No October jinx this time for the stock market

NEW YORK (AP) — October, with its history of big crashes on Wall Street, didn't scare off investors this time. To the contrary, the stock market seemed unstoppable.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index closed at a record high seven times and ended the month up 4.5 percent. The market climbed even after October began with the 16-day government shutdown and the threat of a potentially calamitous U.S. default.

"The market didn't waver in the face of the shutdown," said Anton Bayer, CEO of Up Capital Management, an investment adviser. "That was huge."

After being rattled by a series of down-to-the-wire budget battles in recent years, investors have become inured to the ways of Washington lawmakers. Instead of selling stocks, they kept their focus on what they say really matters: the Federal Reserve.

The central bank is buying $85 billion of bonds every month and keeping its benchmark short-term interest rate near zero to promote economic growth. The Fed stimulus has helped generate a stock market rally that has been going on since March 2009.

With October's gains, the S&P 500 is now up 23.2 percent for the year and is on track for its best year since 2009. The Dow Jones industrial average is 18.6 percent higher, and the Nasdaq composite index is up 29.8 percent.

The S&P 500 has climbed 160 percent since bottoming out at 676.53 in March 2009 during the Great Recession.

Some analysts say the precipitous rise in stocks may now make the market vulnerable to a drop.

"Because stocks have gone up so much, people will get nervous about another big sell-off at some stage," said David Kelly, chief global strategist at JPMorgan funds.

Some investors will be relieved to see October behind them. The Stock Trader's Almanac refers to October as "the jinx month" because of its fraught history.

The Dow lost 40 points on Oct. 28, 1929, a day that became known as Black Monday and heralded the start of the Depression. Almost 60 years later, on Oct. 19, 1987, the Dow suffered its biggest percentage loss, plunging nearly 23 percent in the second Black Monday. The index also plummeted 13 percent on Oct. 27, 1997.

There was no such drama on Wall Street on Thursday. Stocks were mostly flat as investors took in disappointing corporate earnings.

The S&P 500 slipped 6.77 points, or 0.4 percent, to 1,756.54. The Dow dropped 73.01 points, or 0.5 percent, to 15,545. The Nasdaq composite fell 10.91 points, or 0.3 percent, to 3,919.71.

Avon slumped $4.90, or 21.9 percent, to $17.50 after the beauty products company reported a third-quarter loss, reflecting lower sales and China-related charges. The company also said the Securities and Exchange Commission is proposing a much larger penalty than it expected to settle bribery allegations.

Visa fell $7.15, or 3.5 percent, to $196.67. Its quarterly profits fell 28 percent as it set aside money for taxes. Visa also expects a slow recovery for the economy.

Overall, company earnings are beating the expectations of Wall Street analysts and lifting stock prices. Companies are benefiting from low borrowing costs and stable labor expenses, which are enabling them to boost earnings even as sales remain slack.

Earnings for companies in the S&P 500 are expected to grow 5.3 percent in the third quarter, according to data from S&P Capital IQ. That compares with 4.9 percent in the second quarter, and 2.4 percent in the same period a year ago.

The stock market is likely to keep climbing as long as the central bank keeps up its stimulus, said Up Capital's Bayer. But stocks could fall as much as 20 percent when the Fed starts to cut back on its bond-buying program, he said.

• Finance
• Investment & Company Information
• stock market

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/no-october-jinx-time-stock-market-205743884--finance.html
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Neko Case: Tiny Desk Concert

Tiny Desk Concerts

October 31, 2013 It's Halloween! Watch a Tiny Desk Concert featuring Neko Case (in costume), Kelly Hogan, as well as Eric Bachmann of Crooked Fingers and Archers of Loaf.

Set List

• "Night Still Comes"


• "Calling Cards"


• "Local Girl"

Credits

Producers: Bob Boilen, Denise DeBelius; Audio Engineer: Kevin Wait; Videographers: Denise DeBelius, Becky Harlan, Abbey Oldham; photo by Meredith Rizzo/NPR

Source: http://www.npr.org/event/music/241830890/neko-case-tiny-desk-concert?ft=1&f=10001
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Video: What's new in Android 4.4 design

For the more visually minded folks, Google's whipped up a video with Android's Nick Butcher, Adam Koch and Roman Nurik discussing some of the new design elements in Android 4.4 KitKat. Have at it, after the break!

read more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/brjdWorUgV0/story01.htm
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TV cameras go live in UK's Court of Appeal

LONDON (AP) — Lights, camera, appeal!

