FOXNEWS overtakes all of cable last week in BOTH prime and total day, ranking number one for week, according to NIELSEN. USA fell to #2… Developing…

Fox News Channel’s coverage of the bombing at the Boston Marathon last week propelled the network to the top of the cable rankings for the first time in nearly a decade. In both total day and primetime for the April 15 to April 21, the News Corp-owned news network pulled ahead of usually top ranked USA.

http://www.deadline.com/2013/04/fox-news-tops-all-cable-for-1st-time-since-2005/

FLASH: FOXNEWS overtakes all of cable last week in BOTH prime and total day, ranking number one for week, according to NIELSEN.

CNN’s King says mistakes last week were ‘embarrassing’

http://www.wtop.com/1326/3296052/CNNs-King-says-mistakes-last-week-were-embarrassing

Did you already share this? No? Share it now:

• 

InvestmentWatch

FOXNEWS overtakes all of cable last week in BOTH prime and total day, ranking number one for week, according to NIELSEN. USA fell to #2… Developing…

Former Portuguese Prime Minister Says "Portugal Cannot Pay Its Debts", Calls for "Argentine-Style Default"

It’s rare to hear any bit of common sense from political leaders, but today I have a sterling example. Mário Soares, Prime Minister of Portugal from 1976-1978 and 1983-1985, and the 17th President of Portugal from 1986 to 1996 speaks the truth.

Soares says “Portugal Cannot Pay Its Debts“. He calls for an “Argentine-Style Default”, and states “The desire please chancellor Merkel is ruining the country.”

“Portugal can not pay what you owe and however much they impoverish people, however much they steal the money to people who have it, not be able to pay what you owe. And when you cannot, the only solution is not pay. ” The president of Portugal, Mario Soares socialist argues that it is impossible for Portugal to return all of its foreign debt. So has asked to make a Argentine-style default to avoid economic collapse.

“Look at Argentina, was in crisis when he said we do not pay. ‘And something happened?” Asks Soares. “No, nothing happened,” he says in an interview with Antena 1, which airs tonight and that includes the Business Journal.

Soares, who was also prime minister, has called for the overthrow of the government, has criticized the European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso and launched a series of warnings to the President of the Republic, Cavaco Silva. The former head of state also defended as imperative the change in government and an end to austerity.

“This desire to be useful to Mrs Merkel, are ruining the country and forcing him to sell everything. In two years, this government has destroyed almost everything in Portugal,” he says.

For Soares, “any politician with an ounce of common sense when booed-as are the government every day, calling them thieves, should have the dignity to leave. But they cling to power,” he concludes.

Sooner or Later

Sooner or later some politician is going to run on that exact platform and be elected. Alternatively, a politician will decide the same thing while in office.

Eurozone math practically guarantees that outcome. For further discussion, please see Eurozone Math; One Size Fits Germany; Door Number Two.

Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Mike “Mish” Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis

Former Portuguese Prime Minister Says "Portugal Cannot Pay Its Debts", Calls for "Argentine-Style Default"

FED FOCUS-Bernanke"s challenge: prime markets for policy turn

Sun Feb 24, 2013 1:08pm EST

* Economic recovery would spell end to bond buying

* Jittery markets make for a communications challenge

* Response to minutes a microcosm of what may be ahead

By Jonathan Spicer and Ann Saphir

Feb 24 (Reuters) – Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is preparing for a most sensitive task: telling jittery investors who have grown accustomed to the U.S. central bank’s ultra-easy monetary policies that things will eventually have to change.

Bernanke appears committed to the Fed’s bond-buying stimulus right now. But the unprecedented communications challenge of laying groundwork for a shift in policy, while still assuring investors that rates will continue to stay low, could come in just a few months if the U.S. recovery continues apace.

In speeches around the country, other Fed officials have already begun discussing the eventual reversal of some of the most supportive policies the United States has ever seen.

And investors are increasingly parsing minutes of the central bank’s policy meetings for hints on just how long the $ 85 billion in monthly asset purchases will last.

