November 27, 2013

Detroit accused of exaggerating $18bn debts in push for bankruptcy

AND IT'S NOT AS IF ALL THAT MONEY WAS DUE YESTERDAY, OR EVEN TOMORROW....THEY'LL JUST SUCK ALL THE ASSETS OUT, THEN KICK THE REST OF THE DEBT DOWN THE ROAD....THE "DEBTS" TO GOLDMAN AND CO SHOULD BE DECLARED NULL AND VOID, IMO. THE FRAUDULENT DERVIATIVES GS SOLD DETROIT SHOULD BE STUFFED DOWN BLANKFEIN'S THROAT---DEMETER.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/20/detroit-accused-exaggerating-18bn-debts?CMP=ema_565



Detroit's debts are a fraction of the $18bn lawyers pushing for bankruptcy say they are, and their costs are "irrelevant, misleading and inflated," according to a report released Wednesday. A Demos thinktank report, issued as a city judge decides whether to allow Detroit to file for the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history, lays the blame for the city's woes at the feet of falling revenues, Wall Street banks and "extreme assumptions" calculated to make its problems worse than they are.

"There is no doubt that the city has suffered from structural decline and that state and city policies have not successfully addressed that decline. But that is not the immediate issue in a municipal insolvency. The issue is that the cash currently available does not cover the current expenses of the city," said Walter Turbeville, the report's author, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker and a leading expert in infrastructure finance and public private partnerships.

Kevyn Orr, the state appointed emergency manager, has argued that the city's pension and healthcare liabilities are a leading cause of the city's woes. City workers and retirees face draconian cuts on the $3.5bn in pension payments, and another $6bn in healthcare benefits they are owed. The average Detroit pensioner gets $19,000 a year. Under a deal now being discussed they would be given 16 cents to the dollar, cutting the average pension to $3,040. The report claims Orr's focus on cutting benefits and other debts are "inappropriate and, in important ways, not rooted in fact." Turberville questions the necessity of those cuts and the assumptions that underpin Orr's foundation for the $18bn total. According to the report:

• The emergency manager includes $5.8bn of debt from the water and sewerage department as a liability of the city, even though the department serves more than 3 million people across southeastern Michigan. Detroit has just 714,000 residents. "This debt is not a liability of the city's general fund; and, even if it were, only a fraction of it would allocable to the city," he writes.

• Orr's assertion that the city's pension funds have a $3.5bn shortfall is an "estimate, very different from the certain liability of a financial debt, based on calculations that use extreme assumptions that depart from most cities' and states' general practice," he writes.

FOR SOME SENSIBLE POLICY SUGGESTIONS, READ ON AT LINK

November 22, 2013

Weekend Economists Go Full Tin Hat November 22-24, 2013

Ah, November! Deprived of the sweet smell of burning leaves by the Clean Air Act, we are instead treated to the hot electric smell of brains on overload.

It's Conspiracy Month, the month when the deepening gloom of winter, the slough of Economic Despair, and the sheer perversity of Man join together to make 30 days seem like 30 years of a bad marriage....and worse prose!

It is 50 years since our best and brightest was cut down by an assassin, and his brother shortly thereafter. I'm with the conspiracists on this one...something's rotten in the state of Texas, and until Poppy is gone and his heirs richly compensated, we probably won't know who ran the plan that took JFK out of action.

Harry Reid finally took the plunge and nuked the filibuster, for which he would have received the grateful thanks of a nation...4 years ago. Now, the best he can expect is a snarl. Conspiracy? Or just sheer laziness?

But perhaps the longest running conspiracy theory in this nation is the FEDERAL RESERVE BANKING SYSTEM. Here are some photos of the NY branch, which was blown up in Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995), and perhaps other films, although that is the only one I've seen...(3 guesses which side I was rooting for...he may be a nice guy, but I'm not fond of Bruce Willis, and I was always a sucker for an accent).



