FOREX-Euro slumps; safe-haven yen rallies broadly - Reuters UK
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Open Thread: Obama's Money Problem - News Busters
“The money is a huge problem,” confides a senior campaign maven. “We’ll see how long we can stand it. The money alone can’t beat us, but if we get bad jobs numbers a couple months in a row, then all of a sudden, things could get kinda hairy.”
That Obama should find himself on the losing end of a dash for cash is, to anyone familiar with his 2008 campaign, mind-boggling. Four years ago, the upstart candidate had the temerity to take on not only Hillary Clinton but the Clinton fund-raising juggernaut—and kick its ass. The mythology today is that the prodigiousness of Obama’s buckraking was all due to small donors and the juju of the web. Not so. Obama went toe-to-toe with Clinton in competing for Wall Street donors and whipped McCain among the Masters of the Universe. And the expectation was that his fund-raising prowess would be all the greater as a sitting president. Obama would raise $1 billion. His White House–sanctioned super-PAC would haul in at least another $100 million. Obama might fail to secure reelection, but his team would never find itself in the position of hoarding its pennies.
And yet here we are. Although Obama is surely raising a boatload of dough, it appears his campaign (combined with the DNC) could fall short of its goal of $750 million. (Its April fund-raising total declined to $43.6 million from $53 million in March.) Meanwhile, the pro-Obama super-PAC, Priorities USA Action, has raised less than $10 million since setting up shop more than a year ago—$2 million of it from Jeffrey Katzenberg—leading a highly placed Democrat involved in the reelection effort to describe it to me as a “fucking abysmal failure.”
Bill Burton, the former White House deputy press secretary who is one of two men running the super-PAC, disagrees. It’s still early, he says, and professes “no doubt” that his group will reach its $100 million target. But Burton allows that the task has been harder than he anticipated. “We had to spend a year talking to donors, educating them about why super-PACs would matter, even though in 2008, I, as the president’s spokesperson, and the president himself were saying, ‘Do not give to outside groups,’ ” he says. “And we had to do that with the group of people who are automatically skeptical of money in politics.”
But one of the most vaunted fat-cat-wranglers in Democratic history tells me that this is only part of the story. “There are several things going on,” this person explains. “Number one is the shabby treatment the president has given his donors. Unlike Clinton, who loved them and accommodated them, Obama announced he didn’t like big money and gave them the back of the hand. Point two is the president’s campaign announced—or not announced, they let it out, it got in the press, it got in the ether—that they were going to raise $1 billion. So when they come to you and say, ‘We need two-fifty,’ the answer is, ‘What the [f---] do you need my two-fifty for? You’re going to raise a billion! Not a hundred million. A [f---ing] billion dollars!’ You’re getting into federal-budget territory with that kind of claim.
“Three is the Obama donors aren’t scared. They think this is a slam dunk. They don’t think the president’s in trouble. They look at the Republican-primary process and say, That group of [f---ing] clowns? Fourth, Burton and his partner are great guys, but they have no experience in fund-raising. They thought that with the patina of the White House, the checks would just roll in. Wrong.
“Then, everybody looks to George Soros. ‘Why won’t George throw in?’ I know George pretty well. Early on, he wanted to come in to make his case on the economy. George doesn’t want legislation tweaked. He doesn’t want a rule changed. He wants his ideas heard out. But George couldn’t get a meeting in the White House. And then George is saying, ‘Where are the Obama money people with their 5 and 10 million dollars? Where is Penny Pritzker, Exhibit A? Why isn’t she throwing in 10 million?’ And that is a very good question.”
A prominent private-equity player in Gotham who supports Obama agrees with all of that but adds another insight. “Among rich Republicans, the view of Obama is that he’s the Devil,” this person says. “But on the Democratic side, certainly on Wall Street, there’s no visceral reaction against Romney. So if I give $10 million, I’m out the $10 million, and I’m gonna pay more in taxes if Obama wins. And I’m doing it against somebody who—I may not agree with his social views, but I don’t think he’s a bad person. And I’m not really into negative advertising, which is what a super-PAC would do … Then there’s the fact nobody on Wall Street thinks Obama gives a shit about them. They think his attitude is, ‘If I lose Wall Street, it’s not the end of the world.’ And they’re right.”
Whatever the causes, the consequences for Obama may prove dire. Burton reckons that, in the end, the cumulative spending on the Democratic side will be about $1 billion, compared with maybe $1.6 billion on the Republican side. And while the latter may be exaggerated for effect—other savvy Democrats put the GOP figure at more like $1.3 billion—there’s little doubt in either partisan camp that we are about to witness the improbable development of an incumbent president’s being financially overmatched.
