Weekday NEWS to Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comfortable.
Wed 03.24.2010
Milton Friedman - The Social Security Myth - from today's show
Milton Friedman - Socialized Medicine Nobel Laureate Economist Milton Friedman explores the unsettling dynamics set into motion when government imposes itself into the health care system. (1978)
Whistle-Blower: Banks Give Homeowners the Runaround By DAVID MUIR - ABCNews.com 800-Numbers Lead to Runaround as Banks Refuse to Modify Mortgages A vice president for one of the nation's biggest banks claims customers looking for help in lowering their mortgage payments are often told to call an 800 number -- where he says representatives then give homeowners the runaround. The bank executive spoke to ABC News on the condition that ABC News not show his face or name him, because he feared coming forward would cost him his job.
TARP watchdog slams Obama foreclosure program By Tami Luhby NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- President Obama's foreclosure prevention program will likely fall far short of its goals and may even do more harm than good, a government watchdog said Tuesday. The administration's $75 billion loan modification program may help as few as 1.5 to 2 million people, about half the number Obama said it would when he unveiled the program in February 2009, the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program wrote in a report.
Geithner promises mortgage fix By Colin Barr (Fortune) -- A long-awaited renovation of mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could start to take shape this year, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told Congress Tuesday. The Obama administration hopes to propose legislation to fix the nation's housing finance system within months, Geithner told the House Financial Services Committee. The government currently finances almost all home mortgages, thanks to its 2008 takeover of Fannie and Freddie.
Economic Zombies Shuffle Toward Bankruptcy By Bill Bonner - DailyReckoning.com 03/23/10 Paris, France – Zombies Take Over US Health Care! “Obama assures his place in history,” says the editorial in today’s Financial Times. Poor fellow. He’ll be remembered as the guy who let the zombies loose on the US health care industry. It wasn’t a very good industry even before passage of the reform bill. Not because of the doctors and nurses; they’re as competent as other professions. But they’re forced to work under appalling conditions – with lawyers, lobbyists and regulators on their backs! This new reform measure just increases the weight. Now, there’ll be more parasites than ever. Health care is about to turn into a zombie industry…run by brain-dead bureaucrats and kept alive by infusions of blood from the taxpayer.
Gallup: Mid-March Underemployment Reaches 20% By Rocky Vega - DailyReckoning.com 03/23/10 Stockholm, Sweden – Gallup, the polling and research firm, determines underemployment by including both unemployed Americans and those working part-time but who would prefer to be doing full-time work. As the graph below indicates, Gallup research now shows underemployment still trending higher… now reaching 20 percent. According to Gallup.com: “Gallup’s data suggest that while the U.S. unemployment rate has declined over the past month, the employment gains may be largely taking the form of new part-time jobs… “The danger associated with focusing on unemployment is … [when] new [part-time] jobs [are] announced by the government in early April, there is likely to be an enthusiastic, possibly even celebratory, response. Government officials are liable to tout the continued benefits of last year’s stimulus and the future benefits of the new jobs bill. Many Wall Streeters will likely argue that the surge in jobs is simply another confirmation of the strength of the overall economic recovery.
Google's decision signals change in Western businesses' approach to China By John Pomfret - Washington Post -- BEIJING -- The showdown between Google and the world's most populous country marks a turning point in one of the great alliances of the late 20th century -- the bond between Western capitalists and Beijing's authoritarian system. After Google's audacious decision to confront China over the issue of censorship, officials here insisted Tuesday that the Internet giant's case was an isolated one and would not affect China's opening to the West or its market-oriented reforms.
Why the U.S.-China Currency Brawl Puts Global Recovery at Risk By VISHESH KUMAR - DailyFinance.com The bitter debate about health care reform may have taken center stage in the U.S., but it's hardly the only set of fireworks warranting investors' attention. A potentially more vicious international currency showdown is also materializing as some high-profile American lawmakers and economists attempt to force China to raise the value of the yuan. Their proposed weapon: threats of trade sanctions. As a mid-April deadline approaches for the U.S. Treasury Department to consider whether to label China as a currency manipulator, some investors are watching the face-off with horror. Those investors rightly say that the last the thing the fledgling global recovery needs is a trade war between the world's largest economies.
China/Google Feud: What Now?