Television cameras were allowed for the first time in one of Britain's highest courts Thursday after a partial lifting of a nearly 90-year ban on filming in courts. The landmark shift comes after years of campaigning from broadcasters such as the BBC, Sky News and ITN.

James Harding, the BBC's director of news, said broadcasting proceedings at the Court of Appeal will help viewers understand how the justice system works. In the first broadcast case, a man lost his appeal of a 7-year sentence for counterfeiting.

Lawyers' arguments, judges' comments and sentencing remarks may be filmed, but victims, witnesses and defendants may not.

Some cases will be broadcast with a 70-second delay.

• Society & Culture
• Television cameras

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/tv-cameras-live-uks-court-appeal-123334036.html
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Is the Constitution Written Like the Da Vinci Code?

Bond v. United States is testing whether Congress can use treaty laws to punish domestic criminal behavior.

Photo by NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images

It’s the Supreme Court case that sounds like a Lifetime movie: When Carol Bond found out that her husband was having an affair with her best friend, Myrlinda Haynes—and that Haynes was pregnant—Bond, a microbiologist who lived in the Philadelphia suburbs, put toxic chemicals on Haynes’ mailbox and her car. She got caught—and was indicted under a federal statute that makes it illegal to use toxic chemicals to harm other people. Congress had passed that statute to implement the U.S. government’s obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention, the same treaty that Syria was recently forced to sign.

Next Tuesday, Bond’s lawyers will try to persuade the Supreme Court that Congress can’t use the chemical weapons treaty as an excuse for punishing run-of-the-mill criminal behavior. This superficially appealing argument is beloved by libertarians, who have dashed to Bond’s aid, but it depends on a bizarre and tendentious reading of the Constitution that honors neither the founders’ intentions nor the practicalities of governance.

The Constitution gives Congress limited (“enumerated”) powers, which are thought mostly to exclude the ordinary stuff of criminal law like the dispute Bond was involved in. Normally, we think that if we need a law that prohibits people from attacking each other with toxic chemicals, the states, not the national government, should pass it.

And it’s true that the law that nailed Bond derives its authority circuitously. Congress enjoys the power under the Constitution’s catchall Necessary and Proper Clause to enact laws that are needed to advance other powers in the Constitution. One of those other powers is the president’s power to enter treaties with the consent of two-thirds of the Senate. Thus, the government argues, the federal law that criminalizes the harmful use of chemical weapons, privately as well as by governments and terrorists, was necessary and proper to implement the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Bond’s argument is that the president and the Senate cannot, by entering a treaty, give Congress a power that it otherwise does not have. Such a reading of the Constitution crowds out the states’ police powers and gives too much sway to Congress.

This case is a strange vehicle for examining this constitutional question. True, the feds took over the case from state authorities, but that was because Constable Dogberry of the local police thought that the toxic chemical Bond smeared on Haynes’ car was cocaine and advised her to get it washed, not because Pennsylvania law allows people to assault each other with toxic chemicals. The federal law enabled the federal government to step in—the U.S. Postal Service did surveillance and caught Bond—and to punish Bond for acts that were illegal under Pennsylvania law as well.

But libertarian critics of national government power, like the Cato Institute, which submitted an amicus brief, worry that if Bond loses this case, the United States could enter a treaty with Suriname or Lesotho to abolish the death penalty or home schooling. Then Congress could pass an implementing statute that shreds state laws on the death penalty and home schooling, which (according to the libertarians) Congress is otherwise not allowed to do.

You might wonder why Suriname or Lesotho, or the United States, would enter such a treaty. And it is most doubtful that they would. Bond v. United States has become an ideological dispute, based, as such disputes so often are, on the merely theoretical possibility that the government will abuse its powers.

Cato’s brief is rooted in a literal-minded reading of the text of the Constitution. The Treaty Clause says that the president has the power to make treaties with the consent of the Senate. The necessary and proper clause says that Congress has the power to pass laws that are necessary and proper to the exercise of other powers in the Constitution. Cato concludes that therefore Congress has the power to pass laws that are necessary and proper to the making of treaties. But it doesn’t have the power to pass laws that are necessary and proper to the implementing of the treaties, because there is no separately enumerated constitutional power for implementing. And so, according to Cato, Congress can pass laws to implement treaties only if it can rely on a source of power rooted elsewhere in the Constitution. It has no such power to criminalize the domestic use of chemicals as weapons.

