The benchmark index, maintained by the London-based Baltic Exchange to track the daily freight market prices for dry bulk transport, fell 8.2 percent to 826 following a near 4 percent decline Tuesday. The index has fallen more than 48 percent so far this year.

h/t Adrian

Why Is Hartford Buying Back $5 Billion of Annuity Contracts They Worked So Hard to Sell?

Retirees who thought buying an annuity was the last investment decision they’d ever have to make are having to go back to the calculators one more time.
The Hartford is the latest annuity carrier to offer the customers it fought hard to capture incentives to take their money and go home.

U.S. companies are scaling back investment plans at the fastest pace since the recession, signaling more trouble for the economic recovery.
Half of the nation’s 40 biggest publicly traded corporate spenders have announced plans to curtail capital expenditures this year or next, according to a review by The Wall Street Journal of securities filings and conference calls.

The federal agency that insures pensions for more than 40 million Americans last year ran the widest deficit in its 38-year history.
The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. says its deficit grew to $34 billion for the budget year that ended Sept. 30. That compares with a $26 billion shortfall in the previous year.

The photograph above shows a rebel with an apparently complete (tube, gripstock and battery) SA-16. Another photo shows another rebel with an apparently complete SA-24, one of the most advanced heat-seekers in the world. This might be the only time an SA-24 MANPADS has been photographed outside of state control.

The Federal Housing Administration, faced with continuing losses from the housing bubble, will issue a financial analysis next week setting the stage for what could be its first draw from the U.S. Treasury in its 78-year history, according to three people briefed on the report.

The magnitude of Greece’s fiscal challenge was painted in sharp relief on Wednesday as Athens unveiled new budget projections exceeding the worst-case scenarios envisioned by international lenders when they agreed a €174bn rescue eight months ago.

Update – New link here.

Monument honors U.S. ‘horse soldiers’ who invaded Afghanistan

The U.S. special operations teams that led the American invasion in Afghanistan a decade ago did something that no American military had done since the last century: ride horses into combat.
“It was like out of the Old Testament,” says Lt. Col. Max Bowers, retired Green Beret, who commanded the three horseback teams.
“You expected Cecil B. DeMille to be filming and Charlton Heston to walk out.”
Bowers spoke while sitting in the rural Kentucky studio of sculptor Douwe Blumberg, along with three of his former “horse soldiers.”
They, along with 30 fellow commandos on horseback, are the inspiration for a new monument that Blumberg is creating, dedicated to the entire U.S. special operations community.

Story is from 2011, but still a great read.

China’s military spending has been rapidly spiraling upward, and the growing amounts are unnerving Beijing’s Asian neighbors and policy planners in the Pentagon, who are openly wary about the country’s long-term intentions.

h/t peterj

Today, in a surprising development, via the Telegraph we learn that none other than the same Bundesbank which is causing endless nightmares for all the other broke European nations due to its insistence for sound money, decided to voluntarily pull two thirds of its gold holdings held by the Bank of England. According to a confidential report referenced by the Telegraph, Buba reclaimed 940 tons, reducing its BOE holdings from 1,440 in 2000 to 500 in 2001 allegedly “because storage costs were too high.”

h/t Adrian

How deep is the economic hole? The Greek statistics agency EL.STAT is reporting that the 2011 deficit stood at 9.4 percent of GDP and the public debt at a staggering 170.6 percent. Greece is begging the EU and IMF to release the latest tranche of aid—a staggering 31.2 billion euros ($39.7 billion). Forget trite talk of Greeks losing only their feather-bedded pensions and early retirement. The cuts are deep, the pain real, and the anger white-hot.

Via

In contrast with best industry practices ….

Germany’s gold reserves do not seem to be independently verified by a third party.
Philipp Missfelder, a politician from Merkel’s own party, has asked the Bundesbank for the right to view the gold bars in Paris and London, but the central bank has denied the request, citing the lack of visitor rooms in those facilities, German’s daily Bild reported. The Bundesbank won’t let German parliament members inspect the German gold vaulted abroad because the central bank vaulting facilities supposedly lack “visiting rooms.” And yet one of those vaults, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, offers the public tours that include “an exclusive visit to the gold vault”.

h/t Adrian

Caterpillar Inc., the world’s largest maker of construction and mining equipment, forecast sales growth for 2013 that is the slowest in four years as the global economy decelerates.

h/t Kevin B

A single algorithm …

…last week placed and cancelled orders on the Nasdaq accounting for 4% of all quoted traffic in the US. Not only this, it also accounted for a colossal 10% of the bandwidth that is allowed for trading on any given day.
It placed orders in 25-millisecond bursts, involving approximately 500 stocks, but never actually executed a single trade.
The algorithm’s stopped operating at 10.30am ET on Friday.

h/t syncrodox