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At The Daily News Source, the privacy of our visitors is of extreme importance to us (See this article to learn more about Privacy Policies.). This privacy policy document outlines the types of personal information is received and collected by The Daily News Source and how it is used.
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Derek Wallbank and Kasia Klimasinska bloomberg.com February 10, 2014
Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew urged Congress to raise the debt ceiling as soon as possible, saying U.S. borrowing authority may not last past Feb. 27.
Extraordinary measures begun by the Treasury to remain under the debt limit “are likely to be exhausted in less than three weeks,” Lew said yesterday in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s schedule for votes for next week includes possible consideration of legislation related to the debt limit. No bill has been introduced.
It was the final night of Senate Finance Committee consideration of President Barack Obama’s stimulus package, when party leaders turned to Ron Wyden.
The Oregon Democrat, then a junior panel member, had been pushing for years to create a new type of bond to help spur private investment in infrastructure. He had struggled to find an audience for the idea, though, so much so that he was startled when colleagues began asking just how much investment might result.
Wyden, a one-time backbencher with a penchant for big ideas, is now poised to take over the Senate’s most powerful committee. It will instantly vault him into the ranks of the chamber’s most influential, giving him a major say over taxes, health care, trade and programs like those Build America Bonds that made its way into Obama’s stimulus plan.
Wyden, who will officially become Finance chairman as soon as Tuesday, will confront a raft of unfinished business: a package of expired tax breaks, looming cuts in Medicare payments to doctors, a trade deal his predecessor Max Baucus worked out with Republicans, and a highway trust fund projected to run dry as soon as this year, among the biggest.
Wyden’s rapid ascent has left even those close to him a little dazed.
“I still haven’t wrapped my mind around Ron Wyden chairing Finance,” said Jennifer Hoelzer, a former aide.
Just a few years ago, he was the committee’s No. 7 Democrat out of 13, on a panel where seniority is trump, turnover is rare and lawmakers could easily wait decades for a chance at the gavel. But then Democrats on the panel began falling away.
Blanche Lincoln was defeated. Then Kent Conrad retired. Jeff Bingaman called it quits. Then, over the course of a little more than a year, John Kerry was named Secretary of State, Jay Rockefeller announced his retirement and Chairman Max Baucus was named ambassador to China.
Suddenly, the job was his.
There have been so many retirements that, when the 114th Congress opens in 2015, Wyden is in line to become the seventh-most senior Democrat in the Senate — an old bull who’s still in his mid-sixties.
Democrats, who often clashed with Baucus, are excited to have a chairman from a reliably blue state, aides said, even if Wyden sometimes irritates liberals with his dealmaking with Republicans. Republicans see hope in that sometimes idiosyncratic bipartisanship.
“He’s one of the most sensible Democrats,” said Grover Norquist, the anti-tax advocate. He joked, “while there probably shouldn’t be any Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee, if you have to have one, Ron Wyden would be a fine choice.”
He brings a manic wonkiness to the panel — Wyden is not an amendment-to-the-amendment kind of guy.
He has a comprehensive tax reform plan. He had a plan, proposed before Obama was elected, to slash the ranks of the uninsured. A harsh critic of the administration’s NSA policies, he has a surveillance reform bill with Rand Paul. He has a campaign finance bill with Lisa Murkowski, an education bill with Marco Rubio, a white paper on Medicare’s long-term costs with Paul Ryan. He has a second Medicare proposal, with Johnny Isakson, dealing with beneficiaries with multiple chronic conditions.
The breadth of his proposals is unusual for someone who doesn’t already run the relevant committee, with the platoon of staffers, big budget and easy access to the Joint Committee on Taxation that comes with it, said former Democratic Senator Kent Conrad.
“If you think about what he’s done, it’s really quite remarkable,” said Conrad.
Wyden had never headed a full committee until last year, when he took over the Energy and Natural Resources panel. He’s giving up that post to run Finance.
Wyden in many ways contrasts the ever-cautious Baucus, who resigned his seat last week to become ambassador. Baucus, who had pushed for tax reform, did not put out any proposals until after he announced his retirement from the Senate and even then they were labeled “staff drafts.” The often professorial Wyden — critics say he can be a know-it-all — has been willing to endorse controversial ideas, even when it’s clear they’re going nowhere.
