Chancellor Angela Merkel's government approved draft legislation on Wednesday that foresees imposing additional controls on such trading. The proposed measures include requiring that all high-frequency traders be licensed, requiring clear labeling of all financial products traded by powerful algorithms without human intervention and limiting the number of orders that may be placed without a corresponding trade. Traders who violate the limits, which would be set once the law took effect, would face a fine.
"Computer-generated algorithmic transaction involves a variety of new risks," Germany's finance ministry said in a statement. "Germany is reacting to these risks with legislation that will create more transparency, security and a better overview."
The legislation, which is subject to approval by both houses of Parliament, was written with an eye toward similar legislation being discussed in Brussels that could eventually apply across the European Union, which has 27 member nations, the official said.
A prime example of what happens when HFT runs amok occurred in August this year by Knight Match, a system used by high speed trades, nearly bankrupted the trading company Knight Capital that lost $440 million in 45 minutes.
Knight was saved by a hastily assembled $400 million from a consortium of investors, but it appears the damage to Knight's reputation with customers, particularly high frequency traders, will take longer to repair. Knight says the volume numbers, which were compiled by stock market and technology research firm Tabb Group, exclude the trading glitch, which happened on August 1st. Knight was forced to shut down its systems for part of that day. The volume drop shows that traders shied away from Knight longer than just in the days following the trading glitch. A Knight spokeswoman says the company won't comment on whether trading volumes rebounded in September until early next month.
It no longer is your parents' or grandparents' stock market. Rather, it's become a Wild West of trading, with errant technology too often in control and setting stocks, commodities, currencies and futures up for violent moves that could make the $1 trillion flash crash of May 2010 look tame by comparison, testified David Lauer, who has designed trading technology and worked as an analyst for Allston Trading and Citadel Investment Group.
"U.S. equity markets are in dire straits," Lauer said. "We are truly in a crisis."
He noted that "retail investors have been fleeing the stock market in droves" and that the Chicago Booth/Kellogg School Financial Trust Index shows "investor confidence is nonexistent - with only 15 percent of the public expressing trust in the stock market."
Rather than buying a stock and holding onto it, institutions using high-frequency trading buy and sell stocks constantly in milliseconds, or much faster than a blink of the eye. Lauer said about 50 to 70 percent of the volume of trading in the stock market now takes that form. Often trading systems send out phony trades aimed at manipulating others into buying or selling. The activity can mislead legitimate traders working for mutual funds, pension funds or individuals to buy a stock at too high a price or sell it at too low a price.
A New York-based brokerage allowed overseas clients to run a scheme aimed at distorting stock prices by rapidly canceling orders, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Clients of Hold Brothers On-Line Investment Services were "repeatedly manipulating publicly traded stocks" by placing and erasing orders in an illegal strategy designed to trick others into buying or selling, the SEC said today in a release. Hold Brothers, its owners, and the foreign firms Trade Alpha Corporate Ltd. and Demonstrate LLC agreed to settle allegations that the New York broker failed to supervise customers and pay $4 million in total SEC fines.
The SEC complaint targeted practices that abused high-speed computer trading on American equity venues. As high-frequency activity has grown in recent years, the agency's efforts to stop fraudulent practices such as "layering" or "spoofing" have extended to the automated trading tactics.
But the agency is clearly outgunned when it comes to dealing with high-frequency trading, many experts agree. And a new lawsuit goes so far as to accuse the SEC of covering up high-speed fraud so nobody will know just how incompetent it really is, Courthouse News reports.
In the suit, a Wisconsin company called EMM Holdings accuses the SEC of not investigating a Houston high-speed trading firm called Quantlab Financial. According to EMM, Quantlab is perpetrating fraud amid all the high-speed churning and burning it does in the stock market. EMM notes that Quantlab has been flagged six times in the past eight years by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the brokerage industry's self-regulatory body, for not properly documenting its trades. EMM thinks this is evidence that Quantlab is trying to cover up some fraud, and it has asked the SEC (pdf) for any documents showing an investigation of Quantlab. The SEC has refused (pdf), on the grounds that doing so might interfere with law-enforcement activities. EMM has sued the SEC to force it to give up whatever goods it has on Quantlab.
Trouble is, it's not entirely clear if the SEC is actually investigating Quantlab at all. EMM argues in its complaint that the only way the SEC could deny its record request is "if there is an on-going and active investigation." And EMM accuses the SEC of letting this investigation fester, hoping the statute of limitations will run out.
"Given [the SEC's] near complete abdication of its prosecutorial duties during the 2008 financial crisis, inaction and delay may unfortunately have become [the SEC's] modus operandi for dealing with complex financial malfeasance," EMM said in its complaint.
At least the Germans are willing to take the "bull by the horns" by limiting the ability of these trades to disrupt the market with rules that would slow trading, curb the volume and make it more expensive for traders to cancel large volumes of orders.
On this day in 1928, the antibiotic Penicillin was discovered. It's discovery is attributed to Scottish scientist and Nobel laureate Alexander Fleming in 1928. He showed that, if Penicillium notatum was grown in the appropriate substrate, it would exude a substance with antibiotic properties, which he dubbed penicillin. This serendipitous observation began the modern era of antibiotic discovery. The development of penicillin for use as a medicine is attributed to the Australian Nobel laureate Howard Walter Florey together with the German Nobel laureate Ernst Chain and the English biochemist Norman Heatley.
Fleming recounted that the date of his discovery of penicillin was on the morning of Friday, September 28, 1928. It was a fortuitous accident: in his laboratory in the basement of St. Mary's Hospital in London (now part of Imperial College), Fleming noticed a petri dish containing Staphylococcus plate culture he had mistakenly left open, which was contaminated by blue-green mould, which had formed a visible growth. There was a halo of inhibited bacterial growth around the mould. Fleming concluded that the mould was releasing a substance that was repressing the growth and lysing the bacteria. He grew a pure culture and discovered that it was a Penicillium mould, now known to be Penicillium notatum. Charles Thom, an American specialist working at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was the acknowledged expert, and Fleming referred the matter to him. Fleming coined the term "penicillin" to describe the filtrate of a broth culture of the Penicillium mould. Even in these early stages, penicillin was found to be most effective against Gram-positive bacteria, and ineffective against Gram-negative organisms and fungi. He expressed initial optimism that penicillin would be a useful disinfectant, being highly potent with minimal toxicity compared to antiseptics of the day, and noted its laboratory value in the isolation of "Bacillus influenzae" (now Haemophilus influenzae). After further experiments, Fleming was convinced that penicillin could not last long enough in the human body to kill pathogenic bacteria, and stopped studying it after 1931. He restarted clinical trials in 1934, and continued to try to get someone to purify it until 1940.
