Granted the financial sector is a tough place to work these days, but you would think that this person would have no problem getting back on the horse or at least scoring something other than $SBUX….
Comments »For Every $2.52 Spent We Receive $1 in GDP
Presented without much commentary, because little is necessary: the only ratio that matters for the US economy, the change in US public debt ($359.1 billion) and US GDP ($142.4) in the first quarter, hit 2.52x and rising.
It takes $2.52 in new debt to increase $1 of GDP.
Source: Debt to the Penny, Commerce Dept
Comments »State of the Union: Most Americans Will Have $0 by Their 75th Birthday
A Response to “If I Wanted America to Fail”
One response i found from my email chain:
If i wanted america to fail i’d give tax breaks to the wealthiest people.
The biggest companies i’d let pay no taxes at all, then i’d take that deficet and make the poor and middle class pay for it, and errode all safety nets.
If i wanted america to fail, i’d start wars for no reason, with borrowed money, then i’d give no bid contracts to my golf buddies so they could charge 10 times what it would cost the army to do.
i’d make sure the soldiers didn’t have the right equipment, and when my golf buddies electricute the soldiers in the showers they built, i’d make sure no one was held accountable, and renew their contract.
If i wanted america to fail i’d start torturing prisoners to make sure we had future enemies.
If i wanted america to fail i’d let big banks get even bigger, i’d give them free money, and encourage them to play roulette with it.
If i wanted america to fail i’d make sure that only the wealthiest people and companies got things done in congress,and that the people’s wishes were ignored.
If i wanted america to fail i’d convice people that the most abundent energy source (solar).. was impossible, and subsidise the most profitable companies in the history of mankind (big oil.)
i’d stick with old ideas, and push away the new.
After fukishima i’d advocate building more nuclear plants, and laugh at the idea of implementing any lessons learned, i’d keep the one’s on fault lines open and laugh and demonize people who wanted them closed.
i’d pollute the air and water more and more, and point to an owl story to justify it.
i’d devalue the environment,
i’d make sure the citizens could’nt afford health care,
i’d make sure they couldn’t collective bargain, i’d make sure their wages fell,
i’d take away their seeds for growing real food, and make sure to poison their children with more pestisides,
i’d turn their drinking water into undrinkable water… And i’d vote republican
Sent from iPhone
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VIDEO: If I Wanted America to Fail
Fascism: Marine Sgt. Discharged for Posting Criticism of Obama on Facebook
“I love the Marine Corps, I love my job. I wish it wouldn’t have gone this way. I’m having a hard time seeing how 15 words on Facebook could have ruined my nine-year career,” he told The Associated Press.
Comments »Don’t Fuck With Grandma
The Freedom Tower Will Surpass Empire State Building as Tallest in NYC Next Week
Taibbi: Jon Corzine Is the Original George Zimmerman
PBS Frontline Investigation Into Financial Crisis Suggests Another Disaster On Horizon
“Frontline’s new documentary about the financial crisis probably doesn’t say much you didn’t already know, at least if you’ve followed the story. But it’s a story worth telling again anyway, because memories on Wall Street and in Washington are dangerously short.
On Tuesday night PBS will air the first two parts of afour-part documentary on the crisis, called “Money, Power and Wall Street,” with the second two parts to air next Tuesday, May 1.
The first hour tells the history of the credit derivatives at the heart of the crisis, while the second hour tells the blow-by-blow of the crisis itself, culminating with the bank bailouts in the fall of 2008.
Viewers familiar with all of this material — and there’s not much new in the first two hours, which could probably have been condensed to one hour without losing much — might be confused about the point of rehashing what is by now old history. The trailer for the whole series suggests Frontline is slowly building a case, maybe to be hammered home in the final two hours next week, that the financial system is still just as primed for disaster as it was four years ago.
The second part of the documentary, airing in the second hour tonight, is more entertaining than the first, but mainly in the way oft-told horror stories are fun to hear around the campfire. Stop me if you’ve heard any of this before: Bear Stearns goes down because of toxic mortgage debt early in 2008. Policy makers take the summer off. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson decides to let Lehman Brothers die, to teach Wall Street a lesson. Oops! AIG and the rest of Wall Street get hundreds of billions of dollars to keep the financial system from going down the drain…”
Comments »One More Reason Healthcare Costs are Rising
Despite a landmark settlement that was expected to increase coverage for out-of-network care, the nation’s largest health insurers have been switching to a new payment method that in most cases significantly increases the cost to the patient.
