Goldman gets 'annihilated' in FX market, loses $1 Billion, tries to talk up positions

With such a spectacular source of impeccably timed, if always wrong, FX trading recommendations as Tom Stolper, who has cost his muppets clients tens of thousands of pips in currency losses in the past 5 years, and thus generated the inverse amount in profits for Goldman's trading desks, the last thing we expected to learn was that Goldman's currency traders, who by definition takes the opposite side of its Kermitted clients - because prop trading is now long forbidden, (right Volcker rule?) and any prop trading blow up in the aftermath of the London Whale fiasco is not only a humiliation but probably illegal - had lost massive amounts on an FX trade gone wrong. Which is precisely what happened.

According to the WSJ, "a complex bet in the foreign-exchange market backfired on Goldman Sachs Group Inc. during the third quarter, people familiar with the matter said, contributing to a revenue slump that prompted senior executives to defend the firm's trading strategy. Revenue in Goldman's currency-trading business fell sharply in the third quarter from the second. Within that group, the firm's foreign-exchange options desk posted a net loss during the period, the people said." The trade in question: "A structured options trade tied to the U.S. dollar and Japanese yen steepened the decline, according to the people. It isn't clear how large the trade was or how long it was in place."

Curious: does this perhaps explain why just after Q3 ended, on October 3, Goldman's head FX strategist Tom Stolper came out with an FX trade in which Goldman "recommend going short $/JPY at current levels of about 97.30 for a tactical target of 94.00, with a stop on a close above 98.80." Obviously, we promptly took the inverse side: "The only question we have: will the length of time before Stolper is once again Stolpered out be measured in days, or hours?" Naturally, Stolper was stolpered stopped out in a few short days, leading to a few hundred pips in profits for those who faded Stolper... and yet we wonder: was Goldman merely trying to offload its USDJPY exposure gone wrong on its clients in the days after the "trade tied to the USD and the JPY steepened the decline"? If so, that would be even more illegal than Goldman pretending to be complying with the Volcker Rule.

As for the size of the total loss we had a hint that something had gone very wrong when we reported Goldman's Q3 earnings broken down by group. Back then we said "the only bright light were Investment banking revenues which were $1.7 billion, unchanged from a year ago, if down 25% from Q2. It's all downhill from here, because the all important Fixed Income, Currency and Commodities group printed just $1.247 billion, down a whopping 44% Y/Y, well below expectations." Indicatively, Goldman had made $2.5 billion in FICC the prior quarter, and $2.2 billion a year prior. Obviously something bad had happened.

We now know that that something was an FX trading crashing and burning in Goldman's face. Reuters added:

Goldman Sachs Group Inc lost more than $1 billion on currency trades during the third quarter, recent regulatory filings show, offering some insight into why the firm, considered one of Wall Street's most savvy traders, reported its worst quarter in a key trading unit since the financial crisis.

Goldman's currency-trading problems came from the way the bank had positioned itself in emerging markets, two sources familiar with the matter said.

Specific positions could not be learned, but the bank was anticipating that the Federal Reserve would begin winding down its monetary-easing programs, the sources said. When the Fed unexpectedly announced that it would keep its massive bond-buying program in place,Goldman was left with positions that, "absolutely got annihilated," as one person familiar with the matter put it.

Since as the WSJ first reported the position involved the USDJPY, which first spiked then plunged following the Fed's non-taper announcement, and kept sliding until it hit 96.50 in early October just when Stolper suggested putting on the short USDJPY trade (when USDJPY soared), it seems that at least this one time both Goldman's prop traders and the trade recommended by Stolper were on the same side.

Which resulted in a $1+ billion loss for Goldman.

Congratulations Tom: that in itself is worth ignoring that Goldman completely made a mockery out of any and all Volcker prop-trading prohibitions. In fact, keep it up and keep those trade recommendations coming.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-11-20/lets-hear-it-volcker-rule-goldman-loses-over-1-billion-fx-trade-gone-bad-q3

Open a Forex Account

US government released fake unemployment numbers

The U.S. government in the final months leading up to the 2012 presidential election released “faked” unemployment data, according to a bombshell report from the New York Post.

Recall that the unemployment rate from August to September dropped precipitously to 7.8 percent from 8.1 percent. This raised suspicion among certain members of the business community, most notably formerGeneral Electric CEO Jack Welch.

“Unbelievable jobs numbers,” Welch said in an Oct. 5 tweet, “these Chicago guys will do anything…can’t debate so change numbers.”

He was quickly attacked by cable news pundits and branded by one group as an “unemployment-rate truther.”

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/11/18/if-these-claims-by-reliable-sources-are-proven-true-the-obama-administration-will-be-dealing-with-another-huge-scandal/ 

Along with Zero Hedge and Jack Welch, CNBC's Rick Santelli was among the most vocal "jobs truther" in the run-up to last year's election - and suffered the same snark from the mainstream media at such conspiracy theories as to suggest the most important number in the world could be (or would be) manipulated. One year on, we now know the truth and asSantelli rages "if we knew then, what we know now," the world could be a very different place, as "all outcomes could have changed." Santelli raged at the time, "things just didn't feel right," and he was right, perhaps, as he concludes in the brief clip below, the American media "must do better."