The NFL will have its regular officials back on the field tonight, as the owners ended their lockout of the referees, reaching a tentative agreement. The referees union must vote to approve the contract, but the NFL was holding up the return to play for the officials by locking them out, so their lifting that allowed the officials to go back to work.
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So they saved their defined benefit pension for five years, and get a fairly hefty defined contribution thereafter. In one of the other major sticking points, the league will be able to hire an indeterminate number of officials full-time, and have more officials available than the current staff of 121. This is certainly a better contract than the owners wanted to give; they wanted to end the defined benefit pension immediately.
Referees are well-paid, just like everyone associated with the lucrative business of professional football. But we saw over the last few weeks that they are paid at a level commensurate with their skills. And in a rare set of circumstances, the entire nation got a chance to see in real time the documented value of skilled labor over scab labor. It has relevance for a host of labor fights, and hopefully can be used as an object lesson. More on this from the New York Times.
At noon today, sorting the recycling was my biggest challenge. Tonight I'm a scab.
There is no grand conspiracy to turn the world into a one-world Empire and destroy democracy and the Enlightenment principles that inform the form of government we once enjoyed. As you know, I no longer believe we live in a Constitutional Republic but, rather, in a transitional state a new combination of neo-feudalism, imperialism, fascism into something utterly new and unprecedented. The source of all this is something we can find by looking in the mirror for long enough.
This has all happened with, more or less, the consent of people around the world. The chief feature is Orwellian version of a Brave New World. The Global War on Terror is the most clear example of this. We wish to eliminate terrorism by using terrorism and making sure that terror is used to subjugate peoples abroad and to subjugate people here. They can do that here in this country because of its radically anti-intellectual tendencies (due to the failure of public schools to educate anyone and, instead, pretend to educate) and a stunning flight away from even the concept of virtue for which we were warned in the seventies by Christopher Lasch's prescient book The Culture of Narcissism. This allows people to be unashamed to be cowards. You can only describe the American public's reaction to 9/11 as cowardly--in going to war against weak countries who had no capacity to fight back and were not the cause of the terrorist attacks. In fact, it was Saudi Arabia and Pakistan (and perhaps Israel) who were involved directly in 9/11 even if you accept the notion that the American gov't had nothing to do with the attacks (highly improbable). Even if the gov't story were true the reaction is still cowardly and the way those wars were fought were deeply dishonorable--wantonly killing civilians because maybe there were some insurgents among them. Estimates of deaths in Iraq go from around a hundred thousand to more than a million--most of it due to U.S. saturation bombing of neighborhoods and communities which was largely unreported in the American press. In Afghanistan the violence was not as bad because the U.S. uses direct terrorist tactics against civilian populations like the people in the border regions (see Chris Floyd's latest post).
There is no conspiracy only the ongoing wheel of history moving away from the unstable mythological frameworks brought on by the modernist project (the general movement away from uncomprehending belief in a particular world-view towards an intellectual openness to new ideas) and it's inability to take into account the needs and requirements of human beings. People need to belong, people need to feel they are a part of something larger than themselves, people need to have some kind of spiritual framework and modernism doesn't seem to be able to provide for these needs. It has brought fantastic riches and technological marvels but has done very little for the human spirit and, if anyhthing, has caused us to devolve rather than evolve as human beings. Cowardice, self-indulgence and narcissism are the main features of society today--and BTW I include myself in that critique.
And, at the same time, there never was a time when the nature of existence of life, of human nature were better known--we truly live in an age of not just information but wisdom that is flying all around us yet we cannot, fore some reason, take the medicine that will move us out of our problems.
The conspiracy we face it made in the collective unconscious, as I alluded to above. It is we who are resisting opening up our lives to the new and who want to return to authoritarian systems where our place in the world is clear and unambiguous. This is now possible for us. I think the social contract is that as long as the corporate system supplies most people with a Matrix-like system of amusements and entertainments that the people will go along with anything--endless wars, an hereditary aristocracy and a neo-feudal future where their children will inherit a world where they will be serfs if they're lucky, slavery or death if they're not.
In order to break out of this we need to open up our conscious minds to the knowledge of how deep our unconscious is and how much we are dominated by it. Once we understand that we can begin to take steps in life that are more reasonable. It all starts with each one of us and has nothing to do with politics as such--our problems are cultural and philosophical. While those who read this may be dissenters most of our fellows believe in a world of winners and losers. Winners should glory in their success and indulge in excesses while losers should suffer mightily and sing the blues.
Welcome to the Health and Fitness News, a weekly diary which is cross-posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette. It is open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.
Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can't, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.
You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.
All of this week's recipes are hearty vegetarian bean and vegetable stews to serve with couscous. They are make-ahead dishes using the vegetables of late summer and early fall that will keep for up to 3 days in the refrigerator. If you're looking for vegetarian dishes to break the fast, or just dishes for getting ahead on the week's meals, they're perfect.
This late summer/early fall couscous can also be made in winter using canned tomatoes. The hot and the sweet peppers contribute great contrasting flavors.
On this day in 1922, Jean-François Champollion deciphered the hieroglyphs of the Rosetta Stone with the help of groundwork laid by his predecessors: Athanasius Kircher, Silvestre de Sacy, Johan David Akerblad, Thomas Young, and William John Bankes. Champollion translated parts of the Rosetta Stone, showing that the Egyptian writing system was a combination of phonetic and ideographic signs.
