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Get used to it, what some of us might think is an invasion of privacy, is actually some companies idea of getting better with their service.
Like many of the issues of the day, including trading, everything is evolving thanks to technology and social media. Just look at Facebook, Twitter and all of the other current accepted ways of communication.
I know some on this board come here with an agenda, like Fox news does each day, but many companies are trying to stay current in their offerings. Staying ahead of the competition, before the competition comes in and takes market share away from them.
SI has been around for many years, and in some ways it hasn't changed much over the years. We might not like certain aspects of this change, but without change, we would never know how far we have all come.
Some would like to return to an easier time, where things stayed the same for years. I doubt very much that can happen, look at Ameritrade, I have lost my old streamer, and some days I hate, but I do like the individual stock charts I get, so I use my back up streamer from E-Trade. I do not use E-Trade except for the streamer, but then I only have two computers on my desk.
Today will be a long day of playing chicken, some of us will be looking for news out of Washington for news that at least gives everyone some assurances that a deal will be agreed upon. Obama wants the government open as a condition of a deal, while Republicans still want it closed, I just wonder how the Republicans will spin it. In the meantime only certain stocks really were strong yesterday so many others did not participate at all. A very narrow rally in my opinion.
SWY seems to of had another nice bump this morning.
Suit Revives Goldman Conflict Issue
By SUSANNE CRAIG and JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG
October 10, 2013, 2:43 pm
Carmen Segarra worked at the New York Federal Reserve Bank after a career on Wall Street that included jobs at Citigroup and Bank of America.
At a March 2012 meeting, a group of examiners at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York agreed that Goldman Sachs had inadequate procedures to guard against conflicts of interest — guidelines aimed at stopping firms from putting their pursuit of profit ahead of their clients’ best interests.
The examiners voted to downgrade a confidential rating assigned by the New York Fed that could have spurred costly enforcement actions and other regulatory penalties. It is not known whether the vote in fact led to a rating change. The former examiner who pushed for a downgrade, Carmen M. Segarra, now contends in a lawsuit filed on Thursday that just weeks after the vote, her superiors asked her to change her findings on Goldman and fired her after she refused.
The vote to downgrade, which has not been previously reported, could have been a big blow for Goldman.
“Goldman Sachs does not have a conflicts-of-interest policy, not firmwide, and not for any divisions,” Ms. Segarra wrote to Michael F. Silva, a senior executive at the New York Fed. “I would go so far as to say they have never had a policy on conflicts.”
The lawsuit, along with a review by The New York Times of confidential government documents and internal e-mails, raises questions about the success of Goldman’s efforts to police potential conflicts.
The bank has been buffeted by accusations that it has put its own interests ahead of its clients, a contention it denies. Goldman, for instance, faced accusations that in the run-up to the financial crisis that it sold billions of dollars in souring real estate assets to unsuspecting clients. Just weeks before the examiners’ vote last year, the bank was publicly excoriated by a federal judge who found that Goldman had conflicts in a huge energy deal.
The lawsuit also provides a look into the often-opaque relationship between federal regulators and Wall Street. After the financial crisis, banking regulators faced criticism that they were too cozy with the banks that they were overseeing — a familiarity that failed to thwart some of the risky behavior precipitating the housing crisis and ensuing recession.
Even now, banks have sway over their regulators, especially those stationed at a bank’s headquarters, according to two former regulators who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The banks, for example, can work behind the scenes to avert a vote like the one to downgrade Goldman. The people said, however, that once a vote to downgrade has taken place, it is difficult to reverse.
In the lawsuit, which was filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, Ms. Segarra contends she was wrongfully terminated in violation of a federal law that affords protections to bank examiners who find wrongdoing in the course of doing their jobs. Mr. Silva, who is chief of staff for the executive group at the New York Fed, is among the defendants named in the suit.
Jack Gutt, a New York Fed spokesman, declined to comment on Ms. Segarra’s case, citing rules that restrict what the regulator can discuss. “Personnel decisions at the New York Fed are based exclusively on individual job performance and are subject to thorough review. We categorically reject any suggestions to the contrary,” he said in a statement.
