Boehner's Plan B goes down without getting a vote

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: "The president will work with Congress to get this done," the White House says


• The House Speaker says his Plan B wasn't voted on because it didn't have "sufficient support"


• A bill to alter cuts did narrowly pass the House; the White House says it would veto


• The fiscal cliff's tax hikes and spending cuts are set to take effect in January

Washington (CNN) -- House Speaker John Boehner's proposal to avert the looming fiscal cliff's automatic tax increases failed to curry enough Republican support Thursday night, after which Congress left for the holiday with no clear end in sight in the high-stakes debate.

Boehner said earlier Thursday that he was confident that his so-called Plan B -- which would extend tax cuts that are set to expire at year's end for most people while allowing rates to increase to 1990s levels on income over $1 million -- would pass the House, and in the process put pressure on President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Senate. But his gambit seemed in doubt earlier Thursday as Republican leaders struggled to get most all their members to sign on -- even enlisting senators like Sen. Rob Portman, to work the House floor -- knowing the chamber's Democrats oppose it.

Then, around 8 p.m., House Majority Leader Eric Cantor announced that the measure would not go up for a vote as planned.

"The House did not take up the tax measure today because it did not have sufficient support from our members to pass," Boehner said in a statement. "Now it is up to the president to work with Senator (Harry) Reid on legislation to avert the fiscal cliff."

Democratic leaders already had signaled they oppose the so-called Plan B.

After Thursday night's unexpected reversal, Republican legislators walked past reporters through the halls of Congress, and most did not take questions. One who did -- Rep. Jeff Flake, an Arizonan who will move to the Senate next month -- said he was disappointed.

"It's too bad; I'd rather vote on it tonight," said Flake, who said he sides with Democrats in backing the extension of tax cuts except for household income of more than $250,000. "Get it done."

What this means next in the fiscal cliff talks is unclear. From here, scenarios range from intensified and ultimately successful talks in the coming days or entrenchment as the fiscal cliff becomes a reality next year, when a new Congress could enter negotiations with Obama.

The Plan B was significant because Republican leaders previously insisted they wouldn't raise rates on anyone, while Obama called tax rates for those earning more than $250,000 threshold to return to 1990s levels while extending tax cuts for everyone else.

Although the House didn't vote on Boehner's tax measure, most Republicans did vote together earlier Thursday as the House narrowly approved, 215-209, a related measure to alter automatic spending cuts set to kick in next year under the fiscal cliff, replacing cuts to the military with reductions elsewhere. The Congressional Budget Office said this would lead to $217.7 billion in cuts over the next decade, short of the $1.2 trillion in cuts that would go into effect in January if the fiscal cliff isn't averted.

Moments after that vote, the White House issued a statement indicating it would veto this bill. But that should be a moot point, since Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said he won't bring it up for a vote.

Republicans consider piggybacking spending cuts to 'Plan B'

"For weeks, the White House said that if I moved on rates, that they would make substantial concessions on spending cuts and entitlement reforms," House Speaker John Boehner said before his plan fell flat. "I did my part. They've done nothing."

While the Ohio congressman said Obama seems "unwilling to stand up to his own party on the big issues that face our country," Democrats say Republican leaders are buckling to their conservative base by backing off as negotiations seemed to be nearing a deal.

White House spokesman Jay Carney called the GOP alternatives "a major step backwards," claiming they'd lead to extended tax cuts of $50,000 for millionaires. Reid slammed the two Republican measures -- the one that passed and the one that wasn't brought up for a vote -- as "pointless political stunts."

The war of words notwithstanding, Boehner, Carney and Senate Democratic leaders all said they are ready to talk. Reid has said the Senate -- with many members attending a memorial service Friday and funeral in Hawaii on Sunday for Sen. Daniel Inouye -- will be back at work December 27. And after Thursday's session, Cantor's office said legislative business was finished for the week but the House could reconvene after Christmas if needed.

