advisory firm for advanced degree professionals with student loan debt. Around $30,000 shouldn't be unmanageable when the average starting salary for the class of 2013 was $45,237, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

Judge how much debt is right for you by studying which jobs you can expect to earn with your degree and how much you'll make per year, says Collins.

A repayment calculator can predict a borrower's monthly bill. That $27,183 will cost $288 each month when repaid over 10 years, assuming a 5 percent interest rate.

3. Only 41 percent of students graduate in four years.

That refers to first-time, full-time students, according to data reported by 1,207 ranked colleges and universities in an annual U.S. News survey.

Not graduating on time is a triple whammy for student loan borrowers. Not only do they pay for another year -- or more -- of college, their costs climb each year as tuition and living expenses increase, and they enter the workforce later. Students who take six years to graduate at Temple University in Philadelphia have nearly twice the student debt of students who earn a diploma in four, says Neil Theobald, president of the university.

Look for schools with high graduation rates. Meet early and often with your academic adviser and career counselor to ensure that you're on the right academic and career path. And work fewer than 15 hours per week. Working longer hours can negatively affect students academically and financially. "It takes longer to graduate, you have a lower GPA and you take on more debt," Theobald says.

4. The three-year student loan default rate is 15 percent for recent graduates.

Defaulting on your federal student loan happens when you let nine months slide by without making a payment. It will make it tougher and costlier to take out a mortgage, get a car loan or qualify for a credit card, according to the nonprofit American Student Assistance, which writes a student loan blog for U.S. News. Plus, the federal government can seize your tax refund or wages.

Don't get buried under your student loan debt. Pick up the phone and dial your loan servicer, says Collins. You may be able to consolidate your loans to lower your monthly payment, tie your bill to your income with a plan such as Pay As You Earn, qualify for forgiveness or apply for deferment or forbearance.

[Find out how to pay off student loans within five years of graduation.]

5. Borrowers older than 60 owe $43 billion in student loan debt.

Some of these borrowers are likely older students or parents. But if you're worried about repaying loans in your golden years, think about fast-tracking your debt repayment schedule.

You'll pay down debt fastest if you repay the loan with the highest interest rate first. Or motivate yourself by wiping out your smallest loan right away, says Joe Mihalic, who wrote about repaying his $90,000 student debt on his blog No More Harvard Debt.

Remember to tell your servicer how you'd like to allocate extra payments, says the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. You'll need to dictate whether you want the highest interest rate loan paid down first or have extra payments applied to the loan principal instead of, say, counted as early payments. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau offers a sample letter on providing instructions to your lender.

Trying to fund your education? Get tips and more in the U.S. News Paying for College center.

hello gfp, a friend of mine had her umbellical cord frozen and stored when she gave birth to her child.

how far away do you think, as in her lifetime or not, do you think they will duplicate her, or the babies, stem cells and be able to directly inject them into the brain stem?

I would imagine there would be a long line of folks who would be willing to try this. do you know of it being trialed/attempted now?

The great thing would be if stem cells could be compatible just by blood type, and not direct genetics. if that is the case, then where do I sign up?

just imagine what an einstien, or devinci, could have done with some fresh, usable, new, growing, young, duplicating, cells, in their lifetime.

as usual, sorry for the spelling and hope you are doing well.

take care.

==off topic===

it sounded familiar, but had to ask better half where it was. she said it was "really nice" there, recalling from memory from just driving through it. thought it was outside Charleston outside mt. pleasant, again, from memory. if that's correct I can tell you it is very nice down that way and Charleston has been named "friendliest" city a few times by "those" kind of magazines.

sorry couldn't help more.

take care

VIX up 32+% today. (link) EOM

http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/VIX:IND

BRICS set up bank to counter Western hold on global finances

Wed, Jul 16, 2014, 5:19pm EDT - US Markets are closed

Reuters
By By Alonso Soto and Anthony Boadle
22 hours ago

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/negotiations-launch-brics-bank-hit-snag-source-040406826--sector.html

FORTALEZA Brazil (Reuters) - Leaders of the BRICS emerging market nations launched a $100 billion development bank and a currency reserve pool on Tuesday in their first concrete step toward reshaping the Western-dominated international financial system.

The bank aimed at funding infrastructure projects in developing nations will be based in Shanghai and India will preside over its operations for the first five years, followed by Brazil and then Russia, leaders of the five-country group announced at a summit.

They also set up a $100 billion currency reserves pool to help countries forestall short-term liquidity pressures.