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-11-19/santelli-slams-jobs-manipulation-scandal-american-media-you-can-do-better

The Forex Paradox - Is Forex a net loser?

The Forex market is the largest in the world and the least understood.  Since the late 90's, traders and asset managers have flocked to it as an alternative to trade, compared to other common markets (Stocks, Bonds, Futures).  

But due to the fact that the market is decentralized, and unregulated, it also attracted a large amount of fraud, on many levels.  First, there was outright theft by groups such as the one led by Trevor Cook ($190 Million Ponzi scheme).  Then there were sham brokers, in the most extreme case, like One World Forex, that simply didn't bother clearing client orders and used client funds to finance lavish lifestyles and a movie that was never released featuring Busta Rhymes.  Those in the new growing retail market on both sides of the dealing desk developed a special bond going through a unique experience that just wasn't possible in other markets.  

It was said that this was a retail problem, that serious institutional Forex was not aparty to such nonsense.  But now the world's largest investment banks are under investigation by the Department of Justice for Forex market rigging.  This includes names such as Goldman Sachs, Lloyds of London, JP Morgan Chase, Barclays, Citigroup, just to name a few (the full list of names has not been released).

It was always a question that Forex outsiders would ask, why the big banks didn't get into retail Forex trading.  Now we know that not only were some banks charging 7% (700 pip) spread on deliverable transactions, they were 'banging the close' and had basically a near complete control over the price.  So why would they take any risk?

But one of the most overlooked news stories is that of FX Concepts, known as the Rolls Royce of Forex funds, being the first in the business and eventually the largest FX hedge fund.

From Hedge Fund Alert:

Less than a year before his currency-trading shop filed for
bankruptcy, FX Concepts founder John Taylor personally guaranteed a
chunk of the debt his firm owes to its largest creditor.

Asset Management Finance, a Credit Suisse unit that has invested
in a number of prominent hedge fund-management firms in the past decade,
provided $40 million of debt financing to FX Concepts via two
revenue-sharing agreements in 2006 and 2010. But in December 2012, as
opportunities in the currency market continued to fade and redemptions
mounted, Taylor was forced to renegotiate the financing package. The
Credit Suisse unit agreed to defer eight quarterly revenue-sharing
payments in exchange for Taylor’s personal guarantee for those
obligations. As of Oct. 17, when the firm filed for Chapter 11, FX
Concepts owed Asset Management Finance $34.4 million, with Taylor on the
hook for $5 million of the total. “AMF is going to clearly try to get money out of John,” a source said. “By any stretch of the imagination, it’s not there.”

The terms of the refinancing deal with Asset Management Finance,
spelled out in recent court documents, suggest FX Concepts was in even
worse shape than previously understood. The fact that Taylor had to
personally guarantee his firm’s obligations underscores a dramatic
decline for a business that for years was the world’s largest
currency-fund operator, with more than $12 billion of assets. As
recently as the first quarter, FX Concepts had $1 billion under
management. 

When traders would debate "is anyone making money in FX" - proponents of Forex investing and trading would point to FX Concepts as an example as a group that was continually successful.  For years they had multiple products that continued to acheive above average returns in the mysterious FX market.  Until now.  Not only is FX Concepts shutting down, creditors are going after the founder who pledged personal guarantees on capital when performance started struggling.

Certainly not every Forex trader or strategy loses, but with the losses incurred by FX Concepts, we should rethink our approach to trading Forex.

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-11-14/forex-paradox-forex-net-loser

CME Hacked

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange admits that in July it was hacked:

• *CME HAD CYBER INTRUSION IN JULY, SOME CUSTOMER INFO COMPROMISED
• *CME: SOME CUSTOMER INFO ON CME CLEARPORT PLATFORM COMPROMISED
• *CME GROUP NO EVIDENCE TRADES ON CME GLOBEX ADVERSELY IMPACTED

Algos # 0001 through #9999 now have their Vacuum Tube Security Number leaked

Via CME,

In a communication to certain customers today, CME Group confirmed it was the victim of a cyber intrusion in July, making it one of the many organizations subject to this type of crime in recent months.

To date, there is no evidence that trades on CME Globex were adversely impacted, or that the provision of clearing services by CME Clearing or CME Clearing Europe, or trading in CME markets, were disrupted.

CME Group takes these events very seriously and places a high priority on protecting its customers' information and ensuring the integrity of its markets.  Though CME Group maintains sophisticated systems, teams and processes to prevent such incidents, and promptly took significant actions to address the incident, CME Group has learned that certain customer information relating to the CME ClearPort platform was compromised.  To protect participants, CME Group forced a change to customer credentials impacted by the incident, and is corresponding directly with the impacted customers.