Thomas Young was one of the first to attempt decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphs, basing his own work on the investigations of Swedish diplomat Akerblad, who built up a demotic alphabet of 29 letters (15 turned out to be correct) and translated all personal names and other words in the Demotic part of the Rosetta Stone in 1802. Akerblad however, wrongly believed that demotic was entirely phonetic or alphabetic. Young thought the same, and by 1814 he had completely translated the enchorial (which Champollion labeled Demotic as it is called today) text of the Rosetta Stone (he had a list with 86 demotic words). Young then studied the hieroglyphic alphabet and made some progress but failed to recognise that demotic and hieroglyphic texts were paraphrases and not simple translations. In 1823 he published an Account of the Recent Discoveries in Hieroglyphic Literature and Egyptian Antiquities. Some of Young's conclusions appeared in the famous article Egypt he wrote for the 1818 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.
When Champollion, in 1822, published his translation of the hieroglyphs and the key to the grammatical system, Young and all others praised this work. Young had indicated in a letter to Gurney that he wished to see Champollion acknowledge that he had made use of Young's earlier work in assisting his eventual deciphering of hieroglyphics. Champollion was unwilling to share the credit even though initially he had not recognized that hieroglyphics were phonetic. Young corrected him on this, and Champollion attempted to have an early article withdrawn once he realized his mistake. Strongly motivated by the political tensions of that time, the British supported Young and the French Champollion. Champollion completely translated the hieroglyphic grammar based in part upon the earlier work of others including Young. However, Champollion maintained that he alone had deciphered the hieroglyphs. After 1826, he did offer Young access to demotic manuscripts in the Louvre, when he was a curator. Baron Georges Cuvier (1825) credited Champollion's work as an important aid in dating the Dendera Zodiac.
Jonathan Swift did not really want Irish people to sell their children for food in 1791; George Orwell did not really want the clocks to strike thirteen in 1984; Paul Ryan, I am sure, calls Mitt Romney something more dignified than "Stench" and Microsoft did not invent PowerPoint as a means to euthanize cattle. At least I am pretty sure Microsoft didn't.
And you see, this is where Roger Simon is completely and totally wrong, it's perfectly true that-
PowerPoint was released by Microsoft in 1990 as a way to euthanize cattle using a method less cruel than hitting them over the head with iron mallets. After PETA successfully argued in court that PowerPoint actually was more cruel than iron mallets, the program was adopted by corporations for slide show presentations.
Conducting a PowerPoint presentation is a lot like smoking a cigar. Only the person doing it likes it. The people around him want to hit him with a chair.
PowerPoint is usually restricted to conference rooms where the doors are locked from the outside. It is, therefore, considered unsuited for large rallies, where people have a means of escape and where the purpose is to energize rather than daze.
Don't get excited. "The West Wing" hasn't really returned but the cast did get together to make a campaign video for cast member, Mary " Kate Harper" McCormack's sister, Bridget Mary McCormack who is running for State Supreme Court Judge in Michigan. The video also has a voting education lesson in it about filling out the non-partisan section of the voting ballot. This is how Michigan and 14 other states choose their supreme court justices. If you think that these races aren't important, remember that this week the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that returned that state's controversial voter ID law (pdf) back to the Commonwealth Court for review.
Bridget Mary McCormack is a professor at the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor, Michigan, who also serves as Michigan Law School's associate dean of clinical affairs. From her wikipedia bio, she is the founder and co-director of the Michigan Innocence Clinic, the first exclusively non-DNA innocence clinic in the country. Lawrence O'Donnell interviewed the woman who reunited the "West Wing" on his show "The Last Word."
Unless someone snags an iPhone video of Obama taking a leak on Ohio State mascot Brutus Buckeye, or stealing pain meds from a Tampa retiree and sharing them with a bunch of Japanese carmakers, the game looks pretty much up - Obama's widening leads in three battleground states, Virginia, Ohio and Florida, seem to have sealed the deal.
Romney is an almost perfect amalgam of all the great out-of-touch douchebags of our national cinema: he's Gregg Marmalaard from Animal House mixed with Billy Zane's sneering, tux-wearing "Cal' character in Titanic to pussy-ass Prince Humperdink to Roy Stalin to Gordon Gekko (he's literally Gordon Gekko). He's everything we've been trained to despise, the guy who had everything handed to him, doesn't fight his own battles and insists there's only room in the lifeboat for himself - and yet the Democrats, for some reason, have had terrible trouble beating him in a popularity contest.
The fact that Barack Obama needed a Himalayan mountain range of cash and some rather extreme last-minute incompetence on Romney's part to pull safely ahead in this race is what speaks to the extraordinary brokenness of the system.
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(W)hen one of the candidates is Mitt Romney, the race shouldn't be close. You'll hear differently in the coming weeks from the news media, which will spend a lot of time scratching its figurative beard while it argues that a 54-46 split, or however this thing ends up (and they'll call anything above 53% for Obama a rout, I would guess), is evidence that the system is broken. But what we probably should be wondering is why it was ever close at all.
"When you don't have enough money," she said, declining to give her name, "this is what there is."
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"It's against the dignity of these people to have to look for food in this manner," said Eduardo Berloso, an official in Girona, the city that padlocked its supermarket trash bins.
Mr. Berloso proposed the measure last month after hearing from social workers and seeing for himself one evening "the humiliating gesture of a mother with children looking around before digging into the bins."
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But Mr. Berloso's locks created something of an uproar across Spain, where the economic crisis is fueling more and more protests highlighting hunger. A group of mayors and unionists in southern Spain, where unemployment rates are far above the average, recently staged Robin Hood raids on two supermarkets, loading carts with basic foods and pressing them to donate more food to the needy.
More than a dozen people are facing prosecution for theft over the stunt. But they are unrepentant and appear to have huge local support. "Taking some food and giving it to families who are having a really hard time, if this is stealing, I am guilty," one of the men, Francisco Molero of the farmworkers' SAT union, told the local news media afterward.
The impasse has elevated tensions here as Greece braces for a nationwide general strike planned on Wednesday that threatens to bring public services to a halt. The Greek people are increasingly angry over the prospect that public salaries and pensions will be cut again in a last-ditch bid to secure a new loan installment of 31.5 billion euros, or $40.7 billion, from Greece's creditors.