The long-awaited bank is the first major achievement of the BRICS countries - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - since they got together in 2009 to press for a bigger say in the global financial order created by Western powers after World War Two and centered on the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

The BRICS were prompted to seek coordinated action following an exodus of capital from emerging markets last year, triggered by the scaling back of U.S. monetary stimulus. The new bank reflects the growing influence of the BRICS, which account for almost half the world's population and about one-fifth of global economic output. The bank will begin with a subscribed capital of $50 billion divided equally between its five founders, with an initial total of $10 billion in cash put in over seven years and $40 billion in guarantees. It is scheduled to start lending in 2016 and be open to membership by other countries, but the capital share of the BRICS cannot drop below 55 percent. The contingency currency pool will be held in the reserves of each BRICS country and can be shifted to another member to cushion balance-of-payments difficulties. This initiative gathered momentum after the reverse in the flows of cheap dollars that fueled a boom in emerging markets for a decade. "It will help contain the volatility faced by diverse economies as a result of the tapering of the United States' policy of monetary expansion," Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said.

"It is a sign of the times, which demand reform of the IMF," she told reporters at the close of the summit.

China, holder of the world's largest foreign exchange reserves, will contribute the bulk of the contingency currency pool, or $41 billion. Brazil, India and Russia will chip in $18 billion each and South Africa $5 billion. If a need arises, China will be eligible to ask for half of its contribution, South Africa for double and the remaining countries the amount they put in. Negotiations over the headquarters and first presidency were reached at the eleventh hour due to differences between India and China. The impasse reflected the trouble Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa have had in reconciling stark economic and political differences that made it hard for the group to turn rhetoric into concrete action.

"We pulled it off 10 minutes before the end of the game. We reached a balanced package that is satisfactory to all," a Brazilian diplomat told Reuters.

Negotiations to create the bank dragged on for more than two years as Brazil and India fought China's attempts to get a bigger share in the lender than the others.

In the end, Brazil and India prevailed in keeping equal equity at its launch, but fears linger that China, the world's No. 2 economy, could try to assert greater influence over the bank to expand its political clout abroad. China, however, will not preside over the bank for two decades.

Facing efforts by leading Western nations to isolate Russia for annexing Crimea and stirring revolt in eastern Ukraine, the BRICS summit provided President Vladimir Putin with a welcome geopolitical platform to show he has friends elsewhere, economic powers seen as shaping the future of the world.

The BRICS abstained from criticizing Russia over the crisis in Ukraine and called instead for restraint by all actors so the conflict can be resolved peacefully

Yellen and Fed raise flag over some U.S. equity valuations

Reuters

38 minutes ago

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/yellen-fed-raise-flag-over-162212514.html

By Rodrigo Campos and Caroline Valetkevitch

July 15 (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve on Tuesday voiced concern about stretched valuations in certain corners of the U.S. equity markets, including the small cap, biotechnology and social media sectors.

The unusual comments from the Fed's monetary policy report - the first time in 14 years that the Fed has commented specifically on valuation of a particular equity sector - that accompanied Fed Chair Janet Yellen's semi-annual testimony to Congress, hit stocks in riskier sectors of the market.

Yellen said in remarks to the Senate Banking Committee that valuations across equity markets remain generally in line with long-term averages, but the Fed's report said the forward price-to-earnings multiples for smaller companies and those in the biotechnology and social media sectors appear "high relative to historical norms."

Well-known names such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Yelp slipped after the news. Shares of Yelp Inc were among the hardest hit, falling 4.3 percent to $68.01 a share, and the Nasdaq Biotech Index also fell, losing 2 percent.

"It's very unusual for the Fed chairman to take a micro view of a specific industry group. Usually the comments are very top level. So I think the Fed is a little more in tune with what has been bothering the market. My thought is it's late, but not too late in terms of recognition," said Fred Dickson, chief market strategist at D.A. Davidson & Co. in Lake Oswego, Oregon.

Throughout 2013, social media and biotechnology shares were among the market's most popular names, posting massive gains as investors, particularly hedge funds, piled in. For example, the Global X Social Media ETF, which includes Facebook and LinkedIn among its holdings, rose 64 percent in 2013.

Hedge funds were caught when those stocks slumped in late February in a selloff that continued for several weeks. Those stocks rebounded in June, but most have failed to attain earlier heights. The SOCL exchange-traded fund is down 11.4 percent in 2014.

Last week the equity market weakened, with notable slippage in small-cap names. The Russell 2000 has lost 4.6 percent in the last seven trading days, while the Nasdaq Biotech index is off by 4.8 percent.

"These are the sub-industries that have caused a lot of long time stock watchers to scratch their heads," said Kim Forrest, senior equity research analyst, Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh.

"I'd say she'd like to deflate these bubbles with a little bit of stock talk."

