FINANCIAL TIMES: The unit at the centre of JPMorgan Chase’s $2bn trading loss has built up positions totaling more than $100bn in asset-backed securities and structured products – the complex, risky bonds at the centre of the financial crisis in 2008.

These holdings are in addition to those in credit derivatives which led to the losses and have mired the bank in regulatory investigations and criticism…

“I can’t see how they could unwind these positions because no one can replace them in terms of size. It’s a bit of the same problem they face with the derivatives trade,” said a credit trader at a rival bank. “They pretty much are the market.” …  (more)

EDITOR:  “Too big to fail” banks continue to gamble:   If successful, the pocket the profits.  If not, the tax payers bail them out.

HARRISBURG PATRIOT-NEWS:….The [leasing of the land]deal gave Harrisburg $20.3 million to spend after fees were taken off the top — which it primarily used to pay down other debt — but now threatens the city with having to make at least $930,000 in annual bond payments beginning in 2016 on $7 million of the debt, when the authority has to begin repaying the bonds. Harrisburg could find itself on the hook for the payments because in 2016 the lease for Strawberry Square’s main tenant, Verizon, comes due and the telecommunications company may leave or greatly reduce its presence in the building…

Should leases not cover the payments, then HRA is on the hook as well as Harrisburg itself, which pledged to back the bonds. A bond insurance company would then have to make payments should Harrisburg default.

“If the [authority] defaults on this loan and we are required to pay $2 million more each year in debt service, a currently impossible situation becomes even worse. It’s another potential nightmare for the city,” said City Controller Dan Miller…  (more)

LEHIGH VALLEY EXPRESS-TIMES Editorial:   …With stagnant tax revenues, high unemployment and a pyramid of public pension debt looming, Pennsylvanians must expect some scaling back.

Yet [Gov. Tom]Corbett’s proposed cuts in social services, education and other areas go deeper than necessary. The state Senate indicated as much in restoring $500 million to Corbett’s budget plan last week. About half of that will go to higher education, in return for state and state-related universities keeping tuition increases at or below the rate of inflation.

The Senate’s amendments are welcome, but its budget still wipes out the general assistance cash-grant program, which provide checks of $200 a month to adults living with disabilities. For some, that may be the difference between paying rent and utility bills and hitting the streets…  (more)

NEW YORK TIMES Op-Ed:  THREE and a half years ago, on my 62nd birthday, doctors discovered a mass on my pancreas. It turned out to be Stage 3 pancreatic cancer. I was told I would be dead in four to six months. Today I am in that rare coterie of people who have survived this long with the disease. But I did not foresee that after having dedicated myself for 40 years to a life of the law, including more than two decades as a New York State judge, my quest for ameliorative and palliative care would lead me to marijuana…

Inhaled marijuana is the only medicine that gives me some relief from nausea, stimulates my appetite, and makes it easier to fall asleep. The oral synthetic substitute, Marinol, prescribed by my doctors, was useless. Rather than watch the agony of my suffering, friends have chosen, at some personal risk, to provide the substance. I find a few puffs of marijuana before dinner gives me ammunition in the battle to eat. A few more puffs at bedtime permits desperately needed sleep.

This is not a law-and-order issue; it is a medical and a human rights issue. Being treated at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, I am receiving the absolute gold standard of medical care. But doctors cannot be expected to do what the law prohibits, even when they know it is in the best interests of their patients. When palliative care is understood as a fundamental human and medical right, marijuana for medical use should be beyond controversy…  (more)

Gustin L. Reichbach is a justice of the State Supreme Court in Brooklyn.

From the INTELLIGENCER JOURNAL NEW ERA:

“Lancaster County’s public libraries expect to spend about $150,000 this year to replace aging public-access computers.

“The Library System of Lancaster County board on Wednesday voted unanimously to assist the county’s member libraries with the purchase with a two-part program.

“First, the system will pay $100 toward the cost of each computer, system administrator Bill Hudson said. With some 300 computers expected to need replacing, that will cost the system $30,000.”

Click here to read the full article.

EDITOR: The funds from the Library System are from governmental funding that should by all rights be going directly to the libraries.  What is taking place is the System, originally created to perform some useful chores, has made itself a gatekeeper to consume huge chunks of available funding both government and private.

