Government Media & Analysis

TSP Talk Weekly Wrap Up - 5/19/2012

OhMyGov! — Sun, 20 May 2012 10:03:00 GMT

The stock market and the TSP stock funds experienced a precipitous decline last week with barely a notice of any kind of relief rally. The buyers have gone on vacation apparently, while the trouble in Europe dictates the action.

Here are the TSP fund returns for the week of May 14 through 18.

The S&P 500 has broken down through any and all of the support levels, like a hot knife through butter. The head and shoulders pattern had already broken through the neckline and actually hit its initial downside target, which was near 1300. The 50-day EMA had already been taken out, and surely the 200-day EMA would hold on its first test - but no. So far no relief from the 200-day EMA.

Chart provided courtesy of www.decisionpoint.com, analysis by TSP Talk

Being down 6 days in a row, 8 of the last 9 days, and 11 of the last 13, it is not surprise that the indicators are oversold and giving extremely bullish readings, at least for the short-term. This chart from sentimenTrader.com shows that out of all of the indicators they follow, 29% are showing extremely bullish readings while just 1% are extremely bearish.

Chart provided courtesy of www.sentimentrader.com, analysis by TSP Talk

Going back to November of last year, we only saw a bearish percentage this low twice, both in 2011, and both times the market was at or near a low.

One word of caution: Market crashes don't usually start near market highs. They tend to come after the market has already shown a lot of weakness, like we have been seeing, and those still in stocks become unable to handle the losses. Panic sets in and you get a "sell at any cost, just get me out" mentality, and the losses can be brutal.

Fortunately, after that kind of an emotional, panic selling, the market is void of sellers since anyone who was going to sell, probably already did. It's called capitulation and that usually results in a sharp relief rally. I don't know if that is what is going to happen this time, but be aware that panic selling is not usually a good strategy. Crashes are rare but selling during one is not the way to go. If you are still in stocks and are thinking of selling, it would be better to now before any panic. Better yet, the odds favor a rebound, so if we do start seeing panic selling we are probably closer to a bottom and a rally. Those on the sidelines with cash might be on the lookout for any panic selling. Buying panic selling is usually a good way to catch a quick, strong relief rally.

Good luck, and thanks for reading. We will be back here next week with another TSP Wrap Up.

Tom Crowley
www.tsptalk.com

The legal stuff: This information is for educational purposes only! This is not advice or are commendation. We do not give investment advice. Do not act on this data. Do not buy, sell or trade the funds mentioned herein based on this information. We may trade these funds differently than discussed above. We use additional methods and strategies to determine fund positions.

The week's 10 best political jokes – May 18, 2012

OhMyGov! — Sat, 19 May 2012 10:05:00 GMT

10. "Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg turned 28 this week. He got a watch from his girlfriend, a sweater from his parents, and from the rest of us, all of our credit card numbers." –Conan O'Brien

9. "Ron Paul made an announcement on Monday, saying he's dropping out of the race for president. This was his third race for president. He ran in 2008 against John McCain and against Lincoln in 1860." –Jimmy Kimmel

8. "President Obama is calling for more government reform after JPMorgan's $2 billion loss. Really, is that what we need — the government stepping in? You know what's going to happen? The government's going to teach them how to lose $2 billion a DAY!" –Jay Leno

7. "In an interview with ABC News on Wednesday, President Obama said, 'It is important for me to affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.' OK buddy, we get it, you're not a Muslim." –Seth Meyers

6. "The average college graduate now leaves school $27,000 in debt. But the good news is that now it means they are more than qualified to work as financial advisers at JPMorgan." –Jay Leno

5. "I just read about a new 24-hour day care that's opening in India. Yeah, it's pretty cute, instead of playing telephone, the kids just play tech support." –Jimmy Fallon

4. "Mitt Romney has issued an apology for some of his high school pranks that went a little too far. Probably the meanest prank was the time he bought his high school and fired everyone in it." –Conan O'Brien

3. "Today Mitt Romney apologized for holding down Michele Bachmann's husband and cutting his hair." –Jay Leno

2. "After President Obama announced his support for gay marriage, his campaign raised a million dollars in 90 minutes. That explains why today Mitt Romney actually supported gay marriage from noon to 1:30." –Jimmy Fallon

1. "Mitt Romney has jumped to a seven-point lead over President Obama in a national poll. I think Romney's starting to get cocky. Today he threatened to pin down Joe Biden and pull out all of his hair plugs." –Jay Leno

For our Maher fans:

"President Obama said he was evolving and then he came out for gay marriage. Conservatives, of course, are furious – not about the gay thing, about evolution." –Bill Maher

"Bristol Palin accused Obama of pandering to teenagers who watch one too many episodes of 'Glee.' Says the girl who got knocked up after watching one too many episodes of 'Teen Mom.'" –Bill Maher

"Mitt Romney said marriage should be between one man and one woman, the way it has always been – with the exception of all of my relatives in Utah, my dad who was born in Mexico, my great-grandfather who left the damn country to get away from one-man, one-woman marriage. Other than that I'm a strict conservative on the subject." –Bill Maher

"When Mitt was in prep school he led a pack of his friends to forcibly hold down this sensitive gay kid as he screamed and cried, and then cut off his hair, because he had too long hair for Mitt's tastes…I don't know what it's like at your salon, but at mine, isn't the guy cutting the hair the gay one?" –Bill Maher

"There is something indicative about his character because it seems like Mitt Romney was kind of a bully. This was not the only bullying thing he did. He also took poor kids' lunch money – oh, I'm sorry, that's his present-day economic policy." –Bill Maher

Twitter Buzzing Over Census Bureau Figures

Jack B. Winn — Thu, 17 May 2012 16:31:00 GMT

The Bureau of the Census is hardly a sexy topic on social media, yet that didn't stop the agency from enjoying a well-earned boost in buzz on Twitter.

The buzz stemmed from a report by the agency that white births are no longer a majority in the U.S.--news which the Twitterati had a field day with.

"The Census Bureau today reported that whites now account for half of all live births," @kattcalls wrote, "but 96 percent of all toddlers with tiaras."

"Cue the alarm at Fox," @wordsnotbullets said.

According to the Census Bureau's 2011 statistics, there were over 2 million nonwhite births in 2011, versus 1.9 million for whites. The hair splitting is creating very real consequences for politicians looking to get a lock on the minority vote.

According to The New York Times, 348 counties nationwide recorded demographics in which minorities made up a big slice of the pie. They include the District of Columbia (50 percent black, 38 percent White), New York City (25 percent black), Los Angeles (48 percent Hispanic), and even Memphis, where whites are a statistical minority.

Hispanics drove most of the Census Bureau's numbers. As of July 2011, the end of the study period, Hispanics accounted for 26 percent of total births, versus just 15 percent for blacks.

The news was not lost on certain members of the Latino community, who wasted no time having fun with it.

"Bean pride!" One Hispanic commenter wrote on Twitter.

But despite the sentiment, the celebrations might be premature. Though white births declined, whites still represent the largest share of live births--49.6 percent. But with a heavy influx of Mexican immigrants over the past decade and ergo, a boom in Hispanic births, the Hispanic community have managed to catch up.

Their influence--cultural and otherwise--has been most felt in the Southwest. Border states like Arizona, Texas, and California already have a significant portion of Hispanic residents, with Arizona netting 29 percent of Hispanics alone.

As the debate over S.B. 1070 raged in Arizona, the demographics came into play in a big way as pro-Hispanic organizations rallied to oppose the law. According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, nearly 50,000 people in Los Angeles, mostly foreign born, marched in a May Day protest against the law in 2010. Similar numbers were recorded in Dallas, Chicago, and other cities as well.

But if the Hispanic population has proved its political clout, the education gap remains its biggest Achilles heel. According to William Frey, a senior demographer at the Brookings Institution, just 13 percent of Hispanics have a college degree, versus 31 percent for whites.

It's more bad news for the U.S. economy as another player on the world stage--China--revs its economy into high gear. According to the International Monetary Fund, as of 2012 China has the largest economy in terms of GDP--surpassing even the United States.

"This is a polite knock on the door to tell us to get ready," Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress said in an interview with the Times. "We do a pretty lousy job of educating the younger generation of minorities. Basically, we are not ready for this."

Rather than be at odds, the whites and Hispanics recognize they need each other--badly. With the median age for non-Hispanic whites clocking in at 42, someone has to pick up the slack from the legion of Baby Boomers set to retire from the workforce, and the Hispanics just might be America's saving grace.

"If the U.S. depended on white births alone," University of Southern California professor of policy Dowell Myers said, "we'd be dead. Without the contributions from these other groups, we would be top-heavy with old people."

Congressional Support Translates to Social Media Gains for Air National Guard

Jack B. Winn — Wed, 16 May 2012 11:09:00 GMT

According to OhMyGov Analytics, the Air National Guard netted early social media gains in May. The slow but steady growth comes amid an unexpected bounty of good news for the Air National Guard.