Ideally, Bernanke – who is set to testify to Congress on Tuesday and Wednesday, and speak in San Francisco on Friday – would need to say little in the months ahead. The improving economy should do the lion’s share of the work in preparing markets, paving the way for a predictable and smooth turn in policy.

But Fed officials worry that even a small tapering of their bond-buying program could ricochet through financial markets, sharply raising longer-term borrowing costs and choking off the economic growth they have worked so hard to foster.

“We are in a world where, when the Fed starts moving toward a less-stimulative policy stance, at some point the markets are going to say ‘Oh my goodness,’” said Nathan Sheets, global head of international economics at Citigroup and a former economist for the Fed’s policy-setting committee.

Last week, the central bank got a taste of just how abruptly investors can react to a whiff of policy change.

Minutes from the Fed’s January meeting showed that a number of policymakers thought the asset purchases “might well” have to slow or stop before the jobs market improved as much as desired.

Even though “several others” warned of curtailing the program too soon, that sentence, hedged as it was, sent the dollar to a four-week high against the euro and fueled the sharpest stocks selloff in three months.

Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher told Reuters the following day that the reaction was a worrisome sign of “a market that’s hooked on the drug” of easy Fed money.

BEGINNING OF THE END?

In the past few weeks, several Fed officials have begun to set the stage for weaning the addict off the drug, expressing a preference for tapering rather than sharply ending the bond-buying program as the jobs outlook improves.

“I think that talk of tapering is almost the beginning of tapering, the market has become so well accustomed to the Fed being there and changing the supply and demand dynamics,” said Tom Simons, an economist at Jefferies.

“Fed officials are always pushing the notion that communications are the best policy tool,” he added. “So if they can communicate that the market should be prepared for a tapering and then there is a tapering and then it ends, that’s the most gradual way the program could end.”

The Fed’s stated plan is to end its bond buying once a “substantial improvement” in the labor market outlook is achieved, but to keep interest rates near zero until unemployment falls to at least 6.5 percent, from 7.9 percent last month, as long as inflation remains contained.

Further down the road, it would work on gradually unloading the assets on its balance sheet that are now valued at some $ 3 trillion. That job would very likely fall to Bernanke’s successor because the chairman is not expected to stay on after his term expires in January 2014.

Bernanke is not expected to change his dovish tone this week, despite mounting concerns over the size of the balance sheet. But his role over the next year, or longer if he stays in office, will be critical as he begins to navigate a long and delicate process of policy tightening, assuming the recovery takes hold as Fed officials hope.

There are a lot of unknowns, especially compared with the beginning of the last major cycle in which the Fed tightened monetary policy in 2004, when the only policy lever was overnight interest rates.

This time the Fed has the size and makeup of its balance sheet, stuffed not only with Treasuries but also mortgage-backed securities, and all sorts of new communications tools, like the economic thresholds it has set to signal when the time is approaching to raise interest rates.

“Managing the public’s expectations of monetary policy is a difficult task, especially when the policy is far from what the central bank has implemented in the past,” Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser said in a recent speech.

“This opens the door for the public to misunderstand the message the central bank is sending,” he said. Plosser and Fisher are both critics of the Fed’s bond-buying plans.

‘MARKETS TEND TO OVERREACT’

There could be trouble if investors misinterpret when the asset purchase program will end. An abrupt selloff in bonds for example could send longer-term rates soaring, derailing the gradual reversal for which the Fed hopes.

Yields on 10-year Treasury bonds have drifted higher this year, due in part to signals that a policy change could come as early as mid-year, and to signs the economy is strengthening.

“Absent some dramatic change in the economic landscape, when the time comes to normalize it’s likely to be accompanied by a very gradual adjustment in the Fed balance sheet,” said Jeffrey Fuhrer, senior policy adviser at the dovish-leaning Boston Federal Reserve Bank.

“If those things are right then you’d probably expect some relatively modest effect on long-term interest rates,” he said. “But as a general rule markets tend to overreact a little bit.”

A series of economic false starts in each of the last few years has sowed worries about tightening too quickly. Most Wall Street economists expect the Fed to slow its asset purchases only after the jobs market has established a stronger footing, in the first quarter of next year.