Mr. Silva declined to comment through the Fed spokesman.
A Goldman spokesman, Michael DuVally, said his company had no knowledge of internal New York Fed discussions or matters related to Ms. Segarra. “As we have described publicly in our Business Standards Committee report, Goldman Sachs has a comprehensive approach to addressing conflicts through firmwide and divisional policies and infrastructure.”
In an interview, Ms. Segarra said that when she was fired, her bosses told her they had lost confidence in her judgment. Within the Fed, some people who worked with Ms. Segarra echoed those concerns, according to people with knowledge of her time at the agency. Ms. Segarra, these people said, sometimes developed “conspiracy theories.”
Ms. Segarra landed the job at the New York Fed in October 2011 after a career on Wall Street that included jobs at Citigroup and Bank of America.
She was assigned to assess Goldman’s conflict-of-interest program to determine whether it complied with Fed standards.
Banks are required to have detailed policies in place to deal with conflict of interests. Ms. Segarra said these policies typically defined what constituted various conflicts, how the bank might penalize employees who violated those rules and also how the firm made sure that it did not inadvertently promote questionable behavior.
Under the New York Fed’s guidelines, banks are required to have “processes established to manage compliance risk across an entire organization, both within and across business lines, support units, legal entities, and jurisdictions of operation.”
These guidelines are aimed at ensuring that banks have reviewed business transactions to make sure that relationships with one client do not conflict with other clients or with the bank itself.
After Ms. Segarra joined the New York Fed, she said she examined several potentially controversial Goldman deals. For instance, in 2012 Goldman advised El Paso, an energy company, on its decision to sell itself to Kinder Morgan. Goldman owned a big stake in Kinder Morgan, which angered a number of El Paso shareholders, who argued this gave Goldman an incentive to undervalue El Paso. Goldman maintained that it had properly managed the conflicts but was later admonished by a judge, who noted the “disturbing behavior” that led to the deal.
As the deal was coming together, the lawsuit said, Ms. Segarra urged Goldman to provide her with its firmwide conflict-of-interest policy. But Goldman, the lawsuit said, told her that it had no such policy.
While Goldman lacked a broad conflict-of-interest policy, the lawsuit says, individual business units did have some procedures in place. For Ms. Segarra, the absence of a firmwide policy was alarming because it signaled that Goldman lacked the procedures to spot and police conflicts, according to the suit.
Such concerns, the lawsuit said, prompted Ms. Segarra to raise the issue with Mr. Silva, her boss, in a meeting in early December 2011. He seemed to agree. Mr. Silva “expressed concern that Goldman would suffer significant financial harm if consumers and clients learned the extent of Goldman’s noncompliance with the rules on conflict of interest,” according to the lawsuit.
Soon, though, Ms. Segarra was looking at another deal, involving Banco Santander, the largest bank in Spain, and Qatar Holding. As part of her review, Ms. Segarra asked Goldman to provide documentation that it had performed an anti-money-laundering analysis.
According to the lawsuit, Goldman executives told Ms. Segarra that it had done the analysis, but the bank later backpedaled, admitting that no such work had been performed.
Ms. Segarra took her concerns about the transaction to her bosses, who confronted Goldman. She contends that Michael S. Koh, another senior staff member at the New York Fed and a defendant in the lawsuit, told her that Goldman admitted to the misconduct but then he dismissed her concerns. Further efforts to raise the issue were also stymied and her bosses prohibited her from asking Goldman more questions about the deal — a decision that prevented her from finishing her report.
Mr. Koh, through the Fed spokesman, also declined to comment.
In March 2012, Ms. Segarra got her chance to voice her concerns to the New York Fed’s legal and compliance risk team. At the meeting, the group, roughly 20 people, agreed that the issues with Goldman’s conflict-of-interest procedures warranted a warning, known-as a “matter requiring attention,” or M.R.A., according to the lawsuit. As a result, the team approved a downgrade of Goldman’s annual rating from a 2, indicating satisfactory to a 3, indicating fair, according to a confidential document reviewed by The Times. The rating involving policies and procedures is one of several measurements that make up Goldman’s overall score, which is confidential.