The incident is the subject of an ongoing federal criminal investigation and CME Group is cooperating with law enforcement in its investigation into this matter.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-11-15/cme-hacked

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Chart: Major Central Banks Asset Growth vs. GDP Growth

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Ron Paul Exposes The Fed-Driven Erosion Of US Living Standards

One of the least discussed, but potentially most significant, provisions in President Obama’s budget is the use of the “chained consumer price index” (chained CPI), to measure the effect of inflation on people’s standard of living. Chained CPI is an effort to alter the perceived impact of inflation via the gimmick of “full substitution." This is the assumption that when the price of one consumer product increases, consumers will simply substitute a similar, lower-cost product with no adverse effect. Thus, the government decides your standard of living is not affected if you can no longer afford to eat steak, as long as you can afford to eat hamburger.
The problem with “full substitution” should be obvious to anyone not on the government payroll. Since consumers did not choose to buy lower-priced beef before inflation raised the price of steak, they obviously preferred steak. So if the Federal Reserve’s policies create inflation that forces you to purchase hamburger instead of steak, your standard of living is lowered. CPI already uses this sort of substitution to mask the costs of inflation, but chained CPI uses those substitutions more frequently, thereby lowering the reported rate of inflation.
Supporters of chained CPI also argue that the government should take into account technology and other advances that enhance the quality of the products we buy. By this theory, increasing prices signal an increase in our standard of living! While it is certainly true that advances in technology improve our standard of living, it is also true that, left undisturbed, market processes tend to lower the prices of goods. Remember the mobile phones from the 1980s? They had limited service, constantly needed charging, and were extremely expensive. Today, almost all Americans can easily afford a mobile device to make and receive calls, texts, and e-mails, as well as use the Internet, watch movies, read books, and more.
The same process occurred with personal computers, cars, and numerous other products. If left alone, the operations of the market place will deliver higher quality and lower prices. It is only when the government interferes with the operation of the market, especially via fiat money, that consumers must contend with constant price increases.
The goal of chained CPI is to decrease the government's obligation to meet its promise to keep up with the cost of living in programs like Social Security. But it does not prevent individuals who have a nominal increase in income from being pushed into a higher income bracket. Both are achieved without a vote of Congress.
Noted financial analyst Peter Schiff correctly calls chained CPI a measurement of the cost of survival. Instead of using inflation statistics as a political ploy to raise taxes and artificially cut spending, the President and Congress should use a measurement that actually captures the eroding standard of living caused by the Federal Reserve’s inflationary policies. Changing government statistics to exploit the decline in the American way of life and benefit big spending politicians and their cronies in the big banks does nothing but harm the American people.

And here is Ron Paul addressing - among other things - the counter-factual supporting the "but what would we do without them" argument for the Fed...

Whopping 932,000 Americans Drop Out Of Labor Force In October; Participation Rate Drops To Fresh 35 Year Low

The only two charts that matter from today's distroted nonfarm payrolls report.
First, the labor force participation rate, which plunged from 63.2% to 62.8% - the lowest since 1978!
[2]
But more importantly, the number of people not in the labor force exploded by nearly 1 million, or 932,000 to be exact, in just the month of October, to a record 91.5 million Americans! This was the third highest monthly increase in people falling out of the labor force in US history.
[3]
At this pace the people out of the labor force will surpass the working Americans in about 4 years.

http://www.zerohedge.com/print/481190

ECB surprise rate cut sends Euro crashing

In a shocking move, the ECB cut the interest rate by 25 basis points to .25%.

At today’s meeting the Governing Council of the ECB took the following monetary policy decisions:

1. The interest rate on the main refinancing operations of the Eurosystem will be decreased by 25 basis points to 0.25%, starting from the operation to be settled on 13 November 2013.
   
2. The interest rate on the marginal lending facility will be decreased by 25 basis points to 0.75%, with effect from 13 November 2013.
   
3. The interest rate on the deposit facility will remain unchanged at 0.00%.
   

The President of the ECB will comment on the considerations underlying these decisions at a press conference starting at 2.30 p.m. CET today.

EUR/USD Hourly chart



ECB Press Conference Live on FJ at 8:30 ET http://www.financialjuice.com

Rich families hoarding cash: Citi

A new survey of family offices by Citi finds that the wealthy are cash heavy—meaning they may fall short of the investment returns they're expecting.
Wealthy families have about 39 percent of their assets in cash, according to a recent poll of more than 50 large family office representatives from 20 countries conducted by Citi Private Bank.
Stocks represented about 25 percent of portfolios on average. Bonds were about 17 percent of the asset mix and various classes of less liquid and alternative investments amounted to 19 percent.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101157290

The Wall Street Code

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-11-04/wall-street-code-released

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DOJ confirms criminal investigation of Forex manipulation by banks

Oct 29 (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department is investigating the manipulation of foreign exchange rates, a top federal prosecutor said on Tuesday, in the first public acknowledgement of such a probe in the United States.

Criminal and antitrust authorities have an "active, ongoing investigation" into the possible manipulation, Mythili Raman, the acting head of the department's criminal division, said.

