Charlie Rose

BoseEinstein  03/27/2013 07:50 PM Report

Charlie, at 10min and 50sec "healthcare costs declining better than we thought" Earth calling Mr. Rose, Why not read the whole article?....."While some areas will see declines in medical claims costs, the report predicts the majority of states will see double-digit increases in their individual health insurance markets, where people purchase coverage directly from insurers rather than get coverage from employers. By 2017, the estimated increase would be 62 percent for California, about 80 percent in Ohio and Wisconsin, more than 20 percent for Florida and 67 percent for Maryland. Much of the reason for the higher claims costs is that sicker people are expected to join the pool, the report said." And I live in California......

http://www.washingtonguardian.com/study-health-overhaul-raise-claims-cost-32-pct-1

BoseEinstein  03/22/2013 01:18 PM Report

Just a note on healthcare costs; your statement charlie at 10min 55sec is totally untrue! And this is just the beginning..

"Health insurers are privately warning brokers that premiums for many individuals and small businesses could increase sharply next year because of the health-care overhaul law"

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324557804578374761054496682.html

SharkswithfrikingLazers  02/19/2013 03:24 AM Report

Yes Glen, change the budget rules!

In STATE governments, budgeting and balance budget requirements are ubiquitous.

Every state has a budget, and every state other than Vermont has some form of constraint on fiscal discretion, including requirements for governors to submit a balanced budget, requirements for legislatures to pass a balanced budget, restrictions on rolling over a deficit, and restrictions on issuing debt to cover the deficit.

The wide use of balanced budget requirements suggests that state governments perceive balanced budget requirements to be net beneficial.

(This Constitutional Amendment passes Akhil Amar's three tests.)

Let's do it.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  02/19/2013 03:14 AM Report

Manufacturing is not going to rebound with better education. That is nonsense.

Baxter the robot vs a Chinese worker:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-february-5-2013/jon-stewart-uploads-his-stream-on-your-facebook

SharkswithfrikingLazers  02/19/2013 03:01 AM Report

David makes a few comments on the Grand Bargain and who might have really benefited.

Funny thing, this Frontline episode aired the same evening.

JOSHUA GREEN, Bloomberg Businessweek: Obama went back to Boehner and said, “Look, things have changed. There’s this other plan out here. I can’t cut the deal that I thought I could cut before. I need 400 billion more dollars to sign on the dotted line.”

Rep. JOHN BOEHNER: And I told the president, I said, “Mr. President, we had an agreement. We had an agreement on Sunday. And you know, if I make an agreement with someone, I’ve got to live up to the agreement that I made.” But he wanted more revenue, wanted more revenue.

NARRATOR: Still, Boehner wanted the grand bargain badly enough that he actually considered the president’s request.

JASON ZENGERLE: Boehner had gotten this far and he thought, “OK, what can we offer to Obama?” And he was starting to think through how to do his own counterproposal.

NARRATOR: Cantor couldn’t quietly stand by any longer.

BOB WOODWARD: Cantor gets Paul Ryan and other people together. And they say, “My God, we’ve got a runaway speaker. How do we get control of him?”

NARRATOR: He confronted the speaker.

MATT BAI: Cantor says, “Absolutely not.” Cantor says, “I won’t support it. The caucus won’t support it.” And from Cantor’s perspective, he’s now trying to walk Boehner off a cliff. He’s saying, “You want this deal so badly that what you are thinking about doing will destroy you and will destroy the caucus, and I won’t let you do it.”

NARRATOR: Even Boehner’s closest allies were worried.

Rep. STEVE LaTOURETTE (R-OH), 1995-2013: It was to the point where that grumbling came to my ears and other friends of Boehner. And three of us went into the speaker’s office and asked if we could have five, ten minutes of his time. And we sat down and said, “You’ve got to— you’ve got to pull this back because you’re way out over your skis. And if you continue down this path, we’re not going to call you speaker anymore because they’re going to take it away from you.”

So Democrats, Republicans and the other Republicans can't get there and America loses.

And here we are.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  02/19/2013 02:25 AM Report

David Leonhardt of the New York Times says at the end of the day to get a deficit solution we have to:

1) Raise our taxes

2) Cut our Social Security and Medicare benefits

Well you can cut the cost of Healthcare to 12% of GDP from 17%. That should help a lot with Medicare costs. Fareed has some great ideas here.

You can open immigration to increase the Social Security base of people paying into the system to cover the huge baby boomer demographic and at the same time fill up all those empty houses, especially the ones being bulldozed, which will also stimulate the housing market.

You can raise taxes by increasing the labor force with these immigrants increasing the tax revenues. Move toward full employment by building something with a multiplier effect.

Stark ideas require lots of creativity that is not possible with partisan politics.

NeilMacCallister  02/17/2013 10:39 PM Report

Republicans are NOT "disorganized, and back-on-their-heels" as here declared.

Republicans simply support democracy.

The poverty that Barack Obama is promoting here in America, is simply accepted by Republicans as the CHOSEN RESULT that Americans clearly voted for when they re-elected Barack Obama.