"I remain hopeful," Boehner said. "Our country has big challenges, and the president and I are going to have to work together to solve those challenges."

The path toward the fast-approaching fiscal cliff

The possibility of a fiscal cliff -- which economists warn will hit the American economy hard -- was set in motion two years ago, as a way to force action on mounting government debt. Negotiations between top Congressional Republicans and Democrats resumed after Obama's re-election last month as did the barbs from both sides.

Polling has consistently shown most Americans back the president, who insists wealthy Americans must pay more, rather than Boehner and his Republican colleagues, who have balked at tax rate hikes and demanded spending cuts and entitlement program reforms.

A new CNN/ORC International survey released Thursday showed that just over half of respondents believe Republicans should give up more in any solution and consider the party's policies too extreme.

CNN poll: Are GOP policies too extreme?

The two sides seemingly had made progress on forging a $2 trillion deficit reduction deal that included new revenue sought by Obama and spending cuts and entitlement changes desired by Boehner.

Senior administration officials said Obama and Boehner have not spoken since Monday, when the president made a counterproposal to a Republican offer over the weekend.

The president's offer set $400,000 as the household income threshold for a tax rate increase. It also included a new formula for the consumer price index applied to benefits for programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to protect against inflation, much to the chagrin of some liberals.

The new calculation, called chained CPI, includes assumptions on consumer habits in response to rising prices, such as seeking cheaper alternatives, and would result in smaller benefit increases in future years. Statistics supplied by opponents say the change would mean Social Security recipients would get $6,000 less in benefits over the first 15 years of chained CPI.

Boehner essentially halted negotiations by introducing his Plan B on Tuesday. He described it as a fallback option to prevent a sweeping tax increase when tax cuts dating to President George W. Bush's administration expire in two weeks. The spending cut vote -- similar to one passed by the House last year that went nowhere in the Senate -- was added to the docket later Thursday, to appeal to conservative legislators upset about backing a tax increase without acting on spending and protecting the military budget.

The House speaker's reasoning was that the passage of Plan B and the spending bill would put the onus on Obama and Senate Democrats to accept them or offer a compromise.

For now, the Obama administration won't have to weigh in on the tax part of that scenario. As to the House-approved spending cuts bill, White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage dismissed the GOP alternative as "nothing more than a dangerous diversion" for eliminating federal funding by negatively impacting millions of seniors, disabled individuals and poor and at-risk children.

In a statement Thursday night, the White House didn't address Thursday's House proceedings but referenced its top priority -- ensuring that 98% of Americans don't see their taxes rise in January. The statement expressed confidence that there will be deal on the fiscal cliff but with no explanation of how, when or what such an agreement would look like.

"The president will work with Congress to get this done, and we are hopeful that we will be able to find a bipartisan solution quickly that protects the middle class and our economy," the White House said.

Delay of 100 million tax returns?

CNN's Tom Cohen, Greg Botelho, Joe Sterling and Ted Barrett contributed to this report.

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Bank robber from daring Chicago jail escape caught after manhunt

CHICAGO One of two bank robbers was arrested late Thursday after a manhunt following the pair's daring escape from a high-rise federal jail in Chicago, the FBI said.

FBI spokeswoman Joan Hyde said Joseph "Jose" Banks was captured without incident in Chicago. Agents and officers from the Chicago FBI's Violent Crimes Task Force, along with officers from the Chicago Police Department, arrested Banks about 11:30 p.m. Thursday, Hyde said in a news release.

The search continued early Friday for Kenneth Conley, who fled the jail with Banks early Tuesday.

Banks, 37, and Conley, 38, somehow broke a large hole into the bottom of a 6-inch wide window of the Metropolitan Correctional Center, dropped a makeshift rope made of bed sheets out and climbed down about 20 stories to the ground.

The escape went unnoticed for hours, with surveillance video from a nearby street showing the two hopping into a cab shortly before 3 a.m. Tuesday. They were no longer wearing their orange jail-issued jumpsuits.