The Greek prime minister, Antonis Samaras, plans to address the nation this week to bolster support for the austerity package. He has already publicly warned his center-right party, New Democracy, that he will oust lawmakers of the party failing to back the package once it comes up for a vote, probably in early October.
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In this political calculus, Ms. Merkel and others see Mr. Samaras as the last best hope for Greece. They worry that if the government teeters, new elections might be called in which his party could lose power to the increasingly popular leftist party Syriza, led by the political maverick Alexis Tsipras. Mr. Tsipras advocates tearing up the loan agreement with Greece's international creditors. That would raise the risk of default and an eventual exit from the euro.
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At the meeting, Poul Thomsen, the I.M.F.'s lead negotiator for Greece, was pushing hard for additional tax increases and wage and pension cuts, these people say. Mr. Stournaras angrily gestured to a bullet hole in one of the windows of the Finance Ministry.
"You see this - this came from a bullet," Mr. Stournaras said. "Do you want to overthrow the government?"
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The impasse reveals the extent of the government's alarm at the worsening mood on the streets. More protests are likely in October, when Parliament is expected to vote on the measure. Many Greeks are now talking about the potential for civil unrest when the weather turns colder and many people may not be able to afford to heat their homes. Fuel prices, including gasoline, have been climbing, and whatever cushion Greeks on the margins had in their savings is gone.
Moreover, questions are swirling about the extent to which Greece's police force will be willing and able to maintain public order, because it is also facing salary cuts. A number of officers were held off with pepper spray by riot police officers last week outside of Mr. Samaras's residence, where they held a demonstration.
Demand for German debt, perceived to be among the safest securities, is being sustained as Spain weighs a sovereign bailout to supplement a 100-billion euro ($129 billion) bank rescue package and as Europe's economy slides toward recession.
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Even as policy makers strive to end the three-year debt crisis, the region's economic outlook is weakening. Euro-area surveys on Sept. 20 showed services and manufacturing output fell to a 39-month low in September adding to evidence the economy is heading for a recession. Figures yesterday showed German business confidence unexpectedly fell to the lowest in more than two and a half years in September.
"We are in a period where the ECB has laid down its framework to save the euro but the fundamentals will ultimately creep back in and you will see new problems flare," said Harvinder Sian, a fixed income strategist at RBS in London. "Bunds will remain supported. I think 1.55 percent to 1.70 percent is a good entry location."
Spain is in its second recession in three years, endangering plans to trim its budget deficit and avoid a bailout. The euro-region economy will probably shrink 0.4 percent this year, the ECB said this month.
On this day on 1957, West Side Story premieres on Broadway. East Side Story was the original title of the Shakespeare-inspired musical conceived by choreographer Jerome Robbins, written by playwright Arthur Laurents and scored by composer and lyricist Leonard Bernstein in 1949. A tale of star-crossed lovers-one Jewish, the other Catholic-on Manhattan's Lower East Side, the show in its original form never went into production, and the idea was set aside for the next six years. It was more than just a change of setting, however, that helped the re-titled show get off the ground in the mid-1950s. It was also the addition of a young, relatively unknown lyricist named Stephen Sondheim. The book by Arthur Laurents and the incredible choreography by Jerome Robbins helped make West Side Story a work of lasting genius, but it was the strength of the songs by Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein that allowed it to make its Broadway debut on this day in 1957.
There are no videos of the original Broadway production which starred Larry Kert as Tony, Carol Lawrence as Maria, Ken Le Roy as Bernardo and Chita Rivera as Anita (Ms. Rivera reprized her role in the movie), so here is the Prologue from the Academy Award winning movie. The area that the movie was filmed no longer exists. The 17 blocks between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues, from West 60th to West 66th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where he filming took place were demolished to build Lincoln Center for the Preforming Arts.
Brandy is probably the oldest distilled beverage since wine has such an ancient heritage and in this drink it's paired with Benedictine which seems ancient because we associate that with the monkish lifestyle and discipline, but is in fact a formula from the 1800s invented by Alexandre Le Grand.
Like Root Beer the mixture of herbs used to flavor it doesn't really taste like anything else, but it is quite sweet and is mixed with brandy and ice when that quality is less desirable.
So the recipe is just too damn simple to even write down.
A Cocktail that is truly historic is egg nog which was derived from medieval possets. You can make it with almost any kind of spirit (bourbon imparts a nice vanilla flavor), but brandy is traditional.
What is really happening here is the eurozone crisis is so serious, and so dire, public opinion across Europe is turning so quickly in every country against the project, that what they are trying to do is seal and complete the project before everybody really wakes up to what's being done in their name.
That's what they are about. We are now entering the end game in what has been a 50 year political project. This is all going to come to a very dramatic head over the course of the next two years.
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The end game for them is to effectively abolish the nation states of Europe, to completely abolish any concept of national democracy, and to vest all power, all the attributes we associate with normal countries, that is all to be vested in this new European political class.
That imperial ambition has been there from the start, but up until now it has been hidden. I have to say that as far as most of Europe is concerned, I am quite pessimistic.
It makes no difference whether you call it shock doctrine or 21st century imperialism or hostile takeovers, you can't take away from the people of Greece, Italy and Spain all the monuments of their past, as well as all powers they have over their own economies, production facilities and agriculture, and expect them to take that lying down. Not going to happen.
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The politico-banking class are all sitting there smugly and comfy in their bought-on-someone-else's-credit plush offices, picking through the still rich and splendid spoils of once proud nations and fiercely independent peoples. And even if they do win some of the preliminary battles at the negotiating table, the real ones can be won only through the use of violence.
There isn't much time left until that becomes a realistic threat, which means that now is the time for the people of Europe to decide whether they want to go down that road or not. And if they don't, they need to draw conclusions and accept the potential consequences of that decision: Get up, Stand up. And no, I don't have a lot of faith that they will. But I do hope that more people will now start to clue in on what that means: yes, violence.
