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Strategies & Market Trends : John Pitera's Market Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Yorikke who wrote (13836)	3/3/2013 8:57:06 AM
From: ggersh	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 33421

Makes total sense....going with the what looks like the proverbial favorite doesn't seem to hurt institutions as much as people. The pudgy Downing St dude had 10-1 wow, that was probably after Pearl..... Greed, racism, religion equal opportunity people crashers???? "Dig deep enough and everything can always be explained in a rational way based on the most common denominators.....power, and money." Well said...

To: Yorikke who wrote (13836)	3/4/2013 1:04:44 AM
From: John Pitera	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 33421

Kuroda Pledges Bolder Action as Bank of Japan Governor: Economy Haruhiko Kuroda said that the Bank of Japan (8301) will do whatever is needed to end 15 years of deflation should he be confirmed as governor and indicated that open-ended asset purchases could start sooner than next year. “I would like to make my stance clear that we will do whatever we can do,” Kuroda, president of the Asian Development Bank, said at a confirmation hearing in the parliament in Tokyo today. The central bank hasn’t bought enough assets and should consider buying large amounts of longer-term bonds, he said. Stocks, Yen The Nikkei 225 Stock Average (NKY) pared gains and the yen strengthened after Kuroda said that the BOJ should refrain from directly underwriting government debt -- highlighting the potential for even expanded action by the central bank to disappoint some investors. The yen rose 0.3 percent to 93.33 per dollar as of 12:29 p.m. in Tokyo. The stock benchmark was up 0.6 percent after earlier rising as much as 1.4 percent. The 10-year government bond yield fell to a decade low. *While meeting a 2 percent inflation target will not be easy, Kuroda is confident that the BOJ can do it, he told the lawmakers*. He added that a two-year time-frame is the global standard for such goals. Nomura Holdings Inc. and Mizuho Securities Co. say more easing could come as soon as the first policy meeting under the new BOJ leadership, scheduled for April 3-4. Ending deflation will be good for the global economy, Kuroda said, adding that Japan’s easing is not aimed at weakening the yen -- a restatement of official comments aimed at easing global concern over the currency’s decline of about 12 percent against the dollar in three months. Foreign Bonds Kuroda said that purchases of foreign bonds by the central bank would be difficult, echoing comments by Abe last month after Group of 20 nations pledged to refrain from targeting exchange rates for competitive purposes Kuroda said previously that falling prices exacerbate real debt burdens, and give an incentive to companies and households to postpone spending. Consumer prices excluding fresh food fell 0.2 percent in January. The price gauge hasn’t advanced 2 percent -- the central bank’s new target -- for any year since 1997, when a national sales tax was increased. “Further easing policies are needed,” he said today. “However, the policy board will decide on the specifics of doing this based on market conditions and economic trends.” He said that, while a self-imposed rule limiting bond purchases is not something adopted by other central banks, the BOJ shouldn’t “buy bonds directly or monetize debt.” The BOJ has pledged to keep the value of its bond holdings below the amount of cash in circulation, excluding an asset- purchase program which it counts separately. Iwata, Nakaso Abe has nominated Kikuo Iwata, an economics professor who backs greater government oversight of monetary policy, and BOJ Executive Director Hiroshi Nakaso for two deputy governor posts. While Shirakawa established a 76 trillion yen ($814 billion) asset-purchase fund and an unlimited bank-loan financing program, he failed to encourage inflation, instead warning repeatedly about the dangers of excess stimulus. Elsewhere in the Asia Pacific region, inflation in South Korea and Australia slowed in February, while Australian home- building approvals unexpectedly declined for a second month in January, reports showed today. Chinese property stocks tumbled after a March 1 announcement of measures to cool the property market. U.K. house prices rose in February for the first time in nine months, Hometrack Ltd. said. Euro-area producer prices probably increased, according to a Bloomberg survey. Jobless claims in Spain probably climbed last month from January, a separate Bloomberg survey showed. To contact the reporter on this story: Toru Fujioka in Tokyo at tfujioka1@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Paul Panckhurst at ppanckhurst@bloomberg.net

To: Yorikke who wrote (13836)	3/4/2013 8:32:29 AM
From: Pogeu Mahone	1 Recommendation Respond to of 33421