In the weeks after the vote, Ms. Segarra’s supervisors began to question her findings about Goldman, according to a review of e-mails. Mr. Silva said her conclusions “are debatable at best, or alternatively, plainly incorrect,” according to a late-night e-mail sent on May 13, 2012. Mr. Silva explained that a “cursory review” of Goldman’s Web site showed that the bank had a conflict-of-interest section within its code of conduct that “seems to me to define” conflict of interest.
Days after this contentious exchange, Ms. Segarra said in the lawsuit, Mr. Silva and Mr. Koh pressed her to excise her negative findings on Goldman from her examination.
The men, Ms. Segarra said, told her that they did not find her position “credible.” Ms. Segarra said she refused to modify her findings — a position she said she reiterated in an e-mail. On May 23, 2012, Ms. Segarra was terminated and escorted from the building.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/10/10/bank-examiner-was-told-to-back-off-goldman-suit-says/?_r=1&
Obamacare sign-up crash: what’s really behind it?
By Jon Rappoport
October 10, 2013
It’s easy to say the government always screws things up and, therefore, the crash of its Obamacare sign-up system is merely another example of gross incompetence.
But this is shortsighted. White House officials knew, months ago, the online site was an unmitigated disaster, and yet they let the train continue speeding down the track to its inevitable crackup.
To understand this, we need to go back to the opening salvo in the Obamacare drama.
To his advisors’ shock and surprise, Obama, taking office in 2009, announced that his first big move was going to be national health insurance.
His people assumed jobs would be the top priority. The nation was clamoring for a solution. People were out of work. Banks were foreclosing on homes. Families were in peril.
How could the President misread the national mood so badly? National health insurance? Now? Where the hell did that come from?
The 1993 track record of earlier efforts, headed by Hillary Clinton and her buffoon of a consultant, Ira Magaziner, had run aground, failed miserably, and stirred up considerable animosity.
Obama was going to lead with this again? Bring on a storm of contentious clashes in the Congress, the press, and the nation at large?
What was he thinking?
He wasn’t. A super-ambitious campaign on this issue had to come from somewhere else. Obama’s high-flying humanitarian rhetoric notwithstanding, the man was acting as an agent of change. An agent.
He was taking dictation.
And sure enough, he sank the country in a hostile grinding debate that persists to this day. Meanwhile, the economy and jobs went begging.
When the Obamacare bill finally passed, without anyone reading it, and when subsequent arm-twisting led the Supreme Court to call the individual mandate a tax (a transparently preposterous strategy), thus clearing the way for implementation, amid loud cries of fraud, there remained another opportunity for promoting disaster:
A system for enrollment that wouldn’t work, that would crash, that would look like a bevy of drunken idiots ($634 million richer) had put it together with scotch tape and a random number generator.
At a much high level of op, Obamacare was always invented chaos.
It was intended to be.
The target was America itself. As in destabilization.
This is a strategy as old as the hills.
In this case, the people in charge, behind the scenes, are Globalists (think Rockefeller, for starters). For over a hundred years, their objective has been the takedown of the United States, one of the strongest holdouts against a planetary management system, in which, ultimately, national borders are erased and individual countries cease to exist.
In 1971, David Rockefeller’s intellectual consigliere, Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote: “…[the] nation state as a fundamental unit of man’s organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state.”
Achieving such a goal, however, is not simply a matter of standing back and watching evolution take it course. It involves torpedoing major institutions, regardless of how well or poorly they are serving the public interest.
In other words: promote chaos at every possible opportunity.
The extreme oddness of choosing national health insurance as the first planned shot out of the White House, in 2009, was, at the most important level, an exercise in stirring the national pot with a multi-blade fan engine.