The Portuguese people have put up with one draconian package after another - with longer working hours, 7pc pay cuts, tax rises, an erosion of pensions, etc - all amounting to a net fiscal squeeze of 10.4 of GDP so far in cyclically-adjusted terms. (It will ultimately be 15pc).
They have protested peacefully, in marked contrast to the Greeks, even though the latest poll by the Catholic University shows that 87pc are losing faith in Portugal's democracy.
Yet Mr Passos Coelho's rash decision to raise the Social Security tax on workers' pay from 11pc to 18pc has at last brought the heavens down upon his head.
He was hauled in front of the Council of State - a sort of Privy Council of elders and wise men - for a showdown over the weekend. Eight hours later he emerged battered and bruised to admit defeat. The measure will not go ahead.
Francisco Louca from left-wing Bloco suggested that the prime minister cannot survive such a defeat. "The government is dead", he said.
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If Citigroup is right - and views differ on this - Portugal is going into the same sort of self-feeding downward spiral as Greece. Debt-deflation is choking the country.
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The defenders of Portugal's current policies have nothing to do with Friedman or orthodox monetarism.
They are disciples of an extremist subcult that believes in expansionary fiscal contractions, even though ample evidence from the IMF shows that such policies are mostly doomed to failure without offsetting monetary stimulus and/or devaluation.
Sadly, there seems to be almost nobody in public life in Portugal willing to tell the people that membership of the euro is the elemental cause of their current suffering.
Journalists sacked when a local paper closed have taken to doing "citizen journalism" - which today means organising a coach trip around all the various projects Valencia built in the good times.
There is the Formula One racetrack, which runs right through the city so the roads had to be redesigned. But the city has lost its Formula One race.
There is the America's Cup dock, with huge sheds for ocean-going yachts and a massive white control tower. But there is no more America's Cup racing in Valencia.
There is the Opera House, a cross between the one in Sydney and something you would imagine only in your more disturbed dreams - 400 million euros to build, 40 million a year to run - 15 performances a year.
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Whether by corruption - and there has been a great deal of that - maladministration, or pure bad luck, Valencia is littered with vanity projects that tell their own story.
The airport that has never seen a single plane land. The theme park built in a place where the summer heat rises above 40C (104F). The land bought at premium prices that is now worthless.
More than 1,000 riot police blocked off access to the Parliament building in the heart of Madrid, forcing most protesters to crowd nearby avenues and shutting down traffic at the height of the evening rush hour.
Police used batons to push back some protesters at the front of the march attended by an estimated 6,000 people as tempers flared, and some demonstrators broke down barricades and threw rocks and bottles toward authorities.
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Angry Madrid marchers who got as close as they could to Parliament, 250 meters (yards) away, yelled "Get out!, Get out! They don't represent us! Fire them!"
"The only solution is that we should put everyone in Parliament out on the street so they know what it's like," said Maria Pilar Lopez, a 60-year-old government secretary.
Lopez and others called for fresh elections, claiming the government's hard-hitting austerity measures are proof that the ruling Popular Party misled voters when it won power last November in a landslide.
"Let us in, we want to evict you," protesters chanted outside parliament. Evictions have soared in Spain as thousands of people have defaulted on bank loans.
Demonstrators said they were angry that the state has poured funds into crumbled banks while it is cutting social benefits.
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Half-year deficit data indicate national accounts are already on a slope that will drive Spain into a bailout. The deficit to end-June stands at over 4.3 percent of gross domestic product, including transfers to bailed out banks, making meeting the 6.3 percent target by the end of the year almost impossible.
The Obama administration has now taken an even lower road the Bush/Cheney regime when it comes to terrorism and terrorist organizations. US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton is expected to inform Congress that she will be removing Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) from the department's list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO). MEK was designated a terrorist organization in 1997 during the Clinton administration and was one of the reasons for the justification of the Bush invasion of Iraq. MEK has also has been linked to the assassinations of several of Iran's nuclear scientists.
The campaign to bury the MEK's bloody history of bombings and assassinations that killed American businessmen, Iranian politicians and thousands of civilians, and to portray it as a loyal US ally against the Islamic government in Tehran has seen large sums of money directed at three principal targets: members of Congress, Washington lobby groups and influential former officials.
There is a long list of MEK supporters from both sides of the aisle: Democrats Howard Dean, Ed Rendell, Wesley Clark, Bill Richardson, and Lee Hamilton;
Republicans Rudy Giuliani, Fran Townsend, Tom Ridge, Michael Mukasey, ex-FBI director Louis Freeh, Newt Gingrich and Andrew Card. Current Republican Congress members Ted Poe, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the chair of the House of Representatives foreign affairs committee,; Mike Rogers, chairman of the House of Representatives intelligence committee; Dana Rohrabacher, chairman of the foreign affairs committee's oversight subcommittee
Lobbyist groups: DLA Piper; Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld; and DiGenova & Toensing;
Glenn Greenwald, writing at The Guardian, has five lessons to be learned about :the rot and corruption at the heart of America's DC-based political culture":
Lesson One: There is a separate justice system in the US for Muslim Americans.
The past decade has seen numerous "material support" prosecutions of US Muslims for the most trivial and incidental contacts with designated terror groups. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that any Muslim who gets within sneezing distance of such a group is subject to prosecution. Indeed, as I documented last week, many of them have been prosecuted even for core First Amendment activities: political advocacy deemed supportive of such groups. [..]
In sum, there are numerous American Muslims sitting in prison for years for far less substantial interactions with terror groups than this bipartisan group of former officials gave to MEK. This is what New York Times Editorial Page Editor Andrew Rosenthal meant when he wrote back in March that the 9/11 attacks have "led to what's essentially a separate justice system for Muslims". The converse is equally true: America's political elites can engage in the most egregious offenses - torture, illegal eavesdropping, money-driven material support for a terror group - with complete impunity.
Lesson Two: The US government is not opposed to terrorism; it favors it.
The history of the US list of designated terrorist organizations, and its close cousin list of state sponsors of terrorism, is simple: a country or group goes on the list when they use violence to impede US interests, and they are then taken off the list when they start to use exactly the same violence to advance US interests. The terrorist list is not a list of terrorists; it's a list of states and groups which use their power to defy US dictates rather than adhere to them.
