Economy
Related: About this forumWeek-End Economists: WEE R Legend! June 28-30, 2013
WEE note the passing of Scence Fiction author Richard Matheson after 87 years on this planet, on June 23rd.
"Along with I Am Legend, Matheson wrote What Dreams May Come, A Stir of Echoes, and The Shrinking Man, all of which became Hollywood movies (in the case of I Am Legend, more than a few times). He was also one of the original Twilight Zone's greatest screenwriters, penned the classic William Shatner-starring episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet." His Twilight Zone episode "Steel" became the basis for Real Steel, starring Hugh Jackman."
Another film adaptation of I Am Legend was 1971's The Omega Man, with Charlton Heston in the lead role. In 2011, NPR readers voted the novel No. 65 on a list of the top 100 Science Fiction books. Matheson also took up the essential questions of the human condition in his 1993 non-fiction book The Path, based on the concepts of Harold W. Percival... In 1984, Matheson received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement. In 2010, he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame."
As for how Matheson viewed his work, Io9 pulled this quote from a 2007 interview:
The Archive of American Television tells us they have posted interviews with Matheson, in which he discusses his stories, the craft of writing, and other topics: SEE LINK FOR THESE AND OTHER FILM CLIPS, SUCH AS TWILIGHT ZONE EPISODES...
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/06/24/195317782/author-richard-matheson-i-am-legend-writer-dies-at-87?ft=1&f=1001
Demeter
(85,373 posts)as of 7 PM EDT. But check back later...to be sure.
And How about that DOW?!! Talk about a last minute plunge!
You just can't keep a bad market up....
Demeter
(85,373 posts)AW, KEEP HIM. WE HAVE LOTS MORE LIKE THAT!
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/06/27/196226493/u-s-businessman-trapped-by-chinese-workers-is-freed?ft=1&f=1001
American businessman Chip Starnes finally left his factory in China on Thursday after he and a union negotiator worked out severance payments for Chinese employees. Starnes had been stuck inside his medical supply parts factory since last Friday. That's when workers, fearing they were all going to be laid off and that the company wasn't going to compensate them fairly, blocked all of the exits out of the plant. Starnes couldn't get out.
He told Nightly Business Report that the first few days of confinement were challenging, but the pressure was mostly psychological. "First couple of days were very, very tough. Nothing physical, more mental type stuff going on. Standing around you, anywhere you walk, 14, 16, 18 people following you."
Starnes, who is a co-owner of Florida-based Specialty Medical Supplies, had laid off part of the factory's workforce and transferred their jobs to India, where he can pay workers lower wages, according to Bloomberg News. Some staffers had gotten severance pay, and the remaining workers started demanding severance, too. Starnes spent six days in his facility before working out a compensation agreement with the workers even though they hadn't been laid off, reports The Associated Press. Details of the payments weren't discussed...
.......................................
The AP notes that "it is not rare in China for managers to be held by workers demanding back pay or other benefits, often from their Chinese owners. Police are reluctant to intervene, as they consider it a business dispute."
"I just thought I'd have maybe a little more support on the outside from the local government or something, saying this isn't the right way, how to get something done," Starnes told Nightly Business Report.
IS HE A FASCIST, OR WHAT? YEAH, THE AMERICAN WAY IS TO BEAT THE PROTESTERS, SPRAY THEM WITH PEPPER SPRAY, AND ARREST THEIR SORRY ASSES. TOO BAD THE CHINESE AREN'T SO EASILY INTIMIDATED, AND THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT NOT SO HOT TO TROT ON WORKERS' RIGHTS.
Some Chinese workers believe direct action is the best way to solve labor matters rather than going through government channels, James Zimmerman, the former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce China told the Wall Street Journal.
"The perception of workers and petitioners in general is that they do not have effective legal remedies to protect their interests, and find that taking action into their own hands gets near-immediate results," Zimmerman said.
As for Starnes, he plans to rest and "let the dust settle, and we're going to be rehiring a lot of the previous workers on new contracts as of Friday," he told the AP.
SO THE SORRY BASTARD FIRED THEM ALL, AND IS GOING TO PUNISH THEM WITH LOWER CONTRACTS? THIS IS WHAT YOU CALL A SLOW LEARNER...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)It has been one roller-coaster of a week! I don't know about you, but I've been living in a sauna for the past several days. I need to take a break now and drink, and cool down, and all that.
