October 3, 2012

Spain's Tax Take Tumbles as Companies Go Abroad

Spain's corporate tax take has tumbled by almost two thirds from pre-crisis levels as small businesses fail and a growing number of big corporations seek profits abroad to compensate for the prolonged downturn at home.


Carlos Sanchez Pereyra | Photographer's Choice | Getty Images
Attractive tax benefits can accrue to companies expanding overseas, but for Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's government, which now seems resigned to accepting a European financial rescue, the income flow is reversed.

Rajoy has passed 65 billion euros ($84 billion) of austerity measures including public sector wage cuts and consumer tax hikes but has been reluctant to lean on businesses that are key to maintaining jobs when one in four Spaniards is unemployed.

Despite its domestic woes, Spain is home to globally successful corporations such as banks Santander [SAN-LN 105.25 --- UNCH ] and BBVA [77GD-LN 0.00 --- UNCH ], telephone operator Telefonica [06LR-LN 23.12 --- UNCH ],retailer Inditex [IDEXF 126.5078 --- UNCH ] and oil company Repsol [REP-DE 14.96 0.09 (+0.61%) ].

http://www.cnbc.com/id/49267996

October 3, 2012

Lake County considers 'trash-cams' at school cafeterias

http://www.clickorlando.com/news/Lake-County-considers-trash-cams-at-school-cafeterias/-/1637132/16830940/-/or18q4/-/index.html

Lake County School Board officials are considering attaching cameras to school cafeteria trash cans to study what students are tossing after officials found that most of the vegetables on the school menu end up in the trash can.

New federal laws require students to take a healthy produce at lunchtime, but last year in Lake County, students tossed $75,000 worth of produce in the garbage.

"It's a big issue, and it's very hard to get our hands around it," said School Board member Todd Howard, who suggested "trash-cams." "They have to take (the vegetable), and then it ends up in the trash can, and that's a waste of taxpayer money. It's also not giving students the nutrition that they need."

October 3, 2012

CNN showing pics of Benghazi compound.

What looks like bloodstains on side of toilet, hand print on wall, destruction in compound...

Reporter describing items.

CNN reporting investigators still not on site, may never go.

October 2, 2012

Hospitals in D.C., Va. to lose millions from Medicare

Hospitals in the District and Northern Virginia will lose millions of dollars in Medicare funding over the next year because too many of their patients were re­admitted to a hospital within weeks of being released, according to Medicare data and interviews with hospital officials.

Beginning Monday, the hospitals will receive lower reimbursements on Medicare claims filed with the government for each admitted patient. Over the year, the total amount of those reductions will vary from $1.2 million for MedStar Washington Hospital Center in Northwest Washington, the region’s largest private hospital, to about $12,000 for Reston Hospital Center in Virginia. Of 16 hospitals in the District and Northern Virginia, all but three will get paid less.

Medicare will begin penalizing hospitals if readmission rates for patients with heart failure, heart attack or pneumonia are too high.

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Some of the hardest-hit facilities are inner-city hospitals that tend to treat sicker, poorer patients. These patients sometimes end up being readmitted because they have a harder time getting medication and follow-up doctors’ appointments, often because they lack transportation, hospital officials said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/hospitals-in-dc-va-to-lose-millions-from-medicare/2012/09/30/2fe0f96c-08ca-11e2-afff-d6c7f20a83bf_story.html

October 2, 2012

Egyptian women fear regression on rights

A cartoon recently published in an Egyptian daily shows an elderly bridegroom dragging by the hand a little girl in bridal garb clutching a teddy bear. “Okay,” he sighs, “I’ll take you to the amusement park but only after we’ve consummated our marriage.”

The joke, which is doing the rounds on Facebook, is part of an explosion of outrage in liberal circles provoked by Mohamed Saad al-Azhari, an ultraconservative Salafi cleric on the panel drafting Egypt’s new constitution. Along with some others on the panel, he wants to abolish laws setting 18 as the minimum age of marriage for girls.

Mr Azhari, who vehemently denies accusations that he advocates child marriage, also wants to remove a proposed clause banning the trafficking of women. He said he was concerned it would be used to prosecute parents who marry off their underage daughters. The text now under consideration by the panel only bans slavery and the sex trade.