Both Facebook and Twittter spiked amid news that the House Armed Services Committee voted to restore funding for C-130s and ANG personnel--including pilots at the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station in New York, located just a few miles away from the tourist attraction of the same name.

"Today's amendment is a positive step towards ensuring the strong viability of the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station," Rep. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) said in a press conference with local media. "while this is an ongoing process, the bill passed tonight is a significant victory in our effort to protect both the planes and personnel of the 107th Airlift Wing."

Hochul's amendment counters a separate proposal from the Pentagon, which wanted to eliminate 3 aging C-130s and cut nearly 800 positions at NFARS. The amendment restores funding to the FY2013 National Defense Authorization Act.

That wasn't the only surprise for the Air National Guard. Down South residents were celebrating the return of Kentucky's 123rd Special Tactics Squadron to Louisville, KY following a six month deployment to Afghanistan supporting special operations forces in the region.

The Air National Guard wasted no time celebrating the good news. There was a modest increase in outgoing tweets exploded for the week.

"Welcome home!" @AirNationalGuard tweeted. "Mbrs of Kentucky's 123rd Special Tactics Sqdn returned from mission to Afghanistan".

Yet if Kentuckians were overjoyed, the media didn't seem to notice. Stories about the Air National Guard plummeted May 10 following a steady increase in coverage starting May 5, indicating waning interest.

JP Morgan Scandal Puts Federal Reserve Under Scrutiny Via Twitter

Jack B. Winn — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:47:00 GMT

J.P Morgan's $2 billion gamble may be raising eyebrows on Wall Street and D.C., but the loss has also brought new scrutiny into big banks' relationships with agencies like the Federal Reserve--and Twitter is leading the charge.

According to OhMyGov Analytics, mentions of the Fed spiked to 132 May 12--two days after J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon--who famously called critics of big bank trades 'infantile'--issued a public mea culpa of his company's risky hedge that went notoriously wrong. Dimon reiterated his apology again on Meet the Press this Sunday, but the bulk of the online community's rage is falling not on JP Morgan, but the Federal Reserve--the same Federal Reserve that Dimon served as a regional director from 2008 to 2010.

"The Federal Reserve System: Putting the 'Con' in Economy since 1913" One Tweeter wrote.

"The Federal Reserve System is the epitome of crony capitalism" Another wrote.

The overwhelmingly negative tweets come on the heels of a subcommittee hearing by Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) looking into the possibility of auditing or replacing the nearly 100 year monetary agency.

"It has been recognized by many that monetary policy in the Federal Reserve has a lot to do with the creation of some of our problems and shortcomings when it comes to solving these problems," Paul said in his remarks May 8. "I don't think many people reject the idea that Congress does have responsibility of oversight, and exactly how to handle that. Most people realize how big the economy is...but they don't talk about the monetary issue."

The hours-long hearing--focusing on the Sound Dollar Act, the interventionist policy of the Federal Reserve (personified by the tech and housing bubbles), and the impact those policies have on the price of goods and services--received very little media coverage, but clips of the hearing have gotten renewed attention as a small but devoted following of Paul fans circulate them throughout the Web. The clips have been viewed over 6,000 times since.

Interest in the Fed plummeted on Twitter after May 12--to just seventeen mentions May 13.

The press has been similarly sanguine. Over 72 stories were slugged overall between May 8 and May 14--with only 15 being slugged the day JP Morgan went public about its multi-billion dollar mistake.

Support for Paul's proposals have never gotten widespread bipartisan support, but in the wake of Dimon's gambit gone wrong, there is a question of whether Dimon's position on the Federal Reserve board is a potential conflict of interest.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, on May 2nd--two weeks before the crisis--JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, Goldman Sachs' Lloyd Blankfein, and Bank of America's Bryan Moynihan met in a closed door meeting with Fed regulators to see if the agency could loosen restrictions on counterparty risk and proprietary trading, aka the Volcker Rule. Although details of the discussions aren't known, the Fed's representative, governor Daniel Tarullo, sat quietly as the bankers made their case.

A year earlier, Dimon was voted back into his position as Fed Class A NY director. In the same period, according to the Associated Press, Dimon was one of three bankers who met exclusively with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to talk about issues like TARP, Too Big To Fail, and other topics of discussion over a seven month period between Obama's election and May of 2009.

The AP got their information from Geithner's appointment calendar and phone records.

JP Morgan is doing its best to clean up the mess. But the man they hired to replace their outgoing CIO is no saint. Matt Zames, the man JP Morgan picked to manage its chief investment office, has ties to Long Term Capital Management, the 90s hedge fund that famously collapsed in the late 1990s.According to TheStreet.com, Zames is also one of the few on Wall Street who spotted Bernie Madoff's fraud, 18 months before his Ponzi scheme became common knowledge.

In the meantime, the Federal Reserve has launched a Twitter account in an effort to appear more transparent to the public. Since launching, the account has garnered 22,000 followers and 131 Tweets, but the Fed is remaining zip-lipped about JP Morgan's failures, focusing instead on another topic of interest to the financial press...stress tests.

Army Corps of Engineers in Center of Twitter Gossip

Jack B. Winn — Mon, 14 May 2012 12:46:00 GMT

The Army Corps of Engineers may not be on the minds of many Americans right now, but they were on the minds of thousands of Twitter users last week.

According to OhMyGov Analytics, the agency experienced an increase of Twitter mentions for the period May 5 to May 11, amounting to 1,406 references to the Corps of Engineers — an elevation of 65.4 percent from the previous week.

The sudden spotlight on the Corps came amid opposition to the Environmental Protection Agency's plans to approve the corps' plan to rubber stamp the controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, a would-be mechanism which would allow the US to pump synthetic crude oil from Alberta, Canada to multiple sites in the American Midwest and the Gulf Coast.

The pipeline has come under intense scrutiny from environmental activists and Democrats on Capitol Hill amid concerns that it would harm migratory birds and wildlife, as well as the possible emission of greenhouse gases. There are also concerns about a potential conflict of interest between the White House and TransCanada, the builder of the pipeline.

According to an article by Inside Climate's David Sassoon, Paul Elliott, a former chief of staff for Hillary Clinton's 2008 Presidential campaign, currently serves as the chief Washington lobbyist for TransCanada. Secretary of State Clinton has gone on record as approving the proposed pipeline. Lisa Jackson, the current head of EPA, opposes the pipeline—putting the State Department at odds with the EPA.

The agency is remaining mum about the controversy. Outgoing tweets from the Army Corps of Engineers shied away from the debate, choosing instead to address earthquakes, concerns over an estuary near the Tijuana River, and tributes to a 102-year-old WWII Veteran.

TSP Talk Weekly Wrap Up - 5/12/12

OhMyGov! — Sun, 13 May 2012 10:42:00 GMT

We had some red flags to deal with coming into this past week and the market acted like it. The TSP stock funds all finished in the red as the bulls were not able to hold onto any attempts at a rally.

Here are the TSP fund returns for the week of May 7 through 11.

I'm going to start out with a chart of the dollar which has broken out of a triangle type pattern. This recent strength is a result of recent negative grumblings from the European economies.

Chart provided courtesy of www.decisionpoint.com, analysis by TSP Talk

Since the dollar's successful test of the 200-day EMA at the beginning of the month, most markets have been struggling. When the value of the dollar goes up, it takes fewer dollars to purchase anything traded in dollars. That has affected price of oil, gold, wheat, corn, etc., and the CRB Commodity Index is down over 5% in the last week or two. It has also affected the price of stocks.

The S&P 500 has formed a head and shoulders pattern over the last several months, and in a bull market, head and shoulders pattern can break either way. It looks like this one has fallen through the neckline, and that is a bad sign technically.

Chart provided courtesy of www.decisionpoint.com, analysis by TSP Talk

Head and shoulders break downs tend to happen one of two ways, and we seem to be experiencing the second one right now as we've had a test of the head area.

The price of oil has also fallen pretty sharply, coinciding with the recent rally in the dollar.

Chart provided courtesy of www.decisionpoint.com, analysis by TSP Talk

The charts don't look all that good, but as we had been posting most of last week, we are seeing some very positive signs from the indicators. When the charts and indicators are not telling the same story, I usually take the side of believing the charts, so this market has something to prove this coming week. Will the increasingly positive indicators help turn this negative market around? Or should we have just sold in May and gone away, like we were told?

Good luck, and thanks for reading. We will be back here next week with another TSP Wrap Up.

Tom Crowley
www.tsptalk.com

The legal stuff: This information is for educational purposes only! This is not advice or are commendation. We do not give investment advice. Do not act on this data. Do not buy, sell or trade the funds mentioned herein based on this information. We may trade these funds differently than discussed above. We use additional methods and strategies to determine fund positions.