I will return! Maybe even later tonight. But you can go and post for a bit. Feel Free!
Tansy_Gold
(17,850 posts)And I especially like that quote.
"We're yearning for something beyond the every day."
The stuff dreams are made of.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos
Amazon's $600 million contract to build a cloud for the CIA might not happen. But if it does, it will be something Amazon has never done before: a so-called 'private' cloud built in a customer's data center.
If the project proceeds as planned, that would be a game-changer in the fledgling $131 billion cloud computing market.
To recap: In March, news broke that Amazon won a massive contract with the CIA but the details were sketchy. Amazon and the CIA were tight-lipped.
AWS is the largest "public" cloud provider, meaning the hardware is stored in its own data center and many users share it. That's what keeps the costs down. Private clouds use the same technologies, but are located in a company's own data center and not shared with others.
Democracyinkind
(4,015 posts)"After almost three hours of deliberations, lawmakers in the lower house voted 126 to 67 against discussing the draft law, following recommendations of the economics committee. The proposal has proved controversial among parliamentarians, who called it a black box, because its terms were held secret.
Tomorrow morning, the upper house will vote on the proposal for a second time after passing it last week. If that chamber approves it again, the bill returns to the lower house for another vote tomorrow afternoon, according to the parliaments services office. Should the lower house come to the same verdict as today, the law fails."
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-18/swiss-lower-house-votes-against-debating-u-s-untaxed-assets-law.html
(DiK comment: The lower house promtply rejected the bill - back to square one)
--
"the Swiss Federal Council National Council (lower house) held two successive votes, twice vetoed a Swiss banking allows circumvention Bank Secrecy Act, the transfer of customer information to the U.S. bill. This means that Swiss banking secrecy tradition is difficult to shake, and the Swiss banking clients around the United States in the exchange of information disputes will continue to ferment
Swiss America bank information exchange agreement can not take effect"
http://www.thestockmarketwatch.co/difficult-to-shake-the-traditional-swiss-banking-secrecy.html
--
"A year ago, the biggest story in banking was that the U.S. and Switzerland had reached an accord that would all but end the secrecy afforded to offshore account holders. What a difference a year can make.
As summer session draws to a close, the lower house of the Swiss parliament has rejected twice to approve a law which would have forced Swiss banks to hand over records to the Internal Revenue Service. The move would have been a sharp contrast to existing Swiss laws, dating back to the Middle Ages but made law with the passage of the Banking Law of 1934, which made it a crime to violate banking secrecy laws."
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2013/06/23/after-official-rejection-holes-in-swiss-policy-leave-banking-industry-uncertain/
xchrom
(108,903 posts)This Great Graphic comes from The Economist. It depicts world GDP on a year-over year basis for the world, high income countries, the BRICS and other emerging markets.
The Economist estimates that world growth slowed to a 2.1% pace in Q1 13, down a full percentage point from Q1 12. The high incomes countries are barely growing net-net. Europe is largely in recession. US growth in Q1 has been revised lower. The prospects for Q2 look poor. US growth has not improved, though the euro zone contraction may have eased, it is still appears to be contracting. Japanese growth is likely to lead again, with both exports and domestic consumption continuing to recover.
Emerging market often grow faster than the high income countries, though it does not always lead to superior asset returns. The BRICS have slowed, as have other emerging markets. The sharp rise in global interest rates starting in late-May will not help matters. The increase in interest rates is not a reflection of greater demand for capital due to increased activity. Rather the rise in rates reflects portfolio adjustments in response to the tapering talk the US (less stimulus is not the same thing as no stimulus), continued selling of foreign assets by Japanese investors, and the liquidity squeeze in China.
Read more: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MarcToMarket/~3/rPKqQy8S-hQ/great-graphic-world-gdp.html#ixzz2Xc0c3l7x
Democracyinkind
(4,015 posts)" This free-trade deal is the first between China and a continental European economy, and the first with one of the 20 leading economies of the globe, Li said at the signing ceremony. This has huge meaning for global free-trade.
