'It's only halftime, America'

Confidence among U.S. consumers rose more than forecast in February, reaching a one-year high as Americans grew more upbeat about the outlook for the economy. 

The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan final index of consumer sentiment increased to 75.3 this month from 75 in January. The median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey called for 73, after a preliminary reading of 72.5. New-home sales last month were stronger than projected, another report showed.

Three straight months of faster job growth along with a stock market rally since late 2011 are helping keep Americans optimistic in the face of rising gasoline prices. Further gains in confidence may sustain the household spending that accounts for about 70 percent of the economy.

“The overwhelming fact is that the job market has gotten better,” said Bill Cheney, chief economist for John Hancock Financial Services Inc. in Boston, who projected a gain. “People are back to spending most of the additional income that they get, so as employment increases and you get some meager increases in wages, they do feed through to more spending.”

US Supreme Court will decide on NO EXEMPTION FOR GENOCIDE for Corporations

The Supreme Court will weigh next week whether corporations can be sued in the United States for complicity in human rights abuses abroad.

The high court on Tuesday will consider the reach of a 1789 U.S. law that had been largely dormant until 1980, when human rights lawyers started using it, at first to sue foreign government officials. Then, over the next 20 years, the lawyers used the law to target multinational corporations.

The case before the court pits the Obama administration and human rights advocates against large companies and foreign governments over allegations that Royal Dutch Shell Plc helped Nigeria crush oil exploration protests in the 1990s.

Administration attorneys and lawyers for the plaintiffs contend corporations can be held accountable in U.S. courts for committing or assisting foreign governments in torture, executions or other human rights abuses.  Other courts ruled corporations can be held liable.

The justices will hear an appeal by a group of Nigerians who argue they should be allowed to proceed with a lawsuit accusing Shell of aiding the Nigerian government in human rights violations between 1992 and 1995.

California attorney Paul Hoffman, who will argue on behalf of the plaintiffs, said corporations, under the 1789 law, were permissible defendants and that corporate civil liability was a general principle of international law.

"Businesses involved in genocide, crimes against humanity or other serious human rights violations deserve no exemption from tort liability," he said in a brief filed with the court.

The Obama administration supported the corporate liability argument, as did international human rights organizations and Navi Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Backing Shell are various multinational corporations and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce business lobby.

In the past two decades, more than 120 lawsuits have been filed in U.S. courts against 59 corporations for alleged wrongful acts in 60 foreign countries, lawyers in the case said.

Among the cases: Indonesia villagers accused Exxon Mobil Corp's security forces of murder, torture and other abuses in 1999-2001; Firestone tire company was accused of using child labor in Liberia; and Ford Motor Co and other firms were accused of aiding South Africa's apartheid system.

The Alien Tort Statute from 1789 states that U.S. courts shall have jurisdiction over any civil lawsuit "by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States."

In its first substantive look at the law in 2004, the Supreme Court ruled it can be used for certain well-established international law violations.

A ruling in the case is expected by the end of June.

The Supreme Court case is Esther Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co, No. 10-1491.

‘Powerful Recovery’

“The powerful recovery in earnings thus far has allowed market averages to rise without pushing the P/E higher,” David Joy, the Boston-based chief market strategist at Ameriprise Financial Inc., said in a Feb. 21 e-mail. His firm oversees $600 billion. “Many investors are either not convinced that this price rally and earnings recovery are for real, or they simply do not care, having been burned too badly in the downturn.”

U.S. gross domestic product expanded an average 2.4 percent a quarter in the 2 1/2 years since the recession ended in 2009, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The world’s largest economy hasn’t had a smaller post-recession recovery rate since at least the 1940s, the data show. In the 2003 bull market, GDP rose 2.7 percent on average, before the S&P 500 surged 102 percent. For the 1982 rally, the rate was 5.7 percent. Equities more than tripled in that cycle.

Those Countries with a Natural Gas advantage WIN!!!

Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA)’s $1.6 billion bid for Cove Energy Plc (COV) starts a race to develop natural-gas fields off Mozambique’s Indian Ocean coast that may hold more gas than Norway’s entire reserves.

Winning Cove would give Shell an 8.5 percent stake in a block where Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (APC) has found 30 trillion cubic feet of gas. Italy’s Eni SpA (ENI) has discovered even more in a neighboring area. Together, there’s sufficient fuel for the development of two $20 billion liquefied natural gas plants to supply customers in Asia, according to Deutsche Bank AG.

“We’re a natural partner in that project,” Shell Chief Executive Officer Peter Voser said in an interview in The Hague yesterday. “We are the global leader in LNG, so this is an interesting province for us to actually further grow.”

East Africa’s fields offer a fresh source of gas supply for China and India, the world’s fastest-growing major economies. Demand for LNG in Asia is rising at almost 20 percent a year, outstripping the pace of production growth, according to Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Prices in the region reached a record in November.
Shell won’t be the last company looking for a way into Mozambique. India’s Oil & Natural Gas (ONGC) Corp. was among Asian producers considering a bid for Cove and a counter-offer remains possible. At the same time, Eni and Anadarko have both said they’re willing to sell stakes in their discoveries.

If you want your retirement money; your investment money to do better => Vote Democrat!!!