When the facility did discover the two men were gone, around 7 a.m., what was found revealed a meticulously planned escape, including clothing and sheets shaped to resemble a body under blankets on beds, bars inside a mattress and even fake bars in the cells.

A massive manhunt involving state, federal and local law enforcement agencies was launched, as SWAT teams stormed into the home of a relative of Conley, only to learn the two had been there but had left, and searched other area homes and businesses -- including a strip club where Conley once worked.

Law enforcement officials did not answer a host of questions, including how the men could collect about 200 feet of bed sheets, and what they might have used to break through the wall of the federal facility.

Banks, known as the Second-Hand Bandit because he wore used clothes during his heists, was convicted last week of robbing two banks and attempting to rob two others. Authorities say he stole almost $600,000, and most of that still is missing.

During trial, he had to be restrained because he threatened to walk out of the courtroom. He acted as his own attorney and verbally sparred with the prosecutor, at times arguing that U.S. law didn't apply to him because he was a sovereign citizen of a group that was above state and federal law.

Conley pleaded guilty last October to robbing a Homewood Bank last year of nearly $4,000. Conley, who worked at the time at a suburban strip club, wore a coat and tie when he robbed the bank and had a gun stuffed in his waistband.

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Fiscal Cliff 'Plan B' Is Dead: Now What?

Dec 20, 2012 11:00pm

The defeat of his Plan B — Republicans pulled it when it became clear it would be voted down — is a big defeat for Speaker of the House John Boehner.  It demonstrates definitively that there is no fiscal cliff deal that can pass the House on Republican votes alone.

Boehner could not even muster the votes to pass something that would only allow tax rates on those making more than $1 million to go up.

Boehner’s Plan B ran into opposition from conservative and tea party groups -including Heritage Action, Freedom Works and the Club for Growth – but it became impossible to pass it after Senate Democrats vowed not to take up the bill and the president threatened to veto it.  Conservative Republicans saw no reason to vote for a bill conservative activists opposed – especially if it had no hopes of going anywhere anyway.

Plan B is dead.

Now what?

House Republicans say it is now up to the Senate to act.  Senate Democrats say it is now up to Boehner to reach an agreement with President Obama.

Each side is saying the other must move.

The bottom line:  The only plausible solution is for President Obama and Speaker Boehner to do what they have failed repeatedly to do:  come up with a truly bi-partisan deal.

The prospects look grimmer than ever. It will be interesting to see if the markets react.

SHOWS: This Week

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2013 Smart Guide: Searching for human origins in Asia

Read more: "2013 Smart Guide: 10 ideas that will shape the year"

Move over Africa. It is where humanity began, where we took our first steps and grew big brains. But those interested in the latest cool stuff on the origins of our species should look to Asia instead.

Why so? It looks as if some early chapters in the human story, and significant chunks of its later ones too, took place under Asian skies.

For starters, 37-million-year-old fossils from Burma are the best evidence yet that our branch of the primate tree originated in Asia rather than Africa.

A great deal later, after the emergence of early humans from Africa, some of our distant cousins set up shop in Asia, only to die out later. In 2012 anthropologists described for the first time human fossils unlike any others - ancient hominins dubbed the Red Deer Cave People who lived in what is now China as recently as 15,000 years ago, then vanished without further trace.

The implication is that more long-lost cousins remain to be found in South-East Asia's neglected fossil record. We know a little about the enigmatic Denisovans, for example. Their DNA was first discovered in 50,000-year-old fossil fragments from a Siberian cave in 2010, and traces of that DNA live on in modern Indonesians. Not only does this show that the Denisovans interbred with our species, it also suggests they occupied a territory so large it took in South-East Asia as well as Siberia.

Yet the only evidence we have of their existence are a finger bone and a tooth. Too long have the vast plains and forests of Asia remained untouched by the trowels and brushes of palaeoanthropologists. Teams of them are champing at the bit to explore Asia's rocks. Denisovans - and, hopefully, other ancestors, too - will not remain faceless for long.