Chaos has several aims; among them: raising the level of frustration; dividing the populace; engendering heating conflicts; demoralizing citizens; producing a sense of helplessness; and rendering large numbers of people into a state of surrender and passivity.
It is a prelude to a New Order. A more heartless and repressive Order.
Obamacare is just one example among hundreds.
Operation Chaos has been targeting the United States for well over a hundred years.
Of the dozen or so possible first steps of a Presidency, Obama chose the one that would produce the most discord.
Because US presidents rarely mention Globalism and its tentacles and plans and organizations, it is assumed the issue isn’t of high importance.
But since the closing days of World War 2, (and, actually, much earlier), when members of the Rockefeller Council on Foreign Relations were tapped to write the blueprint for the United Nations, when the outline of the Marshall Plan was drafted, when the first serious meetings of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) were set in stone, every American President has looked the other way, when Globalism has reared its head.
That’s FDR all the way through to Obama.
And during that 70-year period, ops small, medium, and large have been launched to weaken the United States and entangle it in the Globalist framework.
For the two terms of Obama’s Presidency, national health insurance was chosen as a bare electric wire, to shock, stimulate, and magnify dormant hostilities throughout the country.
To the Globalists, the respective merits and flaws in a national healthcare system are of absolutely no concern. It is simply one more opportunity to “crash the system” and produce a hole in the fabric of national life.
For these men, the issue of Obamacare “has legs.” They will squeeze more out of it, for their own purposes, in the months and years ahead.
Mired in the quite serious and real pros and cons of a national health plan, people will miss the bigger picture and pass by it without a glance of recognition.
The manipulators don’t pick trivial issues. Distraction requires presenting people with forceful conflicts.
It requires the belief that events are what they seem and the motives behind them are clear and on the surface.
Jon Rappoport
http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2013/10/10/obamacare-sign-up-crash-whats-really-behind-it/
When I now click on a post I get not only the post buy your picture and the sites you like. Is this happening to all or am I being given special consideration by Ihub? I really don't need all your homepage info when I click on a post.
Futures: Dow +17, S&P +0.75, Naz +3.50. Gold and Silver down slightly.
Detroit wins 3-0.
[Ot] Detroit leads Oakland 3-0 in the 7th. Verlander gave up the first hit to the A's in the 7th. Tough, smart pitcher. Don Orsillo and Dennis Eckersley calling the game. They've done the Red Sox. They're good.
FAUX news tinner? Good one.
Why U.S. Health Care Is Obscenely Expensive, In 12 Charts
By Katy Hall & Jan Diehm
10/03/2013 1:56 pm EDT
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/03/health-care-costs-_n_3998425.html
New Study Shows HFT Hurts Long-Term Institutional Investors
By Floating Path
October 9, 2013
The negative effects of high frequency trading (HFT) are sometimes obvious when it comes to blatant manipulation or flash crashes, however the incremental effects of HFT on longer-term investors is something that is more difficult to quantify ( http://tinyurl.com/mxcvftb ).
A paper published by Professor Lin Tong from the University of Iowa suggests that high frequency trading often has a negative effect on institutional trading taking the other side. His study, A Blessing or a Curse? The Impact of High Frequency Trading on Institutional Investors, looked at trade data from 204 institutions and NASDAQ data on a sample of 120 stocks. As summarized by Themis Trading, the results are quite interesting.
1.HFT activity is positively correlated with execution shortfall.
2.When HFT activity is more intense, institutional investors’ execution shortfall is higher.
3.The increasing effect of HFT activity on execution shortfall is stronger on smaller stocks.
4.When HF traders on the net are buying (selling), it is more costly for institutional investors to sell (buy).
5.Even though HFT activity increases institutional investors’ execution shortfall, it does not provide the benefit of reduced timing delay cost.