The week's 10 best political jokes – May 11, 2012

OhMyGov! — Sat, 12 May 2012 10:08:00 GMT

10. "President Obama came out with approval of same-sex marriage. He said that over the years, he has been going through an evolution on the issue. That makes opponents on the far right doubly angry. They don't believe in gay marriage OR evolution." –Jimmy Kimmel

9. "President Obama officially announced he is in favor of gay marriage. Of course, this is a monumental event. In fact, he changed his campaign slogan from 'forward' to fabulous." –Jay Leno

8. "Today Barack Obama became the first sitting president to push the rainbow button and launch gay-mageddon." –Stephen Colbert

7. "Mitt Romney responded today by restating his own views on marriage. He said marriage should only take place between two consenting rich people." –Craig Ferguson

6. "In a new interview, Vice President Joe Biden said the sitcom 'Will & Grace' made America more comfortable with gay people. Biden also said the sitcom character Urkel made America more comfortable with President Obama." –Conan O'Brien

5. "Membership and recruiting of Al Qaeda is drying up. Far be it for me to tell terrorists about strategy but I think membership started to subside when they went to the suicide bomber exploding underpants. Let's just say you put on the exploding underpants and you detonate. When they bring in the 72 virgins, then what?" David Letterman

4."President Obama says his campaign for a second term is still about hope and change. The president's exact words were, 'I hope I won't have to change my address.'" –Conan O'Brien

3. "Rick Santorum finally endorsed Mitt Romney at 11:00 last night. When reached for comment, Santorum said, 'When I can't sleep, I try endorsing Mitt Romney for president and it puts me right out.'" –Conan O'Brien

2."Could you imagine what Bush would have done if he had gotten bin Laden? I mean, this is a guy who played dress-up to celebrate a war he lost. If he had gotten bin Laden, he would have spent his whole second term in a Batman costume." –Bill Maher

1. "Michele Bachamnn has announced she is now also a citizen of Switzerland. What better way to protest a president you think is socialist than become a citizen of a country with a socialist philosophy and a mandated health care plan." –Jay Leno

For our Maher fans:

"Obama went to Afghanistan on the anniversary of killing bin Laden. He made a big speech about how we're winning the war and how our troops are coming home. Of course, we're not winning the war and the troops are not coming home. Other than that, a great speech." –Bill Maher

"And the Republicans, of course, were livid that on the anniversary of the killing of bin Laden, that Obama went over there and celebrated that. How dare he run for President using his accomplishments as President. We knew his campaign would be ugly, but stooping to facts?" –Bill Maher

"And poor Mitt Romney, trying to make hay out of this. Mitt Romney who is on record saying that he would not waste money going after bin Laden, on record saying he would not violate Pakistan's border to get bin Laden, this week said, 'Of course I would have gotten bin Laden.' Even his Etch-A-Sketch went, seriously?" –Bill Maher

"New Rule, Newt Gingrich cannot end his campaign, as he did, by calling it a 'wild ride.' Seeing how he looks exactly like Mr. Toad. Oh, in fairness, there’s a difference between Newt’s campaign and Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. One twists and turns through fantasy-land and makes you want to throw up. And the other one is at Disneyland." –Bill Maher

"Mitt got the endorsement of Michele Bachmann. Michele Bachmann's husband Marcus said he would also like to get behind Romney." –Bill Maher

Donnelly social media accounts spike on Lugar loss

Jack B. Winn — Fri, 11 May 2012 15:13:00 GMT

Representative Joe Donnelly (D-IN) was a relative unknown prior to Dick Lugar's (R-IN) loss to Indiana state treasurer Richard Murdock (R-IN), but if Donnelly was invisible before he accepted his party's nomination to run against the Republican Senate hopeful, he isn't anymore.

According to OhMyGov Analytics, Donnelly's official social media accounts experienced an increase in social media fans after the Republican primary May 8.

Donnelly gained 239 Twitter follower, for an overall growth of 8.6 percent from the prior week. The growth in Facebook fans was even more dramatic, with a spike of 677 fans between May 5 and May 11, for an overall take of 3,672 follows for attorney and small business owner.

The news comes on the heels of a media postmortem of Lugar's loss to Mourdock. Nearly 161 stories mentioning Donnelly in connection with the primary, were slugged on May 9, yet most of them seemed didn't dwell on the Democratic challenger. Rather, the focus seemed to be on Mourdock's dramatic win against Lugar, a six-term senator who rose from obscurity to become one of the few preeminent foreign policy statesmen who isn't a chief executive or Secretary of State.

Donnelly is trying to get ahead of the deluge of news, tweeting furiously. There was a modest increase in outgoing tweets by his staff, stressing his credibility on education and manufacturing--as well as thanking Lugar for his years of service.

"Thanks Sen. Lugar for years of service," Donnelly tweeted at his @JoeforIndiana account. "I'm ready to challenge Mourdock because of what's at stake for Indiana families."

Mourdock is also getting ahead of the news as well. The Republican nominee--with a combined social media strength of over 18,000 fans and growing--has hit the ground running, sending out 10 outgoing tweets for the week.

"The general election has begun," Mourdock tweeted via his @richardmourdock account. "help us match Joe Donnelly's $800k war chest with our money bomb."

According to Mourdock's official campaign website has raised over $100,000 to Donnelly's reported $801,000. A press release on Donnelly's campaign website filed in April claims the money the candidate raised is much higher--$861,000 in cash on hand for the general election, for a total of $1.7 million.

Yet in terms of gossip on social media, the two candidates aren't evenly matched. Joe Donnelly has a total of 681 Twitter mentions for the week, versus Mourdock's 2,588. The majority of comments about Mourdock's win were overwhelmingly positive, with only a handful being negative ("EJDionne: Richard Mourdock smells and looks French but is really a crony capitalist" one user wrote May 9).

In contrast, mentions referencing Donnelly were hot tempered. "Call it what you want," @briantoole wrote to the @JoeforIndiana account. "you still lose!"

"Be sure of this, @INDems," Another user wrote. "We will wrap Obamacare around @JoeforIndiana's neck like the albatross it is."

In terms of polling, though, the tenor of the campaign is neck and neck. According to Real Clear Politics, the candidates are statistically tied, with 35 percent leaning towards Mourdock and 35 to Donnelly.

With T-minus six months to go before the general election, the two candidates have plenty of time and room to win hearts and minds--but if the court of public opinion is any indication, Donnelly may have his work cut out for him.

Heated Battle Over Walker Recall Election Extends to Social Media

Jack B. Winn — Thu, 10 May 2012 17:40:00 GMT

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker's (R-WI) battle against collective bargaining for state employees may have given added ammunition to opponents, but it's also generating tons of gossip on social media.

According to OhMyGov Analytics, mentions referencing the governor on Twitter peaked at 2,669 around May 9, for an overall total of 8,056 for the week. meanwhile, news coverage soared, increasing 8.1 percent in a sign that the recall campaign against him is heating up quickly.

Comments about Walker were mixed on Twitter.

"Keep the momentum going!" A Walker opponent wrote. "Recall Scott Walker because he's #badforWI!"

Others cheered on the Republican incumbent.

"We're not going backward, we're going forward!" a supporter tweeted, referencing the acceptance speech the governor made to a crowd of hundreds in Waukesha, WI election night.

Tom Barrett, the Democratic challenger, has garnered a modest following of Twitter followers since his @BarrettforWi account officially launched. Barrett's 4,692 followers are pale in comparison to Walker's 37,252.

Since his nomination, Barrett has been busy firing up the crowd on Twitter, tweeting 988 times in an effort to catch up with the Wisconsin governor, who has logged 2,742 tweets.

If polling is any indication, Wisconsinites are just as evenly split in real-life as they are on the web. Surveys by Marquette University and Public Policy Polling both found the candidates neck-and-neck, with Marquette giving Walker a one percent lead in April while a PPP poll in January gave the race to Barrett by three points.

The polarization of the race has taken a real toll on civility in the state. According to Marquette, nearly 30 percent of Wisconsin residents have stopped speaking to someone they know because of political disagreements.

"There's no center," Wisconsin state senator Tim Cullen told the LA Times' David Lauter.

Spending has been growing, too. Conservative groups helped raise $23 million for Walker ahead of the recall, with an estimated total of $80 million raised by the election's end.

Even as the rhetoric becomes more heated, politicians--both on the right and the left--are worried that the polarization could make bipartisan bills less formidable than in the 1980s, when Cullen took his seat in the state senate.

"This isn't going to stop with one election," said Senator Dale Schultz, one of the few Republican legislators who voted against Walker's bill taking away collective bargaining rights from state employees. "What we're discovering is what happens when people don't get along. The hatred doesn't go away."

Presidential Race A Blowout on Twitter

Andrew B. Einhorn — Wed, 09 May 2012 12:13:00 GMT

Mitt Romney may be making noise on the airwaves, but when it comes to Twitter, the former Massachusetts governor is facing some stiff competition from President Obama.

According to OhMyGov analytics, Romney was mentioned 20,000 times on the social media site May 8, versus over 45,000 for the 44th President.

