Another bank ripoff and another lawsuit dismissed. The Libor manipulation scandal spurred private investors and others to sue the banks over their losses. A judge just threw out major portions of their case. There were at least 22 Plaintiffs. Now groups like the City of Baltimore are out of luck in recovering all of their losses due to banks manipulating a key interest rate.
Tonight's Friday Night Video is a collection of news and interview clips that need to be seen to be believed. The first is a report from NBC Rock Center on how people are getting their identities stolen and then ripped off. If that wasn't bad enough, identity thieves are filing bogus tax returns and collecting the refunds
The February personal income and outlays report shows personal income bounced back by 1.1% from last month's nose dive that was due to the payroll tax holiday expiration and fiscal cliff deal. Disposable income increased 1.1% but after adjusted for inflation, shows a monthly increase of 0.7%. Consumer spending increased 0.7%, but when adjsted for inflation grew by 0.3% for the month.
Q4 2012 real GDP was revised upward by 0.3 percentage points to 0.4% after the second revision. While an improvement, gross domestic product results still imply a stagnant economy in the 4th quarter. Government spending declines were the drag on the economy and sucked out -1.41 percentage points from 4th quarter real gross domestic product growth. Federal defense spending alone declined 22.1% from Q3. Nonresidential fixed investment was revised higher and businesses purchased equipment and software. Private inventory changes hacked off -1.52 percentage points from Q4 real GDP as businesses shed their inventories. Even without inventories in the economic growth mix, the economy is still suffering from weakness in demand.
Is the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing over inflating housing prices? According to one Fed Official they aren't Yet the Federal Reserve is buying 50% of mortgage backed securities, keeping mortgage interest rates at record lows and affecting pricing on mortgage backed securities themselves.
Do you still want to hold your money in Italian banks? What about Spanish banks, or even in the United States? The Cyprus bail-out, or bail-in as the EU likes to call it, has not put those questions to rest. They’ve become even more urgent now that the Troika – the alliance of European Union, European Central Bank, and IMF bureaucrats who spend their time going from one country bailout to another – have decided that depositors will be on the hook the next time a bank goes under.
It is 2013 and a dirty little secret is once again coming to light. Silicon valley is devoid of women computer scientists and engineers. It all started at a tech conference where two men in the audience were engaging in tech's typical juvenile sex jokes chatter with a woman techie sitting right in front of them.
NAR reported their February 2013 Existing Home Sales. Existing home sales increased 0.8% from last month and inventories increased to a still very tight 4.7 months of supply. Existing homes sales have increased 10.2% from a year ago. Volume was 4.98 million against January's 4.94 million, annualized existing home sales.
The Federal Reserve FOMC released their updated economic projections and frankly they are weird. GDP estimates were lowered yet the official unemployment rate projections were also lowered. The rule of economic law is lower economic growth means less jobs and hires so how one can have subdued GDP with better unemployment figures is none too clear.
For all of us sick to death of Microsoft dominating tech with their offshore outsourcing, labor arbitraging, monopolistic ways, we have some good news. Microsoft is being investigated for bribery:
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