HFT Manipulation? EURO Soars As Bank Run Spreads From Spain To The UK

As the run on the banks spread in Europe, with 30% of customers pulling cash out of UK branches of Spain’s Santander bank, the Euro spikes on absolutely no news.

While we saw Wall Street banks admitting they jumped in to prop up Facebook’s opening day IPO crash today, there is no such admission or explanation when it comes to the Euro’s massive spike.

That spike of course which defies not only technical and fundamental data but conventional wisdom as well as Greece continues down the path of exiting the Euro while the mass withdrawal of consumer deposits has spread from Greece, into Spain and today into the UK.

This of course raises the specter that some high frequency trading algorithm was unleashed to manipulate the price.

With 18,250 cases of HFT market manipulation documented over the last 5 years, including the now infamous silver manipulation scandal and the 54 second grand rehearsal for a market crash the possibility of such manipulation is not far-fetched.

In any case there is explanation for the move in Euro as of right now so we will just have to see how this plays out.

Zero Hedge reports:

Nothing could be more appropriate than topping a week of surreal newsflow than what just happened with the EURUSD, which soared by 80 pips on absolutely non news, in what can be attributed to either some algo going apeshit and lifting every offer, a fat finger, or just the tried and true Bank of International Settlement stop hunt seeking to send correlated risk assets higher courtesy of a spark in upward momentum. Sadly today not even this glaring attempt to jump broad risk into the stratosphere is working. And ahead of a weekend where it is rumored Europe may reopen on Monday, we can’t wait for the inevitable snapback.

What we do know for certain is that what is not driving the EUR higher, is news of another semi-bank run in post bank-downgrade Spain, only this time not at nationalized Bankia, but at Banco Santander. From the WSJ:

Banco Santander SA’s SAN.MC +2.97% U.K. unit lost about £200 million of deposits on Friday as jittery customers worried about the lender’s financial health, according to a senior executive.

The deposit outflows on Friday, amounting to about $316 million, represented roughly 0.2% of Santander UK PLC’s total customer deposits, said Steve Pateman, Santander’s head of U.K. banking. Those deposits stood at £120.1 billion at the end of last year.

“We had a modestly negative day,” Mr. Pateman said.

Santander UK has spent the day scrambling to soothe anxious depositors. Customers apparently are nervous about the British bank’s vulnerability to Spain and its fragile banking system, and were further rattled by news coverage of a downgrade of the bank’s credit rating late Thursday by Moody’s Investors Service.

Customers have been visiting Santander branches and calling customer-service agents to discuss the bank’s financial situation, Mr. Pateman said. Branch managers are explaining to them that Santander UK is fully independent of its Spanish parent and that the U.K. bank benefits from strong supervision by the U.K.’s Financial Services Authority, he said.

Mr. Pateman said about 70% of customers who visited Santander UK branches on Friday to discuss their concerns left without withdrawing their funds. The other 30% couldn’t be convinced, he said.

“They say, ‘I got caught by Northern Rock and I don’t want to get caught again’,” Mr. Pateman said. Northern Rock is a British bank that collapsed in 2007.

Source:Zero Hedge

Source: Alexander Higgins Blog

Artificial Sweeteners Linked with Preterm Delivery

Sugar sweetened beverages such as sodas have received a wide-scale bad reputation for their negative impact on health. All the while, diet sodas are falsely promoted as a healthier alternative. But artificial sweeteners such as aspartame, used in diet soda, have also been tied to numerous health complications, with one study linking artificial sweeteners to premature delivery.

Although some attest to the safety of artificial sweeteners like aspartame, these sweeteners have actually been shown to cause considerable harm.

The study looking at the relationship between soft drink consumption and pregnancy outcome found that preterm delivery risk rises 38 percent for pregnant women having 1 or more servings of artificially sweetened drinks per day. What’s more, consuming 4 or more servings daily was associated with an increased risk of 78 percent.

“There was an association between intake of artificially sweetened carbonated and noncarbonated soft drinks and an increased risk of preterm delivery…A stronger increase in risk was observed for early preterm and moderately preterm delivery than with late-preterm delivery. No association was observed for sugar-sweetened carbonated soft drinks (P for trend: 0.29) or for sugar-sweetened noncarbonated soft drinks (P for trend: 0.93),” the study states.

While the study pinpoints artificially sweetened beverages for increasing preterm delivery risk, there is other research that suggests sugar-sweetened drinks also play a role. Other studies have found that both drink types increase risk for hypertension – a known risk factor for preterm delivery. In addition, there is evidence suggesting that both drink types could affect the length of gestation since high blood glucose concentrations and low-dose methanol exposure both cause shorter gestation duration.

The leading cause of perinatal morbidity and mortality, preterm delivery is actually among the major pregnancy complications which could occur. It was also found that preterm infants suffer from impairment in the long-term, and experience inequality in adult life. These reasons alone make it extremely important for mothers to avoid substances that may trigger premature delivery.

More research was also conducted with a focus on methanol, the primary alcoholic component used in the production of aspartame, to examine potential negative health effects. A retired food scientist and Professor Emeritus of Food Science and Nutrition at the Arizona State University Dr. Woodrow Monte describes how the toxic chemical methanol and its use in the production of aspartame and other chemicals could be a main factor in causing spina bifida, preterm delivery, multiple sclerosis, cancer, and more recently, autism in young children. It is also the primary factor in other developing chronic diseases and health conditions.