“It concerns me gravely,” Plouffe tells me. “From a political standpoint, I’m almost as worried about that as I am about the question of what the economy’s gonna do over the next three or four months.”
Money has changed – that’s the issue - New Statesman
Peter Selby responds to Nelson Jones's article Money and Morality.
When the St Paul’s Institute, working with JustShare, Penguin Books and the LSE, brought nearly 2000 people into St Paul’s for a public debate on the theme of Michael Sandel’s book, What Money Can’t Buy: the Moral Limits to Markets (see Nelson Jones, NS 25 May) it was because we knew the theme touched a nerve, not because we have an answer to peddle. The Institute has been engaged for some years, as an agency of the Cathedral, in seeking to get into debate with the financial institutions which are its ‘parish’; as such we could hardly think Sandel’s book unimportant, and we were delighted so many others thought the same.
That’s not the same as signing up to his thesis about the moral corrosion brought about by the intrusion of the market into all sorts of spheres to which it is not appropriate. Certainly we are signed up to the desire to get people thinking hard about which are the things that should be for sale and which should not be and, as Rowan Williams says in his review of What Money Can’t Buy, to do so on the basis of rational reflection rather than relying in feelings of revulsion when we see certain things getting a price.
Nelson Jones in his NS piece wonders whether things have deteriorated from some golden age when money didn’t play the part it now does, and points to many areas where things were much more monetised in the past than they are now. Tellingly, if slightly optimistically, he says we no longer sell people, and however bad the euro crisis gets we still won’t be doing that. There are examples he cites in the ancient world that are at least as unpleasant to think about as some of the examples Sandel gives of the intrusion of market thinking.
In my comments in the debate I voiced my own reservations about Sandel’s thinking, so much of which seems to me to address symptoms without digging deeper into causes. When he gives the example of prisoners being able to buy a cell upgrade, and when Nelson Jones points out that that has historical precedent, the deeper issue is not being faced by either of them: the selling off of incarceration as a business is common policy in the USA as it is increasingly in Britain. In the process of creating that market a financial interest is being created in locking people up. That can’t be unconnected with the fact that we in Britain lock up more people than other European countries and that a quarter of the rising number of prisoners in the world – and a third of all incarcerated women in the world, whose number has increased by a sixth in five years – are in the USA.
The figures that became a matter of public scandal during the Jubilee 2000 campaign for the relief of unrepayable third world debt showed all too clearly that the escalating power fo financial debt was depriving children worldwide of education, healthcare and life itself. The situation is infinitely worse than either Sandel or Jones portrays: the issue is not the buying and selling of things that should, or should not, be free, or whether people value things they pay for more than things they receive for nothing; in the end it is not about getting people to think more clearly than they do about whether markets should have moral limits though all these questions are important. What really matters is that in everything from the depletion of the planet’s resources to the requirement on Greek citizens to sell their democratic birthright to have their debts rescheduled money is deciding matters of life and death, and doing so more and more.
That’s why as a Christian and a theologian I am convinced money has acquired all the characteristics of an idol, aggrandising its power and claiming more and more of people’s lives. And that’s why, because of faith’s commitment to raise fundamental questions about anything that has the potential to be an idol, the St Paul’s Institute will go on engaging that debate at an ever more fundamental level. When it recently commissioned a report on the attitudes of those working in the financial sector (see Value and Values) we learned that most did not think the City should listen more to the Church’s guidance. But we now know, since the Sandel debate came to St Paul’s, that many people do want to know whether pressing economic questions have something to say about the meaning of life and whether those who profess faith are prepared to get involved in relating that faith to those questions.
Because, make no mistake, money did not acquire this power by accident. The last four decades, roughly since the massive oil price rises of the early 1970s, have seen vast increases in the amount of money in circulation, and technological advance has multiplied its speed of circulation. In the absence of means of regulating that the dominant policy has been one of deregulation, allowing the power of money to grow with its quantity. The results are not just the life and death issues I have described, but a situation in which all of us, rich or poor, are compelled to worry more and more about money and think more and more about it.
The issues of monetary reform, dismissed even by the independent commission on banking and widely ignored, are ones we need to press: just as ‘home ownership’ is a euphemism for housing debt, so ‘fractional reserve’ is now a synonym for debt multiplication: is one of the questions we need to ask about the post-2008 crisis whether the system on which we have relied for money creation for nearly a century fraught with inherent instability? I ask the question not because the Institute has a recipe or a policy to commend, but because it is our passion as a community of faith to ensure that these questions are honestly faced. The Sandel debate, and the Jones response are just a start.