Lesson Three: "Terrorism" remains the most meaningless, and thus the most manipulated, term in political discourse.
Terrorism, at least in its applied sense, means little other than: violence used by enemies of the US and its allies. Violence used by the US and its allies (including stateless groups) can never be terrorism, no matter how heinous and criminal.
Lesson Four: Legalized influence-peddling within both parties is what drives DC.
MEK achieved its goal by doing more than merely changing the beneficiaries of its actions from Saddam to the US and Israel. It also found a way - how it did so remains a mystery - to funnel millions of dollars into the bank accounts of key ex-officials from both parties, a bipartisan list of DC lobbyist firms, and several key journalists. In other words, it achieved its policy aims the same way most groups in DC do: by buying influence within both parties, and paying influence-peddlers who parlay their political celebrity into personal riches.
Lesson Five: there is aggression between the US and Iran, but it's generally not from Iran.
Where is the protest from the so-called progressive left who were so opposed to the right wing Republican fetish with a war with Iran? 'It's OK if you're Obama" should not be acceptable.
Despite the Obama administration's poor performance, it appears that President Obama is on his way to a second term. It also appears that the Senate will continue to remain in the hands of the Democrats and now there is speculation that favors the Democrats taking back the House of Representatives.
What has changed? Up with Chris Hayes host Chris Hayes and The Nation's Washington correspondent, John Nichols discuss the status of heavily contested U.S. House and Senate races across the country, and the polls that show a potential uptick for Democrats.
Since we published our initial Senate forecast on Tuesday, Republicans have seen an additional decline in their standing in two major races.
Two polls of Virginia published on Wednesday gave the Democrat, the former Gov. Tim Kaine, leads of 4 and 7 percentage points over the Republican, the former Senator George Allen. [..]
The other problematic state for Republicans is Wisconsin, where their candidate, the former Gov. Tommy Thompson, had once appeared to hold the advantage.
Mr. Thompson's Democratic opponent, Representative Tammy Baldwin, had published an internal poll earlier this week showing her pulling into the lead. [..]
Wednesday also brought bad news for Republicans in Massachusetts, where a fourth consecutive poll showed the Democrat Elizabeth Warren ahead of Senator Scott Brown; in Connecticut, where a poll gave the Democrat Chris Murphy a slight advantage over their candidate, Linda McMahon; and in Florida, where a Fox News poll gave the Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson a 14-point lead.
The Democrats' chances of controlling the Senate have increased to 79 percent in the forecast, up from 70 percent on Tuesday.
Nate has two theories on what has effected the downturn for the GOP:
Theory No. 1: Is Romney a Downballot Drag?
Mr. Romney has not dictated much in the way of detailed programs in these areas, and some of the policy stances that he has articulated are unpopular.
Mr. Romney has also been less able to campaign effectively against an unpopular Democratic initiative, the Democrats' health care bill, because he passed a similar bill as governor of Massachusetts.
Finally, some voters who disapprove of Mr. Obama, but who also have lukewarm feelings toward Mr. Romney, might lean toward voting Democrat for Senate in effort to ensure divided government, especially since Republicans also have control of the House.
Theory No. 2: G.O.P. Conservatism Is Hurting
An alternative hypothesis is that the shift has to do with overall perceptions of the Republican platform.
Nate's last comment in the article was that if this trend continues with the Senate races leaning to Democrats just how vulnerable is the GOP to losing the House? Well here are a couple of articles that discuss just that possibility:
(As) Romney-Ryan lose steam just when they're supposed to be gaining on the White House, Republicans, including House Ohio Congressman and House Speaker John Boehner, show by actions they took last week that maintaining control of the people's chamber may not be the slam dunk they once thought.
Reports surfaced late last week that House Republicans are throwing in $3.2 million to save their majority. Speaker John Boehner, one report said, is in "all-out panic mode," manifested by his initiative to ask his Republican Members to put up $3.2 million from their coffers to save their shaky House majority.
If the Senate can stay in Democratic control, as many pollsters believe it can, and the House gavel leaves Boehner's grip to be wielded by California congresswoman Nancy Pelosi again, President Obama's second term will turn on a dime from being four years of more GOP obstruction to his every policy recommendation, to a term he can double down on, learning from the battlefield of missed first-term opportunities. [..]
Democrats are currently leading in national "generic ballot polls that ask people which party they prefer for House races (without naming candidates), Dylan Matthews at Wonkblog writes, about the fact that has led a forecasters like Princeton's Sam Wang to conclude that, based on past elections, Democrats are favored to retake the House. Wang puts the odds of that occurring at 74 percent.
Conditions through August showed a 2% lead on the generic Congressional ballot for Democrats. As of September 20th, in the wake of the Democratic convention, the lead has widened to 4.0 +/- 2.0%. Although it has yet to be appreciated by pundits, this could well translate to a November loss of the House of Representatives by Republicans. Based on the generic Congressional ballot, the probability of a Democratic takeover is 74% with a median 16-seat majority. Whichever party is in control, the seat margin is headed for being narrower than the current Congress. Like any probability in the 20-80% range, this is a knife-edge situation. This picture may change over the coming six weeks as more information, especially district-level polls, becomes available. [..]
Predicting the House outcome is challenging. First, there is the basic problem that we have to estimate how far opinion will move between now and November. On top of that, there is uncertainty in knowing how the polling measurement - generic Congressional ballot preference - translates to a seat outcome.
Another approach would be to use district-by-district polls and ratings. An estimate like that can be seen from our data partner, Pollster.com. Their House outlook shows retained GOP control, and RealClearPolitics implies the same. However, many of those polls are weeks or months old. My estimate today suggests that in the coming weeks, we might look for district polls to move in the Democrats' direction. This is also an opportunity for a detailed analytical approach, as taken elsewhere, to shine.
Regardless of which party controls the Executive Branch, it is the Congress that can dictate the direction of policies. We will be following these races and trends closely.