To the dismay of rights activists, the Islamists who dominate the constitutional panel have also made it clear they favour diluting – or even withdrawing – Egypt’s commitment to international conventions upholding the rights of children and banning discrimination against women. Their argument is that provisions in the agreements breach Islamic law.

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/b203c126-06f5-11e2-92ef-00144feabdc0.html#axzz287nugtrK

October 1, 2012

Payroll Tax Cut Is Unlikely to Survive Into Next Year

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/01/business/economy/payroll-tax-cut-unlikely-to-survive-into-next-year.html

WASHINGTON — Regardless of who wins the presidential election in November or what compromises Congress strikes in the lame-duck session to keep the economy from automatic tax increases and spending cuts, 160 million American wage earners will probably see their tax bills jump after Jan. 1.

That is when the temporary payroll tax holiday ends. Its expiration means less income in families’ pocketbooks — the tax increase would be about $95 billion in 2013 alone — at a time when the economy is little better than it was when the White House reached a deal on the tax break last year.

Independent analysts say that the expiration of the tax cut could shave as much as a percentage point off economic output in 2013, and cost the economy as many as one million jobs. That is because the typical American family had $1,000 in additional income from the lower tax.

But there is still little desire to make an extension part of the negotiations that are under way to avert the huge tax increases and across-the-board spending cuts, known as the fiscal cliff, that will start in January without a deal. For example, without any action, the Bush-era tax cuts will expire and the military and other domestic spending programs will be reduced.

October 1, 2012

Study: Baby Boomers’ Health Very Poor, Getting Worse

WASHINGTON (CBSDC) – The Baby Boomer generation’s overall health has been on a sharp decline.

Australian researchers from Adelaide’s three universities have completed the first stage of a report on the generation born between the end of the Second World War and the mid-1960s.

Obesity among baby boomers is more than double the rate of their parents at the same age, and boomers with three or more chronic conditions was 700 percent greater than the previous generation.

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“We have to do something now in terms of reducing obesity as a risk factor if we’re going to manage health costs into the future, but I think more importantly if baby boomers are going to be able to lead active and productive lives in their later years,” he told ABC.

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/10/01/study-baby-boomers-health-very-poor-getting-worse/

October 1, 2012

Meet The Blogger Who May Have Just Saved The American Economy

The Fed's announcement of QE Unlimited was a clear departure from past strategy: Rather than seeing asset purchases as an amount of money injected into the financial system, the Fed is now aggressively using the power of future guidance.

It's a step in the direction of Nominal GDP targeting, the hot idea endorsed recently by Michael Woodford at the Jackson Hole conference.

But while Woodford is one of the most respected monetary academics in the world, the economist who deserves the most credit for taking a wonky idea and making it mainstream is Bentley economics Professor Scott Sumner who writes the blog The Money Illusion.

Tyler Cown of Marginal Revolution writes:

I haven’t seen anyone else say it yet, so I will. The Fed’s policy move today might not have happened — probably would not have happened — if not for the heroic blogging efforts of Scott Sumner. Numerous other bloggers, including the market monetarists and some Keynesians and neo Keynesians have been important too, plus Michael Woodford and some others, but Scott is really the guy who got the ball rolling and persuaded us all that there is something here and wouldn’t let us forget about it.

And Matt Yglesias writes:

Professors at Bentley University who've never published a famous book don't normally shift the public debate. But Sumner's vigorous and relentless blogging throughout the crisis on the potential of expectations-focused monetary policy really broke through. It all began with some links from Tyler Cowen and perhaps a tiff with Paul Krugman. I became a regular reader and his ideas have done a lot to influence me, and you can clearly see the influence on Ryan Avent at the Economist, Matt O'Brien at the Atlantic, Ramesh Ponnuru at National Review, Josh Barro at Bloomberg, and a few of the Wonkblog contributors. Outside the exciting world of online economics punditry, NGDP targeting hasn't (yet!) caught fire as rapidly but it gained explicit allegiance from Christina Romer, Krugman, the economics team at Goldman Sachs, and eventually Chicago Federal Reserve President Charles Evans who started out with a different but similar-in-spirit program.

http://www.businessinsider.com/who-is-scott-sumner-2012-9

Not sure I agree with QE Infinity but this is interesting.