The last mention of specific equity sectors appears in a Fed monetary policy report in July 2000, when it says that "growing unease about the lofty valuations reached by technology shares and rising default rates in the corporate sector may have given some investors a better appreciation of the risks of holding stocks in general."

Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Wunderlich Securities in New York, said the comments also recall former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's statement in 1996 during a speech, when he asked whether "irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values," which sparked a brief selloff in stocks.

"Am I surprised? Absolutely! It's off the script," Hogan said.

"It's not what we're used to and it's certainly not something that we ever got from Bernanke." (Reporting By Dan Burns, Rodrigo Campos, Herb Lash and Caroline Valetkevitch; Writing by David Gaffen; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

===The necessities of life cost more (2)========

kind of off topic, but like airplane seats that now cost more for certain ones, like front, or windows seats, our local movie theater manager told us that the following is coming to a theater near any of us soon and his chain is "testing" this "feature" now.

the seats that are always the most worn, center, 1/3 of the way back, in front of railing, whatever, will all have a color coded price associated with them, like "zones," and the days of get there early and sit where you want will be over.

don't know if it will come to pass but it is the 2nd time he had mentioned it to us in the last few months.....but with movie sales down so much already year over year as they have priced out a lot of families, like baseball tickets, they might not be able to get away with this one....time will tell.

the list goes on.....

take care.

===The necessities of life cost more=====

I wonder if there is a meaningful study of inflation that takes into account the every decreasing size of "standard products."

like ice cream going from half gallon, to a quart and a half. Or tissue, going from 220 a box, to 160 or so. The list is nearly endless of "core" products that have slowly done this over the last decade or two. Tiny candy bars, paper towels where the regular size is about 1/2 of what it once was and the "mega" sizes are ever decreasing the amount of what the consumers actually receive, and they can do it without raising the price, so it looks like prices are stable, but we have buy 2x as much to get what we used to.......

if they could only do it with fuel sizes, I would bet my last dollar that they would have by now.....like charging the same, only you get 3 quarts instead of a gallon......like magic, no inflation.

ha.

Market will crash, just don't know catalyst: Marc Faber

Michelle Fox | @MFoxCNBC
23 Hours Ago
CNBC.com

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101823798?__source=yahoo%7Cfinance%7Cheadline%7Cheadline%7Cstory&par

The market is setting up for a big decline that could be as bad as the crash of 1987, according to Marc Faber, known as "Dr. Doom." He just isn't sure exactly what will set it off.

"The problem with crashes, you never know beforehand precisely what is the catalyst," the publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom report told CNBC's "Closing Bell."

It could come from the credit market, equities being perceived as too expensive or a geopolitical event, he added.

His comments came a day after he told "Futures Now" that the asset bubble has begun to burst.

Read More › Marc Faber: The asset bubble has begun to burst


"I think it's a colossal bubble in all asset prices, and eventually it will burst, and maybe it has begun to burst already," Faber said Tuesday.


Marc Faber
Adam Jeffery | CNBC

Marc Faber


He's calling for a 30 percent decline in the S&P 500.


"I think that the global economy does not support the current valuations," he said Wednesday. Corporations "have had record profits, largely because they are buying back their own shares and so the number of shares is diminishing where revenue growth is basically flat."

Read More › Faber and Schiff may be just what this rally needs


In fact, he said the bond market, which is more sophisticated than the stock market, does not believe in a strong economic recovery and neither does he.

Faber has been calling for a major correction for years. So far, the market hasn't followed his theory, but he said that could be setting it up for an even bigger fall.

"Since 2012, I said it would be healthy for the markets to have a meaningful correction, but it could be that we are in a year like '87 when we go straight up and then we don't have a correction but a more significant crash," he said.

Lumber Liquidators shares sink on outlook

Lumber Liquidators shares sink more than 20 percent after cutting 2014 outlook

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/lumber-liquidators-shares-sink-outlook-143129733.html

Associated Press

1 hour ago

===scstocks, I highlighted the red in this story as it kind of goes along with my thoughts that more folks than not are pulling up their reins and trying to hang onto what they have. circling the wagons=====

NEW YORK (AP) -- Shares of Lumber Liquidators fell nearly 20 percent Thursday, a day after the hardwood floor retailer cut its earnings outlook for the year and said fewer people are coming into its stores than expected.

The company said harsh winter weather in the first part of the year kept shoppers from its stores. Lumber Liquidators also said fewer people are buying homes this year than in 2013, and others are holding off on changing their wooden floors. It also said some mills had production delays and couldn't make some orders. But the company said those problems should be resolved in the third quarter.