In comparison, Romney and Obama are evenly matched in media coverage--Romney's name has surfaced 596 times Monday--the lowest since last week, when Newt Gingrich told USA TODAY that he was suspending his presidential campaign and would formally endorse the governor in a few weeks. The announcement gave Romney a slight boost in news mentions before sliding down to the current number seen today.

A similar one day decline was seen for Obama as his name was mentioned 897 in press reports, a sharp decline from the over 3,000 mentions of his name May 1, but far from the 596 that Mr. Romney has clocked.

Even with the decline, the President continues to dominate discussion on social media. The President's name surfaced nearly 50,000 times on Twitter May 1 in response to the one year anniversary of the killing of Osama Bin Laden to Afghanistan, the current financial crisis and the State Department's handling of Chen Guangcheng.

Yet when it comes to television spots, Romney is Obama's equal. Last Wednesday, the group Restore Our Future, a superPAC allied with Romney, announced it would begin airing ads in key battleground states like North Carolina and Florida--both states with an unemployment rate far exceeding the national average of 8.1 percent. The price tag: $4.3 million dollars.

The President has been shelling out the big bucks too. According to the Washington Post, his campaign has taken out $3.6 million in commercial ad buys since Romney solidified his chances of becoming the Republican nominee. Obama also has a SuperPAC, Priorities USA Action, yet to date the organization raised over $2.5 million for advertising on radio and television--a pittance compared to the tens of millions on the Republican side.

The latest ad in the Obama arsenal, "Forward," capitalizes on the financial and health care reform packages that the President has signed into law since the financial collapse of 2008. At nearly 7 minutes, the video is one of the longest released since the campaign season officially began.

The Romney campaign released an ad of their own too highlighting the candidate's attempt to help one of his Bain Capital employees find his missing daughter in the streets of Manhattan.

Written by Jack Winn

Edited by Andrew Einhorn

TSP Talk Weekly Wrap Up - 5/5/2012

OhMyGov! — Sun, 06 May 2012 11:09:00 GMT

Stocks started to drift lower on Thursday of last week, on jitters over the impending jobs report. Friday's jobs report justified investor's nervousness as it came in lower than expected and and stocks sold off sharply ending the week on a sour note and sending all of the TSP stock funds into the red for the week.

For the TSP funds, the C-fund lost 2.41% last week, the S-fund dropped 3.55%, the I-fund fell 3.03%, while the F-fund (bonds) gained 0.32% and the G-fund was up 0.03%.

Here are the final monthly numbers for April is you missed them:

Friday's action caused the S&P 500 to once again break below the longer-term rising support line and 50-day EMA. These are normally pretty big warning signs, although last time this happened, the index found support pretty quickly and regained those broken levels. I'm not saying that will happen again, but it is not uncommon to see a strong reaction to a jobs report get reversed in the coming days.

Chart provided courtesy of www.decisionpoint.com, analysis by TSP Talk

In 2011, the S&P 500's high of the year was hit on the first trading day in May. Things went a little sour after that as the old "Sell in May and go away" axiom would have worked very well. Not surprisingly we heard that phrase being tossed around a lot this spring. The question is, will the first trading day in May be the high of the year in 2012?

Last week we showed that the Dow Jones Industrial Average (the "Dow") was testing the upper end of the new rising trading channel and the the prior 2012 high.

Chart provided courtesy of www.decisionpoint.com, analysis by TSP Talk

Here is it now testing the lower end of the trading and the 50-day EMA. Not normally the leader among U.S. indices, but this chart could be telling the technical analysis story for us right now. Keep an eye on the 13,000. Should that break, it may be the final red flag for us.

Chart provided courtesy of www.decisionpoint.com, analysis by TSP Talk

The TSP is starting their Roth option this week. Here are some help links and info if you might be interested:

https://www.tsp.gov/whatsnew/roth/compareRoth.shtml

https://www.tsp.gov/whatsnew/roth/index.shtml

Good luck, and thanks for reading. We will be back here next week with another TSP Wrap Up.

Tom Crowley
www.tsptalk.com
Weekly Wrap-Ups Archive
Facebook | Twitter

The legal stuff: This information is for educational purposes only! This is not advice or are commendation. We do not give investment advice. Do not act on this data. Do not buy, sell or trade the funds mentioned herein based on this information. We may trade these funds differently than discussed above. We use additional methods and strategies to determine fund positions.

The week's 10 best political jokes – May 4, 2012

OhMyGov! — Sat, 05 May 2012 12:39:00 GMT

10. "You know who's in town today? Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney has not been in New York City since he used to anchor the Channel 7 news." –David Letterman

9. "Today is Bring Your Child to Work Day — or as it's known at the iPad factory in China, Bring Your Parents to Work Day." –Conan O'Brien

8. "Here's a little bit of history. On this day in 1789, George Washington became the first president of the United States after just narrowly beating out Ron Paul." –Jay Leno

7. "Rupert Murdoch got some bad news today. British lawmakers said Murdoch is unfit to run a company. Is that news? He's 160 years old. Of course he's unfit to run a company. But perfect to run a Hollywood studio, or Congress." –Craig Ferguson

6. "Republicans release a new anti-Obama attack ad. I can't wait to hear what country he was born in now!" –Stephen Colbert

5. "So let me get this straight. Republicans, you're annoyed by the arrogance and braggadocio of a wartime President's political ad. You think he's divisively and unfairly belittling his opponents, I see. I have a question: ARE YOU ON CRACK??? Were you alive, lo, these past ten years? It seems unseemly for the President to spike the football. Bush landed on a fucking aircraft carrier with a football-stuffed codpiece; he spiked the football before the game had even started!" -Jon Stewart, blasting GOP hypocrisy over President Obama's Osama bin Laden ad

4. "Romney proves with a little hard work and a little luck, even a multimillionaire white guy from Harvard can succeed in this country." –Jay Leno

3. "A new campaign video by Barack Obama implies that Mitt Romney would not have killed Osama bin Laden if he had been president. Today Romney shot back. He said not only would he have killed bin Laden, he would have strapped him to the roof of his car and taken him on vacation with him as well." –Jay Leno

2. "We're learning more and more about that whole Secret Service sex scandal. Apparently the prostitutes in Colombia had code names for the different Secret Service guys they were seeing. I mentioned this the other night: the guy who kept wanting to change positions, his nickname was "Mitt." The main guy who wanted to keep putting off paying for stuff until later... his nickname was "Obama." Kind of interesting." –Jay Leno

1. "Texas Governor Rick Perry endorsed Mitt Romney for president. Perry said he chose Romney because out of the one candidate left, he's the best." –Conan O'Brien

David Letterman's "Top Ten Ways Mitt Romney Begins Conversations With Teens"

10. "How's puberty going?"
9. "Where do you summer?"
8. "Do you fellows play sportball?"
7. "Nice shirt — you know, my friend owns the Gap"
6. "You teens are just the right height"
5. "Check out my sick Windsor knot"
4. "Would you like to see my dancing horse?"
3. "Raise the roof if your municipal bonds have reached maturity"
2. Just like this: (video of Mitt saying "Who let the dogs out?")
1. "Didn't I fire your father?"

For our Maher fans:

"Mitt Romney swept recent primaries. There was a big Mormon celebration afterward. People were drinking apple juice and eating animal crackers until nearly 9 p.m." –Bill Maher

"It looks like the Republicans are going back to the strategy of 2008 where Obama is characterized as a celebrity. Says the party who is gay for Ronald Reagan. Come on, you can't worship Ronald Reagan and then attack Obama for being a celebrity. That's like running Chris Christie and saying Obama has a fat ass." –Bill Maher

"Mitt has to be very careful because he doesn’t want to pick a vice president who will overshadow him. So he has narrowed the field to the other guy from Wham!, DJ Jazzy Jeff and Oates." –Bill Maher

"Newt Gingrich says he's going to make an announcement on Tuesday that he's suspending his presidential campaign. Yes, he's letting us down gently. And also because technicians are still working on Callista to install her sad face." –Bill Maher

"New Rule: If the Indians have a rocket that works, but the North Koreans don't, we have to stop being scared of North Korea and start being scared of India. Now, you may ask, why would the Indians launch a missile at us? Well, as Sarah Palin points out we did steal their land." –Bill Maher

"New Rule: Let's follow Canada, and get rid of the penny. It costs more to make than it's worth. And we don't need another copper-colored reminder that government is a useless, stupid boondoggle. We already have John Boehner." –Bill Maher

Air Force Social Media Accounts Surge

OhMyGov! — Thu, 03 May 2012 16:12:00 GMT

The U.S. Air Force saw a surge of Facebook growth --an increase of 7.2 percent from April.

It is the largest increase the Air Force has experienced since the March 2012 surge; where it registered an impressive 140,000 plus boost of Facebook fans.

This despite a rocky month for the Air Force, which struggled to remain visible, the Department’s official Facebook account has been steadily gaining Facebook fans, leading to the impressive numbers seen, making it this week’s military department leader for social media growth.

