South Carolina

Is Low-Level Radiation Dangerous … Or Harmless?  How Much Radiation Will We Be Exposed To?  How Can We Protect Ourselves from Radiation?

For Shawndraka Mack, a 100% pay rise from her current $7.60 "would do just fine." While some employees turn to blood plasma donation, and most are on food stamps (and other benefits), the mother of two teenagers (on Medicaid) told Bloomberg Businessweek, “I love what I do, but I don’t want to work for nothing." Between the 40 hours a week she works and the benefits, Mack explains, “I work at McDonald’s and I can’t afford to eat there. It’s crazy.” Of course, McDonalds has 'tips' for surviving on their state-subsidized wages but once again, despite Harry Reid's extrapolated charts, the reality of raising the minimum wage is lost on most who never stop to think of where the 'money' comes from; and besides employees have little to no leverage as we explained here.

We wish we could say we didn't warn Boeing's machinists about the key trend taking place in the US economy under the Obama "recovery" but unfortunately we did. Three years ago, to be specific, when we wrote: "Charting America's Transformation To A Part-Time Worker Society" and followed it up with "A "Quality Assessment" Of US Jobs Reveals The Ugliest Picture Yet" in which we explained that while the propaganda machine was fixated on numeric, quantitative, job additions every month, what has subversively going on, was the constant deterioration in the quality of jobs - and specifically the declining wages - available to those Americans who had not rotated outside of the labor force permanently (currently at a record 91.5 million). We say "alas" because it once again took several years before our cautions to be felt by the broader population, in this case the Boeing machinist union struggling to extract a wage increase from its employer: Boeing, whose stock keeps hitting new record highs with every passing day.

When will the U.S. labor market start to accelerate?  That is the single most critical question for global capital markets, for it speaks directly to both economic growth and Federal Reserve monetary policy.  But, as ConvergEx's Nick Colas notes, just as important, however, is the question "Where do people actually want to work?" Nick's key conclusions: there is no evidence of any faster pace of hiring, and the trend of hiring part time labor over full time is both strong (a 3:1 ratio) and accelerating.

It is convenient that in a recent post covering the latest historic Verizon M&A deal we showed a spaghetti chart, created by the WSJ, of the US telecom space because it lays roughly how many current subscribers that other US telecom giant, AT&T, has.  The reason for this is that according to the latest revelations from the NYT, which following recent work-sharing with the Guardian is now another official distributor of the Edward Snowden leaks (who in a brilliant move has decided to spread out his disclosures week after week, many times allowing such staggered disclosures to catch the administration - which has no idea what is coming next - in flagrant lies), the chart above shows that 140 million landline and wireless paying AT&T customers is the minimum number of affected Americans whose every call is recorded, however not directly or indirectly by the government, but rather by a private corporation working in collaboration with the US government.

The name of the collaboration: the Hemisphere Project, fomerly Hudson Hawk.

A government that is operating under the credo "by the corporation for the corporation",  rather than "by the people for the people." 

• Lew warns Congress to strike debt ceiling deal (FT)
• Central-Bank Moves Blur the View (WSJ)
• Brazil, Indonesia launch measures to shore up their currencies (FT)
• More mainstream media reminded about Fukushima - Radioactive ground water under Fukushima nears sea (AP)
• Fukushima inspectors 'careless', Japan agency says, as nuclear crisis grows (Reuters)
• New York Banker Arrested on Rape Charges in East Hampton (NYT)
• This time they mean business, for real: CFTC Moves to Rein In High-Speed Traders (WSJ)
• Britain operates secret monitoring station in Middle East (Reuters)
• Moody’s considers downgrading top US banks (FT)
• China's Bo calls wife mad after she testifies against him (Reuters)
• JPMorgan Sub-New Normal Growth Seen Vexing Next Fed Chief (BBG)
• SEC calls for cooling-off period for more staff (Reuters)

• Pimco Sees 60% Chance of Global Recession in Five Years (BBG)
• Global Tumult Grips Markets (WSJ)
• NSA Secrecy Prompts a Pushback (WSJ)
• ANA Scraps 787 Dreamliner Flight as Engine Fails to Start (BBG) - one of these days, though, it shall fly
• Kuroda’s April-Was-Enough Message Faces Markets Wanting More (BBG)
• S&P warns top US banks are still ‘too big to fail’ (FT)
• Democracy for $500 per plate (Reuters)
• Iran, the United States and 'the cup of poison' (Reuters)
• Japan grapples with lack of entrepreneurs (FT)
• Greece First Developed Market Cut to Emerging at MSCI (BBG)
• Asia's ticking time bonds; time to cut and run? (Reuters)
• Sony Outduels Microsoft in First PS4-Xbox One Skirmish (BBG)