China censors searches on Google's Hong Kong-based search engine By John Pomfret, Ellen Nakashima and Cecilia Kang - Washington Post -- BEIJING -- China began blocking results for sensitive searches on Google's Hong Kong-based Web site Tuesday, after the Internet search giant said it would redirect users from the mainland to the Hong Kong site in an effort to avoid Chinese censorship. Searches on Google.com.hk for subjects such as the banned spiritual sect Falun Gong or Tiananmen 64 -- shorthand for the June 4, 1989, crackdown on student-led protests in Beijing -- produced a blank screen or an error message on a computer in Beijing, the Chinese capital. Early in the morning, results were generated but the links were blocked. Other signs were mounting that China was intent on punishing the Internet giant for its bold but risky decision to publicly confront China's policy of limiting the free flow of information.
Google Faces Fallout as China Reacts to Site Shift By MICHAEL WINES and JONATHAN ANSFIELD - NYTimes.com BEIJING — As Google began redirecting tens of millions of Chinese users on Tuesday to its uncensored Web site in Hong Kong, the company’s remaining mainland operations came under pressure from its Chinese partners and from the government itself. For weeks, Google had been holding out hope that the Chinese government would allow it to keep its pledge to end censorship while retaining its share of China’s fast-growing Internet search market.
Redirection of users ‘just a little trick’ By Kathrin Hille in Beijing - FT Google’s decision to keep its companies, staff and website in mainland China while placing controversial content just out of reach of Beijing’s censors in Hong Kong was an attempt at a clever finesse. It aimed to achieve its goals of both staying in and leaving the world’s biggest market. But observers caution that the US internet company is perhaps being a bit too smart; the Chinese government’s initial heavy-handed reaction to the announcement suggests Beijing is unlikely to brook much opposition.
U.S. Debt Crisis, Battle for the Budget By: Casey Research - MarketOracle.co.uk Recently the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) published its scoring of President Obama's budget for the next 10 years. It shows a budget deficit of $9.8 trillion. That is just shy of $4 trillion worse than the CBO’s baseline budget, a budget that includes only the laws as currently enacted, with no estimates of any new programs lawmakers may add that worsen future projections. That our budget is out of control is no surprise, but the charts I present here should provide some perspective of just how dangerous this set of budget estimates could turn out to be. The first chart below shows the amount of red ink in each year for the two CBO estimates.
Hold gold because the next crisis is brewing by LARRY EDELSON - uncommonwisdomdaily.com Despite gold’s choppy trading range … Despite the fact that it’s entering a period of short-term weakness and may even fall to just below $1,000 an ounce … Everyone — and I mean everyone — should consider owning at least my top three gold mining shares. Why? Here are just a few reasons …
A. Because the financial crisis is far from over. . .
B. Because our own Federal Reserve is seemingly dead set on a weaker U.S. dollar . . .
C. Because the U.S. government is flat broke. . .
D. Because China is beginning to do what everyone from Main Street … to Wall Street … to Pennsylvania Avenue fears most: . . .
E. Because there’s a great crisis in confidence brewing around the globe. . .
Gold outshines S&P on global currency movement Commodity Online It is a common belief that gold is expensive, since it has shot up from USD 400 per ounce in 2001 to USD 1,100 today, which accounts to an increase of nearly 3 times, while the S&P 500 index has risen from a recent low of 683 in 2009 to 1,160 today. Ever since the current gold trend has begun in 2001, gold has appreciated much more strongly and consistently than S&P. The S&P was 6 times the price of gold, and today it is just about the same price, which implies that gold has become 6 times more valuable.
Bullish on Bullion Western investment demand for gold will stay well-supported regardless of the economic outlook, says Rozanna Wozniak, investment research manager at World Gold Council. She tells Michael Yoshikami of YCMNET Advisors, CNBC's Martin Soong & Karen Tso why.
"Don't Sell Gold" Says SocGen Strategist as "Long Emergency" in Government Debt Begins By: Adrian Ash - - GoldSeek.com -- THE PRICE OF GOLD in Dollars slipped back from an overnight rally Tuesday morning in London, edging again below $1100 an ounce as world stock markets ticked higher along with government bonds. US crude oil contracts fell towards $81 per barrel, even as the Dollar eased lower through $1.50 per Pound and $1.35 per Euro. The gold price for UK and Euro investors held 0.5% above Monday's lows at £732 and €814 an ounce respectively. "The case for gold is clear enough, but when should we look to sell?" asks Dylan Grice in his strategy view, Popular Delusions, from French bank Société Générale's London office today.