The growth has also been steady on Twitter. As of May 1, the Air Force clocked recorded 91,964 fans on the social network service--for at total growth of 6.9 percent between April 2nd and May 2nd.

The recent spike in social media growth comes on the heels of a $156 million contract awarded to Lockheed Martin by the Department of Defense. The contractor--which manufactures planes, weapons equipment and other devices for the Air Force--will be responsible for building new training devices for aircrews and maintenance personnel. The new devices will be delivered to military bases in New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, as well as the Air Force's base in Ramstein, Germany.

The announcement has been a boon for Lockheed Martin's Twitter account as well, which has garnered over 24,000 followers since its inception.

The jump in social media fans is the first good news for the Air Force since ABC News reported that cadres of airmen and pilots have protested the new F-22 Joint Strike Fighter, citing the jet's oxygen deficit problems as a major concern.

Navy SEALS popularity spikes a year after Bin Laden killing

Jack B. Winn — Wed, 02 May 2012 14:58:00 GMT

They've conquered the sea, the land...now the Navy SEALS are setting their sights on social media.

According to OhMyGov Analytics, the special operations arm of the Navy saw a slight bump in Facebook fans in the run up to the anniversary of Osama Bin Laden's killing in Abbottabad last year. The SEALS gained nearly 10,000 Facebook fans between April 2nd and May 2nd, for a total growth of 4.4 percent for the month.

The percentage growth was even more impressive on Twitter, where the SEALS official account grew by 7.8 percent--thanks in large part to the 2,900 new followers who added them to their list of accounts to track while they sip their morning coffee and fantasize about a second career as an action hero.

Yet the most telling metric isn't the growth in social media fans--it's the spike of talk about the SEALS on Twitter. Twitter mentions spiked to over 5,000 from a baseline of around 400 in the run up to the May 1st anniversary.

A similar increase in news coverage leading up to the date occurred; 261 stories were written about the SEALS by various news outlets Tuesday, compared to only 27 a month prior.

Yet the buzz isn't all about the Bin Laden death. Anti-US sentiments have risen in Pakistan in the year following the raid, even as support for Al Qaeda diminishes in the streets and bazaars of Lahore, Kabul, and Baghdad--cities that have been graced by the terror organization's deadly touch.

According to the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project, nearly 55 percent of Pakistanis have a negative view of Al Qaeda, a reversal of the positive headwinds Bin Laden enjoyed in 2005, when 52 percent of Pakistanis believed he would 'do the right thing in foreign affairs.’

Elsewhere, decline in support for Al Qaeda dropped even more dramatically. According to Pew, 71 percent of Egypt’s population and nearly 98 percent views the group unfavorably in Lebanon.

Though Pew surveyed Pakistanis in most of the major populated cities (Lahore, Peshawar, Karachi and Islamabad), because of an ongoing insurgency spurred in part by remnants of Al Qaeda in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas--once thought to be a hideout for the terror leader-- the survey group were unable to talk to 18 percent of the country's inhabitants, bringing the Pakistani survey into question.

Federal Government Sweats over 'hacktivists'

Jack B. Winn — Tue, 01 May 2012 15:53:00 GMT

IT administrators and systems analysts are becoming concerned about an increase in cyber attacks targeting websites, and according to website Network Computing, the federal government is taking no chances.

With 75 percent of companies anticipating a second or third cyber attack against their IT infrastructure, the situation is so grave that Congress has been inspired to act. The Republican-sponsored Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, breezed through the House of Representatives April 27 along party lines, with 42 Democrats voting in favor and 28 against.

If it becomes law, H.R. 3523 would allow private companies and agencies like the National Security Agency (NSA) to share threat information with each other for the first time since the Internet became commercially available in the mid-1990s. The bill is a reaction to several widely publicized incidents--including the attack on the CIA's main webpage, LulzSec's hacking of Sony three times in 2011--and many others.

"From a threat standpoint, folks are pretty concerned about foreign governments, but they're also concerned about the hacktivism thing," Ed Moyles, founding partner of Second Curve, a New Hampshire based cybersecurity company, told Network Computing's Liam Lahey. "We've heard about hacktivism as it relates to a lot of core services...but in my mind I thought it would play second fiddle by a wide margin to the foreign actors like China and Iran that might be actively targeting our federal systems."

Just recently Anonymous attacked the websites of technology trade associations USTelecom and TechAmerica. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the hacktivist group issued a statement April 9th, taking credit for the digital denial of service effort against both associations.

A recent survey by security vendor Bit9 found that sixty-four percent of IT professionals expected a major attack in the next six months, and sixty four percent of the 2,000 member sample fingered hacktivist groups like Anonymous and LulzSec.

"The one area where, generally, a lot of organizations are ill-prepared is in coordinated, well-funded, sophisticated, low-noise targeted attacks" Moyles said.

Yet the truth about Anonymous rarely lives up to the hype. According to an unclassified Department of Homeland Security bulletin, far from being the mysterious supervillains they are often portrayed as in the media, Anonymous and Lulz Sec owe their success to more rudimentary means of penetration. So called "script kiddie" tactics such as denial of service attacks and defacement of public websites account for the bulk of Anonymous attacks, which are easier to pull off than the sophisticated hacking portrayed in 1995 cyber thriller, Hackers.

They are also easier to identify. For example, the Low Orbit Ion Cannon, an open source stress-testing network that allows Anonymous participants to link up with each other, turning their laptops into one giant DDoS system, is vulnerable to filtering by firewalls. LOICs are also recorded in system logs, meaning individuals IP addresses can be traced by law enforcement agencies, leading to their arrest--that's how many Anonymous participants, including the alleged mastermind of Anonymous, Christopher Doyon, were eventually found.

No wonder IT professionals are confident about their defenses against such attacks. An Information Week survey of 106 IT professionals found that many of them were optimistic about their chances of repelling such low key cyber attacks.

Yet to hear from D.C., Anonymous isn't a group of highly intelligent (if misguided) techies--they are nothing less than terrorists. The U.S. government officially declared cyber attacks such as Anonymous's #OperationPayback as acts of war in 2011, putting them on par with the sinking of the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, and the September 11 attacks.

Furthermore, according to Network Computing, more than half of all federal agencies are planning on increasing cyber security funding in 2013, but with budgets strained already, the question arises of how to pay for all those new Toshibas, Macs, iPads and other devices.

"If you look at cybersecurity both on the offensive and defensive side," Moyles said. "we're seeing additional requests for funding...but the money has to come from somewhere."

Prioritizing is one solution. According to Symantec, a majority of threats--62 percent--were domestic, followed by China at 10.1 percent, and Thailand with 2.1 percent (At 1.5 percent, Russia is ranked sixth on Symantec's list). The United States is also one of the top originating countries for global online threats, with 16.9 percent of global attacks originating in the United States--not Russia, and certainly not China.

Yet prominent stories--like the Koobface virus Russian hackers used to target the personal information of Facebook users, or the ongoing series of hacks by Chinese cyber spies against US institutes and dissident websites like Boxun, NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, and others--continue to focus attention on vague (often foreign) threats that account for a fraction of the 5.5 billion overall threats blocked last year.

With the Wild West of hacking moving to social media and mobile devices, IT administrators are wary. Over 28 percent of respondents surveyed by research firm Enterprise Strategies Group said they were unprepared for attacks using social media or smart phone devices--a big glaring sign that improvements still need to be made in cyber security.

At the end of the day though, Moyle has one piece of advice to IT administrators: keep your eyes peeled.

"You need to do continuous monitoring in a way that ties it back to the risks your agency faces," He said. "that might be a little bit different than what folks are doing on the ground...but they're collecting those metrics because they can and not because they're actually meaningful for their program."

Senator Johanns Sponsors Student Loan Bill, Twitter ranking soars

Jack B. Winn — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:40:00 GMT

Senator Mike Johanns (R-NE) is no Web celebrity, but he got a taste of the powers--and perks--of Web stardom when his social media accounts gained a few new friends following the Nebraska legislator's announcement that he was sponsoring a bill aimed at stopping a hike on student loan interest rates.

According to OhMyGov Media Analytics, there was a boost in Twitter followers between April 23 and April 27--the same period that Johanns' joined a resolution by Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) to extend the current 3.4 percent on subsidized college loans for another year.

The small jump in online support began sometime after April 23. Johann's base of 2,990 Twitter followers crested to a little over 3,020--beginning a slight uptick in social media following that crested at 3,050 followers in all by that Friday--an increase of 2 percent.

"No amount of campaigning is going to change the fact that a majority of recent college graduates are either unemployed or underemployed," Johanns said in a statement. "Everyone agrees on the problem, but it would be irresponsible to raid the Social Security and Medicare trust funds yet again to pay for a fix. The legislation I'm cosponsoring would be a responsible fix that would let us move on to a bigger issue--getting America going again."

According to politicalnews.me, If the bill becomes law, it would pay for the extension by eliminating a portion of a multi-billion dollar "slush fund" provided for under the President's healthcare law. The remaining 6 billion dollars leftover would go to deficit reduction.