He’s proposed taxing the health care benefits that employers provide their workers, something that earned him the enmity of unions; Wyden would have replaced the health care tax exclusion employers get with a deduction for individuals, with the goal of breaking the link between having a job and having health care coverage.
Eurozone exit talk first started with “Grexit” (Greece exit). It progressed to “Spexit” (Spain exit), and now talk centers on “Nexit” (Netherlands exit).
Before anyone else claims the names, let me propose “Frexit” and “Fexit” (France exit) as well as “Sexit” a sexy sounding alternative for Spain Exit.
So far the “exit” scorecard remains on zero, but eventual exits are likely. No one can be assured of the timing or catalyst, but eurosceptcism is on the rise in a huge way.
Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right Freedom Party (PVV) that is leading in Dutch polls for May’s European parliament elections, presented a study on Thursday that claims the Netherlands would be better off if it left the EU and he urged voters to support his call for “Nexit”.
The study, by the consultancy Capital Economics, claims the Dutch economy would quickly emerge from its sluggishness to brisk growth, generating billions of euros – or new Dutch guilders – in fresh revenues for debt-laden households.
Mr Wilders is one of a handful of populist leaders in the EU – including Marine Le Pen in France; Nigel Farage in Britain and Alexis Tsipras in Greece – whose sharp anti-Brussels rhetoric has helped push them into either first or second place in public opinion polls ahead of May’s Europe-wide vote.
The Netherlands is one of the founding members of the EU, and has long been seen as a core supporter of a more integrated Europe. Yet public opinion polls reveal growing support across the country for a renegotiation of powers with Brussels over a number of policy areas, including access to domestic welfare for other EU citizens.
Mark Rutte, Dutch prime minister, in June presented a list of 54 competencies that should remain with national governments rather than be given to the EU, a plan many in Brussels have viewed as the Liberal premier’s attempt to fend off the challenge from Mr Wilders.
“Nexit means that we no longer have to pay billions to Brussels and weak southern European countries,” added Mr Wilders. “We can save billions by liberating ourselves from EU regulations. We can end the mass immigration and stop paying welfare checks to, for instance, Romanians and Bulgarians.”
Mark Pragnell, one of the authors of Capital Economics’ report, said the Netherlands would be significantly richer if it left the EU and the single currency, despite a short period of volatility.
Capital Economics, a London-based economic research firm, has become a leading voice for eurozone break-up, last year winning a £250,000 prize from a British think-tank for its proposal on how to end the single currency.
Wilders is after the protest vote, and he will get it – just like Marine Le Pen’s National Front and the UK Independence Party of Nigel Farage. All three movements have an excellent chance of topping the polls or at least upsetting the political apple cart in their respective countries.
Here lies the significance of Wilders’s call for “Nexit” – or Dutch exit from the EU. As an economic argument, it does not stand up at all: the Netherlands is so deeply integrated into the eurozone and the EU single market that Nexit makes no more sense than “Brexit” for the UK or “Grexit” for Greece.
Bias, Irony, and One Size Fits All Silliness
One can stop reading right there understanding full well the extreme bias in what Rachman wrote. Given that Rachman is a columnist and not a news reporter, bias is to be expected.
But please note the extreme irony in his statement: Nexit makes no more sense than “Brexit” for the UK.
The fact of the matter is that “Brexit” happens to make perfect sense of the UK.
There is not going to be a two-speed EU with some countries in the Eurozone and others not. One is going to be either in or out. Sitting on the fence forever won’t happen. Neither French president Francois Hollande nor the UK liberals will allow that.
The moment the UK fully commits to the eurozone, all kinds of financial stupidities are bound to happen, including financial transaction taxes that are bound to cripple London. Moreover, the UK would be subject to the “one size fits Germany” interest rate policy of the EU.
A valid (albeit clearly out of context) interpretation of Rachman’s statement is as follows:”Nexit makes sense, because Brexit makes perfect sense“.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Nissan lifts U.S. output of electric Leaf as sales rise http://s1.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20140114&t=2&i=829469881&w=580&fh=&fw=&ll=&pl=&r=CBREA0D1ID300
DETROITTue Jan 14, 2014 2:34pm EST
A Nissan Motor logo is seen at the company’s global headquarters in Yokohama, south of Tokyo April 7, 2010.