While regulation around the world is starting to take notice to HFT ( http://tinyurl.com/n8qq9za ), the U.S. is lagging. On the bright side, the SEC today launched a website ( http://tinyurl.com/n8ho7y8 ) dedicated to publishing data mined by its market-monitoring system MIDAS ( http://tinyurl.com/ou7bsh3 ). As more studies like this are published and more regulators take notice, perhaps we are taking the first steps towards ensuring an orderly, fair, and honest market for all participants.
http://www.valuewalk.com/2013/10/hft-study/
The girl that does insurance in our office just called me about her new blue cross premium. She works 4 jobs and has individual coverage for her, her husband and 3 kids $2500 deductible annually. She likes her plan and pays $321 per month.
Now to the new rate. $1500 per month. Now that's what I call affordable health care. Those liberals are doing a great job in DC.
Pat yourselves on the back boys. Mission accomplished. Written by the insurance lobbyists and the insurance companies are going to be limited to a percentage profit. Now as an example of 5X a greater pie. Hope and change.
She says she will drop coverage when her current policy ends.
If Obama Care is so bad, and it surely has some flaws why don't the Conservatives wait till people test the waters and they sweep the next election if the majority hates it.
It is just what they are afraid of, that people will like it, poor people, themotherpeople.
http://www.deadline.com/2013/02/dick-morris-dropped-by-fox-news/
When Fox fires you for being WRONG, you must of been really pathetic !
Again for those who keep living in dreamland, The Affordable Health Care Act is the LAW of the Land, it would take a Majority of the House of Representatives to present a bill to the Senate, who would then have to pass it by a Majority, and then it would have to signed by the President.
The House has done this 44 times, so many times that no one cares, so until the Republicans take back control of the House, or the Senate, and then the Presidency, this argument is moot.
As for Dick Morris, its nice to see he has a new job, after being let go by the Clinton Administration after one year he ended up with Fox news, and after his dismal calls of the elections of 2012 he was given his walking papers.
Listening to anything of Dick Morris says means absolutely nothing.
The Affordable Health Care Act is the law of the land, and just like we have all learned from the shutdown of the government, even most Republicans have learned to accept this FACT of American History.
Let's bet the bank on Dick Morris being right about anything. He can't even get on FAUX news! LOL
It does appear that the stock market is very strong, at least for today, looks like the power of least resistance is up.
Very nice to see the politicians making up, now if the demands are mild, we just might bet back to rebuilding this economy. We still have a few more years before we get back to where we were. Maybe we can even get above 16,000 this year.
Stock picking is still the name of the game.
Will Oklahoma Suit Kill ObamaCare?
DickMorris.com on October 9, 2013
Dear Friend,
In this video commentary, I discuss how an Oklahoma lawsuit may kill ObamaCare. Tune in!
MZOR another interesting stock and company, how many companies are listed.
add pre earnings run up into the formula
Sugar, coffee, cocoa, wheat, cattle continue to look higher.
Today's market action suggests yesterday was a bear-trap.
Keeping an eye on OINK again.
MPAA- another smaller issue I have followed for years, its an auto parts company, nice looking chart, small thin trader most days.
..Preventive medicine that you can get from seeing a Doctor is so much cheaper ......
Of course. I just couldn't imagine "idiots" who would oppose it.
Solar stocks, Dry Bulk, and many of the oil plays that were doing well have not gained much today, if anything. Time to really rethink this main screen.
GWPH, and YOKU provided some excitement this morning, but that's been about it, and now I will sit back once again and see how this day plays out, wondering by the last hour things could be much different. Reminds me of that one day Gold move, ever since then gold has gone down, and today it looks like a door mat for anyone who was looking at this sector for gains.
I might of added the preventive word, as opposed to the article that stated that people without insurance who would be getting could actually have heart disease, diabetes, or cancer.
If you have Insurance you are more likely to go to the Doctor, and hopefully that visit will detect these illnesses before they progress into something that major.
When you do not have Health Insurance you never get a check up, or preventive intervention. I know my Doctor visits have taught me about high blood pressure and diabetes, thanks to that Doctor visit and some medicine for high blood pressure and his words about my diet, those problems have been solved for now.