Around the same time as Johanns made the announcement, the senator experienced a significant surge in media mentions for the week, outshining fellow Republicans Mark Kirk (R-IL), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and Mike Enzi (R-WY).

Johanns finished out the week with a record 83 percentile ranking on OhMyGov's leaderboard and a 84 percentile ranking in news mentions--not bad considering his overall ranking of 47 for the month.

Much of the increase can be attributed to the President's campaign to keep the federal student loan interest rate where it is. #dontraisemyrate is one of the trending topics on Twitter--right behind #toosmalltosucceed, a brand marketing campaign with a twist on the "Too Big to Fail" theme that typified the beginning of the Great Recession--and the subsequent 2008 Presidential election that catapulted Barack Obama into office.

The #dontraisemyrate campaign has been a hit with young people on college campuses and universities since it was rolled out, and Johann's sponsorship of the Interest Rate Reduction Act of 2012, means he will be the beneficiary of a lot of media attention--and a lot of Twitter love.

TSP Talk Weekly Wrap Up - 4/28/2012

OhMyGov! — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 11:06:00 GMT

The stock market got off to a slow start last week, but by Wednesday morning, after Apple had reported its strong earnings, the indices caught fire closing in positive territory for the second week in a row after the early April pullback.

It was all green for the TSP funds for the 2nd week in a row. The C-fund gained 1.83% last week, the S-fund was up 2.34%, the I-fund made 0.92%, while the F-fund (bonds) added 0.14% and the G-fund was up 0.04%.

For April, the C-fund is down 0.23%, the S-fund is back in positive territory at +.12%, the I-fund is still down 1.61%, the F-fund has gained 1.04%, and the G-fund has added 0.14%.

The S&P 500 has so far successfully tested the 50-day EMA (exponential moving average) - something we might expect in a bull market, although brief moves below the average had us concerned. The bear flags we have been watching on many indices last week, have all but disappeared.

Chart provided courtesy of www.decisionpoint.com, analysis by TSP Talk

The Dow Jones Industrial average has led to the upside and surprisingly, it is nearly back to the 2012 highs. Those old highs and the upper end of what appears to be a new rising trading channel, may give the Dow some trouble, but a break above them would be a very good sign for the stock fund.

Chart provided courtesy of www.decisionpoint.com, analysis by TSP Talk

The market leader, Dow Jones Transportation Index has been very erratic but in that chaos it is back above the 50-day EMA and a bullish inverted head and shoulders pattern has formed. These are continuation patterns, meaning in a bull market they should break to the upside, but if the chart was in a downtrend it could fail and break down.

Chart provided courtesy of www.decisionpoint.com, analysis by TSP Talk

The Transports have been in an intermediate-term uptrend, so that would be a good sign for the inverted H&S, but it has actually moves mostly sideways since about the middle of January. So, while the upside breakout looks good, and that is the way I would would guess it is going break, I won't be overly surprised if it doesn't. Oil is off the early April lows and could pose a threat to the Transports if it breaks out to the upside.

You can see that oil is testing a descending resistance line that could pull oil down again, or see it break out.

Chart provided courtesy of www.decisionpoint.com, analysis by TSP Talk

Things are looking bullish right now but with April coming to an end, we could start seeing some of the "Sell in May, and go away" action. Now that earnings season is over, about the only thing the market has left as a positive catalyst in the coming weeks / months is the possibility of an addition quantitative easing (QE 3), and ironically what will help that is weak economic data. That may be why last weeks' weak data was met with some buying. There is an important Jobs Report this coming Friday so that could be the test. How will the market react to a weak or strong report? It could move contrary to what we would normally expect.

Good luck, and thanks for reading. We will be back here next week with another TSP Wrap Up.

Tom Crowley
www.tsptalk.com

The legal stuff: This information is for educational purposes only! This is not advice or are commendation. We do not give investment advice. Do not act on this data. Do not buy, sell or trade the funds mentioned herein based on this information. We may trade these funds differently than discussed above. We use additional methods and strategies to determine fund positions.

The week's 10 best political jokes – April 27, 2012

OhMyGov! — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 10:48:00 GMT

10. "In the wake of the Colombian prostitution scandal, another Secret Service agent has been removed from his position at the White House and demoted to protecting the animatronic presidents at Disney world." –David Letterman

9. "Romney proves with a little hard work and a little luck, even a multimillionaire white guy from Harvard can succeed in this country." –Jay Leno

8. "Congress is expanding its probe into the Secret Service scandal. Congressmen want to know how this could happen, who was responsible, and do those ladies take Discover cards." –Conan O'Brien

7. "Mitt Romney has launched a new drive to appeal to Hispanic voters. Unfortunately, his new slogan is 'Mitt Romney — I probably employ one of your cousins.'" –Conan O'Brien

6. "Yesterday the Secret Service said they’re interviewing rock star Ted Nugent because of remarks that he made that made them think he might be threatening the President’s life. Now look, I don’t agree with Ted Nugent on almost anything. But to call him a threat is ridiculous. Not as ridiculous as to call him a rock star, but ridiculous nevertheless." –Bill Maher

5. "It now appears that as many as a dozen members of the Secret Service were involved in that Colombian prostitution scandal. Now six of the agents have been reassigned. The other six are now party planners for the GSA." –Jay Leno

4. "Today is 4/20. This is like national pot day. And people celebrate all over the world. Although, I must say, the Senate did not celebrate this by smoking joints, for two reasons. One, it would be against protocol. And two, it would mean passing something." –Bill Maher

3. "One of the Secret Service agents had this woman, and the deal was $800 and he gave her $30. I'm thinking, now wait a minute. I've got no problem with a guy trying to save taxpayer dollars." –David Letterman

2. "Yesterday’s show was incredible — we had the president of the United States, Barack Obama, on the show. Obama hung out with me backstage, he did 'Slow Jam the News,' he gave a long interview — at one point, I was like, 'Dude, don't you have a country to run?'" –Jimmy Fallon

1. From David Letterman's "Top Ten Signs Your Boss Is A Jerk": #1. Always nags you to guard the president instead of sleeping with hookers

Philly Signs Off on Open Data and Social Media Policy

Jack B. Winn — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:50:00 GMT

Move over, Iowa, the open data movement has a new cheerleader--and that man is Michael Nutter.

According to the blog Technically Philly, the mayor of Philadelphia has formally signed off on a Open Data and Social Media Policy for the city--a capstone to a year-long partnership by public and private institutions to make city data more transparent and accessible to Philly's 1.5 million residents and 100 plus active companies in the City of Brotherly Love.

In a formal ceremony April 26 at the Municipal Services Building in downtown Philadelphia, Mayor Nutter signed the executive order in front of a crowd of businessmen, activists, and dignitaries, on the heels of AT and T's second annual Philly Tech Week.

"As soon as practicable," text of the executive order reads, "the Mayor and the Chief Innovation Officer (CIO) will establish an Open Data Working Group to focus on transparency, accountability, participation, and collaboration within city government."

With the signage of the executive order, a 90-day clock officially starts for CIO Adel Ebeid to hire staff to oversee the city's open data plan, including a Chief Data Officer, and within 120 days the mayor officially appoints nine members of the Data Governance Advisory Board--which will include Ebeid--to oversee the day to day administration of the new initiative.

As for the publication of open data, that too will be the responsibility of the Chief Data Officer and their lieutenants. It will be their job to designate a "portal" that will facilitate the publication of city data across all departments.

According to NBC 10 Philadelphia, the executive order also establishes an internal social media policy for the city--a first in Philadelphia's history.

A full text of the executive order is available on technicallyphilly.com.

A website has already been established to help publish city data. Opendataphilly.org went online last year following a month-long intensive competition entitled--appropriately enough--the OpenDataRace. The website is the creation of Azavea, a GIS firm that specializes in geographic web and mobile software.

Even with the daunting new tasks Mayor Nutter has established, the city is more than suited to the job. The University of Illinois at Chicago named the City That Loves You Back one of the top 10 most social media savvy in a white paper released in March. The report analyzed the Facebook and Twitter use of 75 of the country's largest cities. Philadelphia was ninth in the rankings, eclipsed only by Virginia Beach, Portland, Oregon, and of course, the media capital of the world, New York City.

Philadelphia's twittering thumbs have been good enough to earn it an award from the Philadelphia Business Journal's Social Media Stars contest, which applauded the city for creating (in the judges' parlance) "an array of tools to enable community members to connect to city government and each other through tools like Change By Us Philly and Philly 311.

Currently, the city's official Twitter account boasts over 11,000 followers and counting. But Mayor Nutter is not to be outdone. The prolific tweeter has clocked over 2,900 tweets, garnering over 25,000 followers in the process.