The Main Entrance: The Bank employs over 3,000 people with careers in economics, law, markets, service, human resources and more. This picture shows employees entering and exiting the Bank through the main entrance at 33 Liberty Street.



The main building of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York was designed by the architects York and Sawyer. The stones are Indiana limestone and Ohio sandstone. The building's lowest floor is 50 feet below sea level.



The Bank: Architects York and Sawyer modeled the Bank after Florentine palaces in Italy. The size of the building and its façade molding suggest both the Pitti and Vecchio Palaces of Florence.



The Strozzi Palace in Florence, Italy, was one of the inspirations for the Bank's architects, York and Sawyer. Our stonework, arches and ironwork were modeled after the Strozzi Palace.



The original lanterns, created by metalworker Samuel Yellin, still adorn the outside of the main entrance to the Bank at 33 Liberty Street.



This is a clock mounted on the wall of the first floor of our main building. It is an original clock designed by metalworker Samuel Yellin, whose decorative work is prominent throughout the first floor.



Board Room Table: Made in 1935, this board room table is made of walnut with burl inlay. Reflected in the shine on the table is a chandelier designed to complement the Yellin metalwork, which graces the remainder of the executive floor of our building.


Of course, the building reflects the time (and the place): Art Deco, ripping off palaces, etc. It wouldn't do to house the Princes of the World in a converted K-Mart big box strip mall, would it?

And perhaps that's where it starts: the smell of money. That's what drives a conspiracy, isn't it? Cui Bono?

November 16, 2013

Weekend Economists Out on an Idle Idol Idyll November 15-17, 2013

Today's theme is Idleness, especially in contrast to the Capitalist Work Ethic (for it has gone way beyond the Protestant work ethic, which did allow for rewards on earth like wages, time off, holidays, etc...) We have Ghost Dog out in Iberia, to thank for the topic.

If you can put two brain cells together, after such an exhausting week, you can join in, too! Tell us what you are best at NOT doing, or where, or when...or help mock the frantic Banksters and their entourages, as they try to abandon a sinking ship, only to find all the dry land is under water and their baggage drags them under.

Bring us mythic, dreamy music and tuneful myths. Eat lotus! Kick back and enjoy the Weekend.



Vailima, Samoa
Home of Robert Louis Stevenson
1892

November 14, 2013

We coulda had a

Universal single payer health care system!

November 13, 2013

Maybe ought to add this to the resource links

Michael Olenick: Comprehensive Review of ObamaCare Plans Reveals Not Only High Cost for Atrocious Coverage, but Also Apparent Violations of ACA Requirements


http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/11/michael-olenick-comprehensive-review-of-obamacare-plans-reveals-not-only-high-cost-for-atrocious-coverage-but-also-apparent-violations-of-aca-requirements.html

Yves here. From what Lambert and I can tell, Michael Olenick is the first to publish any sort of comprehensive analysis of Obamacare plans. And when you read his piece, you will see why were are likely to continue to be subjected to barrages of cherry-picked anecdotes in lieu of analysis.

His three-person family in his Florida zip code has 132 plans available to them. As he describes, the one mechanism that Obamacare stipulated to simplify the shopping task a bit, that of showing what the each plan would pay out under two specific treatment situations, was not disclosed for the overwhelming majority of plans on the healthcare.gov site. That meant that Olenick had to find the the information elsewhere and input it into his comparison.

But the most stunning part is the degree to which the plans fall short of their stipulated “actuarial” payouts. At least for Olenick’s family, the plans fall well short of the mandated level of reimbursements (for instance, a bronze plan is touted as covering 60% of expected medical costs). It’s unlikely that Olenick’s family would produce results that are out of line with results for states with similar regulations (note that some states have additional requirements that will influence plan structure and pricing).