The confirmation comes on the same day Dutch bank Rabobank agreed to pay more than $1 billion to resolve allegations that it manipulated Libor and other benchmark rates. And other European banks that face related probes disclosed they set aside major sums to cover legal costs.

 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/29/forex-probe-idUSL1N0IJ19820131029?feedType=RSS&feedName=financialsSector

 Deutsche Bank confirmed it was cooperating with regulators probing the foreign exchange market as investigators across the globe look into the multi-trillion industry that sets foreign currency rates.

 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/29/forex-probe-deutschebank-idUSL5N0IJ3PK20131029?feedType=RSS&feedName=financialsSector

Banks fined over Libor scandal

Dutch bank Rabobank says it has agreed to pay fines of 774m euros ($1bn; £662m) imposed by US, UK and Dutch regulators over the Libor interest rate-fixing scandal.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24730242

Deutsche Bank AG (DBK), Europe’s largest investment bank by revenue, said third-quarter profit slid 94 percent after it set aside 1.2 billion euros ($1.65 billion) to cover potential legal costs and income from debt trading fell.
Net income in the three months through September dropped to 41 million euros from 747 million euros in the year-earlier period, the Frankfurt-based bank said in a statement on its website today. That missed the 430 million-euro average estimate of 12 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-29/deutsche-bank-profit-falls-94-as-trading-revenue-slumps.html

Nasdaq indexes resume trading

The Nasdaq was hit with another market glitch on Tuesday, as index data froze just before lunchtime and remained frozen for nearly an hour.
In a statement at 12:15 p.m. ET, Nasdaq OMX Group said it was looking into an issue with index data feeds. Stocks on Nasdaq were trading normally, however.
The indexes resumed normal quotation just after 12:37 p.m. ET, Nasdaq said.
Before the freeze, the Composite index last stood at 3,940.02. Once it resumed, it rose 3 points to 3,943.
(Read more: Nasdaq takes responsibility for August 'flash freeze')
Nasdaq also reported at one point that some options had halted trading because of a lack of index data. That trading was set to resume starting at 12:55 p.m. ET.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101151953

Former PFG customers approached with Phishing attack

It was extremely disconcerting for NFA to learn earlier this month that fraudsters were soliciting customers and creditors of Peregrine Financial Group (PFG) who currently are awaiting the resolution of their claims by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

Former PFG customers called NFA to inquire about the legitimacy of an email that was sent on October 4. The email requested personal information from the recipients, and insinuated that if this information was provided, they would receive $250,000.

Upon learning of the email, NFA immediately worked with the PFG bankruptcy trustee to verify that it was a fraud, and sent an announcement to PFG's customers to notify them of the email's illegitimacy. NFA also posted a notice from the trustee about the deceptive email on the homepage of its website to warn visitors and Members of the fraud.

This type of online scam is known as "spear phishing"—where fraudsters target specific groups of people who share a commonality and trick them into divulging their personal information via email. Perpetrators typically get hold of some form of inside information to deceive the list of recipients, like the list of PFG customers, and then send a legitimate-looking message, typically citing urgent and plausible-sounding explanations as to why they need your personal data.

Once the fraudsters have your personal information, they can access your bank accounts, credit cards and even create new identities.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation suggests keeping the following points in mind to avoid becoming a spear phishing victim:

• Most companies, banks, agencies, etc. don't request personal information via email. If you're ever in doubt about the veracity of an email, call the sender. However, don't use the phone number contained in the email—that's typically also phony.
• Use a phishing filter; many current web browsers have them built in or offer them as plug-ins
• Never follow a link to a website from an email—always enter the URL manually
• Don't be fooled by the latest scams

Additionally, October is National Cyber Security Awareness month for the National Consumers League, the Department of Homeland Security and the National Cyber Security Alliance. According to their list of the top 10 reported scams of 2012, phishing ranked No. 4—the second-most common form of online fraud. The group suggests people take note of the following online safety habits to avoid falling prey to scammers.

You likely have heard the famous adage, "there is no honor among thieves." The venerable Sir John Falstaff bemoaned this very point in "Henry IV, Part 1." So please beware when you receive seemingly legitimate emails that request any personal information.

http://www.nfa.futures.org/NFA-investor-information/investor-newsletter/index.HTML#Phishing

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How to Protect Your Money When the U.S. Debt Bill Comes Due

You don’t want to be around when that bill comes due!
Well, as a quasi-government organization with the authority to suck down your hard-earned money through the act of inflation, the U.S. Federal Reserve is “that guy,” and you could be the responsible one left with its bill.
Did you know that the Fed has been inflating the supply of dollars at a stunning 33% annual rate over the past five years? Or that it plans to continue inflating the supply of dollars at least into 2014 and has kept open the possibility that it will do so indefinitely?
When the Fed’s party is over, who do you think will be left with the bill?
Not the Wall Street bankers! We’ve learned that lesson already.
It’s Main Street investors like you who get the bill.
But you can protect yourself -- though your window of safety is closing rapidly.
Robert Prechter, market forecaster and leading opponent of the Federal Reserve, has just released a report that that will help you understand the risks of deflation that most mainstream sources cannot see because they are blinded by decades of inflationary Fed policy.
At just 8 pages, "How to Protect Your Money When the U.S. Debt Bill Comes Due" is a quick read -- well worth any independent investor’s time.
Follow this link to download your free deflation-protection report now >>
Report Excerpt:
The Federal Reserve's efforts to rescue the economy have been historically aggressive, starting with the initial round of quantitative easing in 2008 and continuing through 2013.
The central bank's assets have skyrocketed due to the Fed's bond purchases, which you can see clearly in this eye-opening report that Robert Prechter presented to the Market Technicians Association and his Elliott Wave Theorist subscribers.