Credit: Reuters/Issei Kato
DETROIT (Reuters) – Nissan Motor Co Ltd (7201.T) has lifted U.S. production of its all-electric Leaf by about 50 percent to 3,000 units a month to meet growing demand for the car, the head of the Japanese automaker’s North American operations said on Tuesday.
Jose Munoz said the Leaf logged record sales of 2,500 units in December and was now the best-selling car in some dealerships in Atlanta, where the government is helping promote the technology, outpacing the Altima sedan.
“This car somehow some years ago was not so appealing in terms of the business for the dealers,” Munoz told a group of reporters at the Detroit auto show. “Now the dealers are very positive, they are making business, they are selling cars.”
The pickup in sales was driven in large part by Nissan’s decision to cut its price by more than $ 6,000 to $ 29,650 at the beginning of last year after a shift in production of the model to the United States allowed it to lower manufacturing costs.
Demand for electric vehicles has generally failed to live up to expectations set when models like the Leaf and General Motors Co’s (GM.N) gasoline-electric hybrid Volt were being developed.
Carlos Ghosn, the CEO of Nissan and its French partner Renault SA (RENA.PA), recently pushed back by two to three years an initial target to sell a combined 1.5 million vehicles by March 2017.
While volumes are still at relatively low levels for a production car — sales more than doubled last year to above 22,000 in the U.S. market — Munoz said momentum was building.
One factor is the increase in charging stations in Atlanta and cities such as Seattle and San Francisco on the West Coast. There are currently 554 quick-charging stations, and more than 15,000 slower “level 2″ public charging stations across the U.S., Nissan estimates.
“In those areas where we have been able to work together with the government to develop the infrastructure is where we are seeing that the vehicle is really selling well,” Munoz said.
The Leaf’s customer base is also evolving. While at first most Leaf buyers were green enthusiasts, increasingly customers focused on the potential cost benefits of owning an electric car are showing up at its dealerships, Munoz said.
As a result, it has recently increased prices on some versions of the Leaf, Munoz said.
Nissan produces the Leaf at its Smyrna, Tennessee plant.
(Reporting by Nathan Layne; editing by Andrew Hay)
What a difference a year can make in the Middle East.
Credit: Haaretz for video clip.
Just 12 months ago, Iran was facing some daunting prospects: Painful western economic and financial sanctions, the potential downfall of its key Arab Syrian ally, and a resurgence in anti-Shia and anti-Iran rhetoric spurred on by Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) neighbours seeking to undermine Iranian influence in the region.
But as 2014 kicks off, the tables have turned rather dramatically:
International consensus is starting to gather behind Iran’s Syrian ally and against its Saudi Arabian adversary, tipping the regional balance of power in Tehran’s favour.
Moreover, the Islamic Republic is now widely seen as holding key levers in the resolution of conflicts from Lebanon to Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen and beyond, placing Iran at the table with global powers who need its regional clout quite suddenly.
Diminished US influence in, and commitment to, the Middle East has peeled the constraints off Iran, which appears keen to assume a more prominent regional role.
Iran has gained critical support from UN Security Council permanent members Russia and China, also eager to end the dismal era of American hegemony in the Mideast.
Both states are committed to pushing a new global political and economic agenda based on multilateralism, and with Iran and Iraq set to becoming the Persian Gulf’s new energy hub, Moscow – and especially Beijing – are keen to protect those interests.
While 2014 is already looking much brighter for Iran, there are some significant dangers that will not make this an easy ride.
The Salafist Threat
For starters, Shia Iran – and its multi-sect regional allies – is a huge target for sectarian Salafist militants and Al Qaeda wannabes throughout the Levant and the Gulf.
Corridors of political violence have opened up from Lebanon to Iraq, threatening to destabilise the entire region unless there is a dedicated global effort to roll back Sunni extremism.
Iran is taking the regional lead in tackling this problem, placing the country in direct confrontation with longtime foe, Saudi Arabia. This battle is viewed as an existential one for the now boldly sectarian Riyadh, which is committing serious money and clout to thwart Iran’s ascendency, overthrow Syria’s government, destabilise Iraq and destroy Lebanese resistance group and close Iranian ally, Hezbollah.
Oddly enough, Iran and its allies will gain support in this fight from their adversaries in the West. The Salafist threat has grown too strong, its destabilising potential too obvious, and the threat of jihadism spreading westward too likely – and so there is a noticeable western narrative building against Saudi Arabia and its sponsorship of radicalism and militancy.
