AnneD  (1000+ posts)      | Tue Aug-05-08 06:16 PM Response to Original message |
| 79. Runaway Pay |
 | Outsized executive pay is attracting ever harsher criticism from stakeholders across Europe. The French government, which takes over the six-month presidency of the EU in July, is promising to tackle "scandalous" pay rises and bonus rewards, in the words of finance minister Christine Lagarde. She has hinted that EU-wide regulation may be necessary to limit pay that is not deemed sufficiently linked to company performance. Jean-Claude Juncker, prime minister of Luxembourg, told Lagarde and other euro-zone finance ministers at a meeting in May that recent rises in executive pay were a "social scourge," urging his counterparts to consider new taxes on hefty bonuses. Even Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, said that it was "legitimate to raise questions" about the size of some executive pay packages, warning that they could fuel higher inflation and, by extension, push up interest rates. A sizeable share of executives themselves also think that current pay practices are out of whack. In CFO Europe's latest Business Outlook Survey, 20% of senior finance executives in Europe said that "excessive" executive pay is an issue that may require greater regulatory oversight. (See "The Missing Link" at the end of this article.) The Dutch government has done most to address the issue, following the multimillion-euro "golden parachutes" granted to the bosses of food group Numico and bank ABN Amro after their recent takeovers. In May, finance minister Wouter Bos introduced a legislative proposal on the "taxation of excessive remunerations." Under the plan, now working its way through parliament, companies that award severance payments exceeding the annual salary of employees making more than €500,000 will, from 2009, face a 30% levy, as well as additional tax of 15%, from 2010, on contributions to those employees' pension funds. Can companies do a better job designing pay policies in order to avoid a more widespread regulatory crackdown? For Pascual Berrone, a professor at Spanish business school IESE and contributing author to Global Compensation: Foundations and Perspectives (Routledge, 2008), the answer involves broadening the performance measures tied to executive pay. The general public — and by extension, politicians — want companies to "do more than amass shareholder wealth," Berrone says. "Diverse stakeholders' goals should be part of corporate strategy and reflected in pay schemes." Including environmental metrics or broader social measures in bonus schemes alongside traditional profit-based gauges, he says, will send the signal that a company is "more than just a money-making machine." Although naturally, he adds, that should be a firm's overarching goal. Factoring squishier metrics into pay schemes may appear to be a tall order, but Berrone points out that executive compensation has always been "more of an art than a science." www.cfo.com/article.cfm/11661224/?f=rsspage More art than science my white sagging ass. Every time I went in for a pay raise-they were pretty specific with the requirement. The metrics is nothing more than a shell game. How about letting the employees rate them too. That might be an eye opener.  |
 Alert | Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top |
| Ghost Dog (1000+ posts) | Tue Aug-05-08 06:19 PM Response to Original message |
| 80. Just to lighten the mood: Max Keiser, Peak Oil, Dollar Collapse: |
 | Edited on Tue Aug-05-08 06:24 PM by Ghost Dog (Aug 1) http://karmabanqueradio.com/?p=1007 (Al Jazeera) To be followed by (Aug 2): http://www.karmabanqueradio.com/podcast/tam020808.mp3 "WWI fought with derivatives..." |
| Alert | Add to my Journal | Printer Friendly | Permalink | Edit | Reply | Top |
| Ghost Dog (1000+ posts) | Tue Aug-05-08 07:36 PM Response to Reply #80 |
| 81. Oh yeah. One of few 'media' left that can make me smile, |
| even laugh out loud. ... And do check out that ref.: " Published Dec 4 2006 by Energy Bulletin Archived Dec 4 2006 Closing the 'Collapse Gap': the USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US by Dmitry Orlov" - http://www.energybulletin.net/node/23259 "Slide <6> An economic collapse is amazing to observe, and very interesting if described accurately and in detail. A general description tends to fall short of the mark, but let me try. An economic arrangement can continue for quite some time after it becomes untenable, through sheer inertia. But at some point a tide of broken promises and invalidated assumptions sweeps it all out to sea. One such untenable arrangement rests on the notion that it is possible to perpetually borrow more and more money from abroad, to pay for more and more energy imports, while the price of these imports continues to double every few years. Free money with which to buy energy equals free energy, and free energy does not occur in nature. This must therefore be a transient condition. When the flow of energy snaps back toward equilibrium, much of the US economy will be forced to shut down." --> An outcome which is, on the other hand, of course, long-term and environmentally-speaking, highly desirable. |