The settlement, reached in 2009, followed New York State’s accusation that the companies manipulated data they used to price such care, shortchanging the nation’s patients by hundreds of millions of dollars.
The agreement required the companies to finance an objective database of doctors’ fees that patients and insurers nationally could rely on. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, then the attorney general, said it would increase reimbursements by as much as 28 percent.
It has not turned out that way. Though the settlement required the companies to underwrite the new database with $95 million, it did not obligate them to use it. So by the time the database was finally up and running last year, the same companies, across the country, were rapidly shifting to another calculation method, based on Medicare rates, that usually reduces reimbursement substantially.
“It’s deplorable,” said Chad Glaser, a sales manager for a seafood company near Buffalo, who learned that he was facing hundreds of dollars more in out-of-pocket costs for his son’s checkups with a specialist who had performed a lifesaving liver transplant. “I could get balance-billed hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I have no protection.”
Insurance companies defend the shift toward Medicare-based rates under the settlement, which allowed any clear, objective method of calculating reimbursement. They say that premiums would be even costlier if reimbursements were more generous, and that exorbitant doctors’ fees are largely to blame.
But few dispute that as the nation debates an overhaul aimed at insuring everybody, the new realpolitik of reimbursement is leaving millions of insured families more vulnerable to catastrophic medical bills, even though they are paying higher premiums, co-payments and deductibles.
“They’re not getting what they think they’re paying for,” said Benjamin M. Lawsky, the superintendent of the Department of Financial Services, whose investigators recently found that under the switch, 4.7 million New York State residents — 76 percent of those with out-of-network coverage — are facing reimbursement reductions of 50 percent or more.
The switch “certainly creates the appearance that insurers are trying to end-run the settlement and keep out-of-network payments low,” Mr. Lawsky said….”
Comments »ATTENTION EVERYONE: Social Security Will Never Run Out For As Long As You’re Alive
400 Year Old Diamond Going Up For Auction at $BID
The 400-year-old “Beau Sancy,” one of the world’s oldest and most storied diamonds in private hands, is up for sale at Sotheby’s auction house. Weighing in at 34.98 carats, the sparkling gem with a rare pear cut is expected to fetch up to $4 million.
Comments »Your Tax Dollars @ Work
New Study Shows the U.S. is a Low Wage Country
State of the Union: Baby Boomers Fail
Senate Will Get to the (Colombian) Bottom of this Secret Service Hooker Probe
A Senate committee will expand its probe into the U.S. Secret Service this week following a scandal involving prostitutes in Colombia in advance of a recent trip by the president.
The Homeland Security Committee will send the Secret Service “some questions this week, as the beginning of our broader investigation, asking whether… this was an exception, or is there anything in the records that show this is a pattern of misconduct that has gone on elsewhere by Secret Service agents on assignment, but off-duty?” Sen. Joe Lieberman, the committee chairman, told “Fox News Sunday.”
“Why wasn’t it noticed if that was the case? What’s the Secret Service going to do to make sure it never happens again?”
Some Secret Service members and agents allegedly brought back several prostitutes to a hotel in Cartagena, according to sources familiar with the U.S. government’s investigation.
The Secret Service says 12 members of the agency have been implicated in the incident.
Across the Sunday political talk shows, officials expressed confidence in Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan, saying they believe he has handled the scandal well and will get answers.
“History is full of cases where enemies have compromised” people with security or intelligence information through sex, said Lieberman, I-Connecticut. He added that based on what he has been told so far, “there is no evidence that information was compromised” in this case.
Down the road, the committee will hold a public hearing on the matter — perhaps more than one, Lieberman said.
“Anyone who’s found to be guilty” will lose his job, Rep. Peter King, Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
King told CNN last week that four investigators were assigned to his committee’s probe.
One person who was “partially exonerated” will instead likely face administrative action, King said.
In a letter sent to Sullivan on Friday, King listed a series of questions, including how many employees were aware of the alleged incident and how many total employees were in Cartagena in support of President Obama’s trip to the Summit of the Americas when the incident occurred earlier this month.
“Please provide a comprehensive, minute-by-minute timeline of all known actions, locations, and possible violations of U.S. or Colombia law,” codes of conduct, and directives, King wrote in the letter.
But King and other officials are quick to emphasize that those allegedly involved in cavorting with prostitutes at a hotel in Cartagena are the exceptions.