While Iran and its allies will lead the battle from within the region, with some key intelligence and support coming from new western partners, these are uneasy alliances with divergent interests…it will not be a smooth ride.
Zarif sought to calm Arab fears that a nuclear deal would come at their expense.
The Iranians are seasoned pros in the art of diplomacy, however, and have always chosen the soft power route over a military alternative, so we can count on some fights being won at the negotiating table instead of the battlefield.
Just recently, when the Saudis pushed their GCC partners to form a union to strengthen their hand in the Persian Gulf, it was Iran’s proactive diplomacy that threw a wrench in the works. Oman, which had quietly been courted by Iranians, refused to participate, and the UAE expressed disinterest too.
Call it a divide-and-rule strategy of sorts, if you will. But as the Iranian negotiating team headed to Geneva in November to iron out details of a nuclear deal, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif penned an unusual op-ed in leading Saudi paper Asharq al-Awsat entitled “Our Neighbors Are Our Priority”.
This remarkable commentary sought to assuage the concern of Arab neighbors that an impending nuclear deal would be “pursued at their expense” – and urged Gulf nations against adopting a “zero sum mentality” over this historic rapprochement.Shuttle diplomacy involving several Persian Gulf states ensued, and was undoubtedly pivotal in alleviating concerns about Iranian “intentions” in the region.
Most importantly, during these visits, Tehran managed to dissuade several GCC states from following the confrontational Saudi lead.
Nuclear Deal Has Pitfalls
Once the euphoria over the historic Geneva nuclear deal subsided, the myriad obstructions that could derail a final agreement became fairly obvious.
First, there are potential spoilers everywhere: the US Congress, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iranian skeptics, even France – vested interests in scuttling a deal abound.
Second, any series of events in the Middle East could change the calculations that brought the various parties to the negotiating table. Third, there will be numerous points along the path to a final agreement when the interest of one party or another will shift because of domestic or foreign policy considerations. Fourth, mistrust between the parties is high and can hamper progress indefinitely over mechanisms of implementation.
The forecast is not all bleak, however, particularly not for Iran. The Islamic Republic has already essentially gained recognition of its right to enrich uranium at 3.5 per cent levels, which is what it has always sought. Inside Iran, it is no secret that building new nuclear facilities, jacking up the number of centrifuges, and upping enrichment levels to 20 per cent were all very helpful negotiating tools in reaching this outcome.
And that genie can’t be put back in its bottle.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov revealed that the US negotiation team had actually circulated a draft agreement that had been amended in response to Frances demands before Iran and the other world powers even had a chance to study them. In Foreign Minister Lavrovs own words, literally at the last moment, when we were about to leave Geneva. Credit: UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras
Just as important for the Iranians is why this deal was done. A year ago, there was no real P3 interest in resolving the Iranian nuclear issue – just in slapping on more unilateral sanctions to affect “behavior change” in the Islamic Republic.
Over the past year, the Russians, Chinese and their BRICS partners have drawn red lines around further punitive Iran sanctions, thwarting US, UK and French (P3) attempts to up the ante.
But the reason the P3 showed up in Geneva, finally ready to “do a deal” with Iran, had little to do with nukes and centrifuges. The nuclear agreement was struck because the West had lost control over its Mideast agenda – and Iran was increasingly looking like the only regional state that could offer up solutions.
Iran as a regional power
The Middle East is suddenly falling apart at the seams.
Foreign-backed regime-change operations in Syria and Libya have spawned a jihadist revival, with armed ideological fighters traversing borders with impunity and tearing at the territorial integrity and sovereignty of states.
The US cannot rely on its old allies in the region – Egypt is in turmoil; the Saudis, Qataris and Turks, with their various Islamist alliances, hidden agendas and support for militants are no longer trusted; Israel has become marginalised and cannot play in any Arab theater for fear of backlashes. Washington needed a new regional partner – even if a foe – that shared the mutual goal of rolling back extremism and re-establishing stability in the key Levant and Persian Gulf areas.
So, no – Geneva did not happen because of the incoming “moderate” Iranian president, though he undoubtedly helped make it an easier sell to western audiences. Geneva took place because of the Salafist/jihadist threat – and Iran’s unique position to help troubleshoot the problem.