China has hinted that if allows offshore trading of the yuan it could make Switzerland its financial center, and Swiss watch makers hope to see Chinese duties of 16 to 12 percent on watches fall as a result of the deal."
http://www.chinabusinessreview.com/china-and-switzerland-sign-preliminary-free-trade-deal/
(DiK comment: As predicted in an earlier WEE thread... Switzerland gets in on the renmibi racket for the small price of sacrificing what's left of the Swiss manufacturing sector (except for watches, as the Chinese seem to love them)).
Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)Why Some Men Have a Dog And No Wife:
1. The later you are, the more excited your dogs are to see you.
2. Dogs don't notice if you call them by another dog's name.
3. Dogs like it if you leave a lot of things on the floor.
4. A dog's parents never visit.
5. Dogs agree that you have to raise your voice to get your point across.
6. Dogs find you amusing when you're drunk.
7. Dogs like to go hunting and fishing.
8. A dog will not wake you up at night to ask, "If I died, would you get another dog?"
9. If a dog has babies, you can put an ad in the paper and give them away.
10.. A dog will let you put a studded collar on it without calling you a pervert.
11.. If a dog smells another dog on you, they don't get mad. They just think it's interesting.
And last... but not least:
12. If a dog leaves, it won't take half of your stuff.
To test this theory:
Lock your wife and your dog in the garage for an hour. Then open it and see who's happy to see you.
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)So we were out running errands and stopped for a pizza. A pop-up storm developed with thunder and lightening. Uh oh. We rushed home and were greeted by our big dog, totally frightened, shaky, muddy, and outside of the 6-foot wooden fence! The other 3 small dogs were inside the fence nestled in the dog house, and dry. Thankfully.
We looked all around the fence and could not find any holes the big dog escaped thru. So we surmised that he jumped the fence!
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Both the Lab and the grandpuppy: total cowards, hyperventilating, going to pieces...
I don't think the Scotties even notice.
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)Fireworks, loud sirens, the automatic tool that is used to put nails in roofs, that dog was so neurotic, truly pitiful.
But this big dog we have now, first tries to dig a big hole in the dirt next to the house. aaargh.
Supposedly there is a shirt dogs can wear that helps alleviate the anxiety, but I haven't bought it yet. Seriously thinking about it though
http://www.thundershirt.com/
Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)When I had the Fudd and Stoli, she was a total wreck for thunder, fireworks, even those little crackerballs the kids pop in the street. The Fudd could have cared less.
With Rosco and Sara, she shakes like a leaf and hides, and we give her some Benadryl. Rosco hears thunder, and he starts celebrating. "Let me out in the rain, oh boy I can hardly wait". Same with fireworks. Last night, he was just laying out by the pool relaxing. Sara was hiding behind my chair. She doesn't like machinery or garbage trucks either.
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)The beagle was female, appx 24 pounds. Thunder/lightening was the worst, but she didn't like the UPS guy or mailman either, nor any loud noises.
This 45 pound male dog, so far, is just fearful of thunder and lightening. I think it might have something to do with the static in the air from the lightening and then the loud thunder. Plain rain doesn't bothering him.
I just ordered the thundershirt for this dog. I'll let you know how it works.
edit to add
maybe I'll try the Benedryl too. I have given it to a different dog when she scratches from allergies. But it takes awhile for it to take effect, then she goes to sleep.
Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)Just as good and a lot cheaper.
In fact, I'd better wrap some in some cheese now. I hear thunder in the distance.
I read some google and amazon reviews on the thundershirt. The verdict: works for some dogs, not for others.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)The New Wild West
Dancing to the tune of their corporate benefactors, governments of the ruling G8 countries are enacting complex agriculture agreements delivering large tracts of prime cut African soil into the portfolios of their multinational bedmates.
Desperate for foreign investment, countries throughout Africa are at the mercy of their new colonial masters national and international agrochemical corporations, fighting for land, water and control of the worlds food supplies. Driven overwhelmingly by self-interest and profit, the current crop of investors differ little from their colonial ancestors. The means may have changed, but the aim to rape and pillage, no matter the sincere sounding rhetoric, remains more or less the same.
Regarded by her northern guides as agriculturally underperforming, Sub-Saharan Africa is seen The African Centre for Bio-diversity (ACB) relate, as a new frontier, a place to make profits, with an eye on land, food and biofuels in particular". Africa, then, is the new Wild West; smallholder farmers and indigenous people are the natives Indians, the multi nationals and their democratically elected representatives or salesmen - the settlers.