The first Congress of the United States approves 12 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and sends them to the states for ratification. The amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, were designed to protect the basic rights of U.S. citizens, guaranteeing the freedom of speech, press, assembly, and exercise of religion; the right to fair legal procedure and to bear arms; and that powers not delegated to the federal government were reserved for the states and the people.
The Bill of Rights is the name by which the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution are known. They were introduced by James Madison to the First United States Congress in 1789 as a series of articles, and came into effect on December 15, 1791, when they had been ratified by three-fourths of the States. An agreement to create the Bill of Rights helped to secure ratification of the Constitution itself. Thomas Jefferson was a supporter of the Bill of Rights.
The Bill of Rights prohibits Congress from making any law respecting any establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, guarantees free speech, free press, free assembly and association and the right to petition government for redress, forbids infringement of "...the right of the people to keep and bear Arms...", and prohibits the federal government from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. In federal criminal cases, it requires indictment by a grand jury for any capital or "infamous crime", guarantees a speedy, public trial with an impartial jury composed of members of the state or judicial district in which the crime occurred, and prohibits double jeopardy. In addition, the Bill of Rights states that "the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people," and reserves all powers not specifically granted to the federal government to the people or the States. Most of these restrictions were later applied to the states by a series of decisions applying the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was ratified in 1868, after the American Civil War.
The question of including a Bill of Rights in the body of the Constitution was discussed at the Philadelphia Convention on September 12, 1787. George Mason "wished the plan [the Constitution] had been prefaced with a Bill of Rights." Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts "concurred in the idea & moved for a Committee to prepare a Bill of Rights." Mr Sherman argued against a Bill of Rights stating that the "State Declarations of Rights are not repealed by this Constitution." Mason then stated "The Laws of the U. S. are to be paramount to State Bills of Rights." The motion was defeated with 10-Nays, 1-Absent, and No-Yeas.
Madison proposed the Bill of Rights while ideological conflict between Federalists and anti-Federalists, dating from the 1787 Philadelphia Convention, threatened the final ratification of the new national Constitution. It largely responded to the Constitution's influential opponents, including prominent Founding Fathers, who argued that the Constitution should not be ratified because it failed to protect the fundamental principles of human liberty. The Bill was influenced by George Mason's 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights, the 1689 English Bill of Rights, works of the Age of Enlightenment pertaining to natural rights, and earlier English political documents such as Magna Carta (1215).
Two other articles were proposed to the States; only the last ten articles were ratified contemporaneously. They correspond to the First through Tenth Amendments to the Constitution. The proposed first Article, dealing with the number and apportionment of U.S. Representatives, never became part of the Constitution. The second Article, limiting the power of Congress to increase the salaries of its members, was ratified two centuries later as the 27th Amendment. Though they are incorporated into Madison's document known as the "Bill of Rights", neither article established protection of a right. For that reason, and also because the term had been applied to the first ten amendments long before the 27th Amendment was ratified, the term "Bill of Rights" in modern U.S. usage means only the ten amendments ratified in 1791.
The Bill of Rights plays a key role in American law and government, and remains a vital symbol of the freedoms and culture of the nation. One of the first fourteen copies of the Bill of Rights is on public display at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.
When you think about Cocktails you generally think about distilled spirits and sufficiently filtered and concentrated they have no taste at all, just a burning sensation as it reacts with your mouth. The 2 most common brands sold are Graves and Everclear.
But that's why mixers were created.
Oddly enough the most frequent thing to mix with neutral spirits is other types of alcohol that have the aromatic impurities we call 'taste'. Blended whiskies, which include almost everything except for craft bourbons, single malt scotches, and some brandies, are put together from different distillations to achieve a particular taste and then balanced with water and neutral spirits to create the desired concentration of alcohol by volume (proof).
Use crappy water, get crappy booze.
Most spirits are sold at between 80 and 100 proof, meaning 40% and 50% alcohol (proof is double the volume) but at those concentrations is too strong in my opinion for proper appreciation and enjoyment. While I encourage sampling it as presented from the bottle (at room temperature and in a snifter), you'll enjoy even the noblest single malt or bourbon better toned down a little. With scotch I order straight up with a side of ice and drop the cubes in one at a time until I have the desired temperature and dilution. Bourbon gets a splash of branch but I leave it pretty strong and chase it with seltzer (no salt). Either way it's for sipping and not pounding back.
If on the other hand you're looking for semi-instant inebriation and unconsiousness you can do far worse than a Boilermaker or its Depth Charge variant.
Use the cheapest, awfullest beer and liquor you have, taste is no object. Natural Ice and Dubra are perfect. Chill your beer as cold as you can without freezing, likewise the booze. For a Boilermaker just pour a shot (or so) right in the beer. With the Depth Charge presentation is everything, so use a clear mug that will hold a pint (yes, slightly more than the 12 ounces in your can, you'll see why in a moment).
Take a fairly heavy clear shot glass and fill it with your liquor, position directly in the center of your beer as close to the surface as you can and bombs away!
In either case open your throat for a shooter. The reason an Ale Horn doesn't have a flat bottom is you're not supposed to put it down! With a Depth Charge be careful not to break your mug when the shot glass returns to the bottom, though all the kool kidz will wrap their lips around it, pull it out hands free, and swab it with their tongue, before planting it on the bar next to the mug.
Oh, and be careful standing up. You're much drunker than you were 30 seconds ago.
Dissatisfaction with the trajectory of the campaign seems highest among Ryan's most ardent backers. They view Romney's campaign as having doubled back to a cautious strategy, avoiding Ryan's trademark big ideas, and hoping President Obama will beat himself.
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Still, there have been unforced errors, such as the one Ryan made last month when he misstated his marathon time in an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt - a misstep that has so become part of Ryan's national profile that it was lampooned in the season premiere of "Saturday Night Live."
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And it's not that Ryan is neglecting to cite the need to focus on the big problems facing the country. Aside from his first week on the trail, during which he barely mentioned his signature plan to overhaul Medicare, he has raised the issue at the majority of his roughly three-dozen campaign stops as GOP vice presidential nominee, including in his appearance on Friday at the AARP's annual summit, at which he received a mixed reception.