The main reason investors are expecting runaway inflation is illustrated in [the chart above], which shows the value of assets held at the Federal Reserve. The Fed has been inflating the supply of dollars at a stunning 33% annual rate over the past five years. ... [N]o wonder investors expect inflation and have aggressively positioned for it.
Look just about anywhere else, however, and you will see subtle evidence of deflationary pressures. Given knowledge only of the Fed’s inflating, many people would expect the Producer and Consumer Price Indexes to be rising at a rate of 33% annually. But, as you can see in Figure 2, the PPI’s annual rate of change is stuck at zero and the CPI has been rising at only a 2% rate.

In an interview at the recent San Francisco Money Show with financial author Jim Mosquera, EWI's Chief Market Analyst Steven Hochberg explains why the Fed has gotten so little in return from its stimulus programs. Here's a brief excerpt from the interview published on Aug. 18 on the Examiner.com website.
Question: The Fed wizards have been pushing buttons and pulling levers rather furiously since 2008. The discount rate is rock bottom, and the Fed balance sheet has swelled to the tune of trillions. What button is left for them to push?
Steve Hochberg: That is a really interesting question the way you phrased it because the fact that they have been pushing buttons and have gotten very little in return tells us … that the Fed is not in control. The Fed does not control the markets, and it doesn’t control the economy. Both are bigger than the Fed.
You say they have been doing this furiously. They have been doing this historically! Yet if you look at inflationary measures, such as the Personal Consumption Expenditures, which is the Fed's favorite way of measuring inflation, it's bumping along at 1%.
We have had historic fiscal and monetary stimulus and yet no inflation. Why? The forces of deflation are overwhelming the forces of inflation. The Fed dropped interest rates in 2000 to 2002 and that did not stop the Nasdaq from dropping 78%. The Fed dropped rates from 2007 to 2009 and it did not stop the Dow from going down 59%. There is historical evidence that the Fed does not control the markets but that the markets control the Fed.
As the next leg of the bear market starts unfolding, they are going to do more unconventional things. Things will accelerate to the downside when the public realizes the central banks aren't in control.
For a limited time, you can read Robert Prechter’s 6-page report to prepare for what EWI sees ahead. In this report you'll learn why the risk of deflation is mounting and how you can see it coming in the prices of gold, gas, real estate, crude oil and other markets.

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article42863.html

The Distinction Between Human And Algo-Trading

Submitted by The World Complex
One more time--the distinction between human- and algo-trading
The markets do not act like they once did. The trading in certain stocks is operating on time-scales so small that they cannot be in response to human thought. Not only are certain individuals able to access key information before others and so respond to news releases faster than the speed of light, but certain entities have free range to post and cancel orders on a microsecond basis, and queue-jump by shaving off (or adding on) tiny fractions of a penny from their orders.
Stocks traded by humans tend to make significant moves on a timescale of minutes to days. Even when there is a news event that radically changes the apparent value of a company, if there are only humans in the market, the move takes time to occur. Below are a couple of charts for Detour Gold (I currently have no position in this stock)

Normally, when looked at on a ms timescale, the graph is not really distinguishable from a straight line.

The little squares occur because all the price-changes I saw in the course of the day were a penny. On this scale it scarcely matters which axis is the current price and which is the lagged-price.
Once the algos get involved, the millisecond phase space plots get a lot more interesting. Some of them are works of art! Below, some plots for Century Casinos (I have no position in this one, either). Data here.

Algos playing tug-o-war.

Nice to look at, but maybe not so nice to trade against.
Remember the adage about playing poker: If you don't know who the sucker is 

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-26/distinction-between-human-and-algo-trading

Obamacare Nightmare

 As for Obamacare, the hits just keep on coming:

“I feel like we’re sort of back in the era of control-alt-delete where we’re trying to figure out the different tricks that facilitate people’s enrollment,” said Jennifer Ng’andu, director of health policy for the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group that has been helping to publicize the Affordable Care Act.

The administration for the first time on Friday said it expected the health exchange website serving 36 states should be in good shape in about a month. “We’re confident by the end of November, HealthCare.gov will be smooth for a vast majority of users,” said Jeff Zients, the former White House aide and management expert brought into oversee the repair drive.

But for now, with HealthCare.gov crippled by design flaws and a morass of messy code, the president and health officials have been using a variety of posts and announcements to urge people to try low-tech ways of enrolling. Basically they are saying while the front door is stuck, try the side.