Peter Selby is one of the interim directors of the St Paul’s Institute, and author of Grace and Mortgage: the Language of Faith and the Debt of the World. He was until retirement Bishop of Worcester, and Bishop to HM Prisons.
Money market fund assets fall to $2.569 trillion - Yahoo Finance
NEW YORK (AP) -- Total U.S. money market mutual fund assets fell by $5.35 billion to $2.563 trillion for the week that ended Wednesday, the Investment Company Institute said Thursday.
Assets of the nation's retail money market mutual funds rose $369 million to $889.88 billion, the Washington-based mutual fund trade group said. Assets of taxable money market funds in the retail category rose $390 million to $702.8 billion. Tax-exempt retail fund assets fell $17 million to $187.08 billion.
Meanwhile, assets of institutional money market funds fell $5.72 billion to $1.673 trillion. Among institutional funds, taxable money market fund assets fell $5.61 billion to $1.586 trillion; assets of tax-exempt funds fell $110 million to $86.95 billion.
The seven-day average yield on money market mutual funds was 0.03 percent in the week that ended Tuesday, unchanged from the previous week, said Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet Inc. in Westborough, Mass.
The 30-day average yield was also unchanged from last week at 0.03 percent. The seven-day compounded yield was flat at 0.03 percent. The 30-day compounded yield was unchanged at 0.03 percent, Money Fund Report said.
The average maturity of portfolios held by money market mutual funds rose to 46 days from 45 days in the previous week.
The online service Bankrate.com said its survey of 100 leading commercial banks, savings and loan associations and savings banks in the nation's 10 largest markets showed the annual percentage yield available on money market accounts was unchanged from last week at 0.13 percent.
The North Palm Beach, Fla.-based unit of Bankrate Inc. said the annual percentage yield available on interest-bearing checking accounts was unchanged from the week before at 0.06 percent.
Bankrate.com said the annual percentage yield on six-month certificates of deposit was unchanged from the previous week at 0.22 percent. The yield on one-year CDs was also unchanged at 0.33 percent. It was flat at 0.53 percent on two-and-a-half-year CDs and steady at 1.13 percent on five-year CDs.
Donovan's Campaign Finance Director Arrested - Hartford Courant
Federal authorities have charged the finance director for state House Speaker Christopher Donovan's congressional campaign with trying to hide campaign contributions following an FBI undercover investigation of alleged influence-buying at the state Capitol.
Robert Braddock Jr., the campaign employee, was arrested Wednesday night, according to a variety of sources. The questionable contributions were made in connection with efforts to kill legislation that would that would have imposed new fees and taxes on certain kinds of tobacco retailers, according to the arrest warrant affidavit.
Braddock has been fired, along with at least one other campaign employee allegedly involved, Donovan said in a statement early Thursday evening.
Donovan's campaign spokesman would not say how many others were fired, and wouldn't elaborate on the statement. Donovan did not make himself available on the telephone.
U.S. Attorney David B. Fein said the investigation is continuing.
Although Braddock is clearly identified by his position and name in investigative documents that federal authorities have made public, Donovan is not.
Braddock is described in the affidavit as finance director for "Public Official Number 1," who is a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from the state's 5th Congressional district and who is a current member of the state House of Representatives.
Public records show that Braddock has been working for Donovan for about $3,800 a month.
Donovan is the Democrats' endorsed candidate for Congress in the 5th District. He faces an Aug. 14 primary for his party's nomination against Democratic challengers Elizabeth Esty and Dan Roberti.
Federal agents have fanned out across party lines, and they went undercover to pursue the investigation. They have talked to as many as 12 legislators from both Democratic and Republican parties, as well as legislative aides. Interviewees included Democratic and Republican leaders, sources said. Two Republicans, House Republican Leader Lawrence Cafero of Norwalk and a House Republican legislative aide, John Healey, who both have been advised that they are not targets of the probe, sources said.
Donovan issued a statement shortly before 5:30 p.m. Thursday, saying: "I am cooperating fully with the investigation, which is on-going, as is my campaign."
"The campaign employees allegedly involved" – including Braddock – "have been terminated, and the leadership of the campaign has changed. Tom Swan is joining the campaign, as campaign manager, effective immediately."
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, Donovan's fellow Democrat, commended the feds "for their diligence in the investigation and the speed in which they've taken action." He said "these allegations are despicable" and said Donovan should come forward with an explanation. "While I am encouraged that the Speaker is cooperating with the investigation, his position requires that he give our residents a full explanation of what he knows," Malloy said.
"Allegations like this not only damage a campaign or a candidate, they also undermine citizen's belief in their government's ability to carry out its responsibilities," Malloy said.