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

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Train service disrupted on NEL due to train fault

SINGAPORE: Train services on the Northeast Line have been delayed due to a train fault on Thursday.

A caller to the MediaCorp hotline said a train has apparently broken down.

She said commuters have been told to take the bus to Serangoon station to continue their journey.

Delays of up to 20 minutes can be expected in train services in both directions.

One commuter said she had been stuck in the train for about 30 minutes.

- CNA/xq

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Obama to GOP: 'Take the deal'

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• White House threatens to veto Boehner's "plan B"


• President Obama suggests Republicans are fixated on besting him personally


• Speaker Boehner says the House will pass his fallback tax plan Thursday


• Without a deal, everyone's taxes go up in the new year

Washington (CNN) -- After progress earlier this week in fiscal cliff negotiations, President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner butted heads Wednesday, setting the stage for a showdown as the deadline looms for an agreement.

The negotiations had focused on a $2 trillion package of new revenue, spending cuts and entitlement changes the two sides have shaped into a broad deficit reduction plan.

Boehner on Tuesday proposed a "plan B," which would extend Bush-era tax cuts on income of up to $1 million. He described it as a fallback option to prevent a sweeping tax hike while negotiations continue on a broader plan.

But the White House on Wednesday threatened to veto "plan B," saying it would bring only "minimal" changes in projected budget deficits.

Obama told reporters earlier in the day that Republicans were focused too much on besting him personally rather than thinking about what's best for the country.

"Take the deal," Obama said to Republicans, referring to the broader proposal, adding that it would "reduce the deficit more than any other deficit reduction package" and would represent an achievement.

"They should be proud of it," Obama said. "But they keep on finding ways to say 'no' as opposed to finding ways to say 'yes.' "

His comments at a White House news conference came less than two weeks before the end of the year, when the nation's taxpayers would face automatic tax increases and deep spending cuts if no agreement is reached.

Economists say that failure to reach agreement could spark another recession.

Boehner issued his own statement Wednesday, saying the president had yet to make a proposal offering a balance between increased revenue and spending cuts.

In a 52-second appearance before reporters, Boehner said the House will pass his fallback plan Thursday limiting tax increases to income above $1 million.

While the plan represents a concession from Boehner's original vow to oppose any tax-rate increase, it sets a higher threshold than the $400,000 sought by Obama.

Once the House passes his plan, the president can either persuade Senate Democrats to accept it or "be responsible for the largest tax increase in American history," Boehner said before walking off without answering shouted questions.

The Obama administration and congressional Democrats said Boehner changed course because he was unable to muster Republican support for the larger deal being negotiated with Obama.

At his news conference, Obama alluded to last Friday's Connecticut school shootings in calling on Republicans to put aside political brinksmanship. "If there's one thing we should have after this week, it should be perspective about what's important," he said.

"Right now, what the country needs is for us to compromise," he continued. He characterized as "puzzling" the GOP refusal to accept his compromise.

Asked why an agreement was proving so elusive after both sides had made concessions, Obama said it might be that "it is very hard for them to say 'yes' to me."

"At some point they've got to take me out of it," Obama said of Republicans, adding they should instead focus on "doing something good for the country."

Boehner responded by arguing that Obama's proposal was not evenly balanced, with more new revenue instead of the spending cuts and entitlement reforms Republicans seek.

The Boehner plan B would leave intact government spending cuts, including those related to defense, which are required under a budget deal reached last year to raise the federal debt ceiling. The threat of cuts was intended to motivate Congress to reach a deal.

Opinion: Art that calls the fiscal cliff's bluff

But Obama said Wednesday that Boehner's proposal "defies logic" because it raises tax rates on some Americans, which Republicans say they do not want, and contains no spending cuts, which Republicans say they do want.