JAMES CARROLL Will the church address its real issues? By James Carroll\| Globe Columnist March 04, 2013 AP Pope Benedict XVI delivered his last blessing from the window of the pontiff’s summer residence Thursday. <!-- METADATA FOR EMTAF Will the church address its real issues? Globe Columnist As the cardinals come together to choose a new pope, they must be open to someone who will move the church forward in its teachings on sex and gender equality. By James Carroll 20130304050000 --> The word “conclave” turns on the Latin word for “key,” and that is surely what the Catholic cardinals hope to find this week: a quick way out of the shuttered Sistine Chapel where they must elect a new pope. Yet because of their malfeasance, and that of their predecessors, the church itself is now locked up — not in the opulent chamber where the papal balloting unfolds, but in a dungeon of deceit, hypocrisy, and corruption. It wasn’t the resignation of Benedict XVI that threw the church into its present institutional turmoil. But the pope’s surprising decision laid bare the depth of the problem. Consider two recent controversies: the disgrace of Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the British prelate accused by priests of improper homosexual advances; and the shadow over Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, who epitomizes the far broader cover-up of priestly sex abuse of minors. By focusing global attention on the men who will choose the next pope, Benedict’s resignation is revealing the extent of a catastrophic moral collapse. The question is whether the cardinals gathered in the locked room have it in them to see what really imprisons the church. Start with Cardinal O’Brien. Here is a church leader who, like so many other prelates, has been vociferous in opposing civil rights for gays, yet he himself is said to be locked in the closet of secret homosexual impulses. If so, such hypocrisy captures a larger contradiction. In the hierarchy’s panicked attempt to deflect attention away from its own responsibility for the massive sex abuse crisis, homosexual priests were scapegoated as if they were the source of the abuse. In 2005, for example, an order produced by the current pope prohibited men with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” from being ordained — an act that pretended to close the book on a centuries-long tradition in which homosexuals were quietly welcomed, as celibates, into rectories and monasteries. Yet as the broader society increasingly came to see anti-gay discrimination as an injustice, the church moved in the other direction — intensifying the pressure on those clerics who found themselves living double lives. This is not an uncommon problem. Yet the church’s inability to openly discuss this dynamic threw shadows in which a different group of clerics — child-abusing priests — could efficiently hide. The need to avoid anything that might lift a corner on a deeply troubled clerical culture meant that cover-up became an all-encompassing necessity. Continue reading below Related Accused Scottish cardinal admits sexual misconduct Interactive graphic: Explore the College of Cardinals 2012 Investigation: Failed oversight of a predator priest 2002 Spotlight: Abuse in the Catholic Church The moral dissonance isn’t only among the clergy, for the Catholic laity has been yoked to hypocrisy — revolving around contraception. Beginning with Margaret Sanger, the rise of feminism has centrally involved the demand for safe, reliable, and accessible contraception. The right of women to take control of their own reproductive lives is a pillar of gender equality. Catholic opposition to birth control, as a matter of doctrine, only dates to about the time, early in the 20th century, when Sanger founded what became the Planned Parenthood Federation. The Vatican’s campaign against birth control since then has been built on theological rhetoric about natural law and the God-given purpose of sexuality. Yet the hierarchy’s true motives seem to lie more in male supremacy than in God’s law; surely any realistic opposition to the deeper moral problem of abortion requires the advocacy of contraception, not the forbidding of it. The laity understands this and responds by ignoring Vatican teaching on birth control. In contrast, the cardinals meeting in conclave are handcuffed by these self-inflicted contradictions. The use of doctrines purporting to promote sexual morality as a mode of maintaining authoritarian control — over priests and laity both — has been exposed as a sham. Plainly dishonest, it was bound to fail, but who could have imagined how traumatic the failure would be? Cardinal O’Brien and Cardinal Mahony are only the faces of a systematic corruption, and now they, too, can be expected to be scapegoated by their fellow cardinals. But every man in the Sistine Chapel bears some responsibility. The next pope will preside over an urgent attempt to recover from these scandals, but keeping the issues locked up will no longer work. Church teachings on sex (the end of mandatory celibacy), and gender equality (not only contraception, but the ordination of women) must be up for discussion. The day of reckoning is at hand.