But the policy turn could come even quicker if the growing cadre of Fed officials worried about the eventual downside of the program win more converts.

And while Bernanke has said the Fed will weigh the costs and benefits of the current quantitative easing, known as QE3 because it is the third such program since the recession, he reportedly brushed off the risks of asset bubbles in a private meeting earlier this month with bond dealers and investors.

In his last public speech, in January, he said it was still “kind of early” in QE3 to expect to see a decline in unemployment, suggesting Bernanke sees the program continuing for some time yet.

“The bottom line is the economy is on heroin today and we will at one time move to a diluted form of heroin,” said Robert Lutts, chief investment officer at Cabot Money Management in Salem, Massachusetts. “If they tell me they are taking the heroin away, we are going to have a hiccup.” (Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Maureen Bavdek)

• Link this
• Share this
• Digg this
• Email
• Reprints

Reuters: Financial Services and Real Estate

FED FOCUS-Bernanke"s challenge: prime markets for policy turn

Bernanke"s challenge: prime markets for policy turn

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke smiles during a news conference in Washington December 12, 2012.

Credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

By Jonathan Spicer and Ann Saphir

Sun Feb 24, 2013 1:09pm EST

(Reuters) – Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is preparing for a most sensitive task: telling jittery investors who have grown accustomed to the U.S. central bank’s ultra-easy monetary policies that things will eventually have to change.

Bernanke appears committed to the Fed’s bond-buying stimulus right now. But the unprecedented communications challenge of laying groundwork for a shift in policy, while still assuring investors that rates will continue to stay low, could come in just a few months if the U.S. recovery continues apace.

In speeches around the country, other Fed officials have already begun discussing the eventual reversal of some of the most supportive policies the United States has ever seen.

And investors are increasingly parsing minutes of the central bank’s policy meetings for hints on just how long the $ 85 billion in monthly asset purchases will last.

Ideally, Bernanke – who is set to testify to Congress on Tuesday and Wednesday, and speak in San Francisco on Friday – would need to say little in the months ahead. The improving economy should do the lion’s share of the work in preparing markets, paving the way for a predictable and smooth turn in policy.

But Fed officials worry that even a small tapering of their bond-buying program could ricochet through financial markets, sharply raising longer-term borrowing costs and choking off the economic growth they have worked so hard to foster.

“We are in a world where, when the Fed starts moving toward a less-stimulative policy stance, at some point the markets are going to say ‘Oh my goodness,’” said Nathan Sheets, global head of international economics at Citigroup and a former economist for the Fed’s policy-setting committee.

Last week, the central bank got a taste of just how abruptly investors can react to a whiff of policy change.

Minutes from the Fed’s January meeting showed that a number of policymakers thought the asset purchases “might well” have to slow or stop before the jobs market improved as much as desired.

Even though “several others” warned of curtailing the program too soon, that sentence, hedged as it was, sent the dollar to a four-week high against the euro and fueled the sharpest stocks selloff in three months.

Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher told Reuters the following day that the reaction was a worrisome sign of “a market that’s hooked on the drug” of easy Fed money.

BEGINNING OF THE END?

In the past few weeks, several Fed officials have begun to set the stage for weaning the addict off the drug, expressing a preference for tapering rather than sharply ending the bond-buying program as the jobs outlook improves. <ID:L1N0BE762>

“I think that talk of tapering is almost the beginning of tapering, the market has become so well accustomed to the Fed being there and changing the supply and demand dynamics,” said Tom Simons, an economist at Jefferies.

“Fed officials are always pushing the notion that communications are the best policy tool,” he added. “So if they can communicate that the market should be prepared for a tapering and then there is a tapering and then it ends, that’s the most gradual way the program could end.”

The Fed’s stated plan is to end its bond buying once a “substantial improvement” in the labor market outlook is achieved, but to keep interest rates near zero until unemployment falls to at least 6.5 percent, from 7.9 percent last month, as long as inflation remains contained.

Further down the road, it would work on gradually unloading the assets on its balance sheet that are now valued at some $ 3 trillion. That job would very likely fall to Bernanke’s successor because the chairman is not expected to stay on after his term expires in January 2014.