He also criticized the measure as a benefit for wealthy Americans, who would have lower tax rates on income up to $1 million.

The White House and congressional Democrats say plan B has no chance of passing; Obama said that bringing it up only wastes time.

Senior administration officials said Obama and Boehner have not spoken to each other since Monday. GOP leaders planned to vote Thursday on Boehner's proposal, as well as Obama's long-standing proposal to return to higher tax rates of the 1990s on income above $250,000 for families.

Obama on Monday raised the threshold for the higher tax rates to $400,000.

Conservative allies publicly supported Boehner's plan Wednesday.

Anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist provided political cover for Republicans who have signed his pledge against tax increases, saying he could support plan B.

Obama and Democrats argue that increased revenue, including higher tax rates on the wealthy, must be part of broader deficit reduction plan.

Obama made the tax proposal a theme of his re-election campaign, arguing that it would prevent a tax increase for middle-class Americans.

Polls show support for the Obama plan, and some Republicans have called for acceding to the president on the tax issue in order to focus on cuts to spending and entitlement programs.

Budget experts: Fiscal cliff deal could disappoint

Boehner and Republicans initially opposed any rise in tax rates but agreed to raising revenue by eliminating some deductions and loopholes. The offer of a plan with higher rates for millionaires represented a further concession, but Obama and Democrats say it would not suffice.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said Boehner's plan appeared to be a result of pressure from tea party conservatives opposing a wider deal.

"It would be a shame if Republicans abandoned productive negotiations due to pressure from the tea party, as they have time and again," Reid said this week.

Boehner's spokesman, Michael Steel, shot back that the plan B proposal gave Democrats what they wanted -- higher tax rates on millionaires.

What happens if the payroll tax cut expires

Obama's latest offer has generated protests from the liberal base of the Democratic Party because it includes cuts in entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Justin Ruben, executive director of MoveOn, which backed Obama's presidential campaigns, said its members would consider any benefit cuts "a betrayal that sells out working and middle-class families."

In particular, liberals cited concessions that Obama made Monday in his counteroffer, including a new inflation formula applied to benefits called chained CPI.

Obama offers fiscal cliff tax concession

Chained CPI includes assumptions on consumer habits in response to rising prices, such as seeking cheaper alternatives, and would result in smaller benefit increases in future years.

Statistics supplied by opponents say the change would mean Social Security recipients would get $6,000 less in benefits over the first 15 years of chained CPI.

But White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama's CPI proposal "would protect vulnerable communities, including the very elderly, when it comes to Social Security recipients." He called the president's acceptance of the chained CPI a signal of his willingness to compromise.

CNN's Dan Lothian, Dana Bash, Deirdre Walsh and Brianna Keilar contributed to this report.

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Senate GOP proposes much smaller Sandy aid package

WASHINGTONSenate Republicans on Wednesday proposed a $24 billion emergency aid package for Superstorm Sandy victims, less than half of what Democrats hope to pass by Christmas.

The GOP alternative bill would provide more than enough money to pay for immediate recovery efforts through the spring.

Republicans complain that the $60.4 billion Democratic bill being debated in the Senate is larded with money for projects unrelated to damage from the late October storm, which battered the Atlantic coastline from North Carolina to Maine.

The Republican version does not include $13 billion Democrats want for projects to protect against future storms, including fortification of mass transit systems in the Northeast and protecting vulnerable seaside areas by building jetties against storm surges.

49 Photos

Sandy's devastation on Staten Island

Republicans said however worthy such projects may be, they are not urgently needed and should be considered by Congress in the usual appropriations process next year, not through emergency spending.

"We want to take care of urgent needs now," said Indiana Sen. Dan Coats, ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations homeland security subcommittee, who put forward the bill. "We can look at other needs down the road when we have more time to look at them."

The GOP bill also scraps spending from the Democratic bill that is not directly related to Sandy damages, such as the $150 million for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for declared fisheries disasters in 2012 that could go to New England states, Alaska, New York and Mississippi.