This is where it gets really funny:

Of course, reading an 800 number on national TV — as the president did in the Rose Garden the other day — created a flood of callers who couldn’t get through. That led to another wave of frustration and Obamacare punch lines. But Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius tweeted on Thursday that HHS bulked up the call center to include more than 10,000 trained representatives.

POLITICO reporters who got recorded announcements earlier in the week — sometimes directing them to try HealthCare.gov — can now get through to the call center. Once they connect, staffers like “Justin” try to get people’s information into the online system.

But “Justin” doesn’t have a fast track. Asked if the website works better for him than the general public, he responded: “No.”

“The site does not work for us either,” he said.

Raucous laughter aside, there really are no words to describe the gross incompetence that has been revealed, even if many knew long ago that when the government really sets its mind to it, it can screw something up better than the entire private sector possibly ever could.
And since there are no words, back to the raucous laughter:

Sometime, the call center staff can get in and process the application while the caller waits. If not, the staff can take the information, put it in a PDF and finish later. Even then, it’s just the application — once that’s processed, the customer still has to call back or get online to select the specific health plan they want and enroll.

People do not have to stay on hold indefinitely — a good thing because Sebelius said earlier in the week that the center has handled about 1.6 million calls.

It’s similar in the world of paper applications.
Even before the tech problems, the government had a private contractor, Serco, to handle paper applications, which were expected to come primarily from less Web-savvy people. On Thursday, the company’s program director John Lau told the House Energy and Commerce Committee that it had completed between 3,000 and 4,000 applications.

Lau said the company does have the capacity to handle more than what’s expected — a paper surge. But he also said the customer’s data has to be entered into the Web portal and hinted there could be problems if volume dramatically increases. Lau didn’t say how long that takes, but a customer service representative said it would take about three weeks to complete the enrollment process.

“Our challenges have included coping with the performance of the portal as that is our means of entering data just as it is for the consumer,” Lau said, referring to HealthCare.gov. “With the relatively low volumes of applications we have received thus far, this has not been a problem for us.”

But Serco will be flooded with paper applications if the website glitches persist, predicted John Gorman, founder of the Gorman Health Group, which has advised some of the insurance exchanges. “Serco is going to be swimming in paper within the next two to three weeks,” he said.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-26/obamacares-website-debacles-migrate-paper-phone-applications

Michelle Obama’s Princeton classmate is executive at company that built Obamacare website

Posted By Patrick Howley On 4:57 PM 10/25/2013 In | No Comments

First Lady Michelle Obama’s Princeton classmate is a top executive at the company that earned the contract to build the failed Obamacare website.
Toni Townes-Whitley, Princeton class of ’85, is senior vice president at CGI Federal, which earned the no-bid contract to build the $678 million Obamacare enrollment website at Healthcare.gov. CGI Federal is the U.S. arm of a Canadian company.
Townes-Whitley and her Princeton classmate Michelle Obama are both members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni.
Toni Townes ’85 is a onetime policy analyst with the General Accounting Office and previously served in the Peace Corps in Gabon, West Africa. Her decision to return to work, as an African-American woman, after six years of raising kids was applauded by a Princeton alumni publication in 1998
George Schindler, the president for U.S. and Canada of the Canadian-based CGI Group, CGI Federal’s parent company, became an Obama 2012 campaign donor after his company gained the Obamacare website contract.
As reported by the Washington Examiner in early October, the Department of Health and Human Services reviewed only CGI’s bid for the Obamacare account. CGI was one of 16 companies qualified under the Bush administration to provide certain tech services to the federal government. A senior vice president for the company testified this week before The House Committee on Energy and Commerce that four companies submitted bids, but did not name those companies or explain why only CGI’s bid was considered.
On the government end, construction of the disastrous Healthcare.gov website was overseen by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), a division of longtime failed website-builder Kathleen Sebelius’ Department of Health and Human Services.
Update: The Daily Caller repeatedly contacted CGI Federal for comment. After publication of this article, the company responded that there would be “nothing coming out of CGI for the record or otherwise today.” The company did however insist that The Daily Caller include a reference to vice president Cheryl Campbell’s House testimony. This has been included as a courtesy to the company.
Follow Patrick on Twitter

http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/25/michelle-obamas-princeton-classmate-is-executive-at-company-that-built-obamacare-website/?print=1

NSA Website Hacked Ahead Of "Stop Watching Us" Rally

Update: As of 6:30 pm Eastern, the NSA's website has been down for 5 hours.
Following our earlier comments on the vulnerabilities of the Obamacare websites, the fact that the United States National Security Agency suddenly went offline Friday is still surprising. As RT reports [11], NSA.gov has been unavailable globally as of late Friday afternoon, and Twitter accounts belonging to people loosely affiliated with the Anonymous hacktivism movement have suggested they are responsible.