Greece Exposes Future and Gold Opportunity By: Neil Charnock - MarketOracle.co.uk We are looking at a high probability of a rally in the gold price in the coming weeks which will spur gold stocks into upward motion yet again. This is suggested due to fundamental and technical reasons. Inflation (of the money supply), increasing demand and coming uncertainty as the sovereign debt crisis gradually unfolds are three of the key fundamental drivers going forward. The pace of the increase in the money supply is increasing and causing distortions that are essential to understand.
A Hard Look at Gold, Silver Premiums By: Tarek Saab - MarketOracle.co.uk Lost in the daily commentary about gold and silver prices is the actual cost of taking possession of these precious metals. Unless you trade in paper GLD or SLV, or you store your bullion in overseas vaults with companies like Goldmoney, the actual cost to purchase gold and silver can diverge from the COMEX spot price by as much as 36% (as I will show below). We have analyzed the premiums for these two monetary metals over the past year and a half, and we hope to offer some perspective on "real" market prices.
US dollar index limits gold price surge By Jim Wyckoff April gold futures closed up $4.20 at $1,103.70 Tuesday. Prices closed nearer the session high on short covering following recent selling pressure. The Euro currency moved up from its session low as trading progressed Tuesday, which also encouraged some fresh buying interest in gold. Still, the firmer U.S. dollar index on Tuesday did limit the upside in gold.
Silver Thursday Plus 30 David Morgan - SilverBearCafe.com Unless you are a real silver bug or a much studied gold bug, the concept of Silver Thursday will have little meaning for you. Silver Thursday took place on March 27, 1980, and this-coming Saturday marks the thirtieth anniversary of that event. Generally, the take on Silver Thursday is explained by Wikipedia as follows: "The Hunt brothers had invested heavily in futures contracts through the brokerage firm Bache Halsey Stuart Shields, now Prudential-Bache Securities. When the price of silver dropped below their minimum margin requirement, they were issued a margin call for $100 million. The Hunts were unable to meet the margin call, and facing a potential $1.7 billion loss, the ensuing panic was felt in the financial markets in general, as well as commodities and futures. Many Government officials feared that if the Hunts were unable to meet their debts, some large Wall Street brokerage firms and banks might collapse.
Measuring the Money Supply By Steve Saville - GreenFaucet.com The year-over-year growth rates of popular monetary aggregates M2 and MZM are presently around 2%, which is near their lows of the past 15 years. Furthermore, M3, another popular monetary aggregate, has just experienced the fastest decline in its growth rate in at least 40 years and is now down by about 5% on a year-over-year basis. Note that the Fed no longer reports M3, but unofficial M3 calculations and charts are still available on the internet (here, for example). So, judging by M2, M3 and MZM the US is now in, or bordering on, monetary deflation. However, TMS (True Money Supply) has risen by more than 13% over the past 12 months.
Global derivatives disclosure to rise By Aline van Duyn - FT Watchdogs to get more CDS trade information A transatlantic row that flared up in the wake of the Greek debt crisis over the lack of disclosure to regulators of credit market activity has pushed the new body in charge of collecting global trading data to provide more information to financial watchdogs. Regulators from around the globe including the Securities and Exchange Commission will now be able to obtain breakdowns of trading activity in credit default swaps, including the identity of the investors.
Concerns Over Fiscal Sustainability Threaten Economic Recovery, Suggest More Market Turbulence ResearchRecap.com -- Rising concerns about fiscal sustainability even in AAA-rated countries such as the US and the UK threaten the global economic recovery and suggest market turbulence ahead. Those concerns are highlighted in a complimentary download of the Economist Intelligence Unit’s latest Global Economic Outlook. Report Overview The underlying strength of the global recovery remains uncertain. GDP figures published so far for the fourth quarter of 2009 have shown that the global recovery remains on track, despite continued concerns about its underlying strength. In Asia, the first region to emerge from the downturn, sequential growth has softened, following the stunning turnaround earlier in the year. In the US, growth continued to accelerate, but in the euro zone growth was disappointing, although a renewed improvement is likely in the first half of 2010. The recovery so far is still driven by temporary factors. The global recovery, which started in Asian emerging markets but has since spread to most major regions, is now well under way. Companies and consumers have realised that worst-case scenarios are unlikely to materialise and are adjusting their consumption, investment and hiring behaviour to suit a more benign outlook.