Either the county should do away with the System altogether or the libraries should all be joined together as part of the System and administered by the System, with each library simply represented by an advisory board.   Either of the two would work far better than this useless bureaucracy that consumes vital resources, obstructs progress,  and contributes virtually nothing.

When will the County Commissioners wake up to this situation and find the political courage to correct it.

Yes, the obvious escapes us when there is so much propaganda surrounding us. Of course, jobs would be plentiful if the wealthy created jobs since the wealthy have more wealth than ever before in history.

Another truth — government creates jobs. I wish Obama understood this one. Teachers, police, fire fighters, social workers, court personnel, people building infrastructure, researchers (in a lot of fields) . . . are just a few examples of millions of people with jobs created by government. If Obama understood this he would be on the road to a landslide re-election, http://itsoureconomy.us/2012/05/what-if-the-government-didnt-cut-jobs/ . Rather than wasting half the stimulus on tax breaks for business, he should have just created jobs like Roosevelt did. Roosevelt had the most rapid decline in unemployment in history in his first few years in office. Obama has the slowest job creation of any post-recession period.

And, then once the jobs are created the point made by billionaire Nick Hanauer kicks in and the middle class starts to have money to spend and build the economy. The positive cycle begins, rather than the negative cycle we are currently in continuing.

Iceland got it, http://itsoureconomy.us/2012/05/iceland-shows-bailing-out-the-people-works-better-than-bailing-out-the-banks/. Venezuela got it, http://itsoureconomy.us/2012/05/can-europe-learn-from-hugo-chavez/. Greece is figuring it out, as is Spain (but of course the media tells us THEY are creating the crisis!).

KZ

From the HARRISBURG PATRIOT-NEWS:

Frustration over deep state funding cuts proposed for the county’s human services system is prompting Dauphin County Commission Chairman Jeff Haste to talk about a revolt.

Maybe the county shouldn’t just take the hit if Gov. Tom Corbett succeeds in slashing that funding by 20 percent in next year’s state budget, Haste said today. Instead, he suggested the commissioners should consider calling the governor’s hand and stop providing those services.

“What if we decided to close our human services departments altogether?” Haste said. “I’m not saying that’s the right way to go. I’m just asking the question…

Click here to read the full article.

WASHINGTON POST:  Syrian rebels battling the regime of President Bashar al-Assad have begun receiving significantly more and better weapons in recent weeks, an effort paid for by Persian Gulf nations and coordinated in part by the United States, according to opposition activists and U.S. and foreign officials.

Obama administration officials emphasized that the United States is neither supplying nor funding the lethal material, which includes antitank weaponry. Instead, they said, the administration has expanded contacts with opposition military forces to provide the gulf nations with assessments of rebel credibility and command-and-control infrastructure…

The U.S. contacts with the rebel military and the information-sharing with gulf nations mark a shift in Obama administration policy as hopes dim for a political solution to the Syrian crisis. Many officials now consider an expanding military confrontation to be inevitable…   (more)

THE SALT / NPR:  …  [The National Cancer Institute]  analyzed data collected from more than 400,000 Americans ages 50 to 71 participating in the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study.

“We found that the coffee drinkers, they had a modestly lower risk of death than the non-drinkers,” he tells The Salt.

Here’s what he means by “modestly:” Those who drank at least two or three cups a day were about 10 percent or 15 percent less likely to die for any reason during the 13 years of the study. But you don’t necessarily need to be a heavy coffee drinker…  (more)

USA TODAY:   More than half of all babies born last year were members of minority groups, the first time in U.S. history. It’s a sign of how swiftly the USA is becoming a nation of younger minorities and older whites.

Hispanics, blacks, Asians and other minorities in 2011 accounted for 50.4% of births, 49.7% of all children under 5 and slightly more than half of the 4 million kids under 1, the Census Bureau reports today.

In all, minorities had 5.9% fewer babies last year than in 2010, but births among non-Hispanic whites fell even more, down 10.1%, Johnson says. A key reason: A greater share of the minority population is of child-bearing age…  (more)

EDITOR:  This nation has continuously been altered by waves of immigrants from different parts of the world.  It is our hang up over the color of skin that makes the current transition different and, by many, feared.   Nevertheless, over the next couple of generations  newcomers will be assimilated, although a differential in skin coloration will likely remain for some time to come.  Our grandchildren will hardly notice.