Various initiatives offering what is, indisputably, much needed support and investment flowing north to south. Key amongst these is The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition in Africa (NAFSNA), designed by the governments of the eight richest economies, for some of the poorest countries in the world. The New Alliance was born out of the G8 summit in May 2012 at Camp David and, according to, War on Want (WoW), has been modelled on the new vision of private investment in agriculture developed by management consultants McKinsey in conjunction with the ABCD group of leading grain traders (ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus) and other multinational agribusiness companies. (Ibid) It has been written in honourable terms to sit comfortably within the Africa Unions Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP), bestowing an aura of international credibility.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The pianos are moved, it was practically nothing for trauma. The free papers are disposed of.
I'm off to the pool...even though it's only 70F, the humidity is 78%. I am gasping for air..and cool.
100% wet sounds a lot better...try to beat the storm.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)A 2008 paper by Arindrajit Dube, Ethan Kaplan, and Suresh Naidu (hat tip MS) found evidence that the CIA and/or members of the Executive branch either disclosed or acted on information about top-secret authorizations of coups. Stocks in highly exposed firms rose more in the pre-coup authorization phase than they did when the coup was actually launched.
Heres how the dataset was developed:
Out of this, the authors found four coup attempts that met their criteria: the ouster of Muhammed Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, two programs in Guatemala in 1952 and 1954 that eventually removed Jacobo Arbenz Guzman; the unsuccessful effort to topple Castro in 1961, and an operation that began in Chile in 1970 and culminated in overthrow of Salvador Allende. Then they chose companies:
They used these criteria to devise two samples (based on different definitions of highly exposed) and tested both.
Their conclusions:
We find that coup authorizations, on net, contributed more to stock price rises of highly exposed and well connected companies than the coup events themselves. These price changes reflect sizeable shifts in beliefs about the probability of coup occurrence.
Our results are robust across countries, except Cuba, as well as to a variety of controls for alternate sources of information, including public events and newspaper articles. The anomalous results for Cuba are consistent with the information leaks and inad- equate organization that surrounded that particular coup attempt.
Now sports fans, given the fact that theres reason to believe that people in the intelligence with access to privileged information werent above leaking it to people who could take advantage of it, why should we expect things to be different now? And given what has already been revealed about the NSAs data gathering, if you were a clever trader and had access to this information, how would you mine it? How would you go about finding patterns or events to exploit?
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Edward J. Snowden, the whistleblower on global U.S. surveillance, has been called all kinds of things by members of Congress over the past couple of weeks including a defector and a man guilty of treason. Federal prosecutors have prepared a sealed indictment against him. At the same time, he has been lauded by Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, as a member of the young, technically minded generation that Barack Obama betrayed. Assange called President Obama the real traitor. Across the world, and in the United States itself, many people sympathize with Snowden. They see his leaks as a needed stand for individual freedom against the security-driven mass surveillance of a U.S. National Security Agency armed with the technology to gather and analyze the digital trails of our lives.
So what is Snowden? A self-aggrandizing geek who betrayed his country and his employer, Booz Allen Hamilton, exposed the United States to greater risk of terrorist attack, and may now wittingly or unwittingly have made his trove of secrets available to China and Russia, nations that are no longer enemies but are rival powers? Or a brave young American determined to fight at the risk of long imprisonment against his countrys post-9/11 lurch toward invasion of citizens lives, ever more intrusive surveillance, undifferentiated data-hauling of the worlds digital exhaust fumes (for storage in a one-million-square-foot fortress in Utah), and the powers of a compliant secret court to issue warrants for international eavesdropping and e-mail vacuuming?