How Much Capital Does it Take to Lift a Dollar? By Bill Baker - DailyReckoning.com 03/22/10 Baltimore, Maryland – On March 18, 2010 the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA) wrote CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler a letter calling to his attention evidence that suggests an anti-gold cartel consisting of the U.S. Treasury, the Fed, and the bullion banks has been suppressing the gold price, and that this action is coordinated to further the “strong dollar” policy established by former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers. If indeed this is the case, since all interventions end badly, a valuable question to answer is whether there are signs that the intervention has gotten long in the tooth. The most obvious would be that the capital required to rescue the ailing buck would be significantly higher than it was prior to the meltdown of the credit markets in 2008. Indeed, Peter Schiff speculated the dollar rally would end badly just three days before the GATA letter was published.
Fed’s Yellen Says Too Soon to Raise Interest Rates By Vivien Lou Chen March 23 (Bloomberg) -- Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President Janet Yellen said it’s too soon to raise interest rates, and she discounted concerns record budget deficits might fuel inflation. “I don’t believe this is yet the time to be tightening monetary policy,” Yellen said in the text of a speech today in Los Angeles. “But as recovery takes firm root and economic output moves toward its potential, a time will come when it is appropriate to boost short-term interest rates.”
MF Global Brings Corzine Back to Wall Street NYTimes.com Jon S. Corzine, the former governor of New Jersey, is back in finance. Mr. Corzine, who is also a former chief executive of Goldman Sachs, has become the chairman and chief executive, of MF Global Holdings, a broker in futures, options and derivatives. He will also become a partner at J.C. Flowers & Company, the private equity firm specializing in financial companies. MF Global said Tuesday afternoon that Mr. Corzine would take over from Bernard W. Dan, who resigned from MF Global as chief executive for “personal reasons.” Mr. Dan will remain with MF Global through May 16 help with Mr. Corzine’s transition.
Pay czar takes aim at all TARP takers By David Ellis - CNNMoney.com NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- White House pay czar Kenneth Feinberg, who has clamped down on executive compensation at the nation's biggest bailout firms, now has a new target: any firm that accepted a government lifeline. Unveiling a bold new initiative Tuesday, Feinberg said he would examine compensation paid to top executives at 419 companies made between October 2008 until February 2009, a period when the nation's financial system was teetering on the brink.
New York Fed Warehousing Junk Loans On Its Books Ryan Grim - HuffingtonPost.com As Lehman Brothers careened toward bankruptcy in 2008, the New York Federal Reserve Bank came to its rescue, sopping up junk loans that the investment bank couldn't sell in the market, according to a report from court-appointed examiner Anton R. Valukas. The New York Fed, under the direction of now-Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, knowingly allowed itself to be used as a "warehouse" for junk loans, the report says, even though Fed guidelines say it can only accept investment grade bonds.
Geithner: Government Still Has a Role to Play in Housing By SARA HANSARD - DailyFinance.com While Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner pledged to reform the way Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) operate in the U.S. housing market at a packed hearing on Capitol Hill today, he also said that the two government sponsored enterprises have operated more prudently than much of the private housing finance market. "The GSEs played a generally quite responsible role in... establishing standardized mortgage products, and generally they held to better underwriting standards than was true of the private market," Geithner said at a hearing held today by the House Financial Services Committee on how to reform the housing finance market.
First Corporate Campaign Ads Appear After Supreme Court's Citizens United Decision The Huffington Post | Michael Falcone -- A Texas company recently took out a political ad in several local newspapers, making it one of the first corporations to do so in the wake of a landmark Supreme Court ruling that lifted restrictions on corporate political spending. The Texas Tribune reports that the company, KDR Development, paid for an ad against state Rep. Chuck Hopson, formerly a Democratic member of the state legislature who switched parties and ran in the Republican primary for re-election.
A First Step on Fannie and Freddie By SEWELL CHAN - NYTimes.com WASHINGTON — Amid pressure from Congress, the Obama administration is taking a tentative first step in developing a plan to reshape Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the huge mortgage-finance companies that the government took over in 2008. WASHINGTON — Amid pressure from Congress, the Obama administration is taking a tentative first step in developing a plan to reshape Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the huge mortgage-finance companies that the government took over in 2008.
