ridin' the storm out
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CBO: ObamaCare Will Reduce Budget Deficit
Posted by Herman Victor on Jul 25, 2012
http://distriction.com/2012/07/cbo-obamacare-will-reduce-budget-deficit/
Republicans in Congress want to reduce the budget deficit. Their plan to do that involves “repealing” and “replacing” President Obama’s health-care overhaul legislation.
Get rid of ObamaCare! Now! It’s a really good idea … if your plan is to do the exact opposite of what you’re trying to achieve on controlling the deficit.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday said ObamaCare will actually work to shrink, not enlarge, our fiscal budget headache. The AP has details:
Republicans have insisted that “Obamacare” will actually raise deficits — by “trillions,” according to presidential candidate Mitt Romney. But that’s not so, the budget office said.
The office gave no updated estimate for total deficit reductions from the law, approved by Congress and signed by Obama in 2010. But it did estimate that Republican legislation to repeal the overhaul — passed recently by the House — would itself boost the deficit by $109 billion from 2013 to 2022.
“Repealing the (health care law) will lead to an increase in budget deficits over the coming decade, though a smaller one than previously reported,” budget office director Douglas Elmendorf said in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.
The law’s mix of spending cuts and tax increases would more than offset new spending to cover uninsured people, Elmendorf explained.
The next time you hear John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mitt Romney or anyone on FOX News talk about how ObamaCare will explode the deficit, just remember, it’s not partisan to call them out on that rhetoric being a big fat lie.
The Problem Isn’t Outsourcing. It’s that the Prosperity of Big Business Has Become Disconnected from the Well-Being of Most Americans
http://robertreich.org/post/27527895909
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
President Obama is slamming Mitt Romney for heading companies that were “pioneers in outsourcing U.S. jobs,” while Romney is accusing Obama of being “the real outsourcer-in-chief.”
These are the dog days of summer and the silly season of presidential campaigns. But can we get real, please?
The American economy has moved way beyond outsourcing abroad or even “in-sourcing.” Most big companies headquartered in America don’t send jobs overseas and don’t bring jobs here from abroad.
That’s because most are no longer really “American” companies. They’ve become global networks that design, make, buy, and sell things wherever around the world it’s most profitable for them to do so.
As an Apple executive told the New York Times, “we don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.” He might have added “and showing profits big enough to continually increase our share price.”
Forget the debate over outsourcing. The real question is how to make Americans so competitive that all global companies — whether or not headquartered in the United States — will create good jobs in America.
Apple employs 43,000 people in the United States but contracts with over 700,000 workers overseas. It assembles iPhones in China both because wages are low there and because Apple’s Chinese contractors can quickly mobilize workers from company dorms at almost any hour of the day or night.
But low wages aren’t the major force driving Apple or any other American-based corporate network abroad. The components Apple’s Chinese contractors assemble come from many places around the world with wages as high if not higher than in the United States.
More than a third of what you pay for an iPhone ends up in Japan, because that’s where some of its most advanced components are made. Seventeen percent goes to Germany, whose precision manufacturers pay wages higher than those paid to American manufacturing workers, on average, because German workers are more highly skilled. Thirteen percent comes from South Korea, whose median wage isn’t far from our own.
Workers in the United States get only about 6 percent of what you pay for an iPhone. It goes to American designers, lawyers, and financiers, as well as Apple’s top executives.
American-based companies are also doing more of their research and development abroad. The share of R&D spending going to the foreign subsidiaries of American-based companies rose from 9 percent in 1989 to almost 16 percent in 2009, according to the National Science Foundation.
What’s going on? Put simply, America isn’t educating enough of our people well enough to get American-based companies to do more of their high-value added work here.
Our K-12 school system isn’t nearly up to what it should be. American students continue to do poorly in math and science relative to students in other advanced countries. Japan, Germany, South Korea, Canada, Australia, Ireland, Sweden, and France all top us.
American universities continue to rank high but many are being starved of government funds and are having trouble keeping up. More and more young Americans and their families can’t afford a college education. China, by contrast, is investing like mad in world-class universities and research centers.
Transportation and communication systems abroad are also becoming better and more reliable. In case you hadn’t noticed, American roads are congested, our bridges are in disrepair, and our ports are becoming outmoded.
So forget the debate over outsourcing. The way we get good jobs back is with a national strategy to make Americans more competitive — retooling our schools, getting more of our young people through college or giving them a first-class technical education, remaking our infrastructure, and thereby guaranteeing a large share of Americans add significant value to the global economy.
But big American-based companies aren’t pushing this agenda, despite their huge clout in Washington. They don’t care about making Americans more competitive. They say they have no obligation to solve America’s problems.
They want lower corporate taxes, lower taxes for their executives, fewer regulations, and less public spending. And to achieve these goals they maintain legions of lobbyists and are pouring boatloads of money into political campaigns. The Supreme Court even says they’re “people” under the First Amendment, and can contribute as much as they want to political campaigns – even in secret.
The core problem isn’t outsourcing. It’s that the prosperity of America’s big businesses – which are really global networks that happen to be headquartered here – has become disconnected from the well-being of most Americans.
Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital is no different from any other global corporation — which is exactly why Romney’s so-called “business experience” is irrelevant to the real problems facing most Americans.
Without a government that’s focused on more and better jobs, we’re left with global corporations that don’t give a damn.
oh sure... NOW he tells us about TBTF
duhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
that's like all the two-time George Bush voters who now say they didn't like him... surrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre
he is already on record that if he becomes POTUS he would cut his OWN personal taxes further, and to pay for his tax cuts he will slash social services for middle class and poor... but of course he will increase govt spending on the war machine... this is what we know for sure... the guy would actually be worse than Bush... every single candidate the repukes put up just gets worse and worse... the guy really is a shallow slimeball
corporate welfare... all of the rewards of capitalism with none of the risks
Rmoney is so pro-Amercia he has to have Swiss bank accounts
what a joke
THIS is how we treat our heroes?
http://eclectablog.com/2012/07/astronaut-and-physicist-sally-ride-passed-away-this-week-her-partner-to-receive-no-federal-benefits.html
Astronaut and Stanford physicist Sally Ride passed away this week from pancreatic cancer. She was the first woman American* and the youngest American of either gender to travel into space. My family has a small but important (to us) connection with Dr. Ride. When my daughter was in grade school, she had a project where they dressed as their heroes and, during an open house, played the role of their hero, answering questions and chatting with the parents that visited. My daughter was there, dressed in a blue jumpsuit and sporting my motorcycle helmet, a third grade astronaut. Her picture even ended up in the local newspaper.
When Dr. Ride, a lesbian, passed away this week, she left behind her partner of 27 years, Dr. Tam O’Shaughnessy. Because of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), O’Shaughnessy will receive no federal benefits, benefits she would receive if she were a man. Despite their life-long partnership, she is treated as if she were just an acquaintance.
The two met when they were 12 years old.
"...When did we become a country where the millionaires are jealous of the people on food stamps? A country that thinks teachers and fire fighters are sucking us dry? A country that thinks the richest who are paying some of the lowest taxes in 80 years are the ones being beaten up?"
So Bain pays you $100,000 to do nothing?
http://eclectablog.com/2012/07/who-wants-free-stuff.html#.UAALh9tKdGY.reddit
"There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody."
"You built a factory out there? Good for you, But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did."
"Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."
What’s the Real Story Behind the Postal Crisis?
http://my.firedoglake.com/kaytillow/2011/09/26/whats-the-real-story-behind-the-postal-crisis/
Neither workers nor our unions caused this crisis.
In 2006, Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act. This law requires the Postal Service to do something that no other business or government agency has to do–pre-fund its FUTURE retiree health care benefits. This is a 75 year liability that has to be paid in 10 years. The Postal Service makes a payment of approximately $5.5 billion on September 30 at the end of every fiscal year to meet this obligation. The Post Office has been paying these benefits the past four years into a trust fund for employees who have not even been born yet. This is the burden that is creating the “financial crisis” for the Post Office. The recession that has gripped America the past few years has undoubtedly affected the Postal Service, but even in the worst economic times since the great depression, the USPS has had a net profit of $611 million dollars. Unfortunately, the red ink associated with the post office is the mandated pre-funding since 2006.
perhaps you should read more than Fox lies
How Congress is killing the Post Office
By Felix Salmon
July 20, 2012
The Post Office’s problems are the same today as they were back in September: the long-term secular decline of postal mail, on the one hand, combined with all manner of Congressionally-mandated restrictions which make a bad situation much, much worse. And now the inevitable has happened: we’re going to have a $5.5 billion default.
A default of that magnitude sounds scarier than it actually is. Congress requires the Post Office to make inordinately huge pension-plan payments, for reasons which nobody can really understand. But in the final analysis, USPS pensions are a government obligation, and it doesn’t make a huge amount of difference whether they come out of a well-funded pension plan, a badly-funded pension plan, or just out of US government revenues.
What does make a lot of difference is the degree to which the Post Office is hamstrung by Congress. There’s still room for the Postal Service to reorient itself and become a successful 21st-century utility — but there’s no way that’s going to happen if it’s constantly on the back foot and if Congress prevents it from entering new businesses, possibly including banking.
To put it another way: the Post Office is broken, in large part thanks to unhelpful meddling by Congress. And it won’t get fixed unless and until Congress gets out of the way and stops forcing it into the corporate equivalent of ketosis, essentially consuming its own flesh in order to survive.
The talking point from the mailing industry here is that multi-billion-dollar defaults “could make consumers lose confidence in the Postal Service”, and thereby make matters even worse. It’s a bit like the argument we saw in Detroit in 2009, when lots of people said that if the big auto makers went bankrupt, no one would buy their cars any more. That argument wasn’t convincing at the time, and it turned out not to be true. Similarly, I’m not worried about that bickering in Washington will directly affect the confidence that Americans have in their postal service.