How could ANY blame be thrown over toward the Republicans???

tabs  02/14/2013 02:46 PM Report

An Adverse Shift

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Starting with the Financial Crisis in 2008 the United States Treasury embarked on a policy of massive deficit spending resulting in a now 6T USD increase in it's debt level, brining the upfront debt to roughly 16.5T USD. The Federal Reserve on the monetary front lowered interest rates and instituted a number of Quanatative Easings to increase the liquidity of the financial system in order to at first stabilize the system and then to promote economic growth in that system. The increase of liquidity to the system through Federal Reserve purchases of US debt instruments is roughly 3T USD. In September of 2012 the Federal Reserve embarked on OE3 whose tenents included the purchase of 85B a month in US debt instruments and mortgage backed securities with an open ended time frame of the US economy having a 6.5% unemployment rate.

What the concern in this is are the dislocations that these policies have caused in the stability of the global economy and the attendant political, social and cultural strata. Here one can postulate that as US debt levels climb, it destabilizes the above mentioned strata. This is because of several factors which include that the United States is the largest economy in a globally intertwined economy and that the USD is the Reserve Currency of the World. Being the Reserve Currency for the world means that every nation must hold reserves of USD in order to purchase oil. Further the USD being not only the Reserve currency but having a 200 year history of being a stable and thus responsible currency has made it the favored currency to be held by private concerns and individuals. This has been especially true in times of distress either globally or on a foreign national level. This has recently been a factor in the USD strength in the past several years as there has been a flight to the USD and US debt instruments in the face of a potential meltdown of the European Union due to the amount of leverage it has incurred and its slow response to rectifying it's problems.

However with the "unlimited" nature of both the European Central Bank and US Federal Reserves recent QE programs which for all intents and purposes means an unlimited printing of money to purchase sovereign debt, dislocations in the various economies are now beginning to appear which is resulting in their currencies seeking a new equilibrium. This is caused by a defacto devaluation of the large amount of USD being held either by foreign governments, held by private concerns or individuals which then puts pressure on those local economies. Further the real danger lies in the fact that as the USD becomes evermore diluted/devalued/debased those foreign holders of USDs will feel increasing pressure to divest themselves of those USDs or face continued pressure on their economies. Or going beyond this as Y. Aksoy and T Piskovski state in the conclusion of their paper "Foreign Holders of Dollars And The Information Value Of US Monetary Aggregates,"

"That if the leading role of US dollar as an international currency will be challenged by longterm

adverse shifts in the preferences of the foreign holders, the US Federal Reserve may face serious

obstacles in the conduct of monetary policy to stabilize the US macroeconomic environment."

Thus in conclusion the Federal Reserves recent "unlimited" QE program has the potential unintended consequence of being a WMD which could create an economic tsunami that would sweep the world with catastrophic consequences.

StandupPhilosopher  02/14/2013 01:43 PM Report

http://americansolvency.blogspot.com

StandupPhilosopher  02/14/2013 01:43 PM Report

http://americansolvency.blogspot.com

StandupPhilosopher  02/14/2013 12:37 PM Report

At 21:50 in the above video, Glenn Hubbard talks about possibly changing budgetary rules and even about amending the constitution. Well, there's a recently published book, called "American Solvency" that breaks down in detail how a very simple constitutional amendment ("The Solvency Amendment") can completely change the debates about government spending in a way that makes them more constructive and forces those in Washington to take a holistic view towards spending programs.

I think it’s a must read–especially for those in Capital Hill. But this is a book that MUST be read all the way through to the very end–especially since it is an issue that carries with it a great deal of partisan baggage. Being “liberally bent” (although, I would say that I’m just a human being who thinks critically about things and is always searching for the truth behind all the sound bites), my experience reading this book is that I felt it was an idea that favored fiscal conservatives, until I reached the very end of the book. It wasn’t until I got to the fifth and final Section of the Solvency Amendment that I was able to see it as truly non-partisan and fully appreciate all the positive long-term implications this Amendment has for changing the culture of Washington surrounding fiscal issues.

The author of the book also has a blog called americansolvency via blogspot.

REMant  02/14/2013 10:57 AM Report

There wasn't much point in guessing at what the president would say. But if one were to, it would be that he'd allege whatever he proposes won't cost anything, which is what he did. The question (at a minimum) is in what time frame? That the sequester will happen seems certain. That it will be good, not bad, seems equally so.

But we've been having this debate for his entire first term, and it's likely to be the one constant in next. By then, if nothing changes, we will likely be in far worse shape, either in terms of declining productivity, rampant inflation, or both (which BTW is what baffles the portfolio mgrs). And it is the attitude of the kind of folk here that will be the cause, not the politicians or ppl per se.

What no one seems to want to confront, is that we cannot do anything we can't pay for, and just printing money won't do that. Altho I suppose they can always spin the rising price of food and fuel by arguing Americans should eat less and exercise more.

I think all the president's men should take to heart James Weldon Johnson's observation that while Northern white people love the Negro in a sort of abstract way, as a race; through a sense of justice, charity, and philanthropy,... generally speaking they have no particular likings for individuals of the race," which he went on to say their former masters do, because if anything is going to get accomplished in this nation, it is going to happen face-to-face, not in some ivory tower. What is doubly annoying is the virtual certainty that when or if it does, they will run in to take credit of it.