Changes Ahead for Fannie and Freddie
Microcosm of Housing Crisis on an Arizona Street By LOUISE STORY - NYTimes.com CAVE CREEK, Ariz. — The uncertain line between hope and despair divides this exurb of Phoenix, where the trim stucco houses used to sell so briskly. It winds around the swimming pools and the pebbled yards of East Montgomery Road like a slow-burning fuse. On one side are people like the Setbackens, Gary and Cissie, who moved here from Washington State and, with prudence, have managed to pay their mortgage bill month after month. On the other side are those like Kelley Carter, who never dreamed that home prices would fall so hard, and got in over their heads.
Existing-home sales fall for third straight month By Renae Merle - Washington Post Existing-home sales fell for the third consecutive month in February, fueling concerns that the tax credit for home buyers that helped revive the market last year won't provide a comparable boost during this spring's buying season. An $8,000 tax credit for qualified first-time home buyers helped give the nation's sagging housing market a lift in 2009. But sales levels have fallen 23 percent since November, when the tax credit was initially scheduled to expire. Congress extended and expanded the tax credit to more buyers, but now some economists worry that, even if there's a pickup in sales over the next few months, it might prove to be temporary.
Existing Home Sales Drop, Supply Climbs By Shobhana Chandra March 23 (Bloomberg) -- Sales of existing U.S. homes fell in February for a third month, and the number of properties on the market climbed by the most in almost two years, casting a pall over the prospects for a recovery. Purchases dropped 0.6 percent to a 5.02 million annual rate, the lowest level in eight months, figures from the National Association of Realtors showed today in Washington. There were 3.59 million houses for sale, a 312,000 increase from January that marked the biggest gain since April 2008.
More Sellers Put Homes on Market, but There Are Fewer Buyers By DAVID STREITFELD - NYTimes.com -- The volume of home sales is slumping even as the number of properties on the market is rising, which is putting new pressure on prices, according to economic data released Tuesday. The triple whammy of bad news stoked fears that the brief recovery in housing was finished and another dip had begun. If that proves to be the case, it could slow the broader economic recovery. “The housing market may remain a noose around the neck of the U.S. economy for some time yet,” Paul Dales of Capital Economics told clients.
Federal government cancels plans for office building in Aurora By Margaret Jackson - The Denver Post -- The federal government has canceled plans to build a 350,000-square-foot office building at Gateway Park in Aurora. Known as Project Keystone, the high-security building was supposed to be occupied by Aerospace Data Facility Colorado, now housed at Buckley Air Force Base. The facility, operated by the U.S. Air Force, provides data to defense and intelligence agencies. "Headquarters decided that the money could be put to better use for other intelligence priorities," said Rick Oborn, a public-affairs officer with the National Reconnaissance Office, the executive agent for the project.
14 states sue to block health care law By the CNN Wire Staff CNN) -- Officials from 14 states have gone to court to block the historic overhaul of the U.S. health care system that President Obama signed into law Tuesday, arguing the law's requirement that individuals buy health insurance violates the Constitution. Thirteen of those officials filed suit in a federal court in Pensacola, Florida, minutes after Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The complaint calls the act an "unprecedented encroachment on the sovereignty of the states" and asks a judge to block its enforcement.
Socialized Medicine, The Road to Wealth Destruction By: Mac Slavo - MarketOracle.co.uk When we discuss wealth, we must keep in mind that we’re not discussing investments exclusively. Wealth takes many different forms, and the ability to generate wealth in the first place is what gives us the ability to make long-term investments. The recently passed health care legislation places an almost instantaneous tax on Americans, even though they will see no benefit from this new tax for at least four years when the law is to be implemented nationwide.
IRS to Monitor Your Health Insurance
From Monday's news page . . . worth repeating
The Wrong Prescription: Democrats’ Health Overhaul Dangerously Expands IRS Authority Report from the Republican Ways and Means Committee . . . Democrats will have vastly expanded the responsibilities of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and fundamentally altered the relationship between the IRS and taxpayers. Specifically, this report examines the Individual Mandate Tax (IMT) proposed in the Democrats’ health care legislation. Under this provision, Democrats make the IRS the chief enforcer for a new government-run health insurance system. One of the most troubling aspects of this new IRS authority is the newly granted power to collect additional taxes from Americans whose health insurance coverage is deemed to be insufficient to meet the definition of minimum coverage, as defined by federal bureaucrats, required to be purchased.