There is always the danger – as the year progresses – that as the threat of militancy diminishes on the ground, the P3 will scuttle some Iranian gains to level the playing field once more.
It’s an old tactic to keep adversaries in check, and it is likely to be put back into play at various intervals.Will this nuclear deal reach its intended goals in the one year allocated to finalize a comprehensive agreement? Unlikely, at this point, I suspect. There are too many divergent interests between the P3 and Iran still.
Washington has little incentive to remove all sanctions and let Iran off the hook for launching an indigenous nuclear programme and pursuing independent policies. That would require expending vital domestic political capital at a time when foreign policy is of little importance to Americans more concerned with jobs, healthcare, economy.
But they may intermittently roll back further sanctions, which is all Iran’s current and potential trading partners need to start the process of bypassing unilateral sanctions altogether.
The sanctions regime will not hold once that dam is broken – even collectively, the US and EU do not have the same clout they once enjoyed to dictate terms in a fast-changing global economy where every penny counts.
The US has spent three decades building up the “mad mullah” and “dangerous Iranian nuclear weapons” narratives – it will be extremely difficult to reverse that storyline and remove all punitive sanctions against Iran in the one short year allotted in the Geneva deal. Signs that things are on track for a final agreement? Watch for clear and drastic narrative changes favoring the Islamic Republic.
It is more likely that the agreements struck during and after Geneva will simply continue to be extended indefinitely, with perhaps some minor revisions and additions that suit the various parties. Only a huge “game-changer” is going to get us to a final agreement.
The West will look to “contain” Iran’s influence in a different way than in the past, but today Iran also has plenty of tools to reciprocate in areas important to the P3 – in the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and Lebanon – and it will employ these cards for gain anytime the West decides to make things difficult for Iran.
In this, the two sides are well-matched, with Iran having a slight advantage of the home court and some new support from rising powers.
Right now, tentative, positive steps continue to be made behind the scenes in areas where P3 and Iranian goals converge. The Geneva “deal” was only a Joint Plan of Action, and an actual agreement has not yet been put into play.
Both sides confirm that the bilateral and multilateral meetings now taking place are ironing out some key mechanisms and details, and all parties currently expect to finalise the implementation plan shortly.
Then the clock starts ticking.
This is a big year for Iran. In many ways, the Islamic Republic has already achieved several long-held goals: recognition of its position as a regional power and its policy independence, and recognition of its inalienable right to a peaceful nuclear programme.
Iran kicks off 2014 playing a much larger regional and international role, but does so facing the biggest threat to its national security since the Iran-Iraq war. One thing worth remembering this year: Iran plays the “long game” where others are impatient for quick results and rewards.
Thirty-odd years after being sidetracked in the world of international politics, the Islamic Republic has stepped back in, at the top of their game.
This is one country to bet on.
Sharmine Narwani is a writer and political analyst covering the Middle East. She has a Master of International Affairs degree from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs in both journalism and Mideast studies. She is a columnist at Alakhbar English. You can follow her on twitter @snarwani.
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A trio of deadly bombings has focused new attention on Chechen warlord Doku Umarov, who has claimed responsibility for a wave of similar attacks in the name of Islam and vowed to stop the Sochi Games.
Joke Headline of the Day: "Pending Home Sales Rise"; Five Housing Headwinds https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_JXM98EicGnzOz1Il6Mq6CUZhB1cPfqQTajJKoiof2L7c2LkqBPYkFW9w6x7YqkV3FmhpTMRvoTrLY3iaXxVd6c6bH9i8jbr0nbi_p6oFAjwa7jZKsjXUHr90Tq0jI0BFNasWBksbOlo/s400/Pending+Home+Sales.png
I was perusing online stories about today’s release of pending homes sales data from the National Association of Realtors. Here are a few sample headlines.
It took about one second to understand the discrepancy.
All but the ZeroHedge headline (not necessarily the articles) ignored the NAR statement (see first link) “The Pending Home Sales Index,* a forward-looking indicator based on contract signings, inched up 0.2 percent to 101.7 in November from a downwardly revised 101.5 in October, but is 1.6 percent below November 2012 when it was 103.3.“
ZeroHedge has a chart that shows just that.
Pending Home Sales Year-Over-Year
It’s kind of easy for sales to be up when the previous month was revised lower. But how much lower? The NAR did not even say. Let’s take a look at monthly NAR reports to find out.