Snowden, apparently holed up in the transit area of Moscows Sheremetyevo airport, has disappeared from view. Perhaps one way to assess what he has done is to imagine how things would stand if he had never existed... We would not know how the N.S.A., through its Prism and other programs, has become, in the words of my colleagues James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, the virtual landlord of the digital assets of Americans and foreigners alike. We would not know how it has been able to access the e-mails or Facebook accounts or videos of citizens across the world; nor how it has secretly acquired the phone records of millions of Americans; nor how through requests to the compliant and secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (F.I.S.A.) it has been able to bend nine U.S. Internet companies to its demands for access to clients digital information. We would not be debating whether the United States really should have turned surveillance into big business, offering data-mining contracts to the likes of Booz Allen and, in the process, high-level security clearance to myriad folk who probably should not have it. We would not have a serious debate at last between Europeans, with their more stringent views on privacy, and Americans about where the proper balance between freedom and security lies. We would not have legislation to bolster privacy safeguards and require more oversight introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Nor would we have a letter from two Democrats to the N.S.A. director, Gen. Keith B. Alexander, saying that a government fact sheet about surveillance abroad contains an inaccurate statement (and where does that assertion leave Alexanders claims of the effectiveness and necessity of Prism?).
In short, a long-overdue debate about what the U.S. government does and does not do in the name of post-9/11 security the standards applied in the F.I.S.A. court, the safeguards and oversight surrounding it and the Prism program, the protection of civil liberties against the devouring appetites of intelligence agencies armed with new data-crunching technology would not have occurred, at least not now. All this was needed because, since it was attacked in an unimaginable way, the United States has gone through a Great Disorientation. Institutions at the core of the checks and balances that frame American democracy and civil liberties failed. Congress gave a blank check to the president to wage war wherever and whenever he pleased. The press scarcely questioned the march to a war in Iraq begun under false pretenses. Guantánamo made a mockery of due process. The United States, in Obamas own words, compromised its basic values as the president gained unbound powers. Snowdens phrase, turnkey tyranny, was over the top but still troublingOne of the most striking aspects of the Obama presidency has been the vast distance between his rhetoric on these issues since 2008 and any rectifying action. If anything he has doubled-down on security at the expense of Americans supposedly inalienable rights: Hence the importance of a whistleblower.
Snowden has broken the law of his country. We do not know what, if anything, he has offered China or Russia or been coerced or tricked into handing over. He has, through his choice of destination, embraced states that suppress individual rights and use the Internet as an instrument of control and persecution. His movements have sent the wrong message. Still, he has performed a critical service. History, the real sort, will judge him kindly.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)... Since $1525 support broke, gold has been in the throes of stop loss selling. Gold is now over 2% below its 200 day moving average. Physical supply is extremely tight. The precious metals analysts where I trade in Zurich have very good contacts among the refiners. They tell me the order backlog is over four weeks now versus four days in a normal market. Same for Shanghai and Mumbai where you see sharply increasing demand as US Dollar gold prices fall and gold premiums rise. Here in the United States the US Mint cannot keep up with demand for gold and silver eagles.
RCW: So is this correction a normal reaction to the Fed? Or has the fact of QE magnified the volatility of gold (and everything else)?
HS: The shorts in the market are running out of short fuel. The decline in gold has been going on since late 2011 and is very long in the tooth. Sentiment against gold is virtually 100% right now among Western gold analysts. This is a Rothschild moment.
RCW: This is a reference to the famous dictum by Baron Rothschild: Buy when there's blood on the street?
HS: It is. There seems to be an expectation that the end of QE will be bullish for the Dollar and therefore bearish for gold. My view is the end of QE will be bearish for all those asset classes which require QE for life support and/or do not do well in a rising interest rate environment. That would include the bulk of US equity and fixed income markets. ...
bread_and_roses
(6,335 posts)Believe It or Not!13 Mindblowing Facts About Americas Tax-Dodging Corporations
by Richard Eskow
1. Were told we cant afford full Social Security benefits, even though closing corporate tax-haven loopholes would pay for Obamas chained CPI benefit cut more than ten times over!
Abusive offshore tax havens cost the US $150 billion in lost tax revenue every year (via FACT Coalition). Thats $1.5 trillion over the next ten years.
The chained CPI cut, proposed by President Obama and supported by Republicans, is projected to save a total of $122 billion to $130 billion over the same time period by denying benefits to seniors and disabled people.
Its true. Serious politicians and pundits are demanding that ordinary people sacrifice earned benefits, while at the same time allowing corporations to avoid more than ten times as much in taxes.
So how can there be any question about where President Mellifluous stands or who's side he's on?
3. Wells Fargo got $8 billion in tax breaks, even as executives at its subsidiary Wachovia avoided indictment for laundering money for the Mexican drug cartels!