On the other hand, it’s pretty much certain that bickering in Washington will unnecessarily make the situation at the Post Office much worse than it needs to be. And as such, it’s a prime example of US political dysfunction. As Zero Hedge says, if the muppets in Washington can’t get this right, what are the chances that they’re going to be able to do the right thing when the fiscal cliff arrives at year-end?
The best hope for America is that politicians are more likely to create fights and dysfunction for things which don’t rise to the level of outright crisis, but that they somehow manage to come together to find solutions when the alternative is catastrophic. That’s often a good bet — but not always. And so while I’m reasonably confident that we’ll get through the fiscal cliff somehow, I’m not at all certain of it. Meanwhile, I am reasonably certain that Congress will starve the USPS of the funding and freedom it needs to succeed over the long term. Which of course will cost taxpayers enormously for as long as postal workers are collecting pension checks.
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/07/20/how-congress-is-killing-the-post-office/
LMAO!... dick milde is a birther
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=77604703
doesn't get much more stupid than that
congrats
please explain how you are blaming the victims of this crime?
"if only we had MORE anonymous people with guns on the street"
what a sick load of crap
why do you post such crap and then don't have the fucking balls to defend it?
do you think everyone should be walking around with 100-round assault weapons???
wtf is wrong with u?
no but i have to go make some crab cakes
Short List of People Conspiring Against the GOP, and therefore, America
(SLOPCATGOPATA for short):
Liberals
Democrats
Socialists
Community Organizers
Geologists
Biologists
Meteorologists
Climatologists
Atheists
Muslims
Jews
Satan
ABC
NBC
CNN
CBS
PBS
All of cable news except FNC
The New York Times
The LA Times
The Washington Post
The Associated Press
Reuters
BBC
The Guardian
Black People
Mexicans
Human Rights Activists
SCOTUS
Europe
Movie Industry
Television Industry
Environmentalists
ACLU
The United Nations
Labor Unions
Colleges
Teachers
Professors
ACORN
National Endowment for the Arts
Gays
Judges
NPR
Paleontologists
Astrophysicists
Museums (*except Creationism Museum)
WHO
WTO
Inflated tires
The Honolulu Advertiser
The Star Bulletin
Teletubbies
Sponge Bob and Patrick
Nobel Prize Committee
US Census Bureau
NOAA
Sesame Street
Comic Books
Little Green Footballs
Video Games
The Bible
CBO
Bruce Springsteen
Pennies
The Theory of Relativity
Comedy Central
Young People
whatever the hell a Justin Beiber is
Small Business Owners
Math
CPAC
Navy SEALs
The Economist
The Muppets
Iowa Republicans
Low-Flow Toilets
Breast Cancer Screenings
Chrysler
Clint Eastwood.
Robert Deniro
Tom Hanks
Glenn Frey
Norman Rockwell
James Cameron
Dr. Seus
Nuns
Supreme Court Justice John Roberts
Jonathan Krohn at age 17
yep, as i already knew
you cannot defend your right wing talking points and lies
a true conservative does not support our current health care system
you are just a mindless drone...
the only "conservative" you are is of the social kind
you hate everyone who's not a fat white old bible thumping redneck bigot and moron... that pretty much sums up your political philosophy... and now you're on board with Rmoney who would actually be worse than Bush but like the mindless hatemongering drone you are you will always vote repugnuts because you are in the cult... once you are in you can't get out
Scott Brown gets in on the Big Lie
By Greg Sargent
Look, ma, I can lie about Obama’s quote, too!
Obama’s now infamous “didn’t build that” speech is similar to Elizabeth Warren’s viral remarks about how the rich didn’t get rich on their own. So it’s not surprising that Senator Scott Brown has just released a new Web video (embedded below) tying Obama’s remarks to Warren’s and painting them as vaguely anti-American. Brown says: “I will never demonize you as business leaders and business owners.”
Brown, apparently taken with the plaudits Romney has earned from the right for lying relentlessly about Obama’s quote, has now done the same. His video reproduces the audio of Obama’s speech this way:
“If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, ‘well it must be ‘cause I was so smart.’ Because if you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
Just as Romney’s Web video does, the audio is edited to remove the chunk of the speech in which Obama talks about our “great American system” and “roads and bridges,” misleading listeners into believing that the “didn’t build that” line was an insult to business owners. Any listener would reasonably conclude that the language quoted above is exactly as Obama delivered it.
The Brown video also unwittingly demonstrates just how ridiculous this attack really is. It includes speeches from John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton extolling the virtues of free enterprise, suggesting that Obama and Warren represent a radical departure from what these previous Dems think.
Yet Obama regularly extolls the free market as one of the greatest forces for progress and wealth creation the world has ever known. The only way Brown and Romney can portray Obama’s beliefs on these matters as radical or out of step with that of “good” Dems like JFK and Clinton is by decontextualizing that quote in a way that amounts to straight-up lying.
This gives me an occasion to make another point. The whole ”didn’t build that” dust-up is important, because the larger falsehood on display here — that Obama demeans success — is absolutely central to the Republican case against Obama. The Republican argument — Romney’s argument — is partly that Obama’s active ill will towards business owners and entrepreneurs is helping stall the recovery, so you should replace him with a president who wants people to succeed.