ObamaCare: Soon to be the Worst Bill Passed in U.S. History (Part 1) By: Mike Stathis - MarketOracle.co.uk -- With Obama’s healthcare bill ready to sign, democrats are celebrating. Meanwhile, (supposedly) enraged republicans insist payback will come in November. This is part of the typical back-and-forth theatrics staged to galvanize voter support for each party. Please do not allow yourself to be fooled by these games. As the facts show, both parties are essentially the same when it comes to issues that matter most to working-class Americans; free trade and healthcare, as first detailed in America’s Financial Apocalypse.
Doctors brace for a 21% reduciton in Medicare rates in 8 days by Ralph Weber mediBlog.com The health bill which just passed the house calls for a 21% reduction in Medicare reimbursement rates effective almost immediately, and a further 2% reduction every year until total reimbursements are down 41%. This may produce the $500 billion in savings projected by the CBO, but seniors will likely have a hard time finding a doctor able to accept medicare.
States Sue Over Overhaul That Will Bust State Budgets By Pat Wechsler March 23 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama faces a fight over the health-care overhaul from states that sued today because the legislation’s expansion of Medicaid imposes a fiscal strain on their cash-strapped budgets. Florida, Texas and Pennsylvania are among 14 states that filed suit after the president signed the bill over the constitutionality of the burden imposed by the legislation. The health-care overhaul will make as many as 15 million more Americans eligible for Medicaid nationwide starting in 2014 and will cost the states billions to administer.
Ron Paul: Bill Makes Health-Care System Worse
National Health Caress by Butler Shaffer - LewRockwell.com The lies the government and media tell are amplifications of the lies we tell ourselves. To stop being conned, stop conning yourself. ~ James Wolcott An otherwise mature and well-educated man I know still believes that professional wrestling is on the up-and-up; that the grapplers who toss one another around in the ring are engaged in fights as genuine as those that take place in gang-ridden neighborhoods. For this man, and so many others like him, such spectacles are more than just enjoyable entertainment: they are the real thing.
Obama to sign abortion order behind closed doors By Joseph Curl - WashingtonTimes.com A day after a lavish bill signing White House ceremony on health care reform, President Obama will sign an executive order barring the law from allowing federally funded abortion, but he'll do so behind closed doors and with no media allowed. The executive order, which the White House aaid Tuesday will "reaffirms the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Acts consistency with longstanding restrictions on the use of federal funds for abortion," was crucial to securing the votes of at least 10 pro-life Democrats.
Healthcare Intervention: The Bigger Picture Mises Daily: by Doug French The prospect and reality of Obamacare have woken up many people to the need to stop the socialization of medical care in America. It will produce here what it has produced everywhere: stagnation, overutilization, rationing, and the sacrifice of individual well-being in the name of collective justice. This is the result not only of every experiment in socialized medicine but of every experiment in socialism generally. The reasons were spelled out by Mises in 1922. He explained that, without property and market prices, economic rationality disappears. The result is unworkable, chaotic, and impoverishing.
That Didn't Take Long.... by Karl Denninger - market-ticker.org From the forum: "So I just got a call from my health insurance provider. My family rates are going up $200/month ... $2400/year per employee effective April 1st. Didn't take long after signing to get this s**t going. . . So much for the "my plan will save Americans" $2500/year in Healthcare premiums. . . F***ing liar in chief. " . . . Yes, this law will induce people to hire, it will improve health access, and it will be positive for the consumer, economy, stock market and spending.
Small Business Worries About Health-Care Costs
Health care dictatorship: A crime against America by Mike Adam - NaturalNews.com It's amazing that the day before the health care "reform" bill is passed in America, the FDA announces that one of the most popular statin drugs sold in America causes so much kidney damage that it might kill you. And then the day after this health care bill passes, the FDA announces that a popular rotovirus vaccine made by Merck is being halted because it is contaminated with a mysterious DNA sequence from a pig virus called porcine circovirus type 1 or PCV-1. The reason this is important is because cholesterol drugs and vaccines represent what conventional American medicine is all about: Drugs and injections. It's not about health and prevention; it's about drugs and injections (and surgery too, of course). And the legislation that was just passed is focused entirely on how to expand the failed system of drugs and injections so that it causes harm to everyone rather than just those who voluntarily choose to be suckered into it. This is the medical equivalent of a wartime draft that forces soldiers into battle against their will.