The aid will help states rebuild public infrastructure like roads and tunnels and help thousands of people displaced from their homes. Sandy was the most costly natural disaster since Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and one of the worst storms ever in the Northeast.

More than $2 billion in federal funds has been spent on relief efforts so far for 11 states and the District of Columbia. The Federal Emergency Management Agency's disaster relief fund still has about $4.8 billion, and officials have said that is enough to pay for recovery efforts into early spring.

Earlier this month, Govs. Chris Christie, R-N.J., Andrew Cuomo, D-N.Y., and Dannel Malloy, D-Conn., argued in an op-ed that "in times of crisis no region, state or single American should have to stand alone or be left to fend for themselves," pointing to the "hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses damaged or destroyed, thousands still left homeless or displaced, tens of billions of dollars in economic loss" as evidence that "It's time for Congress to stand with us."

The governors, while recognizing that "our nation faces significant fiscal challenges," strive to separate the disaster-relief needs of their region from the ongoing "fiscal cliff" negotiations consuming Capitol Hill, arguing that Congress must "not allow this much-needed aid to fall in to the ideological divide."

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Obama Invokes Newtown on 'Cliff' Deal

Invoking the somber aftermath of the school massacre in Newtown, Conn., President Obama today appealed to congressional Republicans to embrace a standing "fair deal" on taxes and spending that would avert the fiscal cliff in 13 days.

"If there's one thing we should have after this week, it should be a sense of perspective about what's important," Obama said at a midday news conference.

"I would like to think that members of that [Republican] caucus would say to themselves, 'You know what? We disagree with the president on a whole bunch of things,'" he said. "'But right now what the country needs is for us to compromise.'"

House Speaker John Boehner's response: "Get serious."

Boehner announced at a 52-second news conference that the House will vote Thursday to approve a "plan B" to a broad White House deal -- and authorize simply extending current tax rates for people earning less than $1 million a year and little more.

"Then, the president will have a decision to make," the Ohio Republican said. "He can call on Senate Democrats to pass that bill or he could be responsible for the largest tax increase in American history."

Fiscal Cliff Negotiations: Trying to Make a Deal Watch Video

House Speaker John Boehner Proposes 'Plan B' on Taxes Watch Video

'Fiscal Cliff' Negotiations: Deal Might Be Within Reach Watch Video

Unless Congress acts by Dec. 31, every American will face higher income tax rates and government programs will get hit with deep automatic cuts starting in 2013.

Obama and Boehner have been inching closer to a deal on tax hikes and spending cuts to help reduce the deficit. But they have not yet had a breakthrough on a deal.

Obama's latest plan would raise $1.2 trillion in new tax revenue over 10 years, largely through higher tax rates on incomes above $400,000. He also proposes roughly $930 billion in spending cuts, including new limits on entitlement spending, such as slower annual cost-of-living increases for Social Security beneficiaries.

Boehner has agreed to $1 trillion in new tax revenue, with a tax rate hike for households earning over $1 million. He is seeking more than $1 trillion in spending cuts, with significant changes to Medicare and Social Security.

The president said today that he remains "optimistic" about reaching a broad compromise by Christmas because both sides are "pretty close," a sentiment that has been publicly shared by Boehner.

But the speaker's backup plan has, at least temporarily, stymied talks, with no reported contact between the sides since Monday.

"The speaker should return to the negotiating table with the president because if he does I firmly believe we can have an agreement before Christmas," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., a White House ally.

Schumer said Obama and Boehner are "not that far apart" in the negotiations.

"If they were to come to an agreement by Friday, they could write this stuff over the Christmas break and then we'd have to come back before the New Year and pass it," Schumer said.

Obama said he is "open to conversations" and planned to reach out to congressional leaders over the next few days to try to nudge Republicans to accept a "fair deal."

"At some point, there's got to be, I think, a recognition on the part of my Republican friends that -- you know, take the deal," he told reporters.