I do not even take blood pressure medicine anymore, I leaned from those Doctor's visits that simple changes in lifestyle can prevent a lot of major medical expenses.
Preventive medicene that you can get from seeing a Doctor is so much cheaper than letting diseases like heart, diabetes, and cancer run there course until you have to seek emergency room treatment, that's really much more expensive.
Thanks for the effort but I still do not find the reference.
I know this has been a very narrow stock market when it came to gains on the long side, this rally is just demonstrating that you might like a stock, but on mornings like this, if they do not rally, its time to play only those stocks that these fund managers are bidding up and down.
There are plenty stocks I like, but they just do not seem to be moving much, even with this massive move this morning.
Time to rethink this main screen of stocks, and start building one with stocks that fund managers might really want to own.
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=92852381
This was the article that Basserdan posted and here is the other article.
http://thehealthcareblog.com/blog/2013/10/06/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-obamacare/
This was the article that I posted from that very same website.
zab, me again
...Preventive Medical Care, and these idiots are against it cause it might actually cost money.
... that comment posted by Basserdan.
Sorry but help me here. I do not find the reference to preventive medical care in basserdan's post (12078), nor the link to the article.
I just cannot see this rally lasting but its nice to see which stocks are moving, and which have turned into MUSH !!
You remember mush, that breakfast cereal some of us had back in the fifties before we got Mapo.
P, YOKU, CLDX, SBGI, NXST, INSY and FB some of the better gainers at the moment.
I am not surprised and suspect that the situation is worse than portrayed in the article. I was also amazed when Japan won the olympic bid. Maybe hold the next games in Chernobyl?
I wonder whether we are going to need a double bottom in gold, around 1235 if I remember correctly, before it can recover?
Futures..
http://finviz.com/futures.ashx
Aurcana's Corporate Presentation for October 2013 (AUN.V ~ AUNFF)
http://www.aurcana.com/i/pdf/Aurcana_Corp_Pres_Oct-2013.pdf
http://www.aurcana.com
Exactly! And just think how many those Funds and Institutions employ.
Louis Goodman and Tim Norbeck were the authors of that comment posted by Basserdan.
I also want to thank you for reminding me of that Debt Clock, placed it in one of my favorites for future reference.
So America's household worth is about 105 Trillion. There is one other issue that seldom gets reported, we are Americans and the American lifestyle has its flaws, but we also have so many great things that we invest in each and everyday.
This week I am cutting back foods in the freezer, I call it adventure eating, putting together things that have been in the freezer and cabinets for awhile. This allows me not to spend any money at the grocery store. I have also paid down the few bills on my credit cards to zero balances. I finished my projects around the house before winter sets in. Americans are pretty good with money, we might spend it all of the time, but if you have family, house, car and activities, its what we all do. We just cut back here and there, and spend cautiously when we have to.
My neighbor is having some major work done on his home this week. But that's another example of why this country is far superior when it comes to what we have. We do try and take care of our possessions, and we like to do many things, like baseball games, and everything else.
I just wish the Republicans would get back to sanity, and what they once did better, maintaining an adequate defense of this country, but with a sense of reasonability when it comes to spending, and to balance our approach to any entitlementsin the long term view, so that they will be around for decades to come.
Everything else are just the issues of the day that get discussed and debated over the years.
I like it when posters place websites for me to look at, the internet has such a vast amount of information in it, but some days many of us can get lost looking for something. I have my favorite places, and one of your websites has joined that list. When I tell Mary I am going up to check numbers, she knows that I check a wide variety of things. I can do so much from my office, so much that some days I do not even have to leave the house. I can become so productive by just typing some keys on my computer, and that makes me feel better when my body is not quite up to the task.
Sure will be interesting to see what happens today, the stock market might move higher, but only certain stocks will benefit from this move, the rest will just have small penny gains.
zab, hi
...Preventive Medical Care, and these idiots are against it cause it might actually cost money.
Not trying to be argumentative at all, but can you say by name just who these idiots are? I have not heard one word in opposition to keeping that part of the law from anyone. It makes sense.