It is perhaps not entirely coincidental that there is a major “Stop Watching Us” rally scheduled for Saturday [12] in Washington, DC.
[12]

where the following letter was sent to Congress:

Dear Members of Congress,
We write to express our concern about recent reports published in the Guardian and the Washington Post, and acknowledged by the Obama Administration, which reveal secret spying by the National Security Agency (NSA) on phone records and Internet activity of people in the United States.
The Washington Post and the Guardian recently published reports based on information provided by an intelligence contractor showing how the NSA and the FBI are gaining broad access to data collected by nine of the leading U.S. Internet companies and sharing this information with foreign governments. As reported, the U.S. government is extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person's movements and contacts over time. As a result, the contents of communications of people both abroad and in the U.S. can be swept in without any suspicion of crime or association with a terrorist organization.
Leaked reports also published by the Guardian and confirmed by the Administration reveal that the NSA is also abusing a controversial section of the PATRIOT Act to collect the call records of millions of Verizon customers. The data collected by the NSA includes every call made, the time of the call, the duration of the call, and other "identifying information" for millions of Verizon customers, including entirely domestic calls, regardless of whether those customers have ever been suspected of a crime. The Wall Street Journal has reported that other major carriers, including AT&T and Sprint, are subject to similar secret orders.
This type of blanket data collection by the government strikes at bedrock American values of freedom and privacy. This dragnet surveillance violates the First and Fourth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, which protect citizens' right to speak and associate anonymously, guard against unreasonable searches and seizures, and protect their right to privacy.
We are calling on Congress to take immediate action to halt this surveillance and provide a full public accounting of the NSA's and the FBI's data collection programs. We call on Congress to immediately and publicly:

1. Enact reform this Congress to Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, the state secrets privilege, and the FISA Amendments Act to make clear that blanket surveillance of the Internet activity and phone records of any person residing in the U.S. is prohibited by law and that violations can be reviewed in adversarial proceedings before a public court;
2. Create a special committee to investigate, report, and reveal to the public the extent of this domestic spying. This committee should create specific recommendations for legal and regulatory reform to end unconstitutional surveillance;
3. Hold accountable those public officials who are found to be responsible for this unconstitutional surveillance.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Via RT, [11]
Twitter users @AnonymousOwn3r and @TruthIzSexy both were quick to comment on the matter, and implied that a distributed denial-of-service attack, or DDoS, may have been waged as an act of protest against the NSA

 http://www.zerohedge.com/print/480628




Allegations that those users participated in the DDoS — a method of over-loading a website with too much traffic — are currently unverified, and @AnonymousOwn3r has previously taken credit for downing websites in a similar fashion, although those claims have been largest contested.


The question, of course, is whether this is retalization from Europe (or Brazil) for the 'denied' allegations over spying?

The cost of the financial crisis hits Americans harder than banks

What’s the real cost of a financial crisis? Apparently, it depends on who’s paying.
If you’re Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase, or Brian Moynihan, the CEO of Bank of America, it’s a price your $2tn bank can easily afford to make trouble go away.
If you’re a homeowner, it’s a price that has rendered your past five years a struggle of financial anxiety. If you’re an American, it’s a price that has resulted in a recession and recovery characterized by historically high poverty – with 42 million Americans on food stamps – and historically low rates of Americans working, with only 63% of the population gainfully employed.
As you rise up the financial ladder, the consequences of the financial crisis are increasingly arbitrary. The Department of Justice is looking for scalps – finally, after five years of drowsy hibernation – but some banks are whining about merely getting haircuts.
This week, two mortgage-crisis settlements hit the news: one potential and one official. The idea of a $13bn rumored fine to JP Morgan and an $848m fine to Bank of America would indicate two things.
The first conclusion is that the Justice Department, largely led by US Attorney for the Southern District Preet Bharara, is finally slapping Wall Street for the things that went wrong five years ago. Fine, let’s go with that.
The second conclusion, to any outside observer, is that JP Morgan was guiltier than Bank of America of mortgage abuses because it’s paying a bigger fine. Nope. Whether JP Morgan, Bank of America or Citigroup, guilt in the mortgage crisis was more or less evenly distributed across Wall Street. It’s only the fines that aren’t.
JP Morgan is paying more largely because it can afford to, and its rivals can’t. In the context of JP Morgan’s $21bn of income in 2012, $13bn is manageable. JP Morgan, sitting on over $2tn of assets, can easily take the pain, and Dimon still received an $11.5m pay package last year.
Bank of America, which has already shelled out $40bn in clean-up costs for its acquisition of Countrywide, made a paltry $4.2bn in net income last year: one-fifth of the income of JP Morgan. Bank of America had, at the start of the year, only $1.5bn socked away to pay for mortgage settlements. These are numbers so small that JP Morgan would find them laughable.
Bank of America would find its back broken by the kind of fine facing JP Morgan; it would need a bailout to afford a $13bn settlement. So would Citigroup, which made $7.5bn in 2012 – a third of JP Morgan’s haul – and only paid back its 2008 bailout this year; Citi is still such a work in progress that the Federal Reserve still won’t allow the bank to give its investors dividends.
There’s another difference between the two fines. Bank of America knows its screwed up by doubling down on the mortgage business. In 2011, Moynihan sounded like he was beating himself up daily: "Obviously, there aren't many days when I get up and think positively about the Countrywide transaction."
Dimon, on the other hand, has been in an imperious state of denial.
There has also been a totally erroneous whisper campaign, backing Dimon, that JP Morgan deserves no blame for the mortgage troubles, which came primarily from stepchildren Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns. “We’re doing a good job,” Dimon told employees this month after the bank reported its first loss since 2004, due to its legal settlement costs.
Dimon’s charisma detracts from what really happened. To be clear, JP Morgan and Dimon knew exactly what they were getting into back in 2008 when JP Morgan bought both Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual with government help. These were sweetheart deals that JP Morgan bragged about.
The government allowed JP Morgan three weeks advance notice of WaMu’s demise and allowed JP Morgan to shave $20bn in liabilities off the bank. JP Morgan estimated it might have to take as much as $54bn of losses on mortgages, which it managed to avoid.
Executives also beat their chests to investors at the time of the acquisition:

We had a lot of detail and a lot of very direct conversations. We had probably 75 people at JP Morgan Chase involved in the process, both going through data as well as talking to members of the company,” said one executive. “And it was not a rushed analysis.” Another: “I’ll just tell you it was probably one of the most thorough things we’ve ever done.”

“We bid to win because we wanted to win for a lot of obvious reasons,” Dimon told investors about buying WaMu. “We’re pretty sure we did the right thing for the shareholders.”
That hardly sounds like a bank shoved into a bad deal, does it?
About Bear Stearns, for which JP Morgan predicted $33bn of potential exposure, a former JP Morgan executive was similarly proud in 2008: “we were very pleasantly surprised to see that it was a very well run, tight operation with good risk controls and a risk discipline that was very similar to our own,” he said. Another added about the Bear Stearns mortgage business: “Needless to say, a very, very good strong business and one that in the long run will be very additive ... it’s a business that we are looking to pick up market share in.”
That’s a pretty far cry from JP Morgan’s tune these days, about how it was victimized by two bad banks that were forced on it.That's not surprising. Most banks could sell ice to Eskimos, and they're good at marketing lines that don't stand up to scrutiny.
So here JP Morgan bought two banks that could have had over $80bn in losses together, and did not. JP Morgan is likely to pay $13bn, and it will continue to sail on with its reputation and, eventually its profits, totally untouched.
What’s the cost to you?
If you own a home, the cost of the financial crisis could have been foreclosure, which swept up 4.4m homes. Or the cost could have been standing back and watching your home value go “underwater,” its value sinking below the mortgage you were paying. That was the cost for 12 million people in 2011. Were all these people irresponsible borrowers who splashed out on real estate in an HGTV-impelled frenzy of status-seeking capitalism? No. The consequences of the financial crisis were largely arbitrary to most Americans. It was not only house-flippers who lost their jobs, or mortgage brokers who found themselves deep in debt. Everyone shared the pain with no real rhyme or reason.
We like to believe that history has a karmic arc, that wrongdoing faces punishment equal to the extent of the crime, but recent history shows us that’s not how things work. We can collect only pennies on financial crimes that cost the country trillions in lost growth, productivity and jobs.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/24/cost-of-financial-crisis-jpmorgan/print

China is Now the World’s Largest Importer of Oil—What Next?

Last month the world witnessed a paradigm shift: China surpassed the United States as the world’s largest consumer of foreign oil, importing 6.3 million barrels per day compared to the United States’ 6.24 million. This trend is likely to continue and this gap is likely to grow, according to the EIA’s October short-term energy outlook. Wood Mackenzie, a leading global energy consultancy, echoed this prediction, estimating Chinese oil imports will rise to 9.2 million barrels per day (70% of total demand) by 2020.

This trend has been driven by a combination of factors. Booming American oil production, slow post-recovery growth, and increasing vehicle efficiency have all served to reduce crude imports. In China, however, continued economic growth has brought with it a growing middle class eager to take to the road. While the automobile market had cooled earlier this year, September saw sales rise by 21%—a trend that is putting increasing strain on China’s infrastructure and air quality in addition to oil demand.

Some of the world’s largest traffic jams are now commonplace in major Chinese cities, and air quality issues have pushed authorities to pursue synthetic natural gas technology to offset the need for coal-fired electricity. Increasing oil consumption will only serve to exacerbate these issues.

http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/China-is-Now-the-Worlds-Largest-Importer-of-OilWhat-Next.html

CHART OF THE DAY Still think its "all about the fundamentals"...?

All of these things are not like the other... except one!

In all the following charts, the green line is the S&P 500...

Crude Oil is diverging...


High Yield Credit is diverging...


US Macro Fundamentals are diverging...


10Y Yields are diverging...


The USD is diverging...


Earnings expectations are diverging...

and Current earnings are diverging...


Current US GDP is diverging...


US GDP expectations are diverging...


and Dr. Copper is diverging...


But... there is one "asset" that is not diverging from the S&P 500...


Still think its "all about the fundamentals"...?