There is a separate policy dispute under way, too — Republicans insist that deregulation and tax reform that will cut taxes for the rich further are the way to speed the recovery, while Obama says more government intervention is necessary. But Republicans have decided the policy difference isn’t enough. They also need to sow doubts about Obama’s alleged intentions and hostility towards private enterprise and individual initiative, to give voters a narrative about the Obama presidency and an explanation for the sluggish recovery that will make them more receptive to GOP tax and deregulatory policies they might otherwise greet with skepticism. The claim that Obama demeans success is central to that narrative. Without lies like this one about the “didn’t build that” quote, that claim and that narrative collapse. And that’s why this matters.
the problem is we the people are tired of paying for deadbeats such as yourself who don't want to buy insurance yet when they need it they can freeload on the system
you are such a clueless dolt it is not even funny
you are just a repetitive drone of Rush Limpdick and the various hysterical Obama haters
you and benzoid loved George Bush until you didn't... such phony douchebags
good god man
do you really believe that shit?
so where were all the gun-toting NRA freaks at the CO shooting??
oh that's right,, they are busy sitting on their fat asses defending the NRA freak who murdered a kid with a bag of skittles
good job gun nuts... good job
pretty amazing isn't it... after all the "free market" crimes we have witnessed because of govt deregulation and the mistaken belief that the free market can regulate itself
Peter Schiff's father is a career criminal who also blames everything on the big bad government... guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irwin_Schiff
Schiff has lost several civil cases against the federal government and has a record of multiple convictions for various federal tax crimes. Schiff is serving a 13-plus year sentence for tax crimes
"Peter Schiff's views are colored by the fact that his father is serving a 13 year sentence for income tax evasion, and a lifetime of exposure to his father's odd criminal opinions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irwin_Schiff
As a result Peter Schiff's predominant message has always been the evil government of the United States will collapse. His views on government debt are not informed by economics or finance, rather by his father's wacky criminal claims.
You can get the economically-based advice from Roubini, or any number of economists, without the added lunacy.
To be fair, I've noticed that government law enforcement and the judicial system are most particularly involved in arresting and prosecuting criminals.
I wouldn't be surprised if most criminals see government law enforcement as a massive conspiracy against them. But I don't find the advice of criminals and the mentally ill to be useful for investing.
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=77642667
that's where i park my yacht
Port Folio, Cayman Islands
My Favorite Growth Sector
http://joefahmy.com/2012/07/18/my-favorite-growth-sector/
Posted by Joe Fahmy
on July 18th, 2012
I believe the best way to outperform the market is to select individual stocks. I’m not a fan of ETFs or diversification. As an individual investor, if you have the time and want to put in the effort, you shouldn’t own more than 20 stocks. Personally, I like to keep a concentrated portfolio of about 6-12 stocks…and I watch them VERY closely. Again, you have to be willing to put in the time. If you don’t want to, put your money in the $SPY and leave it for the long-term. Trust me, 500 multinational companies is PLENTY of diversification.
If you are interested in individual stocks, I highly recommend researching one of my favorite growth sectors: 3-D printing. Rather than give you a long explanation, just watch the following video. It does a great job of explaining 3-D printing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pQHnMj6dxj4
The 3 main stocks I follow are DDD SSYS and PRLB. (By the way, DDD acquired Z Corporation, the company featured in the video). These stocks share many characteristics of big winning stocks from the past. Here are a few reasons I like them for the long-term:
1) Strong earnings and sales growth. Fundamentally, these companies are growing rapidly, even in a challenging economy.
2) Strong technicals. These stocks have held up very well and have displayed great relative strength during the market correction that began in April 2012.
3) They are newer, entrepreneurial companies. Most people are afraid to buy stocks they’ve never heard of, but don’t be scared of new companies! Of course, do your homework and make sure they fit your investment criteria.
4) High short interest. When you click on this NASDAQ link, you will see that their short interest has been rising…as the stocks are going up! It reminds me of big winners from the past such as $TASR and $MNST. People kept doubting them and they just continued to rise.
5) In a recent conversation with a very sharp money manager, he told me that many high level investors and VCs believe this sector is in its early growth stage. In other words, if it’s good enough for the big money and for people who are smarter than me…it’s good enough for me.
Full disclosure: I own positions in all three stocks. Because it’s too early to tell who will eventually become the leader, I’ve been trading all three and I’ll let the technicals lead me to the winner. I try not to predict, I simply follow the large institutions since they are the ones who move these stocks and the overall market. If I’m wrong, as always, I’ll simply stop myself out and move on to the next group of stocks. Also, keep in mind that these companies report 2nd quarter earnings soon, so look up the dates and adjust your positions accordingly.
As I mentioned earlier, if you want to buy any of these stocks, do your homework and make sure they fit your investment philosophy. If you don’t have a philosophy, I strongly suggest you get one! Remember, your ultimate goal as a trader is to make confident decisions on your own, and trade with complete independence. The purpose of this blog is to help people with idea generation. If you trade any of the ideas mentioned on this site, ALWAYS USE STOPS to protect your portfolio in case the positions turn against you. Good luck trading!