One can respond to this argument by observing that Congress can rely on its old broadly interpreted friend, the power to regulate interstate commerce. But libertarians object to the broad interpretation of Congress’ powers here as well. And in the Bond case, the government didn’t make this argument in the lower courts. One can also respond by arguing that “make” has a broader meaning than Cato claims, as another amicus brief gamely does.

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/view_from_chicago/2013/10/bond_v_united_states_the_ridiculous_libertarian_argument_in_the_supreme.html
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Digitizer makes 3D scanning accessible, but not yet practical

When Bre Pettis unveiled MakerBot's Digitizer, you couldn't wipe the smile off his face. And, upon opening our own unit, it's easy to understand why. When you lift the plastic unit, swaddled in black foam, out of its cardboard box, you feel like you're stepping into the future. 3D scanning isn't ...

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/FsSx14BcYn8/
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Obama admin presses for delay in Iran sanctions

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Joe Biden and senior Obama administration officials convinced a number of senators on Thursday to hold off on another round of Iran sanctions as Western powers test Tehran's willingness to scale back its nuclear aims.

The full-court press didn't sway every senator who participated in the hours-long, closed-door briefing, but the chances that the Senate Banking Committee would draft new, punitive measures next week just as negotiations occurred in Geneva diminished significantly.

"As one member of the committee, my attitude is if something is going on that may lead to a positive result, let's see where that ends up," said Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., as he emerged from the session. "We can always pass a sanctions bill."

Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., said the administration was "making a good case" for delaying another round of penalties although he said he had not made a decision.

Joining Biden in the discussions with Democratic leadership and committee members were Secretary of State John Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, a lineup that underscored the administration's strong desire to get Congress to wait on a new package of penalties. Although the White House insists that tough sanctions have forced Iran to negotiate, it wants Congress to pause to give negotiators flexibility in talks with Iran.

"I like John Kerry, I got a lot of trust in John Kerry," said Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., who explained that it might make sense for the committee to wait, finalize any legislation "and let them (the administration and Western powers) do their negotiations."

Unnerving for the administration is the prospect that a Senate panel would be crafting new sanctions at the same time as Iran and six world powers meet in Geneva next week for another round of negotiations.

The chairman of the Banking committee, Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., said he was undecided on whether the panel would craft the bill next week. Republican and Democratic congressional aides indicated that it was unlikely on the same days as the international talks.

Western powers have been trying to determine Iran's seriousness in complying with demands it prove its nuclear program is peaceful since reformist President Hassan Rouhani took office in August. Both sides described their last round of negotiations as positive, with Tehran ready to discuss some curbs on programs that can create both atomic energy and the fissile core of nuclear arms.

Several lawmakers emerging from the session argued that this is no time to let up on Tehran.

"I have to hear something far more substantive to dissuade me from being an advocate for pursuing a new round of sanctions," said Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee who has repeatedly sponsored tough sanctions legislation.

Republican Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois, who has often partnered with Menendez, said his response to the administration's intense lobbying was to keep pushing for sanctions, dismissing the latest talks with Tehran as "a long rope a dope."

"I think we need to keep rolling with the pressure," Kirk said. "Without sanctions, you have war. Sanctions are the only way to prevent a war. I don't want to condemn our allies and Israel to a war."

The Banking Committee is weighing a bill that would blacklist Iran's mining and construction sectors. It largely mirrors a House measure that passed overwhelmingly by a 400-20 vote in July. That bill also called for all Iranian oil sales to end by 2015.

The Senate bill may narrow that time frame, block international investment in more economic sectors, try to close off Iran's foreign accounts and tighten President Barack Obama's ability to waive requirements for allies and key trading partners who continue to do business with Iran.

The powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which has considerable sway in Congress, favors more sanctions to stop Iran.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama is not seeking an open-ended delay to new sanctions and believes there may come a point where additional economic penalties against Iran are necessary. Kerry told senators that the president wants to keep the current sanctions regime in place while negotiating with Iran.

Even if the administration succeeds in convincing Democratic leaders and Johnson to delay a vote, Kirk said he would try to attach new sanctions to the annual defense policy bill that the Senate could consider as early as the week of Nov. 12.

"I would look for every opportunity as a senator," he said.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-10-31-US-United-States-Iran/id-8253cd0d18af4a769c72a9bf7445fc3c
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