"They keep on finding ways to say no, as opposed to finding ways to say yes," Obama added. "At some point, you know, they've got take me out of it and think about their voters and think about what's best for the country."

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Fail-safe software could stop flash crashes

HIGH-FREQUENCY trading algorithms are seriously profitable. But they are also a serious problem, leading to mysterious "flash crashes" on the world's financial markets. So would emergency fail-safes of the kind used to prevent medical robots and nuclear reactors going haywire be any help?

Philip Bond, a computer scientist at the University of Bristol, UK, thinks so. At present, suspicious trading at an exchange can be stopped by a catch-all "market halt", but that's often too late: what is needed is a reliable way of sensing when wild stock-price variations suggest a build-up to a crash. At that point a smart circuit breaker could step in, Bond told a London meeting of the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation on 11 December.

The idea is to avoid another debacle like the flash crash of 6 May 2010, when $10 trillion was briefly knocked off the Dow Jones Industrial Average after a trading firm's high-frequency algorithm went awry. Prices mostly recovered in a matter of minutes, but the turbulence caused slumps in stock prices around the globe.

High-speed traders have a distinct advantage over traditional investors, according to research by Andrei Kirilenko, chief economist at the US Commodity Trading Futures Commission, and his colleagues. Kirilenko presented the findings on 30 November at the National Bureau of Economic Research's Market Microstructure Meeting. This skewed playing field might increase market instability even more.

Because high-frequency trading algorithms (HFTs) can work at blistering speeds - a trade every 60 microseconds is common - a lot can happen before humans have a chance to intervene. This has left governments scrambling to come up with ways to regulate the practice. The European Parliament is considering legislation that could force traders to increase trading intervals to a "safer" half a second.

But Bond and his colleagues, who examined the risks of high-speed trading for the UK government, say that enforcing a delay is wrong-headed. Making algorithms wait half a second would stop them from reacting to breaking financial news and render them useless.

Instead, they propose using circuit-breaker algorithms that will trip when trading becomes erratic. Such software monitors systems like medical robots and nuclear reactors for potentially dangerous behaviour. "HFT circuit breakers need to be considered as very high reliability software engineered to work under stressed conditions and with multiple backups," he says.

A decision is needed fast. The proportion of high frequency trades has declined in the US in recent years as they have lost some of their initial edge, but they still account for a majority of trades. And the hardware needed to get in the game is becoming more accessible - a server running a high-speed system costs only $270,000, and prices will keep falling.

Any technical backstops will have to distinguish between algorithms gone haywire and simple bad decision-making, warns Fod Barnes, an economist with UK consultants Oxera. "The HFT system is a bit more complex than just engineering," he says. "Why should those who manage to write an algorithm that makes a series of very bad trades be protected from their own folly?"

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50 community countdown parties to welcome 2013

SINGAPORE: Grassroots organisations under the People's Association umbrella are organising about 50 community countdown parties islandwide to usher in the new year.

80,000 residents are expected to join in the revelry, which will also feature more budding local performers. Some of the highlights include a cosplay event, stargazing, and fireworks.

For example, for the countdown at Boon Lay, local bands will perform for the residents, while at the cosplay event at the Sengkang West countdown party, organisers will try to set the first record for largest cosplay gathering in the Singapore Book of Records.

At Nee Soon GRC's countdown party, the fireworks display will be upped to five minutes - from three minutes in previous years.

People's Association's chief executive director Mr Yam Ah Mee said that in the last few years, he has noticed more youth community leaders getting involved in the planning and organising of these countdown parties.

"These youths have brought together new insights to how they would like to organise the countdown, to provide platforms for fellow other youths and fellow other residents to come - not just to watch the countdown, but to participate in the countdown. And the youths have also planned to involve more of the residents' talents so residents can showcase, using the platform of the countdown, to showcase their talents to fellow other residents," he said.

- CNA/ck

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