Social Media Directors a Burgeoning Career Field

Jack B. Winn — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:59:00 GMT

Teachers, firefighters, engineers and federal bureaucrats may be staring down the barrel of a loaded gun as budgets are slashed and jobs are eliminated, but one sector of government employees is enjoying significant growth: social media directors.

According to Government Technology, from Gracie Mansion to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, young digital natives are being hired by governments both small and large as state and local agencies struggle to keep up with Web 2.0 trends and information consumption by the public on social media.

Case in point: Oak Park, Illinois. The town of 52,000 has been on Twitter and Facebook for four years, and social media has become an integrated part of their communications strategy. The city also has a YouTube channel, but its primary communications are via tweets and posts.

"We thought that if the importance is really to communicate with the community, then that means being able to use the same tools that the community is relying on for information," Oak Park communications director David Powers said in an interview with Gov Tech's Elaine Pittman.

The dedicated point woman in charge of Oak Park's social media efforts is Leslie Boehms. Born in 1983--the same year that ARPANET officially switched over to TCP/IP and GPS became officially available for civilian use--the 29 year-old Boehms is one of a recent spate of Gen Yers in government service to be employed officially as a social media manager. In her official capacity as social media maven, it is her job to coordinate Oak Park's media message on Facebook and Twitter.

It also helps that she's a bit of an addict herself.

"I went from Friendster to MySpace to Facebook," She said. "So I've always been kind of immersed in social media."

Her official title is social media director, but unofficially, she is a go-between between social media and local government agencies looking to answer constituent's questions.

Like many of her fellow social media mavens, Boehms is a refugee from the print media world, whose declines in circulation--and reluctance to fully embrace the power of the Internet--has caused thousands of would-be journalists and writers to stake claims on the digital frontier as they struggle to build a reputable career online. Those who manage to avoid the slings and arrows that social media can dish out can make a handsome career managing social media, either in the private sector or the public sector.

According to Payscale.com, a successful social media manager can make anywhere from $28,000 to $64,000 a year depending on their location and which sector they work in. For those at the upper tier of the income bracket, the pay is as much as $100,000 dollars a year if in the federal government and the Metroc Washington D.C. area.

Social media isn't just a medium for small towns like Oak Park. One of the pioneers in adopting social media for government use lies further up the road. Chicago, with its magnificent skyscrapers and big city attitude, was one of the first to coordinate several social media accounts at once (each city department has their own separate account). With everyone from the Mayor's Office, the tourism department and even the Department of Families and Social Services on social media, making sure everyone is on the same page is no small feat.

As in Oak Park, the person in charge of making all of that work is young, bright and steeped in social media. At 28, Kevin Hauswirth is Boehm's contemporary. But rather than just sitting at a laptop and tweeting, Hauswirth is using social media to create connections outside the digital world. Using social media to facilitate workshops and discussion groups for the various departments, Hauswirth meets regularly with representatives from the Chicago Public Schools and the Transit Authority to help them craft a buzz-worthy social media strategy.

"The best practices are coming out of shared common knowledge of what is working and what is not working," he said. "It's really less about the technology and more about the relationships--that's really what we're working on."

At the federal level, there are currently 21 positions requiring social media skills advertised on USAjobs.gov, the federal government's job board run by Monster Inc. The highest paying of these is a Supervisory Communications Specialist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which pays up to $155,000 a year and requires to applicant to "have knowledge of communications tools and techniques, including online communications, video production, and social media."

In a tough job market where employment is still unstable, jobs like the one at NOAA are sure to attract hundreds, if not thousands of candidates, provided of course they are willing to spend the extra time on the more complicated government applications.

Entrepreneurs, coders to compete at OpenIowa contest

Jack B. Winn — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 13:22:00 GMT

It used to be that Iowa was a land of prairie, where the wheat sashayed in the wind and seas of corn stretched out as far as the human eye could see. Well, the corn is still there and wheat continues to loom large in the horizon, but there is another industry that is taking root in the Hawkeye State—technology.

Just as the homesteaders of old raced to stake their claim, a new generation of coders, developers, and software geeks will be fighting it out for three days next weekend to decide once and for all who is the reigning king (or queen) of the iPhone app, SMS code, and other web 2.0 applications.

This event is the OpenIowa competition, and from April 27-29 the downtown headquarters of StartupCity Des Moines will be transformed from sedate conference rooms and lobbies to a virtual pressure cooker as coders code, developers hone their applications, and business pitches are made to a panel of judges who will decide who gets to stay and who is sent packing.

The event is the brainchild of StartupCity Des Moines (or DSM, as it is colloquially known). With unprecedented access to a treasure trove of software code, government statistics, and other data, it will be the job of software engineers, developers and entrepreneurs to take the bushels of digital data and turn creative business plans that state and local governments--and perhaps most importantly, venture capitalists--will find suitable for launch.

"We are lucky to have a large space that can host a big crowd," Becky Mollenkamp, one of the organizers of the event, said in an email interview. "We hosted about 150 people for StartupWeekend last month. This event will be quite similar in format to that event."

"The codeathon is a chance for developers to get access to a wealth of datasets—in this case from the government—and use those to create a website or mobile app,” said Mollenkamp. “Anyone who attends can propose an idea and all of the ideas will be voted on by the room. The best ones will be worked on all weekend by teams that form."

Those lucky enough to survive vetting by the crowd will get a chance to have their voices heard by the panel of judges—an array of government officials and entrepreneurs. But only one project has the chance to become the chosen app to rule all government data apps.

"This is an informal and fun process," Mollenkamp said. "Here, people will be creating an app or site in a weekend using government data. The winning project will be the one that uses government data to create a useful app or site that addresses a public need."

Participants can register for the competition through Tikly, a sort of Ticketmaster for the Web 2.0 generation, at https://tickets.tikly.co/-/event/466. The price of admission is $30.

The event kicks off in earnest at 5 p.m., complete with dinner and refreshment.

Sponsored in part by the Des Moines Register, the event has the official endorsement of the state's Lieutenant Governor, Kim Reynolds.

Founded in October 2011, StartupCity Des Moines is only the latest outfit to grace the "Silicon Sixth" corridor. The company employs only three employees: Mollenkamp, Christian Renaud and Tej Dhawan.

But OpenIowa is just the tip of the digital iceberg for the trio.

"We are already talking about our next big event but we are currently focused on making this weekend's OpenIowa event a success," Mollenkamp said. "There are plans to repeat it statewide in the future."

Ron Paul Cries Government Conspiracy with Google and Facebook

Jack B. Winn — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 17:38:00 GMT

Cyber-security experts and corporations are watching with bated breath as the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) winds its way through Congress.

The latest assault on Internet freedom, CISPA, permits both the federal government and private companies to view your private communications with no judicial oversight--provided of course; they do so in the name of 'cyber-security'.

Earlier this year strong opposition by prominent websites forced Congressional leaders to cancel votes on two bills known in Washington as SOPA and PIPA, which threatened search engines and websites with possible shutdowns if the Justice Department deemed them insufficiently cooperative with the 'War on Terror'.

Not shy to expose his views, GOP presidential candidate, Ron Paul (R-TX), called out the bill for allowing companies as diverse as Facebook, IBM, Verizon and Intel to trade user's personal information to the government if requested to do so--no warrants needed, no questions asked.

The paranoid rhetoric--a familiar staple of Ron Paul's speeches--will be familiar to anyone who has attended his rallies, read his newsletters, or seen clips of him speak on YouTube. Yet in a four minute long address posted on the Internet, Paul took it one step further--accusing the government and telecommunications companies of conspiring in corporatism as they hash out the finer points of the bill.

"CISPA reflects an alarming form of corporatism, as it further intertwines government with companies like Google and Facebook," Paul said. "It permits them to hand over your private communications to government officials without a warrant, circumventing well -established federal laws like the Wiretap Act and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. It also grants them broad immunity from lawsuits for doing so. Simply put, CISPA encourages some of our most successful internet companies to act as government spies, sowing distrust of social media and chilling communication in one segment of the world economy where America still leads."

The synopsis Paul paints of the dystopian new world CISPA would create is fitting for a remake of 1984. In Paul's version, government approved employees work at Facebook, ferreting out information about private citizens to their employers.

Yet in real life, the authors of the bill have been at pains to balance the needs of both cyber-libertarians and government agencies anxious to prevent a digital Pearl Harbor from happening in cyberspace.

The current version of the bill removes some of the most onerous provisions--the new version is far more narrow in scope that the initial amendment that was proposed on the House floor last November, limiting the government's powers to those already granted by other laws.

The bill also bars the government from making any quid pro quo arrangements with private companies for sharing intelligence--an 'I'll show mine if you show yours' approach', so to speak. Private companies cannot use the information they receive from the government to benefit themselves, and classified information is only shared based on approved guidelines set by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), who will design rigorous standards as to who or what entity receives the information, how that information is used--and how long it's stored in their respective records.

In a bold step, the bill also grants individuals who feel that the government violated their privacy by sharing private information with companies the right to sue--a right currently not enjoyed under U.S. law.