Rather, the concern of some of the seven-term Wisconsin congressman's supporters is that nowadays Ryan's discussion of the big issues facing the country offers more specifics on what Obama has done wrong than what Romney and Ryan would do right.
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A Ryan spokesman disputed the notion that the campaign has not delivered on its promise of honing in on the big ideas, noting that Ryan frequently focuses in interviews as well as in his campaign-trail remarks on Medicare, tax reform and balancing the budget.
"Only one ticket has had the courage to talk about solutions to the big challenges facing America," spokesman Brendan Buck said. "Not only has Paul Ryan championed the Romney plan to save and strengthen Medicare - he's done it in front of Florida seniors and at the AARP. We are running on bold solutions - made even bolder compared to the pettiness of President Obama's campaign."
When you have a fire in an aircraft, there's no place to go, exactly, there's no - and you can't find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don't open. I don't know why they don't do that. It's a real problem.- Mitt Romney
But he isn't the only one who dismisses the concerns of his supporters. Barack Obama was elected in large part by people who wanted real changes from the Bush government. They wanted an end to wars, restoration of civil liberties, equality for LGBT people, strenuous regulation and law enforcement directed at the criminals on Wall Street, and economic fairness through support for homeowners and workers. With the notable exception of grudging support for marriage equality and equality in the ranks of the armed forces, Obama and the Democratic Party turned their backs on their supporters. It is impossible to find a single policy suggested by anyone from Paul Krugman to whatever is left of the left that made its way into any piece of actual legislation. No one from the Wall Street criminal class has been investigated, let alone prosecuted.
It was apparent by Fall 2009 that the Democrats believed what the Republicans were saying: America is a Center-Right nation. Time after time, Obama and the Democrats proposed legislation that only a Republican could love, then bargained further to the right to pick up votes from the most conservative Democrats and the least conservative Republicans. Time after time the resulting legislation was nearly useless when action was taken at all. Unions and the hard-working people they represent were probably the single greatest contributor to the Obama victory. They got slapped in the face. The stimulus was too small. Dodd-Frank relied on captured agencies to create rules. Obamacare threw millions of Americans into the maws of the private insurance companies. Every time I hear a Democrat brag on some piece of legislation, I think of the lost possibilities.
The nation was hungry for leadership, starving for action to make things better, desperate for change, and we got a President who was unwilling to push for anything that would actually change the status quo.
Ultimately, both Romney and Obama disrespect their constituents. Romney openly loathes the people he needs, and they know it. They may vote for him, but they know that they will suffer for it.
Obama is more circumspect in public, but look at the people he hires: Rahm Emmanuel who openly loathes the left, and Tim Geithner, who lives to serve Wall Street at any cost, like foaming the runway for bank foreclosures with the lives of millions of homeowners. Obama refuses even to talk to anyone who questions conventional wisdom, which is the nature of the intellectual activity of the left. It's as if we professional leftists don't exist for him, in exactly the same way the 47% don't really exist for Romney.
This is no way to run a country. Ideas matter, policies matter, evidence matters. In a room full of smart people, the smartest person is the room. Romney despises his supporters, and will fill the room with silly people like those at his secret fund-raiser. So far, Obama has refused to listen to the room. He thinks he knows we are a center-right nation and that he can do nothing to change that, that he cannot exercise leadership. I hope that changes if he wins a second term.
Leadership means that the President listens to the room, clarifies thinking and helps everyone see the problems and the possible solutions. When that doesn't happen, we are governed by a tiny group of jerks, responsible only to their moneymen and reliant on public relations tricks to pacify the masses. That will work until it doesn't.
One of the most frustrating things about having a two party political system, especially during the heat of an election, is that many important points get ignored if the don't fit the partisan dynamic. One of the best examples I feel is the debate about Obama's record on the economy.
The only arguments most people hear against Obama's record comes from Republicans, but their criticisms are normally incoherent attacks based on fantasies about confidence and government crowding out the private sector. Most prominent figures who believe in Keynesian economics are at this moment defending Obama poor record mainly because it is at least noticeably less terrible than any proposal from Mitt Romney.
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People trying to defend Obama record from the left will often claim Obama didn't try to get more stimulus only because Obama knew he wouldn't be able to get the votes in the Senate. Yet here are things Obama could have done for the economy without Congress but he choose not to do them. Given that Obama didn't even try to spend all the potential money for stimulus he had at his disposal, it is safe to assume the real reason Obama didn't seek more stimulus money for Congress was simply because he mistakenly believed the economy didn't need it.
The behavior and statements of the administration clearly show that they kept underestimating the size of the economy problem for years.
While Bill Clinton is defending Obama by claiming no president could have magically turned the economy to full employment, a honest look at the record would indicate another president could have done a better job even with the constraints Obama faced. Sadly though this critic of Obama's record from the left is almost completely absent. Careful examinations of Obama's failing are being completely overshadowed by how misguided Mitt Romney policy ideas are.
WikiLeaks Mirror Sites
Welcome to the 
Thomas Young was one of the first to attempt decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphs, basing his own work on the investigations of Swedish diplomat Akerblad, who built up a demotic alphabet of 29 letters (15 turned out to be correct) and translated all personal names and other words in the Demotic part of the Rosetta Stone in 1802. Akerblad however, wrongly believed that demotic was entirely phonetic or alphabetic. Young thought the same, and by 1814 he had completely translated the enchorial (which Champollion labeled Demotic as it is called today) text of the Rosetta Stone (he had a list with 86 demotic words). Young then studied the hieroglyphic alphabet and made some progress but failed to recognise that demotic and hieroglyphic texts were paraphrases and not simple translations. In 1823 he published an Account of the Recent Discoveries in Hieroglyphic Literature and Egyptian Antiquities. Some of Young's conclusions appeared in the famous article Egypt he wrote for the 1818 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.
The first Congress of the United States approves 12 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and sends them to the states for ratification. The amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, were designed to protect the basic rights of U.S. citizens, guaranteeing the freedom of speech, press, assembly, and exercise of religion; the right to fair legal procedure and to bear arms; and that powers not delegated to the federal government were reserved for the states and the people.