Bernanke is not expected to change his dovish tone this week, despite mounting concerns over the size of the balance sheet. But his role over the next year, or longer if he stays in office, will be critical as he begins to navigate a long and delicate process of policy tightening, assuming the recovery takes hold as Fed officials hope.

There are a lot of unknowns, especially compared with the beginning of the last major cycle in which the Fed tightened monetary policy in 2004, when the only policy lever was overnight interest rates.

This time the Fed has the size and makeup of its balance sheet, stuffed not only with Treasuries but also mortgage-backed securities, and all sorts of new communications tools, like the economic thresholds it has set to signal when the time is approaching to raise interest rates.

“Managing the public’s expectations of monetary policy is a difficult task, especially when the policy is far from what the central bank has implemented in the past,” Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser said in a recent speech.

“This opens the door for the public to misunderstand the message the central bank is sending,” he said. Plosser and Fisher are both critics of the Fed’s bond-buying plans.

‘MARKETS TEND TO OVERREACT’

There could be trouble if investors misinterpret when the asset purchase program will end. An abrupt selloff in bonds for example could send longer-term rates soaring, derailing the gradual reversal for which the Fed hopes.

Yields on 10-year Treasury bonds have drifted higher this year, due in part to signals that a policy change could come as early as mid-year, and to signs the economy is strengthening.

“Absent some dramatic change in the economic landscape, when the time comes to normalize it’s likely to be accompanied by a very gradual adjustment in the Fed balance sheet,” said Jeffrey Fuhrer, senior policy adviser at the dovish-leaning Boston Federal Reserve Bank.

“If those things are right then you’d probably expect some relatively modest effect on long-term interest rates,” he said. “But as a general rule markets tend to overreact a little bit.”

A series of economic false starts in each of the last few years has sowed worries about tightening too quickly. Most Wall Street economists expect the Fed to slow its asset purchases only after the jobs market has established a stronger footing, in the first quarter of next year.

But the policy turn could come even quicker if the growing cadre of Fed officials worried about the eventual downside of the program win more converts.

And while Bernanke has said the Fed will weigh the costs and benefits of the current quantitative easing, known as QE3 because it is the third such program since the recession, he reportedly brushed off the risks of asset bubbles in a private meeting earlier this month with bond dealers and investors. <ID:L1N0BM3Z8>

In his last public speech, in January, he said it was still “kind of early” in QE3 to expect to see a decline in unemployment, suggesting Bernanke sees the program continuing for some time yet.

“The bottom line is the economy is on heroin today and we will at one time move to a diluted form of heroin,” said Robert Lutts, chief investment officer at Cabot Money Management in Salem, Massachusetts. “If they tell me they are taking the heroin away, we are going to have a hiccup.”

(Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Maureen Bavdek)

• Link this
• Share this
• Digg this
• Email
• Reprints

Reuters: Economic News

Bernanke"s challenge: prime markets for policy turn

Is It Fair For People On Food Stamps To Buy Prime Rib And Lobster While Working Families Barely Survive?

Should we all quit working and jump on board the Obama gravy train?  Of course I am being facetious, but when you are barely surviving does there come a point when it just becomes easier to give up and totally rely on the government?  Today, the federal government runs nearly 80 different means-tested welfare programs, and many state and local governments have their own welfare programs on top of that.  If you become an expert on those programs and you learn how to game the system, can you live more comfortably than someone that lives honestly and works as hard as they can and yet still makes less than 10 dollars an hour?  Now, right from the outset of this article, let me make it abundantly clear that I do not believe that most people are abusing the system.  As I have written about over and over, the number of Americans living in poverty is rapidly increasing because there are not enough jobs.  There are not enough jobs because we are shipping millions of them out of the country to the other side of the globe, and we are also losing millions of jobs to technology.  There have always been those that need our help, and because of the foolish decisions that we have made as a nation, the ranks of the poor will continue to expand.  But it is also true that there are some people out there that are very brazenly abusing the system.  For example, is it really fair for people on food stamps to buy prime rib and lobster while many working families barely survive?  People like that are taking advantage of their fellow Americans, and they are making it harder for the people that really need the help to be able to get it.