Despite the acknowledged concessions to privacy activists, civil liberties groups feel that the bill doesn't go far enough to protect the rights of average citizens.

"Although we appreciate the Intelligence Committee's efforts to improve the bill," Sharon Bradford Franklin wrote in an op-ed April 18. "the changes in the most current draft do not come close to addressing the civil liberties threats posed by the bill, and some of the proposals would actually make CISPA worse. Therefore, Congress should not pass CISPA."

Reporters Without Borders, the Sunlight Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Tim Berners-Lee--the father of the World Wide Web--have joined in opposition to the bill, bringing the total number of opponents to 36.

"It [CISPA] is threatening the rights of people in America," Berners-Lee wrote in an op-ed in the UK edition of the Guardian last week. "and effectively rights everywhere, because what happens in America tends to affect people around the world. Even though the SOPA and PIPA acts were stopped by a huge public outcry, it's staggering how quickly the US government has come back with a new, different, threat to the rights of its citizens."

Yet even if Berners-Lee, Franklin, Paul and other cyber-libertarians manage to defeat the bill, the battle isn't over--two separate bills, S. 2151 (Secure IT) and S.2105 (Cybersecurity Act) are pending in the Senate--and two more, H.R. 3674 and H.R. 4657 in the House of Representatives.

But that isn't deterring Ron Paul at all. On the slate of the perennial candidate's agenda on his official website (behind "honest money", "foreign policy" and "audit the Fed")--is civil liberties.

White House to crack down on Internet snooping

Jack B. Winn — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 15:52:00 GMT

The brokered peace deal in Syria may be faltering, but the White House isn't waiting to add new sanctions on the Assad regime.

According to the Washington Post, the President is set to issue an executive order today, which will allow the U.S. to impose sanctions on foreign nationals--not nation-states--found to have used cell phone tracking technology, internet surveillance tools and other technologies to locate--and detain--protesters and civilians.

The move comes in the wake of a series of widely publicized accounts involving Syrian security forces use of Western-made surveillance technology to track, locate--and in many cases kill--dissidents who previously thought of themselves as immune from the kind of blanket surveillance commonplace in authoritarian regimes. The connection only came to light when about 54 gigabytes of log files were released to the public by Telecomix--one of the companies implicated in the accounts--released them in October 2011.

A separate bill pending in the Senate, S. 2034, would also impose sanctions on imports of surveillance technology to Syria--including contractors who do business in the country. The Syrian Human Rights Accountability Act of 2012, was introduced by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), and sponsored by Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH), although the full chamber has yet to take up the proposal.

While both the White House and Senate proposals impose sanctions on persons who are found to be responsible for, complicit in censorship, surveillance, and human rights abuses in the Levant-based country, the President’s executive order would take effect immediately, while S. 2034 would not kick in until 90 days if the bill becomes law--enough time for Syrian security forces to tidy up any bloody messes far from the prying eyes of the U.S. authorities.

The President isn't stopping there. In addition to the executive order, the Washington Post reports that President Obama has also authorized a first ever National Intelligence Estimate by the CIA and other intelligence agencies focusing specifically on the issue of genocide around the world.

"This unprecedented direction from the President, and the development of a comprehensive strategy, sends a clear message that we are committed to combating atrocities, an old threat that regularly takes grim and modern new forms" Samantha Power, the National Security Council's senior director for multilateral affairs and human rights said in a statement.

Power--the author of A Problem From Hell, a study of genocide in Rwanda, Yugoslavia and elsewhere--will also serve as chairwoman of the Atrocities Prevention Board, a newly created panel that was announced by the administration in August.

Previous attempts by the President to address genocide have not come without some criticism. When the President decided to intervene in Libya last year citing human rights abuses by Ghadafi loyalists in Misrata and other cities, Republicans derided the move as attempt to distract the public from his unpopular approval ratings at home. The "wag the dog" theory didn't gain much traction when U.S-led NATO air-strikes on Tripoli and other Ghadafi strongholds weakened the North African despot's hold on the country, and the matter was quickly forgotten when Ghadafi was killed by Libyan rebels in August 2011.

What is different about the Libyan uprising then--and the Syrian crackdown on dissidents now--is that the U.S. policy toward Syria is currently seen by both conservatives and human rights activists as feckless, inefficient--and more likely to do harm than good.

"For the United States to sit idly by and watch this wanton massacre is a betrayal of everything we stand for and believe in" Senator John McCain (R-AZ) said in a speech last week.

Obama--who has publically called for the removal of Bashar Al-Assad and imposed economic sanctions against Assad's government--has not been shy about his disapproval of the Syrian crackdown. Yet as of press time, nearly 11,000 people have been estimated by human rights groups to have been slaughtered at the hands of the Syrian regime. Many more have fled to Turkey, Lebanon--and even Iraq--to escape the violence there.

According to The New York Times, Syrian troops have reportedly fired at refugees crossing along the Turkey-Syrian border--killing civilians inside Turkey's borders and further angering Syria's former partner in the region. As calls for military intervention escalate, the pressure on the United States to respond--as it did in Libya--is growing.

According to Power, the new Atrocities Prevention Board will hold its first session Monday afternoon--the first-time a panel has officially met to discuss the issue of genocide. Power and other senior administration officials are expected to meet with representatives from over 200 NGOs, university chapters of anti-genocide groups like Amnesty International, and other individuals.

As memories of Srebrenica, Sarajevo, the Great Lakes refugee crisis in Rwanda and the current famine in Somalia loom large in the minds of seasoned activists all eyes are on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to make sure that the inaction that composed most of the White House's response to genocide in the 1990s and early 2000s--never happens again.

"This won't make genocide go away," Power insists. "but it does give us a new set of tools and should prevent presidents from ever saying again that they don't have options to prevent mass killings."

TSP Talk Weekly Wrap Up - 4/20/2012

OhMyGov! — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 11:31:00 GMT

As earnings and economic reports rolled in, the stock market bounced around trying to find direction. The normally historically positive option expiration week during the April earnings season did finish with gains, but it was not an easy task as the sellers were not too far behind any rally.

For the TSP, the C-fund gained 0.61% last week, the S-fund was up 1.00%, the I-fund led the way adding 1.67%, while the F-fund (bonds) gained 0.09% and the G-fund was up 0.04%.

For April, the C-fund is still down 2.03%, the S-fund has lost 2.17%, the I-fund has fallen 2.51%. The F-fund is now up 0.90% for the month, and the G-fund has added 0.10%.

The S&P 500, what we use to listen to the heartbeat of the U.S. stock market, has been slowly rising off of the support lines and the early April lows, but that action has created a bearish formation called a bear flag.

Chart provided courtesy of www.decisionpoint.com, analysis by TSP Talk

Here is a closer look at the bear flag and we have been talking about this all week on TSP Talk so I won't to go into too much detail, but suffice it to say that bear flags are bearish (negative.) The fact that the S&P 500 is holding above the 50-day EMA is what the bulls are hanging their hat on right now. If the bear flag breaks down and the S&P 500 moves below the 50-day EMA, the short-term outlook becomes less optimistic - although the longer-term outlook may not be, but we'll talk about that another time.

Chart provided courtesy of www.decisionpoint.com, analysis by TSP Talk

Many of the charts we follow are showing this bear flag, but I wanted to point out the importance of the 50-day EMA right now on one of the market leaders - the Nasdaq Composite. If this leading index can stay above the 50-day EMA the rest of the stock indexes should remain positive. Right now the Nasdaq is being bullied by Apple's stock, a major influence on the Nasdaq.

Chart provided courtesy of www.decisionpoint.com, analysis by TSP Talk

After a nearly parabolic move higher over the last several months, Apple has been pulling back going from nearly $650 a share to $572. That's a 12% loss, which is not excessive for an individual stock, but because the Nasdaq is so heavily weighted and dependent on Apple's stock, it has been a big drag on this leading index.

Chart provided courtesy of www.decisionpoint.com, analysis by TSP Talk

If Apple can hold here at the 50-day EMA and after filling that open gap near 570, we could see the Nasdaq rebound, which would likely help the rest of the market. If these support levels fail, the rest of the market could follow. Keep an eye on the price action in Apple this week.

Our readers became a lot more bearish last week as the TSP Talk Sentiment Survey came in at 40% bulls, 45% bears, for a bulls to bears ratio of 0.89 to 1. That is a complete reversal from the prior week's bullish results, and this new extreme bearishness would normally be a good sign for stocks going forward. The theory being that if everyone is bearish, there's no one left to sell.

According to sentimenTrader.com, over the past 20 years, the S&P 500 futures have been positive the day after April option expiration (the third Friday of the month) only 30% of the time. However, from the next Monday's close through Friday (meaning from the close of 4/23 through 4/27 in our current case), it was positive 80% of the time averaging +0.8%. The last 8 years have all been positive during those 4-day stretches.

Good luck, and thanks for reading. We will be back here next week with another TSP Wrap Up.

Tom Crowley
www.tsptalk.com

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