It is finally important to recognize that the overwhelming majority of reporters and commentators have not been gone the route Olenick has, of obtaining actual detailed plan data for a particular family or individual. Instead, for the most part, they have relied on a dataset provided by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for every health care plan in the Federal marketplace. It has the appearance of being comprehensive, as Charles Ornstein tells us in his post “Not a good price calculator“(hat tip Lambert):

MUCH, MUCH MORE

November 8, 2013

Weekend Economists Honor Our Veterans November 8-10, 2013

History



The markets will be open Monday, but just because the DOW sees fit to ignore the soldiers, sailors, air corps and Marines that risked their lives and futures for the 1% Bankster Elite's right to do what they do so well (and it ain't printable, so use your imagination)....as I say, just because the markets are closed to the idea of celebrating veterans, doesn't mean we have to be...

November 8, 2013

Drones from the Other Side War Is A Crime .org

Imagine you awake to the sound of a machine noisily buzzing over your house, and another machine nearby in the sky, and another. These machines and others like them have been around for months. They never leave. While you live in the United States, the machines belong to the government of Pakistan. The machines are unmanned drones armed with missiles. Every once in a while they blow up a house or a car or a couple of kids playing soccer or a grandmother walking to the store, sometimes a McDonald's or a shopping center.

Imagine that you've learned to live with this. The popularity of homeschooling has skyrocketed, as nobody wants to send their kids outside. Telecommuting is now the norm for those able to maintain employment. But there's no getting used to the change. Your kids wake up screaming and refuse to sleep. Your rage makes you physically ill. Antidepressants are on everybody's shopping lists, bu t shopping is a life-and-death proposition. Canada is facing an immigration crisis. So is Mexico.

Now, Pakistan claims to be targeting evil criminals with surgical precision. And some in the U.S. government go along with this. But others object. The U.S. Supreme Court declares the drone deaths to be murder or war -- murder being illegal under U.S. law, and war being illegal under the U.N. Charter via Article VI of the U.S. Constitution.

The U.S. Congress insists that criminals must be indicted and prosecuted, that negotiations with hostile groups cannot succeed while drones tear the negotiators limb from limb, and that Pakistan has no right to put its robots in our skies no matter what its good intentions. Statements agreeing with this opposition to the drones are signed by everybody who's anybody. Popular demonstrations against the drones, and -- bravely -- in the face of the drones, dwarf anything seen before. In fact, the world joins in, and people protest Pakistan's murder spree all over the globe. Human rights groups in various countries denounce it as criminal. The Pakistani prime minister reportedly checks off men, women, and children to kill on a list at regular Tuesday meetings. He's burned in effigy across the United States.

But Pakistani human rights groups take a different tack. In their view, some of the drone murders in the United States are illegal and some are not. It depends on the knowledge and intentions of the Pakistani officials -- did they know those kids were just playing soccer or did they believe their soccer ball was an imminent threat to the nation of Pakistan? Was blowing up those kids necessary, discrete, and proportionate? Were they militants or civilians? Was blowing them up part of an armed conflict or an act of law enforcement, and what type of armed conflict or what law was being enforced? Paki stan, these groups argue, must not blow people up without identifying them, without verifying that they cannot be captured, and without taking care not to kill too many civilians in the process. Further, Pakistan must reveal the details of its legal reasoning and decision making, so that the process has transparency. Indeed, Pakistan must begin running its proposed drone killings by a judge who must sign off on them -- a Pakistani judge, but a judge nonetheless.

The Pakistani human rights groups are not made up of evil people. They very much mean well. They want to reduce the number of Americans killed by drones. And they are not permitted to declare all drone killing illegal, because these killings might be part of a war, and these groups have adopted as a matter of strict principle the position that wars must never be opposed, only tactics within wars. They believe this makes them "objective" and "credible," and it certainly does do that with certain people. These Pakistani human rights groups are not pulling the trigger, they're trying to stop it being pulled as often. Lumping them together with the Pakistani military would be Bushian (with us or against us) thinking. But it's harder to see that from under the drones here in the United States with the kids wailing and Uncle Joe's brains still staining the side of the Pizza Hut, than it would be perhaps in Pakistan or at the United Nations Headquarters in Islamabad.