Healthy without health insurance in America
Health-Care Cost Lies Make Us Sing the Blues: March 23 (Bloomberg) -- “So lie to me, lie to me, I’d rather have it that way.” Every historic moment has its soundtrack, and passing U.S. health-care legislation is no exception. The song for this bill is “Lie to Me,” recorded by blues singer Brook Benton in 1962. Benton’s song is a plea to the woman who cheated on him to lie to him about it and instead say everything’s fine. The tune came to mind while watching some voters applaud Democratic leaders as they promise that the new law will reduce budget deficits by $1 trillion. “Just lie, lie, lie.”
U.S. Drug Move Said to Deprive Elderly By DUFF WILSON - NYTimes.com A Senate panel will hear complaints on Wednesday from nursing home operators, doctors, nurses and pharmacists that a Drug Enforcement Administration narcotics crackdown has left seriously ill patients crying for pain relief. The D.E.A. says it is merely enforcing the law that requires pharmacies to wait for prescriptions that are signed by physicians before dispensing potent painkillers like Vicodin, Percocet and morphine. But the nursing home groups say the new enforcement rules upend many years of practice in which the government informally allowed nurses to speed the process by taking doctors’ orders orally, or from medical charts, and passing them along to pharmacies, similar to the procedures used in hospitals.
Medicare vs. Government Insurance
US-Israeli spat plants seeds of crisis By Victor Kotsev Last month, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy published an analysis of three simulations conducted recently by experts at Harvard University, Tel Aviv University and the Brookings Institution. The simulations explored different scenarios for how the Iranian crisis would develop, and an outcome they had in common was rising tensions between the United States and Israel and a failure of the sanctions policy to halt Iran's nuclear progress. "Game play suggests," the analysis points out, "that an eventual US-Israeli crisis is likely." Even without Iran, tensions between the two allies have been running high during the past year. As far as the Iranian question is concerned, the row of the past couple of weeks seems to more than confirm the predictions. Moreover, it is likely to be just the beginning of, or a dress rehearsal for, a larger crisis in relations.
U.S. Bolsters Chemical Restrictions for Water By CHARLES DUHIGG - NYTimes.com The Environmental Protection Agency announced on Monday that it would overhaul drinking water regulations so that officials could police dozens of contaminants simultaneously and tighten rules on the chemicals used by industries. The new policies, which are still being drawn up, will probably force some local water systems to use more effective cleaning technologies, but may raise water rates.
France ditches carbon tax as social protests mount By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Telegraph.co.uk France is facing its own 'spring of discontent' as strikes shut schools, courts, railways and metro services, and trade unions vowed mass protests across the country. President Nicolas Sarkozy on Tuesday scrapped the country's proposed carbon tax and reshuffled his cabinet in populist tilt after suffering a crushing electoral defeat over the weekend, when his Gaulliste UMP party lost every region other than in its bastion of Alsace and the Indian Ocean island of Reunion. The vote saw a resurrection of both the Socialist Party and the far-Right National Front, showing how the delayed effects of rising unemployment can change the political landscape long after recession has passed. The jobless rate has risen to 10.1pc, up from 8.7pc a year ago. A quarter of those aged under 25 are out of work.
29 sickened by led poisoning CHENZHOU, Hunan - The number of patients sickened by lead poisoning rose to 29 Sunday in Chenzhou City of central China's Hunan Province, health officials said. The Chenzhou Municipal Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine received 10 more children Sunday, bringing the number of patients tested to have excessive levels of lead in their blood to 29, 28 of whom were below the age of 14, said a statement from the public health bureau of Chenzhou. Another two people demanded to be treated in the hospital but tests showed no excessive lead in their blood. Most of the patients were in stable condition, said Wang Feixiong, a doctor with the hospital. There could be more reports of sickened children, said Liu Jianrong, deputy head of the hospital. The cases emerged about 10 months after 254 children were found with excessive levels of lead in their blood in Chenzhou in July last year.
China, Russia sign major agreements worth $1.6bn China Daily Key powers agree to cooperate on economy, technology and energy Beijing - China and Russia signed 15 deals cumulatively worth $1.6 billion in the Russian city of Vladivostok over the weekend, with more coming up on Monday. The documents were signed during Vice-President Xi Jinping's tour of the country. Xi arrived in Russia Saturday at the invitation of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. He is expected to meet Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Putin in Moscow on Monday.
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