Would you like to know what America's young people are actually learning while they are away at college?  It isn't pretty.  Yes, there are some very highly technical fields where students are being taught some very important skills, but for the most part U.S. college students are learning very little that they will actually use out in the real world when they graduate.  Some of the college courses listed below are funny, others are truly bizarre, others are just plain outrageous, but all of them are a waste of money.  If we are going to continue to have a system where we insist that our young people invest several years of their lives and tens of thousands of dollars getting a "college education", they might as well be learning some useful skills in the process.  This is especially true considering how much student loan debt many of our young people are piling up.  Sadly, the truth is that right now college education in the United States is a total joke... and still a generation of jobless youths borrow from a feckless Fed to indenture themselves...

In more than a dozen states, legislators are pushing for a movement back to a world where gold is considered money. As Bloomberg reports, lawmakers in Arizona are poised to follow Utah, which authorized bullion for currency in 2011. Similar bills are advancing in Kansas, South Carolina and other states to recognize gold and silver coins as legal tender. "The legislation is about signaling discontent with monetary policy and about what Ben Bernanke is doing," which seems confirmed by the recent shift in Texas to bring its gold back from the New York bank warehouse. The new measures would give "people the option of using money that won’t lose any purchasing power to inflation," one supporter of the bill explained, with another adding, "there is a fear that the government, or Bernanke in particular and the Federal Reserve, is pursuing a policy that will lead to the collapse of the dollar." The U.S. Constitution bars states from coining money and also forbids them from making anything except gold and silver coin tender for paying debts. Advocates say that opens the door for the states to allow bullion as legal tender.

Starting at 1147ET, Rand Paul began his James-Joycean discussion on US-based Drone strikes, six hours later (and with some minor aid from Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)), he is still going. Have you ever felt so strongly about something that you were willing to talk about it for over six hours? From Cruz's note that today is the 177th anniversary of the fall of (or stand at) the Alamo to Paul's rhetorical (we think) question to the President: "Are you going to just drop a hellfire missile on Jane Fonda?" We suspect the night is yet young as the snowquester continues.

As the video denotes below, here we have big brother traded on an exchange

While it is not news that the GOP has proposed a temporary debt ceiling extension that would suspend the provisions of the debt ceiling target until May 19, as was reported last week, however which would demand that the Senate do something unthinkable, and something it has not done for 4 years, namely pass a budget by April 15, it is news that as The Hill reports, the vote to suspend the debt ceiling in the House will take place "as soon as Wednesday." From The Hill: "While past measures to address the debt limit have simply increased the borrowing cap, the House bill would actually suspend the debt limit for three months. Then, on May 19, the debt limit would be automatically increased from $16.4 trillion to accommodate whatever additional borrowing the Treasury had done during that time frame." As we explained last week, this is merely a plan to shift fiscal (ir)responsibility into the Democrat camp, as it is virtually impossible that America can have a budget now or ever again. After all with $1 trillion deficits as far as the eye can see, the possibility to bluster and claim one is fiscally responsible while demanding $4 trillion in debt until 2016, will hardly fool the majority of the people any more of the time. Sure enough, Pelosi's response has made it quite clear this entire plan is DOA: "the proposed three-month debt- limit increase does not relieve the uncertainty faced by small businesses, the markets and the middle class. This is a gimmick unworthy of the challenges we face.”

What a long and wild ride it has been since then and the forks in the road have been marked with turmoil, disdain and an ever increasing amount of debt for this small nation. The solution for each and every problem has been more money appended by more taxes and more austerity measures and the Greeks keep lining up and will keep lining up until the cash dries up and then other conclusions will be found. You may think it is a never ending story and that the current act will go on forever but that would not be my bet nor do I think it is a likely conclusion. Whether it is the German Parliament or the IMF or some other nation in Europe under the guise of nationalism and prudence who has had enough and rightly says, “That is enough;” there is an ultimate endpoint to this game.

The second update of the day is here, and this one is far less jovial and optimistic than that coming from the seemingly quite cluless Lindsey Graham:

• REID SAYS HAVE BEEN UNABLE TO COME UP WITH COUNTEROFFER
• REID SAYS `WE'RE APART ON SOME PRETTY BIG ISSUES'
• REID SAYS `I WISH THEM WELL' REGARDING MCCONNELL-BIDEN TALKS
• MCCONNELL SAYS HE CALLED BIDEN TO TRY TO `JUMP START' TALKS

Nothing like the fate of the nation in the hands of Joe Biden, who may or may not still be laughing.