| Alert | Add to my Journal | Printer Friendly | Permalink | Edit | Reply | Top |
| TheWatcher (1000+ posts) | Tue Aug-05-08 08:01 PM Response to Reply #81 |
| 83. Delete. |
 | Edited on Tue Aug-05-08 08:01 PM by TheWatcher Wrong Spot. |
| Alert | Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top |
| Ghost Dog (1000+ posts) | Tue Aug-05-08 08:09 PM Response to Reply #83 |
| 85. Better delete this, too, Watcher (classic British dry humour): |
| Edited on Tue Aug-05-08 08:46 PM by Ghost Dog |
| Alert | Add to my Journal | Printer Friendly | Permalink | Edit | Reply | Top |
| TheWatcher (1000+ posts) | Tue Aug-05-08 09:31 PM Response to Reply #85 |
| 96. Oh My God That is hilarious. |
| Thanks for posting that Ghost Dog. Sometimes it helps to be able to laugh.  GREAT stuff. Bookmarked and shared with friends.  |
| Alert | Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top |
| TheWatcher (1000+ posts) | Tue Aug-05-08 08:02 PM Response to Original message |
| 84. Dow Ends The Day Up 331 Points. |
| May The Farce Be With You.  |
| Alert | Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top |
| specimenfred1984 (1000+ posts) | Tue Aug-05-08 09:33 PM Response to Reply #84 |
| 97. I liked that pullback around...oh wait, there was no pullback, none. |
 | Just the happiest group of totally fraudulent people that ever existed. With the govt not allowing "free markets" anymore in order to preserve our "free markets", it's a free market rally because everyone is so free and happy! |
| Alert | Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top |
| Robbien (1000+ posts) | Tue Aug-05-08 08:48 PM Response to Original message |
| 87. Naked shorting: Hedge Funds up in arms about short-selling ban |
| The ban implies that the SEC has either misunderstood the damage that illegal naked shorting can inflict and has been inflicting, and suggests that it admits that the practice is rife in the industry. One trader says he is familiar with a large hedge fund manager that has been shorting large financial companies in the past few months with no intention of locating the actual stocks within the three-day period. His argument is that his firm has sufficient clout with the broker for the broker to turn a blind eye. The ban has received criticism from hedge fund industry representatives, fearing it might lead to longer-term regulation restricting short selling as a whole. The Managed Funds Association and Coalition of Private Investment Companies wrote a letter of complaint to the SEC. MFA president and chief executive Richard Baker says his firm believes "the difficulties are the result of poor fundamental conditions and not a mysterious conspiracy, or the inadequacy of current rules related to short selling". Jim Chanos, chairman of the CPIC, argues that restrictions on short sales undermine the integrity of prices because they remove liquidity and healthy sceptism from the marketplace Shorting stock without physical possession of the stock certainly keeps the market liquid but hedge funds’ arguments that three days are not sufficient to locate stock and deliver it is only proof that the SEC’s failure-to-deliver regulations have been ignored for years. http://www.euromoney.com/Article/1990841/BackIssue/6574... The ban on naked shorts was put in and suddenly commodities stocks fall. Cause and effect? |
| Alert | Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top |
| Tandalayo_Scheisskopf (1000+ posts) | Tue Aug-05-08 08:52 PM Response to Reply #87 |
| 89. Another version: |
 | I want to sell you a bridge. I will sell you a bridge. I don't own a bridge, but I won't let a small detail like that stop me. |
| Alert | Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top |
| Robbien (1000+ posts) | Tue Aug-05-08 09:08 PM Response to Reply #89 |
| 93. And |
| Don't worry about it being illegal, friends in high places are highly paid to not only look the other way but will work hard to protect our right to sell that bridge. |
| Alert | Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top |
| Tandalayo_Scheisskopf (1000+ posts) | Tue Aug-05-08 08:50 PM Response to Original message |
| 88. 4:45 Commodities Market Final |