Needless to say, artificial sweeteners have been shown to be far from safe, and should be avoided if you’re aiming for optimal health.

Source: Activist Post

International House of Pander-cakes - Greece & France Vote

This is hilarious and holds a lot of truth.

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‘Indignants’ hold fresh rally in Spanish capital

Spaniards have once again staged a rally at the capital’s Puerta del Sol square to protest against the government’s harsh austerity measures.

The so-called Spanish "Indignados (Indignants)" held the demonstration in Madrid on Sunday after 18 people were arrested in the same area earlier in the morning.

The protesters, chanting, "We're not all here," are planning to stay at the square until May 15.

The development came a few hours after tens of thousands of protesters marked the first anniversary of the anti-austerity “Indignados” movement with mass protests throughout the country.

Spain has entered a deep recession for the second time since the global economic downturn in 2008, with unemployment now standing at almost 25 percent, which is the highest in the eurozone.

The Spanish government has planned to reduce its public deficit to 5.3 percent of gross domestic product in 2012 from 8.5 percent in 2011.

Madrid is adopting a fresh round of austerity measures, while experts fear that the country may soon require a Greece-style bailout.

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Big Pharma wants you hooked on these six pharmaceuticals for life

It is a known fact that the drug industry makes a whole lot more money on pharmaceuticals that patients must take perpetually for chronic conditions, rather than on those they take occasionally for isolated illnesses. This is why Big Pharma has worked hard over the years to get as many people as possible hooked on drugs that must essentially be taken for life, including six classes of drugs in particular that you or someone you know is probably already taking.

Ever since direct-to-consumer drug advertising became commonplace on television, in magazines and even on billboards starting in the 1990s, more Americans than ever become convinced that they have some novel new disease that requires ongoing treatment with medication. And these conditions include things like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), anxiety, depression, asthma, gastroesophageal reflux (GERD) and many others.

But many of these conditions have essentially been made up, or at least grossly overblown, for the purpose of selling new drugs. Individuals are made to feel as though they must take a drug for the rest of their lives in order to mitigate the symptoms of these new and novel conditions. And the consequence of this has been a massive upswing in the number of pharmaceutical drug addicts in America today, conveniently making Big Pharma very rich in the process.

The big three - behavioral drugs, statins, and antidepressants

Writing for AlterNet.org, Martha Rosenberg recently outlined six types of drugs that drug companies hope you and your family will get suckered into taking for the rest of your lives. And rounding out the top three, though not in this particular order in Rosenberg's piece, are behavioral drugs, statin drugs and antidepressants.

Every year, the age at which children are "pre-diagnosed" for conditions like ADHD, bipolar disorder and other so-called "behavioral" problems gets younger and younger. More than 20 million American children, in fact, have been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder, even though the vast majority of them are simply immature children that have yet to develop into adults (http://www.naturalnews.com/033131_psychiatric_disease_labeling.html).

This is precisely how Big Pharma has been able to rope more parents into drugging up their children, by convincing them that their children have inherent behavioral problems that must continually be addressed by drugs that calm or "normalize" them. And the same is often true for children and adults that are diagnosed with depression and told they must take antidepressants for an indefinite period of time (http://www.naturalnews.com/031267_antidepressants_medical_fraud.html).

Then there are statin drugs, which purportedly normalize cholesterol levels and prevent cardiovascular problems, but that must be taken throughout a person's life. Even though statins cause many other health problems, even raising the risk of cardiovascular events, many patients fear that if they stop taking them, their arteries will become clogged and they will be worse off in the long run.

Hormone replacement therapy, proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) for "heartburn," and asthma-control medicines are three other major drug categories that require constant use as well, even though they only address symptoms while doing little or nothing to address the underlying health problems involved. Incidentally, each of these classifications is also linked to very serious side effects.

"[Pharma executives] have shown less interest in medicines like antibiotics that actually cure disease than in those that only treat symptoms," wrote Melody Petersen of Our Daily Meds about the issue. "Most blockbusters are pills for conditions such as anxiety, high cholesterol or constipation that must be taken daily, often for months or years. They are designed for rich Americans who can afford to buy them."

Source: Natural News

Talking About Greece Leaving The Eurozone Is No Longer Taboo

This started last week, but it's now becoming a hot trend: It's no longer taboo to talk about Greece leaving the Eurozone.

The FT is running a story about how central bankers are now, increasingly discussing it openly.

Bloomberg is also quoting various finance officials around Europe saying the same thing, that a Greece exist is not desirable but possible.

Ekathimerini The recent cover from Der Spiegel, titled Akropolis Adieu, also shows how the idea of Greece leaving the Euro has permeated mainstream thinking.

Bottom line: Between Greece bickering internally, and serious people in Europe talking about how the Eurozone could handle a Grexit, the country's position is looking more and more tenuous.

The two main things keeping it in: Eurozone membership is extremely popular in Greece. AND people think that an actual departure would be horrible for Greece and the rest of Europe, possibly leading to the collapse of the Eurozone altogether.

The fact that its departure would be such a nightmare seems to be why people still don't think it will happen.

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Source: Business Insider