Lumber Liquidators could be hurting from increased competition from Home Depot, which also sells flooring, Wedbush analyst Seth Basham said in a note to clients. Lumber Liquidators said in an emailed statement that it offers "a unique value proposition with the best price, selection, quality, availability and service" and is confident that it will continue to grab market share.

The Toano, Virginia-based company said it now expects earnings between $2.65 per share and $3 per share for the year, down from its previous forecast of between $3.25 per share and $3.60 per share. That's far below the $3.33 per share Wall Street analysts expected, according to FactSet.

It now forecasts revenue between $1.05 billion and $1.10 billion, down from its previous range between $1.15 billion and $1.20 billion. Analysts expected revenue of $1.16 billion.

Shares of Lumber Liquidators Holdings Inc. fell $14.20, or 20.2 percent, to $56.22. Earlier, its shares fell to $54.31, their lowest point since February 2013.

Harbinger’s Fidelity Falls After Sandler Downgrade

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-10/harbinger-s-fidelity-falls-after-sandler-downgrade.html?cmpid=yhoo

=====hummm, seems like insurer's and banks are having some issues these days, hope things don't freeze up, end scstocks=======

By Kelly Gilblom Jul 10, 2014 10:28 AM ET

Fidelity & Guaranty Life (FGL), the insurer controlled by billionaire Philip Falcone’s Harbinger Group Inc. (HRG), fell the most since its 2013 initial public offering after Sandler O’Neill & Partners downgraded the stock.

Fidelity dropped 7.8 percent, or $1.83, to $21.61 at 10:18 a.m. in New York. Sandler analysts led by Edward Shields today cut the company to hold from buy, saying its price-to-book ratio is now comparable to industry rivals after the shares rallied from the IPO.

The stock had jumped 38 percent through yesterday from the December price of $17 in the share sale. That meant the Baltimore-based company was trading at about 90 percent of book value, a measure of assets minus liabilities.

The downgrade is “based solely on valuation, which appears to be fair,” the Sandler analysts wrote. “We believe sales volume may be a little light for FGL” during the quarter that ended June 30.

Harbinger Group still holds about 80 percent of the stock in Fidelity, which trades under the ticker symbol FGL. Falcone’s company also has a majority stake in Spectrum Brands Holdings Inc., the maker of Rayovac batteries and George Foreman grills. Harbinger declined 1.6 percent.

Say hello to U.S. economy’s newest bubble

Opinion: Stocks are way overdue for a correction

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/say-hello-to-us-economys-newest-bubble-2014-07-08

Irwin Kellner Archives | Email alerts

July 8, 2014, 8:30 a.m. EDT

By Irwin Kellner, MarketWatch

PORT WASHINGTON, N.Y. (MarketWatch) — When good news is good news, and bad news is good news, it’s time to take some money off the table.

Call it irrational exuberance, part two. Like old man river, the stock market just keeps rolling along. Last week it was Dow 17,000. Will this week see the market go even higher?

Before you jump on the bulls’ bandwagon, let me call to your attention a couple of salient statistics. At today’s level, the Dow industrials DJIA -0.69% are up 5% since the beginning of this year. This is on top of a 35% leap in 2013. And in case you are keeping score, the Dow is now a whopping 155% above its low back in March 2009.

All that said, there are a number of warning signs out there that suggest the party may soon be over.

For one thing the economy has not grown anywhere near as much as stocks over the past 5-1/3 years; neither have corporate profits.



AFP/Getty Images

Additionally, price-to-earnings ratios are well above average. Robert Shiller, the noted Yale professor, economist and author, thinks that the market today is about at the valuation it was running at in 2008, just before stocks plunged.

In the past, the stock market has managed to avoid such excesses by dropping in price. A decline of 10% (a.k.a. a correction) used to occur about once every 12 months.

This bull market has managed to avoid a correction for 33 months — far longer than average. And correction or no, the current bull market is the fourth-longest since the Crash of 1929.

If you don’t have angst yet, here is another bit of history to chew on: Stocks usually take a header late in the third quarter, as well as in October. Indeed, some of the market’s biggest declines have occurred during this period.

Here is another tidbit: Bond prices are up — the yield on the bellwether 10-year Treasury note 10_YEAR +0.51% , at 2.61% Monday night, is down from over 3% at the end of last year. This suggests that bond buyers are concerned about the longevity of the economic recovery.

In the face of all these warning signs, the stock market continues to work its way higher. Stocks are being supported by a lack of alternatives to low-interest bonds and bills.

The Federal Reserve is keeping rates low in order to support the economy. In the process, it is inflating stock prices, thus creating a bubble.

So let me ask you, what do you think will happen to stocks when the Fed decides to take away the punch bowl and raise rates?

I don’t know, but if I were you, I would not walk under any open windows down on Wall Street.