| CLU08.NYM Crude Oil Sep 08 118.55 3:40pm ET Down 2.86 (2.36%)<--==  HOU08.NYM Heating Oil Sep 08 3.2741 3:39pm ET Down 0.076 (2.27%)<--== NGU08.NYM Natural Gas Sep 08 8.644 3:39pm ET Down 0.082 (0.94%)<--== PNU08.NYM Propane Gas Sep 08 1.785 3:43pm ET 0.00 (0.00%) RBU08.NYM RBOB Gasoline Sep 08 2.9403 3:39pm ET Down 0.0599 (2.00%)<--== Some German bozo called a floor on oil today at $110.00. Earlier this year, they were saying that oil would peak somewhere between $150-200/barrel. Thesis: Most of these market prognosticators don't know shit and only make these projections to protect their own positions. Translations: Assholes. See: Douchebag. ALQ08.CMX Aluminum Aug 08 1.32 4:11pm ET Up 0.01 (0.76%) HGQ08.CMX Copper Aug 08 3.484 3:57pm ET Down 0.0035 (0.10%) ZGQ08.CBT Gold 100 oz. Aug 08 874.10 3:35pm ET Down 26.00 (2.89%) GCQ08.CMX Gold Aug 08 874.50 3:58pm ET Down 25.60 (2.84%) PAU08.NYM Palladium Sep 08 349.00 3:23pm ET Down 5.45 (1.54%) PLU08.NYM Platinum Sep 08 2,040.10 3:43pm ET 0.00 (0.00%) ZIQ08.CBT Silver 5000 oz. Aug 08 17.12 Jul 30 0.00 (0.00%) SIQ08.CMX Silver Aug 08 16.45 3:12pm ET Down 0.653 (3.82%) CU08.CBT Corn Sep 08 525.25 2:26pm ET Down 10.25 (1.91%) OU08.CBT Oats Sep 08 359.75 11:04am ET Up 0.75 (0.21%) RRU08.CBT Rough Rice Sep 08 16.20 2:14pm ET Up 0.15 (0.93%) SMQ08.CBT Soybean Meal Aug 08 347.50 2:17pm ET Down 6.50 (1.84%) BOQ08.CBT Soybean Oil Aug 08 52.98 2:15pm ET Down 1.12 (2.07%) SQ08.CBT Soybeans Aug 08 1,262.50 2:14pm ET Down 24.50 (1.90%) FCQ08.CME Feeder Cattle Aug 08 115.35 2:10pm ET Down 0.075 (0.06%) PBQ08.CME Frozen Pork Bellies Aug 08 65.40 11:38am ET Down 3.00 (4.39%) LHQ08.CME Lean Hogs Aug 08 82.775 2:30pm ET Up 0.525 (0.64%) LCQ08.CME Live Cattle Aug 08 100.225 1:59pm ET Up 0.05 (0.05%) CCU08.NYB Cocoa Sep 08 2,722.00 3:14pm ET Down 77.00 (2.77%) KCU08.NYB Coffee Sep 08 140.20 3:14pm ET Up 3.50 (2.56%) CTV08.NYB Cotton Oct 08 67.16 2:58pm ET Down 0.09 (0.13%) LBU08.CME Lumber Sep 08 261.30 2:30pm ET Up 2.30 (0.89%) OJU08.NYB Orange Juice Sep 08 97.50 3:14pm ET Down 2.15 (2.13%) SBV08.NYB Sugar #11 Oct 08 13.89 3:14pm ET Up 0.49 (3.65%) SEU08.NYB Sugar #14 Sep 08 23.75 3:17pm ET Down 0.03 (0.13%) |
| Alert | Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top |
| dweller (1000+ posts) | Wed Aug-06-08 05:28 AM Response to Reply #88 |
| 111. okay then |
 |  is w/ propane?0.00 (0.00%) jus nuthin? dp |
| Alert | Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top |
| Hannah Bell (1000+ posts) | Wed Aug-06-08 06:22 AM Response to Reply #88 |
| 112. i hope copper keeps going down; tired of metal theives. |
 | |
| Alert | Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top |
| ozymandius (1000+ posts) | Tue Aug-05-08 08:55 PM Response to Original message |
| 90. When I was an audio engineer, I always became gravely concerned when something fixed itself. |
 | Edited on Tue Aug-05-08 08:56 PM by ozymandius Like today's market averages. They are obscene. The absence of (relatively) bad news does not make an abundance of good news. The sweet news about energy costs, of FOMC wording, and employment issues fail to justify the scale of lemmings leaping over the cliff today. Blind faith and phantom trades in the S&P pits, I guess. Alas, it is the way of the sucker rally. Sheep are scheduled to be shorn later this week. Dow 11,615.77 Up 331.62 (2.94%) Nasdaq 2,349.83 Up 64.27 (2.81%) S&P 500 1,284.88 Up 35.87 (2.87%) 10-Yr Bond 4.0070% Up 0.0350 NYSE Volume 5,474,020,500 Nasdaq Volume 2,387,650,000 4:25 pm : The stock market posted its largest percent gain in four months on Tuesday in a broad-based rally that was aided by favorable wording in the Fed's latest directive, a drop in crude prices and a better-than-expected economic reading on the services sector. All ten of the economic sectors posted a gain, with seven sectors advancing more than 2%. The S&P 500 surged 2.9%, with 91% of its components ending the session in positive territory. The FOMC left the fed funds rate at 2.00%, and the discount rate at 2.25%, as expected. The Fed noted that there are both risks to inflation and growth. The FOMC said that although the economy grew in the second quarter, labor markets have "softened further" and financial markets remain under "considerable stress." Most of the directive was very similar to June, when the Fed also kept rates unchanged. However, there were some subtle changes in the final paragraph. In June the Fed said downside risks to growth remain, although they have "diminished somewhat" and that upside inflation risks have "increased." In the latest directive, the Fed said downside risks to growth remain, and inflation is a significant concern -- removing the comments related to diminishing downside