Secret Hours

You can knock the economy and call this a sucker's rally... but the market is damn resilient

Yesterday had the feel of a top before a long decline, especially with Goldman Sachs (GS) falling immediately after their secondary offering.

And though the markets were down early today, with all kinds of bad news to cite, the stock market came back solidly. The Dow ended up 109.52, closing back over 8,000. The NASDAQ was basically flat on the day, while the S&P 500 was up just over 1%.

Ray Kelly's attempt to evict the press corps from police headquarters has city lawmakers concerned. "This is definitely a step in the wrong direction," says City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr., who chairs the public-safety committee, which oversees the police. "If there's one issue that everybody agrees the police department needs to improve on, it's communication." Kelly's plan to clear out reporters in "the Shack," a ramshackle cluster of offices on the second floor of 1 Police Plaza (where this reporter once had a desk) for "construction of the new Joint Operations Center" this summer miffed many reporters working there, who said Kelly never told them or their editors about his plans. It's also unclear whether Mayor Bloomberg knew about Kelly's attempt to oust the press from his building — shortly after Kelly's intent was made public, he altered his plan slightly. Our call to Kelly's press office about the matter was — perhaps not surprisingly — not immediately returned.

Since the human genome was sequenced six years ago, the cost of producing a high-quality genome sequence has dropped precipitously. More recently, the National Institutes of Health called for cutting the cost to $1,000 or less, which may enable sequencing as part of routine medical care.

Are you a Stamford resident two shakes away from being thrown out on your ass? All may not be lost, if you make a mental note to show up at the Yerwood Center this Saturday, where Goldman Sachs trader Christopher Meek will be holding a meet and greet with distressed homeowners and lenders (including HSBC, People’s United Bank, New Alliance Bank, Webster Bank and Freedom Mortgage) to share some leaf cookies and assess some situations. Also in attendance will be debt counselors from Housing Development Fund, Neighbor Works, the Urban League of Southern CT and the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority.

Meek came up with the idea last fall while talkin’ foreclosures over beers with work pals. Chris suggested organizing an info session between the foreclosers and the foreclosees, and his naysaying colleagues said “you’ll never be able to do it,” bet him a cup of coffee he couldn’t, and ordered more shots. How wrong those drunk bastards were.

Chris told the Stamford Advocate that working on the event for the past several months has “…opened my eyes to things…I truly believe this economic environment has made everyone a kinder, gentler person.” He expects that around 72 families may be able to modify their loans this weekend, though as many as 200 could show up. But no one will go home empty handed.

After your cushy office job goes away, and nobody cares about your "creative capital", it'll all be about what you can make or grow with your hands.

Well, maybe.

But in Japan, being a farmer is a booming vocation for the scores of unemployed workers (well, scores is relative, unemployment there is less than 5%).

WSJ: "On my first day, I went to sleep feeling cold and woke up feeling cold," said Mami Hinataze, a 23-year-old woman from a Tokyo suburb who worked at a cafe until recently. Later, Ms. Hinataze learned to use six layers of covers to keep warm at night.

Then there was the grueling workload, which included setting up a greenhouse and collecting chicken droppings from a poultry farmer to use as fertilizer. One afternoon, the trainees tackled weed-picking with enthusiasm, competing to see who could dig up the largest clump. But soon, the conversation turned to a nearby hot spring they all wished they could visit to ease their achy muscles.

Since the new peace deal was made, the militants are beginning to push into neighboring areas. Last week they overpowered a village militia in the adjacent Buner district. The attack was a violation of the peace accord. But the Taliban faction that controls Swat says it has no intention of withdrawing. “We want Islamic sharia [law] also to be enforced in Buner,” said Mr. Khan. “No one can force us out from any part of the province”

Jerry and Carol Ptacek bounced from one cramped apartment to another most of their adult lives, so they could hardly believe their luck when they were able to buy a San Bernardino house for the bargain price of $63,000.

Nine years later, they are renters again — a testament to the failure of the federal government’s Dollar Homes program.

Congress launched the program in 1998 to clear the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s books of foreclosures and provide affordable housing. Local governments would buy the homes for $1, fix them up and resell them at a discount to poor families, who would get a chance to put down roots in the community.

Another week, another earthquake. Having already signed a nearly eight-hundred-billion-dollar stimulus bill, restored the rule of law to America’s treatment of detainees in its custody, developed plans to shore up the banking and housing sectors, demanded new regulation of private equity and hedge funds, proposed sweeping reforms in health care, energy, and education, and deepened the country’s involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan, President Obama, in his tenth week in office, effectively put the government in charge of a large part of the automobile industry. And that was just Monday. By midweek, at the G-20 meeting in London, he had also committed the United States in principle to a new global regulatory framework for financial markets and, by some accounts, had resurrected the art of Presidential diplomacy. Then, on Thursday night, he won passage of a $3.5-trillion budget, whose tax and spending provisions mark the end of a long-term trend toward greater inequality.

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