“In any organization things can go wrong,” President Obama’s chief campaign strategist David Axelrod told CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday. “I must say that in my experience the Secret Service has been completely professional, so impressive. I always felt like they were … willing to do anything to protect the president and the people around the president. And so this was really disappointing.
“Obviously we have to get to the bottom of it, but those problems should not denigrate the efforts of so many who do such a good job.”
Sen. Susan Collins, ranking member on the Homeland Security Committee, and Rep. Carolyn Maloney of the House Oversight Committee suggested having more female agents could help avoid such scandals.
“I can’t help but wonder if there’d been more women as part of that detail if this ever would have happened,” Collins told ABC’s “This Week.”
Maloney agreed, and added that she was told 11% of agents in the Secret Service are women. The agency did not immediately confirm the figure to CNN Sunday.
“We probably need to diversify the Secret Service and have more minorities and more women,” she said.
Six Secret Service members have left their jobs in the wake of the incident in Cartagena, Colombia, which came while they were on a security detail in advance of President Obama’s trip for the Summit of the Americas.
One employee “has been cleared of serious misconduct, but will face administrative action,” the Secret Service said.
Five employees are on administrative leave and have had their security clearances temporarily revoked.
In addition, the U.S. military is investigating 11 of its own troops for possible heavy drinking and consorting with prostitutes.
White House staff have not been implicated in the controversy.
After the scandal broke, President Obama called for a “thorough” and “rigorous” invsetigation. “If it turns out that some of the allegations that have been made in the press are confirmed, then of course I’ll be angry,” he said.
Comments »GOP Hopefuls Jockeying for Position as Rubio Plays it Cool
Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio, continuing to play down talk of his possible selection as Mitt Romney’s running mate, on Sunday tried to shift the speculation to another Sunshine State Republican: former Gov. Jeb Bush.
Bush recently said he hoped Rubio would accept a potential offer from presumptive Republican presidential nominee Romney to serve on the ticket, calling it “an extraordinary combination.” Rubio said he feels Bush should do the same.
“That’s very nice of Jeb. I hope he’ll say yes if future President Romney asks him,” the senator said on CNN’sState of the Union. “I think he’d be a fantastic vice president.”
Comments »Critics Say the Real Rate of Inflation is Above 10%
“Maggie Humphrey, a price collector for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, visits the same grocery store every month in the Chicago suburbs to punch the cost of a pound of bananas into her Lenovo tablet computer.
“That price has not fluctuated since I’ve been here,” says Humphrey, who started gathering prices for the BLS in 2006 and has checked bananas at this particular establishment for about a year. She records it as 69 cents a pound and includes their country of origin, whether they’re on sale and any applicable sales tax.
Humphrey is among 400 price collectors who visit 23,000 locations in 87 cities every month to determine the cost of 80,000 products and services, from breakfast cereal to haircuts. She and her colleagues feed a database in Washington, where statisticians compile the monthly inflation report, used as benchmark for everything from Social Security payments to the value of Treasury’s inflation-indexed bonds.
The bureau’s price-gathering and statistical methods are standard practice from Japan to Switzerland. That hasn’t averted a lashing from critics who say the government is engaged in a campaign to hide inflation of 10 percent a year or more. Assurances by Federal Reserve policy makers that inflation remains “subdued” also haven’t deterred the skeptics.
“I’m as hawkish and worried about inflation as anybody,” said Stephen Stanley, Chief Economist at Pierpont Securities LLC in Stamford, Connecticut and one of the top forecasters of CPI over the last two years in Bloomberg News surveys. “But the idea that inflation is 10 percent is not a proper reading of the data.”
One Critic
One such critic is John Williams, the author of Shadow Government Statistics, a newsletter that he has run since 2004. Williams says the federal government understates the level of inflation to keep increases in Social Security payments and other costs down.
“The reporting system increasingly succumbed to pressures from miscreant politicians, who were and are intent upon stealing income from Social Security recipients, without ever taking the issue of reduced entitlement payments before the public or Congress for approval,” Williams says on his website, shadowstats.com.
Williams’s alternate measure of inflation was 10.3 percent for the 12 months through March, compared with 2.7 percent for the Consumer Price Index. He calculates unemployment at more than 20 percent rather than the official 8.2 percent in March. His assessment of gross domestic product has clocked negative economic performance in every quarter since 2005. The Department of Commerce’s measure turned negative in 2008 and 2009, recording the worst recession since the Great Depression. The economy is nearing “hyperinflationary Great Depression,” he says on his web site….”
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