risks and increasing upside inflation risks. Traders took this as a sign that a Fed rate hike is not imminent, causing stocks to soar to their session highs in late afternoon trade. The FOMC decision does not deserve all the credit for the market's rally this session, as stocks were already up 1.9% prior to the announcement. A portion of the buying interest this session was due to a 2.3% drop in the price of crude oil to $118.64 per barrel, which follows the previous session's drop of 3.0%. The drop in crude prices aided oil-cost sensitive areas, with consumer discretionary rallying 4.4% as retailers spiked 5.3%. Airlines got a large 9.4% boost, and transportation as a whole rose 4.9%. Conversely, the energy sector underperformed on a relative basis with a gain of 1.1%. The financial sector (+5.1%) provided leadership throughout the session, indirectly benefiting from a healthy advance in European banks after Paris-based Societe Generale reported better-than-feared earnings. AIG (AIG 29.89, +3.20) led the surge higher with a gain of 12% after being upgraded to Buy from Neutral at UBS. Earnings news was mixed as Procter & Gamble (PG 67.97, +2.15) topped expectations, while MGM Mirage (MGM 35.85, +4.85), Molson Coors Brewing (TAP 48.18, -6.25) and Archer Daniels Midland (ADM 25.88, -1.52) fell short of analyst estimates. In terms of economic news, the July ISM Services report indicates business conditions aren't as weak as widely reported, although conditions are still not ideal. The reading rose to 49.5 from 48.2 in June, which topped the average estimate of 48.8. Since the reading is below 50, it reflects contraction in the services sector, although the number is moving in the right direction. DJ30 +331.62 NASDAQ +64.27 NQ100 +3.6% R2K +2.4% SP400 +2.1% SP500 +35.87 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1937/2.39 bln/884 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 2377/1.41 bln/752 |
| Alert | Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top |
| Ghost Dog (1000+ posts) | Tue Aug-05-08 09:07 PM Response to Reply #90 |
| 92. As a one-time (pre-windoze) 'software engineer' (analysis, design, programming) |
| I can deeply empathise. |
| Alert | Add to my Journal | Printer Friendly | Permalink | Edit | Reply | Top |
| DemReadingDU (1000+ posts) | Tue Aug-05-08 09:08 PM Response to Reply #90 |
| 94. It is obscene, I fear something dreadful is going to happen |
 | very soon  |
| Alert | Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top |
| Finnfan (1000+ posts) | Tue Aug-05-08 10:03 PM Response to Reply #94 |
| 102. If you go back to the SMW of exactly one week ago today |
 | (or maybe it was yesterday) I predicted that there was going to be some really bad news by the end of the week, and I was right - the markets gave up all of their gains. The markets seem to rise at the beginning of the week in direct proportion to the level of bad news at the end of the week. If this holds again this week, . |
| Alert | Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top |
| DemReadingDU (1000+ posts) | Tue Aug-05-08 09:36 PM Response to Original message |
| 98. Morgan Stanley says it has been hired by U.S. Treasury Dept |
| Edited on Tue Aug-05-08 09:38 PM by DemReadingDU to advise it on how to help mortgage finance giants Fannie and Freddie Breaking on money.cnn.com no link yet -------------------- What is this about? edit to add link: http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080805/housing_rescue.html |
| Alert | Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top |
| skoalyman (266 posts) | Tue Aug-05-08 09:41 PM Response to Reply #98 |
| 99. Just more news to smooth out fears so the market will shoot through the stratosphere tomorrow |
 |  |
| Alert | Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top |
| ozymandius (1000+ posts) | Tue Aug-05-08 10:39 PM Response to Reply #98 |
| 107. I think it means that Fannie and Freddie's problems are too big for them to fix |
| on their own. |
| Alert | Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top |
| UpInArms (1000+ posts) | Tue Aug-05-08 11:18 PM Response to Reply #107 |
| 108. and all the king's horses and all the king's men |
 | could not put humpty together again  |
| Alert | Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top |
| Robbien (1000+ posts) | Tue Aug-05-08 10:04 PM Response to Original message |
| 103. Regulators find huge error in Commodities Futures market and quietly slip in a fix |