Being Street Smart
http://www.decisionpoint.com/tac/HARDING.html
By Sy Harding
The 'Banking Industry/Regulators' Time-Bomb
July 13, 2012.
When President Eisenhower left office in 1961 his parting message to the nation was to "beware the Industrial/Military complex". He warned that military contractors had become so chummy with Congress and the Pentagon that "the potential for a disastrous rise of misplaced power exists."
We now face a much more dangerous power grab that could actually melt down the entire financial system of the country if it isn't brought under control.
I refer of course to the still growing power and influence of the financial industry.
We've already seen frightening examples of how out of control it has become, how undeterred it is in its quest for huge profits for a chosen few insiders, with total lack of concern about the effect on the rest of country.
The U.S. is still reeling from the manipulative build-up of the housing bubble, the sub-prime mortgage mess, the resulting real estate crash, and the financial crisis of 2008 that required a multi-trillion dollar bailout of banks and brokerage firms.
And the threats continue unabated.
We were promised new regulations that would prevent the abuses of the past, downsizing of the financial firms that had become too big to fail and had to be bailed out, punishment of the wrongdoers, and so on.
You know what a joke those promises have become.
For four years the financial industry has successfully lobbied to water down and delay the new regulations. The previously too big to fail financial firms have become even larger and more ominous through mergers suggested and abetted by the regulators as part of the rescue effort from the 2008 crisis. No one has gone to jail, most of the same 'masters of the universe' that ran the firms before are still running them (and still drawing down unconscionable salaries and bonuses).
I was shocked to read the other day that the 5-year statute of limitations for the SEC to bring charges related to the 2008 meltdown will soon run out, and SEC officials are 'concerned' that they won't make the deadline on some cases on which they supposedly want to file suits.
The costs of the 2008-2009 bailout that prevented the country from plunging into another Great Depression, are still hanging over the rest of us in the form of a weak economy, record government debt, record budget deficits, and the so-called 'fiscal cliff' to be faced in 2013.
So, is the financial industry ashamed of its former activities and pitching in to help? No sign of that.
The latest scandal is the manipulation of the Libor (London Interbank Offered Rate). And it's a beauty. The Libor influences hundreds of $trillions in financial contracts around the world, including mortgages, corporate loans, loans to individuals, and interest-rate swaps. The 16 major banks that set the rate are under investigation by authorities in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Asia, suspected of manipulating the rate.
As Bloomberg News puts it, "The investigators are piecing together a breath-taking portrait of avarice and deceit, with the potential to become the most costly manipulation in the history of banking." Forbes says. "The Libor rate scandal could make banks' mortgage and foreclosure troubles look like child's play."
Already giant Barclays Bank has agreed to pay $453 million to settle U.S. and British allegations, and its three top executives have resigned.
And once again it must be asked - where were the regulators?
It's being reported that as far back as 2007 the U.S. Federal Reserve was concerned about the arbitrary way by which Libor was being set, and urged U.K. officials to reform the process to prevent the possibility of manipulation.
Nothing was done.
This week we've had the shutdown of futures trading firm Peregrine Financial Group Inc., and the alleged disappearance of $215 million in customer funds. Where were the regulators on that one? The firm was involved in dozens of arbitration disputes with disgruntled customers in recent years, but that didn't alarm regulators (who now say the firm was cooking the books for at least two years, and issuing fraudulent statements to customers).
Interestingly, last fall futures trading firm MF Global imploded, and an estimated $1.2 billion of customers' funds disappeared. Regulators then ordered a review of all futures firms to ensure the safety of customer money. And even with that review in January, Peregrine Financial Group was given a clean bill of health.
To be sure, these latter two situations were collapses brought on by the shameful activities of individual firms and not the result of industry-wide practices.
But that is not the point. The point is where are the regulators in all these situations?
It doesn't seem to matter if it's industry-wide practices like those revealed in the investigations after the 2008 financial collapse, or activities by a small group of major banks as is alleged in the current Libor scandal, or the fraudulent activities of individual firms that result in losses only for their own customers. Where are the regulators?
Washington continues to have the resolution of the still out-of-control financial industry and its regulators pushed into the background, while they argue over immigration laws, same-sex marriages, and how to handle healthcare.
Meanwhile, the clock is ticking on very serious economic and financial time-bombs, the potential damage from which dwarfs all other concerns.
Someone had better wake up and get with it.
We All Do Better When We All Do Better
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stan-sorscher/we-all-do-better-when-we-all-do-better_b_1469635.html
A few days ago, economist Joseph Stiglitz said something quite provocative: "We've been shaping our society to create people who are more selfish."
The eye is drawn to the last part, "... create people who are more selfish." My takeaway message is at the beginning, "We've been shaping our society ... ."
In the same speech, he repeats a line from one of his books: "The reason the invisible hand was often invisible was that it wasn't there." He reminds us that, generally, markets do not solve our problems. "Nobody ever said that they were fair, that they would lead to a distribution of income that was socially acceptable." Markets fail, more often than we suppose.