November 25 NAR: October Pending Home Sales Down Again, but Expected to Level Out: The Pending Home Sales Index,* a forward-looking indicator based on contract signings, slipped 0.6 percent to 102.1 in October from an upwardly revised 102.7 in September, and is 1.6 percent below October 2012 when it was 103.8. The index is at the lowest level since December 2012 when it was 101.3; the data reflect contracts but not closings.
October 28 NAR: Pending Home Sales Continue Slide in September: The Pending Home Sales Index,* a forward-looking indicator based on contract signings, fell 5.6 percent to 101.6 in September from a downwardly revised 107.6 in August, and is 1.2 percent below September 2012 when it was 102.8. The index is at the lowest level since December 2012 when it was 101.3; the data reflect contracts but not closings.
September 26 NAR: Pending Home Sales Decline in August: The Pending Home Sales Index,* a forward-looking indicator based on contract signings, eased 1.6 percent to 107.7 in August from a downwardly revised 109.4 in July, but remains 5.8 percent above August 2012 when it was 101.8; the data reflect contracts but not closings. Pending sales have been above year-ago levels for the past 28 months.
August 28 NAR: July Pending Home Sales Slip: The Pending Home Sales Index,* a forward-looking indicator based on contract signings, declined 1.3 percent to 109.5 in July from 110.9 in June, but is 6.7 percent above July 2012 when it was 102.6; the data reflect contracts but not closings. Pending sales have stayed above year-ago levels for the past 27 months.
Note the October data (released November 25) showed the pending home sales index slipped a reported 0.6 percent to 102.1.
“Pending Home Sales Rise”
Last Month: 102.1
This Month: 101.7
Result: Rise of 0.2
With all this revisionist history, these month-over-month comparisons seem rather meaningless. The chart posted by ZeroHedge shows the real story.
Lawrence Nun, the NAR cheerleader had this to say “We may have reached a cyclical low because the positive fundamentals of job creation and household formation are likely to foster a fairly stable level of contract activity in 2014“. Five Housing Headwinds
Prices Up (Housing Less Affordable)
Interest Rates Up (Housing Less Affordable)
Insufficient Wage Growth (Housing Less Affordable)
Household Formation Poor (Lack of Buyers)
Poor Job Growth (Lack of Buyers)
I suggest there is absolutely nothing that suggests a cyclical low. The recovery has been fueled by excessively low rates, that are now rising sharply.
TREASURIES-U.S. bonds rise; light buyside bid for 3-month bills http://currenteconomictrendsandnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/d4041__p-89EKCgBk8MZdE.gif
Mon Nov 18, 2013 1:16pm EST
* Record highs on Wall Street restrain gains for safe-haven debt
* Lightest buyside demand for 3-month bill auction since July
* Three-month bills to mature after Feb. 7 debt ceiling mark
* Retail sales, consumer price, home sales data due on Wednesday
By Ellen Freilich
NEW YORK, Nov 18 (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury debt prices rose on Monday, supported by the prospect of “easy” monetary policy, but gains were limited by investors’ preference for riskier assets.
U.S. stocks advanced as the Dow and the S&P 500 climbed to record highs, reacting to prospects for continued economic stimulus from the Federal Reserve.
Continued reaction to comments from the likely next Fed Chairperson Janet Yellen drove the Treasury market’s gains, said Kevin Giddis, head of fixed income capital markets head at Raymond James.
Better buying in the middle of the maturity curve from international real money accounts and curve flattening trades from various accounts were two features of the trading, said Thomas di Galoma, co-head of fixed income rates at ED&F Man Capital in New York.
THREE-MONTH TREASURY BILL AUCTION
The Treasury’s weekly sales of three- and six-month bills resulted in the lightest buyside demand since July for three-month bills, said Stone & McCarthy Research Associates analyst Cathy Guo.
The six-month bills drew a better bid than the three-month bills.
“The maturity date of the three-month bills in late February may have something to do with it, but investors will be cautious with front-end investments around the time that the debt ceiling is reinstated,” said Thomas Simons, vice president and money market economist at Jefferies in New York.
As of now, the Treasury is allowed to issue as much debt as needed through Feb. 7. At that point, Congress must raise the debt limit to let the Treasury increase the total amount of official borrowing.