"These are very serious allegations that we expect will be thoroughly investigated," said Jeb Fain, spokesman for Esty, one of Donovan's Democratic rivals.
"This could be another in a series of ethical lapses by Donovan's campaign," said Chris Cooper, campaign spokesman for Mark Greenberg, one of four Republicans contending in an Aug. 14 primary for their party's 5th District nomination. Cooper cited Donovan's acceptance of legal donations — but, Cooper said, questionable ones — from lobbyists with bills pending before the legislature during its recently concluded 2012 session. "These are very serious charges, and at the very least they speak to the issue of judgment and character," Cooper said. "If it should turn out that Donovan knew about this activity, it is the worst possible breach of the public trust."
U.S. Attorney David B. Fein and Kimberly Mertz, who leads the FBI office in Connecticut, said Braddock, 33, was charged with conspiracy to conceal the source of contributions to the campaign of a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives.
The complaint alleges that Braddock conspired with others to accept conduit campaign contributions, which are contributions made by one person in the name of another person. It is a violation of federal campaign finance law for any person to knowingly accept a contribution made by one person in the name of another person.
The purpose of the conduit contributions alleged in the complaint was to conceal the fact that the individuals who were actually financing the payments had an interest in tax and licensing legislation that was introduced earlier this year in the Connecticut General Assembly, over which Donovan holds considerable influence as speaker.
The legislation introduced would have deemed "Roll-Your-Own" smoke shop owners to be tobacco manufacturers under Connecticut law, a designation that would have subjected these shop owners to a substantial licensing fee and tax increase. The Legislature's Joint Committee on Finance, Revenue and Bonding voted in favor of the bill, Senate Bill 357, on April 3, 2012.
Money Pit: Truck Series Needs to Return to Roots - pilot.com
If you are a regular reader of this space (thanks both Larry and Chad), you know I am a big fan of the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series.
(Disclaimer: I have done some public relations work for a truck series team.)
It is routinely some of the best racing out there. The drivers are either early in their careers and have something to prove, or are late in their careers and have something to prove. It leads to novel things in NASCAR these days, like passing and even a little bumping.
But all is not well with the trucks. Despite being a well-run series and having full fields for its first five races (even sending trucks home in each race), it has problems.
Money problems, that is.
Earlier this week, Red Horse Racing announced that it is suspending operations on its No. 7 entry, driven by John King. For those of you who don’t follow the series, King won the season opening race at Daytona.
The team will continue to field trucks for Timothy Peters and Todd Bodine.
They aren’t the only team with money woes.
The No. 27 Hillman Racing team that fields entries for Jeb Burton, son of Ward Burton, is looking for sponsorship as its six-race deal with State Water Heaters is wrapping up.
Ron Hornaday Jr., a four-time truck series champion, has run sans sponsorship in several races this year. David Reutimann is only running 10 to 12 of the series’ 22 races this year, due to lack of sponsorship money. In fact, the primary sponsor on his truck, BTS Tire and Wheel Distributors, is owned by Ricky Benton. Benton also owns the team.
Last season, the sponsorship situation got so bad that one race was run with a field of 30 trucks. A full field in the Camping World Truck Series is 36 entries.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see that again this year as the series moves away from North Carolina. Three of the first five races (Rockingham, Charlotte and Martinsville) were extremely close to home for truck teams, lessening the cost. There were 45 trucks attempting to make the field in Daytona, but that is a big money, special event.
There are 37 trucks on the entry list at Dover after the truck of King and two others withdrew after posting entry blanks with NASCAR.
The problem becomes obvious when you look through the garage. You have fully funded teams at Richard Childress Racing, Eddie Sharp Racing, Kyle Busch Motorsports (one team) and Turner Motorsports (even though Turner is doing it through a series of primary sponsors on each of its trucks).
There are tons of blank quarter panels, hoods and deck lids.
The solution for the trucks is to get back to what it was originally: an affordable series that ran on short tracks. It was a minor league for NASCAR Cup. You didn’t have to have a $10 million budget to go race.
Send them to South Boston, Myrtle Beach, Caraway, Ace, Bowman Gray (that would be awesome) or Gresham, not Kansas, Texas or Chicago. I know this may sound like a step back, but you are going to get a lot more buzz and build an identity for the series that will attract sponsors.
They will still have their TV deal with Speed, but it wouldn’t hurt if they could get a few of those races on Fox (Fox owns Speed).
Don’t think that’s the answer? Look at the attendance and TV ratings for the truck series. The best attendance and ratings in 2012 were for the race in Rockingham, which was a throwback to racing roots and the roots of the truck series.
People will pay to see more of that. And so will sponsors.
Contact Andy Cagle at
andycagle@earthlink.net.
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