Unfortunately, we are rapidly becoming an “entitlement society”.  Close to half the country lives in a home that receives some sort of monetary benefits from the federal government each month at this point.

In particular, the food stamp program has experienced explosive growth in recent years.  Since Obama has been president, the number of Americans on food stamps has grown by more than 49 percent, and more than 11,000 people a day have enrolled in the food stamp program since Obama entered the White House.

And if you can believe it, the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the entire population of Spain.

Will we all eventually be on food stamps?

Actually, the truth is that there are millions upon millions of hard working American families that are desperately trying to make it on their own and that don’t want to become financial dependents of the federal government.  Unfortunately, it can be a little disheartening when you are barely making it from month to month and yet you see others using government benefit cards to buy luxury items.

The other day my wife came across a discussion on Facebook that really caught her attention.  I thought that I would share with you all the post that got that discussion going.  As far as I can determine, this woman shared what she believed she actually saw at her local grocery store, but I have no way of determining if this story is true or not.  But I have seen quite a few similar stories of food stamp abuse in the past.  Either way, I think the following story will be good to help spark a conversation about whether our current system is broken or not.  All of the names have been removed so as to protect the identity of the woman that originally posted this on Facebook…

Okay…so, I’m going to go on a rant for a minute…just to get it off my chest…

**** & I went to the grocery store to pick up a few things because we were getting low…sooo, we pick up our 40% off chicken and buy one get two free items and proceed to checkout.

There is a woman ahead of us with a child about 4 years old. The woman, I couldn’t help but notice….had beautiful fingernails, clearly professionally done…and I also noticed her brand new IPHONE…which she was talking on, and I think that is rude while you are being checked out. Her little girl was commenting on the TWO live lobsters in a bag on the checkout, asked if it was going to hurt when they get cooked, her mom brushed her off…at that time I took a look at what else she had on the counter…A HUGE roast, sirloin tips, shrimp, beef ribs and pork ribs…only the prime cuts… I thought to myself….mmmmmm someone is having a yummy dinner and must have a great job as I could not afford these things (not that I’d get my nails done anyway)….

So…the cashier gives her a total and what does she pull out of her wallet but a BENEFIT card!!!!!!! I had all I could do to contain myself…

Sometimes people need help, and I’m okay with that, and those who need it should get it….BUT…if you can afford the latest IPHONE and fancy nails then why in the world are the taxpayers paying for your LOBSTER?!!!! If she really needed help and food, she should have been buying the “sale” items…40% off chicken, buy one get one free cheese ravioli…you know, like the rest of us working class have to buy!

It especially makes me mad because there ARE PEOPLE WHO NEED HELP and can’t get it…My son and his girlfriend and brand new baby aren’t eligible for an ounce of help…they tried, she works days and he works nights so that they don’t have to pay for day-care, they use inexpensive diapers and try to save money anyway they can, they struggle to make ends meet and to pay for their straight talk phones and to boot are paying off college loans…but they supposedly make too much…c’mon, really, he works at McDonalds and she works in a nursing home…lets be real here…those are the type that SHOULD get help…UGHHHH Our system is broken and something needs to be done about it!!!

There, that’s my rant…kudo’s to you if you managed to read the whole thing as I know it was an awful long rant….Gotta go work now, Thanks for listening.

In response to her story, dozens of people posted comments.  Quite a few people said that they had seen similar things where they lived.

And the truth is that food stamps are accepted just about wherever you look these days.  Just check out this shocking article: “Obama’s food-stamp nation: ‘We accept EBT’ signs are everywhere“.

So is this kind of thing fair?

If not, what can be done about it?

What everybody can agree upon is that the number of food stamp recipients is absolutely exploding.  The following is from a recent CNS news article…

When Obama entered office in January 2009 there were 31,939,110 Americans receiving food stamps.  As of November 2012—the most recent data available—there were 47,692,896 Americans enrolled, an increase of 49.3 percent.

But this didn’t just start under Obama.  Back in the year 2000, there were just 17 million Americans on food stamps.