| NEW YORK, Aug 5 (Reuters) - A quiet data revision that has boosted by nearly 25 percent the number of oil futures contracts U.S. regulators think are held by speculators is raising eyebrows in the energy trading community. The revision means that speculators controlled 48 percent of the open interest in NYMEX crude oil futures and options as of July 15, compared with just over 38 percent under the previous classification. "That's huge when you look at the numbers," said Phil Flynn of Alaron Trading in Chicago. It changes the whole way you look at the recent moves in this market." The U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission announced on July 18 that it was reclassifying some trading positions that it had reported as commercial hedging positions as noncommercial speculative positions. The data revision converted approximately 327,000 long and 330,000 short NYMEX crude oil futures and options positions into mostly spreading positions held by speculators. The big shift is all the more surprising, oil traders and analysts said, since the CFTC apparently reclassified only one unidentified oil trader at the same time as the data revision. . . . The reclassification comes amid the collapse of energy trader SemGroup LP, which filed for bankruptcy on July 22 after suffering $3.2 billion in losses on oil futures and derivatives. SemGroup has blamed its collapse on unauthorized speculative oil trading by its co-founder and former chief executive, according to a court filing by a SemGroup lender. The SemGroup collapse coincided with a sharp fall in oil futures from their peak above $147 a barrel in mid-July. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/7703185 Curiouser and curiouser |
| Alert | Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top |
| UpInArms (1000+ posts) | Tue Aug-05-08 10:07 PM Response to Reply #103 |
| 105. reclassified only one unidentified oil trader at the same time as the data revision |
| Edited on Tue Aug-05-08 10:08 PM by UpInArms and SemGroup dies hmmmm..... (edited out an oopsie) |
| Alert | Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top |
| Robbien (1000+ posts) | Tue Aug-05-08 10:14 PM Response to Reply #105 |
| 106. The Brits weren't buying the story either |
| Nice to be able to read this story without the US spin. The SemGroup story has been in the US media but the articles hinted nothing about this fraud. So how many other companies out there are listing their speculative commodity bets as non-speculative investments? |
| Alert | Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top |
| Demeter (1000+ posts) | Wed Aug-06-08 02:56 AM Response to Reply #103 |
| 110. No Speculation, My Eye |
| |
| Alert | Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top |
| UpInArms (1000+ posts) | Tue Aug-05-08 10:06 PM Response to Original message |
| 104. Hedge funds expand role as small business lender (loan sharking) |
| http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSN0551309620080... CHICAGO (Reuters) - Hedge funds are known for playing many roles on Wall Street, but last-resort lender to small businesses that are turned down by banks is hardly one of them. Yet with the credit crunch pushing many major U.S. banks to set tougher lending standards for small and medium-sized businesses, hedge funds have stepped in. The money isn't cheap, with interest rates of 14 percent or more. But small businesses have few places to turn. "A major void has been created in the marketplace by banks tightening their credit standards and trying to stabilize their balance sheets," said David Grin, co-founder of Laurus-Valens, a hedge fund with around $1.7 billion under management. "From the investment point of view, this is as good as it gets." Laurus-Valens provides loans to public and private companies with average revenues of $30 to $50 million. The fund charges interest rates of about 10 percent to 11 percent, and takes equity stakes in the companies. ...more... a small firm = annual sales of less than $50 million |
| Alert | Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top |
| Wednesdays (1000+ posts) | Wed Aug-06-08 02:21 AM Response to Original message |
| 109. Well, the big implosion isn't happening just yet; Nikkei up 2.25% |
 | Edited on Wed Aug-06-08 02:24 AM by Wednesdays NIKKEI 225 (Osaka: ^N225) Index Value: 13,205.36 Trade Time: 10:00PM ET Change: Up 290.70 (2.25%) Prev Close: 12,914.66 http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s= ^N225 Australia is up 2.47% ALL ORDINARIES IDX (ASX: ^AORD) Index Value: 5,002.70 Trade Time: 10:23PM ET Change: Up 120.70 (2.47%) Prev Close: 4,882.000 http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s= ^AORD |
| Alert | Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top |
| DU AdBot (1000+ posts) | Wed Aug 06th 2008, 07:35 AM Response to Original message |
| Advertisements [?] |
|
| Top |
No comments:
Post a Comment