I first saw this remarkable figure in 2002:
In the post-war period, workers' wages increased in direct proportion to increases in productivity. Then, in the mid-'70s, wages abruptly decoupled from productivity.
The message of this figure is that wages, adjusted for inflation, would be twice what they are now, if workers had continued to share improvements in productivity. The top of our society has prospered, while more than 90 percent of us have stayed even or fallen behind.
This has consequences. As the economists say, "In the long run, consumption cannot increase faster than income." Income has been flat for the long run.
Let me give some examples of why this matters.
Erik Reinert wrote a terrific book, inspired by a question that troubled him as a Norwegian teenager on a class trip to Peru. Why does a barber in his native Norway make a comfortable middle-class living when an equally deserving barber in low-wage Peru makes so much less? The barbering profession had made only modest gains in productivity since the introduction of metal scissors in Roman times. The difference for barbers in Peru and Norway is the prosperity of their customers.
My father was a dentist in Michigan. Most of his patients worked in auto plants, where their union negotiated dental benefits. My father was a very adept businessman, compassionate to his patients, and he worked hard. He knew exactly what he had accomplished through his own work, and what had been given to him by circumstance. He had no doubt for one minute that the prosperity he enjoyed was directly connected to the next UAW contract with General Motors.
Nick Hanauer is a high-tech entrepreneur in the Seattle area. He says, as clearly as it can be said, that the magic of success in business is having prosperous customers who can buy your product. As an entrepreneur he did not create jobs. In his words, entrepreneurs want to create revenue with as few jobs as possible. Customers bring demand; demand causes businesses to hire. Prosperity comes from customers who can pay for your products.
We hear the legend of Henry Ford -- that he paid $5 per day to set a high wage standard in the community. Ford did well, not because he was generous and beneficent. In many ways, Henry Ford was a horrible, beastly man. He did well because customers in his community were prosperous enough to buy Ford cars.
Ross Perot may be a better example than Henry Ford. As an industrialist, Ross Perot knew exactly what NAFTA and other so-called Free Trade Agreements would do. As an industrialist he would be compelled by market forces to move production to Mexico, close facilities in the U.S., and reduce the wages paid to the workers in the community where he lived. As a patriot, he wanted trade policies that raised living standards, not lower them. He ran for president, at least in part, to thwart a flawed trade policy that would force him to hurt America.
The common theme is: "We all do better when we all do better."
Lately, the public mood has gone the opposite way. Simply put, we are told that we will all do better when most of us do worse. We demonize workers, and we imagine which of our neighbors should make additional sacrifice.
At the same time, top 1 percent executives believe they can move work offshore, lower wages, terminate pensions, shift health care costs, lay off workers and foreclose millions of homes. They don't accept responsibility for hurting America. They believe they can take a free shot, and the rest of society will pick up the slack.
Nobody is picking up the slack. That's a straight path to a Lesser America.
I recall the old Soviet joke, "My neighbor has a cow. I have none. I want his cow to die." Our version has become, "I have a cow. I'm okay if my neighbor never gets a cow. Nor wages to buy milk from my cow."
It makes much more sense to ask, "What works?" Even for those who look only to their self-interest, the long-term solution is to shape a society with prosperous customers. This is what Alexis de Tocqueville called "self-interest, properly understood."
Joseph Stiglitz warned that free trade and trickle-down policies are creating a distribution of income that is not socially acceptable. It won't work, and it has never worked, as Nick Hanauer says in his video interview.
Our past success was built, in part, on economic mobility, opportunity for anyone, and a strong middle class. Take that away, and we're just a large sluggish country with a lot of good memories and bad karma.
References:
Erik Reinert, "How Rich Countries Got Rich . . . and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor"
Nick Hanauer 6-minute video
Joseph Stiglitz video The invisible hand discussion starts around 12:30. The "selfish people" remark comes at 36:40 - 37:40.
Another version of "We all do better, when we all do better."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stan-sorscher/we-all-do-better-when-we-all-do-better_b_1469635.html
We All Do Better When We All Do Better
A few days ago, economist Joseph Stiglitz said something quite provocative: "We've been shaping our society to create people who are more selfish."
The eye is drawn to the last part, "... create people who are more selfish." My takeaway message is at the beginning, "We've been shaping our society ... ."
In the same speech, he repeats a line from one of his books: "The reason the invisible hand was often invisible was that it wasn't there." He reminds us that, generally, markets do not solve our problems. "Nobody ever said that they were fair, that they would lead to a distribution of income that was socially acceptable." Markets fail, more often than we suppose.
I first saw this remarkable figure in 2002:
In the post-war period, workers' wages increased in direct proportion to increases in productivity. Then, in the mid-'70s, wages abruptly decoupled from productivity.
The message of this figure is that wages, adjusted for inflation, would be twice what they are now, if workers had continued to share improvements in productivity. The top of our society has prospered, while more than 90 percent of us have stayed even or fallen behind.