... And yet no criminal indictments were handed down because, as a Senate investigator told Bloomberg News, Theres no capacity to regulate or punish them because theyre too big to be threatened with failure.
...
9. Big corporations paid $216 million to Congress and got $223 billion in tax breaks!
... more at link - not anything we haven't known before, but a nice short format, sort of a quick cheat sheet on perfidies.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)I'm being run ragged this weekend, and today it continues. If I'm still awake tonight, I'll probably get a head start on SMW, so look for more there. Have a great day!
kickysnana
(3,908 posts)A pub relative is on unemployment but we are not in a red state so it could be worse. If I had to go to confession, I would need to schedule overtime for my thoughts about pubs.
Did anyone ever figure out who Red, used to =Communists, is suddenly Conservative? That was a monumental shift. Perhaps: Black is white, followed by Shock Doctorine?
Demeter
(85,373 posts)I think it was about then that the color line was drawn...
I am grateful to the Weekenders who picked up the slack this weekend. They did good, don't you think?
Wiki says it was 2000
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)FUNNY but TRUE: How News is Reported - corporate mainstream media, appx 2 minutes
Demeter
(85,373 posts)xchrom
(108,903 posts)China's banking system is stable, despite ongoing fears of a "credit crunch" spooking financial markets, according to the country's top regulator.
"The issue with tight liquidity in the interbank market has started to ease," said the head of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, Shang Fulin.
Fears over bad bank loans sent Chinese stocks to a four-and-a-half-year low last week.
Global markets also fell sharply.
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)xchrom
(108,903 posts)xchrom
(108,903 posts)Cyprus's debt ratings have been downgraded to "default" after it announced it would delay paying back 1bn euros ($1.3bn; £860m) of bonds.
Standard & Poor's lowered the island's credit ratings to "selective default" from CCC/C.
Cyprus will swap government bonds maturing in 2013 through to the first quarter of 2016 with new debt that matures at between five and 10 years.
The EU country has to do the bond swap to meet the terms of its bailout.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)EU leaders have ended their summit in Brussels by agreeing to put 6bn euros (£5bn; $8bn) into youth training schemes amid record unemployment.
They also agreed to promote lending to credit-starved small businesses, using an extra 10bn euros in funding.
Nearly a quarter of jobseekers aged 18 to 25 in the EU have no work.
Critics say the schemes will have little impact until countries return to growth but Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann said they were a "first step".
xchrom
(108,903 posts)He said it as an omnipresent local member for Griffith, and he said it again the next day, immediately after wresting back the Labor leadership. ''The China resources boom is over,'' Kevin Rudd warned, and he will probably continue to sound the warning as he campaigns to extend his stint as PM beyond a couple of months.
The point he underscores is that Australia's economy must make profound adjustments to cope with the reality that the resources boom is on the wane.
In posthumously characterising it as the ''China'' resources boom, Rudd helped make it abundantly clear why commodities prices and mining investments are sliding, along with the share prices of all companies within the resources orbit. Just maybe, China's legendary appetite for our resources is not what it once was.
The events of the past fortnight or so in China's money markets have raised the eyebrows of even the staunchest of China bulls, and armed the growing band of doubters with more ammunition.
Read more: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/business/chinas-banks-tread-fine-line-in-chase-for-growth-20130628-2p2r0.html#ixzz2Xi2lRTrY
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Almost a third of 32 hospitals and health systems involved in an experiment aimed at changing the way medical providers are paid may exit the program, a potential threat to the Affordable Care Acts ambitious cost-saving goals.
Medicares Pioneer program is designed to save money by more efficiently managing care for patients with chronic diseases, such as diabetes and dementia. The providers agreed to a three-year plan to forgo traditional fee-for-service payments, where hospitals charge for every procedure, and instead get a fixed monthly stipend for individual patients.
Begun in January 2012, Pioneer is one of several programs involving 252 providers created under the law to experiment with new payment models. Nine Pioneer members have told the U.S. they may exit, said Brian Cook, a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services spokesman. At least four may join other accountable-care programs that carry less financial risk, he said.
Depending on the number of patients involved, it really shows a critical cost-containment approach in the Affordable Care Act is running into real problems, said Robert Blendon, a health-policy professor at Harvard Universitys School of Public Health, in a telephone interview today.