30 million more have been added to the program since then.

And of course food stamps is not the only federal welfare program that is being abused.

According to the Wall Street Journal, there has been a tremendous amount of abuse in the free cell phone program as well.

The U.S. government spent about $ 2.2 billion last year to provide phones to low-income Americans, but a Wall Street Journal review of the program shows that a large number of those who received the phones haven’t proved they are eligible to receive them.

The Lifeline program—begun in 1984 to ensure that poor people aren’t cut off from jobs, families and emergency services—is funded by charges that appear on the monthly bills of every landline and wireless-phone customer. Payouts under the program have shot up from $ 819 million in 2008, as more wireless carriers have persuaded regulators to let them offer the service.

A lot of people refer to those free cell phones as “Obamaphones”, but the truth is that the program has been going on for a long time.  It just has accelerated greatly under Obama.

So what is the solution to all of this?

Well, what we really need are a lot more jobs, but in the State of the Union address last night Obama simply rehashed a lot of the same tired proposals that he and our former presidents have been promoting for years.

If we continue to do the same things that we have been doing, we are going to continue to get the same results.

There is a reason why the percentage of the civilian labor force in the United States that is employed has been steadily declining every single year since 2006.  We keep pursuing foolish policies, and those policies are steadily destroying our economy.

Sadly, many of our politicians appear to be engaged in some form of “doublethink”.  The things that they tell us will solve our problems are actually the things that are making our problems even worse.

For example, Barack Obama says that we need even more “free trade agreements” and that we need to integrate our economy into the emerging one world economic system even more deeply.

But as I have shown in article after article, the “free trade” agenda of the global elite has resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of U.S. businesses and millions of good paying U.S. jobs.

For much more on this, please see the following article: “55 Reasons Why You Should Buy Products That Are Made In America“.

And of course Obama once promised that he would never “rest” until he had fixed our employment problems, but that hasn’t exactly been the truth either.  The following is from a recent article by Dan Gainor…

Back in 2009, the president promised never to “rest” until the job situation was fixed. Nearly four years later, he’s done a lot of resting.

According to The Weekly Standard, Pres. Obama has had 83 vacation days overall and Factcheck.org says he took 26 of those in 2009. That means the president has taken at least 57 vacation days since his vow not to “rest.”

But hey, he needs his rest.  Life is rough.  U.S. taxpayers only spend about a billion dollars a year on the Obamas.  How is he supposed to scrape by on such limited resources?

Meanwhile, Americans are still incredibly pessimistic about the economy.  The following is what one recent survey found…

• Eight in 10 Americans are skeptical that career and employment opportunities will be better for the next generation.
• More than half of Americans say the economy will not fully recover from the 2007-2009 recession for another six years; 29% believe the economy will never fully recover.
• 73% of Americans were directly impacted by the recession: individuals surveyed had either lost a job themselves or a family member/close relative had been out work because of the economic downturn.
• The majority of survey participants said college would become unaffordable for most young Americans.
• 56% reported having fewer savings than before the recession.
• More than half of those who were laid off or lost a job said they cut back on medical treatment or doctor visits.
• 40% of Americans have borrowed money from family or friends.
• Nearly 25% of participants said they have sought professional help for stress or depression.

And as you can see from the charts in this article, U.S. businesses remain very pessimistic about the future of the economy as well.

Unfortunately, those that are pessimistic about the economy have very good reasons to be so.

And as bad as things are right now, they are going to be getting much, much worse.

That means that millions more Americans are going to be wanting to sign up for food stamps and other welfare programs.

But what will happen someday when the safety net breaks and all of those welfare programs start getting cut back dramatically?

What kind of riots will we see in major U.S. cities when the international community insists that the U.S. implement its own version of “austerity” in response to a massive debt crisis?

Will we eventually end up just like Greece and Spain or even worse?

Please share this article with as many people as you can, and please feel free to leave your thoughts on this article above by posting a comment below…

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

The Economic Collapse

Is It Fair For People On Food Stamps To Buy Prime Rib And Lobster While Working Families Barely Survive?