This has consequences. As the economists say, "In the long run, consumption cannot increase faster than income." Income has been flat for the long run.
Let me give some examples of why this matters.
Erik Reinert wrote a terrific book, inspired by a question that troubled him as a Norwegian teenager on a class trip to Peru. Why does a barber in his native Norway make a comfortable middle-class living when an equally deserving barber in low-wage Peru makes so much less? The barbering profession had made only modest gains in productivity since the introduction of metal scissors in Roman times. The difference for barbers in Peru and Norway is the prosperity of their customers.
My father was a dentist in Michigan. Most of his patients worked in auto plants, where their union negotiated dental benefits. My father was a very adept businessman, compassionate to his patients, and he worked hard. He knew exactly what he had accomplished through his own work, and what had been given to him by circumstance. He had no doubt for one minute that the prosperity he enjoyed was directly connected to the next UAW contract with General Motors.
Nick Hanauer is a high-tech entrepreneur in the Seattle area. He says, as clearly as it can be said, that the magic of success in business is having prosperous customers who can buy your product. As an entrepreneur he did not create jobs. In his words, entrepreneurs want to create revenue with as few jobs as possible. Customers bring demand; demand causes businesses to hire. Prosperity comes from customers who can pay for your products.
We hear the legend of Henry Ford -- that he paid $5 per day to set a high wage standard in the community. Ford did well, not because he was generous and beneficent. In many ways, Henry Ford was a horrible, beastly man. He did well because customers in his community were prosperous enough to buy Ford cars.
Ross Perot may be a better example than Henry Ford. As an industrialist, Ross Perot knew exactly what NAFTA and other so-called Free Trade Agreements would do. As an industrialist he would be compelled by market forces to move production to Mexico, close facilities in the U.S., and reduce the wages paid to the workers in the community where he lived. As a patriot, he wanted trade policies that raised living standards, not lower them. He ran for president, at least in part, to thwart a flawed trade policy that would force him to hurt America.
The common theme is: "We all do better when we all do better."
Lately, the public mood has gone the opposite way. Simply put, we are told that we will all do better when most of us do worse. We demonize workers, and we imagine which of our neighbors should make additional sacrifice.
At the same time, top 1 percent executives believe they can move work offshore, lower wages, terminate pensions, shift health care costs, lay off workers and foreclose millions of homes. They don't accept responsibility for hurting America. They believe they can take a free shot, and the rest of society will pick up the slack.
Nobody is picking up the slack. That's a straight path to a Lesser America.
I recall the old Soviet joke, "My neighbor has a cow. I have none. I want his cow to die." Our version has become, "I have a cow. I'm okay if my neighbor never gets a cow. Nor wages to buy milk from my cow."
It makes much more sense to ask, "What works?" Even for those who look only to their self-interest, the long-term solution is to shape a society with prosperous customers. This is what Alexis de Tocqueville called "self-interest, properly understood."
Joseph Stiglitz warned that free trade and trickle-down policies are creating a distribution of income that is not socially acceptable. It won't work, and it has never worked, as Nick Hanauer says in his video interview.
Our past success was built, in part, on economic mobility, opportunity for anyone, and a strong middle class. Take that away, and we're just a large sluggish country with a lot of good memories and bad karma.
References:
Erik Reinert, "How Rich Countries Got Rich . . . and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor"
Nick Hanauer 6-minute video
Joseph Stiglitz video The invisible hand discussion starts around 12:30. The "selfish people" remark comes at 36:40 - 37:40.
Another version of "We all do better, when we all do better."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stan-sorscher/we-all-do-better-when-we-all-do-better_b_1469635.html
How Not to Get Big Pharma to Change Its Ways
http://robertreich.org/post/26568286162
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Earlier this week the Justice Department announced a $3 billion settlement of criminal and civil charges against pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline — the largest pharmaceutical settlement in history — for improper marketing prescription drugs in the late 1990s to the mid-2000s.
The charges are deadly serious. Among other things, Glaxo was charged with promoting to kids under 18 an antidepressant approved only for adults; pushing two other antidepressants for unapproved purposes, including remedying sexual dysfunction; and, to further boost sales of prescription drugs, showering doctors with gifts, consulting contracts, speaking fees, even tickets to sporting events.
$3 billion may sound like a lot of money, but during these years Glaxo made $27.5 billion on these three antidepressants alone, according to IMS Health, a data research firm — so the penalty could almost be considered a cost of doing business.
Besides, to the extent the penalty affects Glaxo’s profits and its share price, the wrong people will be feeling the financial pain. Most of today’s Glaxo shareholders bought into the company after the illegal profits were already built into the prices they paid for their shares.
Not a single executive has been charged — even though some charges against the company are criminal. Glaxo’s current CEO came on board after all this happened. Glaxo has agreed to reclaim the bonuses of any executives who engaged in or supervised illegal behavior, but the company hasn’t officially admitted to any wrongdoing – and without legal charges against any of executive it’s impossible to know whether Glaxo will follow through.