I know, and you are right, Mary has changed jobs a few times these past few years. Within that network of Auto Dealers, I could not believe how many different funds were available for her retirement funds.
Then there were those special GM funds that were available to her during her first 20 years in the auto business. Again I never heard of any of them, and you could only be an employee of a Dealer Network to get into those funds.
Wal-Mart would farm out its choices, and I remember attending a meeting where I was asked to explain those funds to associates. Most WMT associates would just buy WMT stock, but when WMT had to make funds available to all associates as a choice for 401K funds, due to the Enron collapse, I was asked to explain the advantages of other funds.
My discussion encouraged diversity with retirement funds, especially if you had been a long term associates. At that time many WMT associates were in the profit sharing plan and had lost so much money because WMT stock kept going down each year, even after you got your contribution.
But you are right there are probably more Mutual Funds, and variations and then there are stocks.
http://thehealthcareblog.com/blog/2013/10/06/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-obamacare/
Within that same Health Care blog there was this article. It all depends on what you choose to read each day, some people only watch Fox News, and Limbaugh, while most of America wake up each day and read a wide assortment of news from all around the country.
You can choose to be informed, or to only accept what you want to hear.
You think there are many stocks you haven't heard of? There are more funds and institutions than there are stocks. Let that roll around the noggin for a while.
Now to more important things:
Dodgers/St. Louis, Detroit/Boston pick them.
The Schmuckerheads of Washington could talk about a short term funding bill and the markets are rallying. Just wondering which stocks might actually move ahead, while so many just get a few penny bump.
You really have to be a stock picker in this market, cause even when it does bounce back, only choice stocks do well.
FB seems to be one those candidates this morning.
QUMU- I cannot believe how many stocks I can expose myself to without ever even hearing of them. Never heard of this company, not recommending it either, I am just amazed on how many stocks trade each day and probably many of us have never heard of them.
http://www.wrcbtv.com/category/141406/continuing-coverage-the-drive-for-volkswagen
When you drive by Enterprise South you can watch all of the bulldozers and trucks clearing 1000s of acres of land, we have had no announcement of the new SUV assembly plant, but they are clearing the property. There must be about 100 Trucks and 50 Bulldozers working hard each day. May our stupid Governor and Bob Corker keep their mouths shut for a few more weeks.
In that opening statement it clearly states that healthcare costs could go up because people getting insurance could be treated for heart disease, diabetes, and cancer which had gone undiagnosed for years.
That's like owning a car for 10 years and having your mechanic tell you that you have not been taking care of it, so its going to need an oil change, filters, and you might even have to replace a few parts that you have neglected to take care of.
Got to thank Goodman and Norbeck for that article, if there was ever a reason to finally get a hold of Healthcare in America for all Americans, this country will applaud The Affordable Health Care Act in the years and decade going forward.
Then this article goes on to remind everyone about the cost of Medicare in 1966 was $ 3 Billion.
The Department of Defense spends this much.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_did_the_Vietnam_war_cost_the_US
When you do comparisons with how much we have spenton Defense, its nice to see our tax dollars actually being used here in America helping out own citizens getting early treatments for things like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Investing monies in your own country so that your citizens can be healthier and more productive will be better in the long term, as opposedto not treating these diseases.
Its called Preventive Medical Care, and these idiots are against it cause it might actually cost money.
Jobless Claims at 8:30; not sure if they'll be available with the government shutdown.
Futures indices: Dow +91, S&P +12.75, Naz +21.25.
Why Healthcare Costs Are About To Explode
Louis Goodman and Tim Norbeck
10/03/2013 @ 7:31PM
Word out of Washington is that Obamacare is finally fulfilling its promise to bend the nation’s healthcare cost curve. Unfortunately, it’s bending it the wrong way.