The benchmark 10-year Treasury note rose 7/32, leaving its yield at 2.69 percent.
Absent fresh economic data, there was little besides the backdrop of monetary accommodation and the lure of riskier assets to guide the U.S. Treasury market on Monday.
Wednesday is the first day of the week offering a basket of fresh economic data. Figures on October retail sales, consumer prices, and home sales are due that day.
“Wednesday is when the fireworks could begin: Retail sales, the consumer price index, existing home sales and minutes from the October 29-30 Fed policy meeting could make trading U.S. government securities quite interesting,” Giddis said.
The 30-year bond rose 15/32 in price at 99-19/32 for a yield of 3.77 percent.
Journalism awards are named after I.F. Stone today, but major newspapers shunned him in his prime
A crisis in journalism lasted from the 1890s until the 1920s. Party-driven journalism had disintegrated, the increasingly lucrative and powerful newspaper magnates ruled their independent empires and exercised considerable political power, and the pursuit of profit sometimes led to an incredible, even appalling, journalism. Mounting public anger and dissatisfaction with the journalism of this era produced what became the first great existential crisis for journalism.
The problem at its core was that a relatively small number of very powerful newspaper owners dominated their communities and states, and a handful of them had national empires. Market economics was pushing toward more concentration and ever less competition. As even the publisher of the Scripps-owned Detroit News argued, in private, in 1913, the corrosive influence of commercial ownership and the pursuit of profit were such that the rational democratic solution would be to have municipal ownership of newspapers.
In view of the explicitly political nature of newspapers in American history, this was not as absurd a notion as it may appear today. Scripps, always the most working-class-oriented of the major chains, even launched an ad-less daily newspaper in the 1910s, because it saw how commercialism undermined the integrity of the news.
By 1912, three of the four candidates for president—Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt and Eugene Debs, all but President William Howard Taft—made the irresponsibility and corruption of the daily press a theme of their campaigns. The world of newspapers had turned upside down in three decades.
The major newspaper owners were able to repel any serious threat to their survival, and to do so, they promoted a new sense of journalism, one that saw the press as independent of politics, neutral in stance, and there to provide the facts necessary for citizens to understand the world and participate effectively as citizens. Put crudely, publishers gave up their direct personal control over news content that had been the hallmark of American journalism to create a product that would have legitimacy and allow the increasingly monopolistic commercial system, already generating lovely profits, to remain in place.
The more visionary owners, like Joseph Pulitzer, argued that journalists needed to be educated at universities, and that there needed to be a “Chinese Wall” between the newsroom and the business offices. In this way, readers could trust that they were getting straight news that was not playing favorites for owners, advertisers, politicians, or the editors and reporters themselves.
Joseph Pulitzer with copies of his newspapers
There were no schools of journalism in 1900; by the 1920s, nearly all of the major schools had been established across the nation. In 1922, the American Society of Newspaper Editors was established and formally adopted its professional code of ethics for reporters forthwith.
For press owners, professionalism was the solution to their problem. As Edward Scripps (Richard Kaplan, Politics and the American Press) explained it, once readers “did not care what the editor’s views were…when it came to news, one paper was as good as a dozen.” If trained journalists were striving to present an objective report, monopoly would no longer be a pressing concern. Moreover, all attention to understanding news coverage would focus on editors and reporters as the decisive players; publishers and advertisers would drift into the background.
This was a striking shift in American journalism. For the first century of the republic, the vast majority of papers were owned and edited by the same person and the newspaper reflected the owner’s partisan viewpoint. Knowing the owner meant knowing the paper. Americans today often regard independent, nonpartisan, factually accurate reporting conducted by commercial enterprises as the ideal form of democratic journalism, for understandable reasons. But accomplishing such a system without having significant problems proved to be impossible.
Scarce resources needed to be deployed, and some topics would therefore receive coverage and others would not. There was no neutral value-free code or algorithm that could make that decision; it would, in the end, be determined by values. And the process of generating professional journalism was done under commercial auspices, where the commitment to professional standards was tempered by commercial considerations. This is not to say that some forms of news cannot be more neutral than others, only that all news has a set of values and assumptions that drive it and determine the broad contours of what is covered, how it is covered, and what is not covered.