The Glaxo case is the latest and biggest in a series of Justice Department prosecutions of Big Pharma for illegal marketing prescription drugs. In May, Abbott Laboratories settled for $1.6 billion over its wrongful marketing of an antipsychotic. And an agreement with Johnson & Johnson is said to be imminent over its marketing of another antipsychotic, which could result in a fine of as much as $2 billion.
The Department says the prosecutions are well worth the effort. By one estimate it’s recovered more than $15 for every $1 it’s spent.
But what’s the point if the fines are small relative to the profits, if the wrong people are feeling the financial pinch, and if no executive is held accountable?
The only way to get big companies like these to change their behavior is to make the individuals responsible feel the heat.
An even more basic issue is why the advertising and marketing of prescription drugs is allowed at all, when consumers can’t buy them and shouldn’t be influencing doctor’s decisions anyway. Before 1997, the Food and Drug Administration banned such advertising on TV and radio. That ban should be resurrected.
Finally, there’s no good reason why doctors should be allowed to accept any perks at all from companies whose drugs they write prescriptions for. It’s an inherent conflict of interest. Codes of ethics that are supposed to limit such gifts obviously don’t work. All perks should be banned, and doctors that accept them should be subject to potential loss of their license to practice.
the Tyranny of Obamacare
"A government with the power to force us to buy health insurance can also force restaurants to serve black people."
(sarcasm alert)
- Reagan and Bush I adviser Bruce Bartlett, on Facebook
10 Things You Get Now That Obamacare Survived
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/06/obamacare-supreme-court-regular-americans
1) Insurance companies can no longer impose lifetime coverage limits on your insurance. Never again will you face the risk of getting really sick and then, a few months in, having your insurer tell you, "Sorry, you've 'run out' of coverage." Almost everyone I've met knows someone who had insurance but got really, really sick (or had a kid get really sick) and ran into a lifetime cap.
2) If you don't know someone who has run into a lifetime cap, you probably know someone who has run into an annual cap. The use of these will be sharply limited. (They'll be eliminated entirely in 2014.)
3) Insurers can no longer tell kids with preexisting conditions that they'll insure them "except for" the preexisting condition. That's called preexisting condition exclusion, and it's out the window.
4) A special, temporary program will help adults with preexisting conditions get coverage. It expires in 2014, when the health insurance exchanges—basically big "pools" of businesses and individuals—come on-line. That's when all insurers will have to cover everyone, preexisting condition or not.
5) Insurance companies can't drop you when you get sick, either—this plan means the end of "rescissions."
6) You can stay on your parents' insurance until you're 26.
7) Seniors get $250 towards closing the "doughnut hole" in their prescription drug coverage. Currently, prescription drug coverage ends once you've spent $2,700 on drugs and it doesn't kick in again until you've spent nearly $6,200. James Ridgeway wrote about the problems with the doughnut hole for Mother Jones in the September/October 2008 issue. Eventually, the health care reform bill will close the donut hole entirely. The AARP has more on immediate health care benefits for seniors. Next year (i.e., in nine months), 50 percent of the doughnut hole will be covered.
8) Medicare's preventive benefits now come with a free visit with your primary care doctor every year to plan out your prevention services. And there are no more co-pays for preventative services in Medicare.
9) This is a big one: Small businesses get big tax credits—up to 50 percent of premium costs—for offering health insurance to their workers.
10) Insurers with unusually high administrative costs have to offer rebates to their customers, and every insurance company has to reveal how much it spends on overhead.
UPDATE: Here's one more big benefit we've found out about since the ACA passed:
11) Free birth control and other preventative services for women, unless you work for a faith-based organization that opposes birth control.
yes, it's not perfect but it's the best that could get passed
Most intelligent and morally responsible people agree single payer was the best option, but it was politically not possible with the republican filibustering. Then the next best option was a "public option" which was not free healthcare but simply another option one could pay for... yet again it was sabotaged by the selfish obstructionist crowd... so at least we have some positive changes and hopefully we will work to improve it
what it basically comes down to is some people are very very selfish and ideological boneheads... and for some reason we keep electing these people... oh that's right, now that corporations are people all that counts is MONEY
Lots of crazy stuff on the airwaves re the SCOTUS’s upholding of the ACA.
http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/health-care-reform-leftovers/
The Inane “Is It a Tax?” Debate: R’s are viciously attacking the ruling because it introduces a new “tax” on people who don’t have coverage. As I and many others have stressed, this tax is a free-rider penalty. It is a PRF—a personal responsibility fee for not saddling the rest of us with your health care costs, thereby imposing an implicit tax on the rest of us. And it hits 1-2% of the population.
You thought personal responsibility was supposed to be a conservative value? Not, apparently, when the dreaded tax word is invoked.
I get it: silliness pervades in an election year…but really? Seriously?!? Taxes happen in societies— according to a Supreme Court justice from a saner time, they’re “the price we pay for a civilized society.” And in this case, they’re the price we pay to offset a negative externality by which the behavior of a small minority of citizens imposes a cost on everyone else.
To be ashamed to make that case is to cede the field to Norquist and co.