Forty-one months after its passage, data are beginning to emerge questioning whether the Affordable Care Act (ACA) can actually provide care to more Americans for less. These data appear to be surprising to its advocates, but they’re merely old news to those analysts who repeatedly questioned how adding 32 million people to the insurance rolls could possibly lower costs – especially when many of them will need treatment for illnesses such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer which have gone undiagnosed for years. Furthermore, the population of those over 65 will have doubled between 2000 and 2030. Not surprisingly, compared to young people, older Americans use more healthcare, largely because they are more likely to have diabetes, heart disease, arthritis and cancer.
And many remember the first year of Medicare in 1966, when the cost of the program was $3 billion. Projections for the cost of Medicare in 1990 were $12 billion. The actual cost in 1990: $107 billion. Cost estimates of government programs are always underestimated, as will be the case with the ACA.
This increasing cost of care, which has taken a breather during the recession, is projected to rise dramatically as the ACA is fully implemented. In California, for example, it was recently reported that the cost of insurance on the ACA-mandated health insurance exchange will be more than 100 percent higher, than current rates, for the healthiest young adults. Several large insurers have already announced their intention of not selling policies in that state, an action that will certainly reduce consumer choice. What if they do likewise in other states as well? Less competition almost always translates into higher premiums / costs.
The expected increase in healthcare use, coupled with an increasing demand and federal government requirement to use more and more expensive technology, can be expected to add another percentage point to our bulging 18 percent of GDP devoted to healthcare. Even in an era of sequestration, federal government mandates will continue to thwart our ability to meet the nation’s healthcare needs.
Consider, for example, one of the many aberrations in the U.S. system that unnecessarily cost us billions of excess dollars: hospital site of service differentials. Medicare pays far more for physician services delivered in a hospital or hospital-owned facility than for the exact same services delivered or procedure performed in a private practice physician office. This happens because the government pays hospitals a so-called facility fee (Medicare Part A) to cover the costs of their buildings in addition to a professional fee (Medicare Part B) for actually providing medical care to patients.
Eliminating this aberration in our system would save billions of dollars every year with absolutely no reduction in quality or access to services. But the ACA, with its incentives for integrated care, is actually driving more physicians to hospital employment, pushing more services into the more expensive hospital-owned facility. It’s a consequence of the health law that the industry acknowledges needs to be resolved, as evidenced by MedPAC’s June report, which recommended Congress “move immediately to cut payments to hospitals for many services that can be provided at much lower cost in doctors’ offices.”
As we’ve reported previously, the government’s incredible red tape and reporting burden on medical practice have cast an emotional pall on the profession. They also add significant cost to every service delivered – with no demonstrable benefit to the patient. A majority of physicians (64 percent) we surveyed last year responded that more government regulation was a “very negative” solution to the health system’s cost and access challenges. It comes as no surprise then that many physicians complain that the ACA and various incentives force them and healthcare systems to spend considerable funds on electronic medical records that hurt productivity and do little to improve patient outcomes.
In a recent study for the Physicians Foundation, health policy analyst Jeff Goldsmith found that paradoxically, while physicians direct almost 80 percent of all healthcare spending, many of them feel powerless to change the conditions that generate unnecessary costs and create red tape. In fact, 82 percent of physicians feel they have little ability to change the healthcare system, according to the Foundation’s 2012 Biennial Physician Survey. By purpose or design, the ACA is driving physicians from the best and most cost-effective place to provide care – their private offices – to the most expensive place to provide care: the hospital.
Unless and until this trend is reversed, the cost of American healthcare will continue to rise at an increasing rate without any demonstrable improvement in access to quality healthcare services. The worst of both worlds.
In Medicine’s Dilemma, William Kissick, MD refers to access, quality and costs as the iron triangle of medicine. They are all in competition with each other. The lesson of the iron triangle is that there are inherent trade-offs in health policy. You may be able to improve one or perhaps even two of the three, but it will only come at the expense of the third. It is a safe bet that costs will escalate under the ACA.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/physiciansfoundation/2013/10/03/why-healthcare-costs-are-about-to-explode/
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PC sales fall again in 3rd quarter.
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