The values that would drive professional journalism were determined and occasionally fought over by publishers, editors and journalists for the first half of the 20th century. There was a strong reform impulse, attached to the Progressive Era and muckraking, which believed journalism should “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.” This was nonpartisan journalism, and it held politicians of all parties to the same standard, but it was hardly value free.
This type of journalism was embraced by the Newspaper Guild (the union for reporters) when it was founded in the 1930s. To protect the integrity of the news, leading elements of the guild wanted to effectively prohibit owners and advertisers from having any influence over the newsroom.
Some publishers embraced the spirit of the reform approach—if not their formal banishment from controlling their newsrooms—but the vast majority found the notion of a truly independent journalism far too controversial and adversarial toward the power structure, of which they were most indubitably a part. The professional journalism that emerged in the 1920s and crystallized by midcentury moved decisively in an establishment direction, where it remains to this day.
To take the controversy away from story selection, and to maintain neutrality, political coverage was based primarily on what people in power—official sources—said and did. When they debated an issue, or when they had no particular interest in an issue, it was fair game for journalism. When they agreed on an issue, it was considered inappropriate and “ideological” for a journalist to raise questions challenging the elite consensus, except on the rarest of occasions—as, for instance, when a handful of southern editors such as Hazel Brannon Smith questioned the segregationist consensus in states such as Mississippi.
We remember dissenting and dissident editors such as Smith not only because of their courage, but also because of their rarity. For the most part, however, a premium was placed on achieving factual accuracy and on not tilting the coverage toward challenging the powerful and questioning the basic infrastructure of an often corrupt and dysfunctional status quo.
So it was that one of the greatest journalists of the age, I.F. Stone, had to create his own small publications to raise big questions about the health risks posed by cigarettes, the military-industrial complex, and McCarthyism. In 2008, the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University announced plans to award an annual “I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence,” but in the 1950s and 1960s, when he was in his prime, Stone could not get his writing published in major American newspapers and was given no forum on broadcast television.
That’s because the journalists who got the jobs, and the journalism that was rewarded, bent over backward to avoid taking a side not just in the political debate between the two parties but also in the great debates of the era. This approach fostered the illusion of professional impartiality. But it also had the important business benefit of making journalism less expensive: just plant reporters near people in power and have them report.
There were major problems with this style of professional journalism, problems that surround us to this day, especially when it comes to the coverage of politics. It tended to make off-limits and unquestioned those areas that people in power agreed upon, and that not coincidentally tended to be near and dear to press owners.
Specifically, when it comes to covering politics, professional journalism has a strong inclination to simply publicize the positions of the leadership of the two parties and regard them invariably as the two legitimate poles of debate—with the rational center between them, the place journalists tend to see themselves and the best people inhabiting.
To maintain neutrality, journalists are loath to call out one side for lying. They also do not want to antagonize their sources, upon whom they are dependent. Instead, journalists prefer to report that one side is calling the other side liars and leave it at that. We report; you decide. The problem is that the liars can dismiss the criticism as being driven by their opponents and ignore it, so this becomes a liar’s paradise.
This obsession of professional journalism to play it strictly down the middle between the two legitimate parties, to avoid at all costs the charge of favoritism—the “cult of balance” as Paul Krugman (New York Times, 7/29/11) termed it—compromises the rigor and integrity of where political analysis would go if it simply followed the evidence “without fear or favor.” Krugman defined the cult of balance as “the insistence on portraying both parties as equally wrong and equally at fault on any issue, never mind the facts.” “If one party declared that the earth was flat,” Krugman stated jokingly, “the headlines would read ‘Views Differ on Shape of Planet.’”
Krugman on the “cult of balance”: “If one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read ‘Views Differ on Shape of Planet.’”
Ari Melber (PBS.org, 9/5/12) wrote, “For years, Americans’ political press has been stuck in a fact-free model of neutrality, often covering even the most obvious lies as ‘one side’ of a dispute.”
The grave damage of the cult of balance is that it allows dubious players to pollute the political culture and get away with it. After all, if the news media attack them, the media are accused of being partisan and unprofessional. And when the political culture moves sharply in one direction, journalism comfortably and uncritically goes along with it, sticking resolutely to the “center.” The center, more than anything in the United States, is determined by where Big Money is located.
This article is adapted from John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney’s Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex Is Destroying America (Nation Books). Nichols is D.C. correspondent for The Nation magazine; McChesney is a professor of communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