From here in the United States, the cries are for justice. Many want the prime minister of Pakistan prosecuted for murder. Many are beginning to view the absence of such legal justice as grounds for violence. I'm growing worried over what my neighbors and even myself might unleash on the rest of the world. I'm beginning to fall in love with the feeling of hatred....


FROM EMAIL NEWSLETTER

November 8, 2013

Lessons from the Fall of RomneyCare By Michael D. Tanner FROM 2008!

http://www.cato.org/policy-report/januaryfebruary-2008/lessons-fall-romneycare

When then-Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney signed into law the nation's most far-reaching state health care reform proposal, it was widely expected to be a centerpiece of his presidential campaign. In fact Governor Romney bragged that he would "steal" the traditionally Democratic issue of health care. "Issues which have long been the province of the Democratic Party to claim as their own will increasingly move to the Republican side of the aisle," he told Bloomberg News Service shortly after signing the bill. He told other reporters that the biggest difference between his health care plan and Hillary Clinton's was "mine got passed and hers didn't." Outside observers on both the Right and Left praised the program. Edmund Haislmaier of the Heritage Foundation hailed it as "one of the most promising strategies out there." And Hillary Clinton adviser Stuart Altman said, "The Massachusetts plan could become a catalyst and a galvanizing event at the national level, and a catalyst for other states."

Today, however, Romney seldom mentions his plan on the campaign trail. If pressed he maintains that he is "proud" of what he accomplished, while criticizing how the Democratic administration that succeeded him has implemented the program. Nevertheless, he now focuses on changing federal tax law in order to empower individuals to buy health insurance outside their employer, and on incentives for states to deregulate their insurance industry. He would also use block grants for both Medicaid and federal uncompensated care funds to encourage greater state innovation. He encourages states to experiment, but does not offer his own state as a model.

A Double Failure

There's good reason for his change of position. The Massachusetts plan was supposed to accomplish two things — achieve universal health insurance coverage while controlling costs. As Romney wrote in the Wall Street Journal, "Every uninsured citizen in Massachusetts will soon have affordable health insurance and the costs of health care will be reduced." In reality, the plan has done neither. Perhaps the most publicized aspect of the Massachusetts reform is its mandate that every resident have health insurance, whether provided by an employer or the government or purchased individually. "I like mandates," Romney said during a debate in New Hampshire. "The mandate works." But did it? Technically the last day to sign up for insurance in compliance with that mandate was November 15, (2007) though as a practical measure Massachusetts residents actually had until January 1, 2008. Those without insurance as of that date will lose their personal exemption for the state income tax when they file this spring. In 2009, the penalty will increase to 50 percent of the cost of a standard insurance policy. Such a mandate was, of course, a significant infringement on individual choice and liberty. As the Congressional Budget Office noted, the mandate was "unprecedented," and represented the first time that a state has required that an individual, simply because they live in a state and for no other reason, must purchase a specific government-designated product.

It was also a failure.

When the bill was signed, Governor Romney, the media, state lawmakers, and health care reform advocates hailed the mandate as achieving universal coverage. "All Massachusetts citizens will have health insurance. It's a goal Democrats and Republicans share, and it has been achieved by a bipartisan effort," Romney wrote. Before RomneyCare was enacted, estimates of the number of uninsured in Massachusetts ranged from 372,000 to 618,000. Under the new program, about 219,000 previously uninsured residents have signed up for insurance. Of these, 133,000 are receiving subsidized coverage, proving once again that people are all too happy to accept something "for free," and let others pay the bill. That is in addition to 56,000 people who have been signed up for Medicaid. The bigger the subsidy, the faster people are signing up. Of the 133,000 people who have signed up for insurance since the plan was implemented, slightly more than half have received totally free coverage. It's important to note that the subsidies in Massachusetts are extensive and reach well into the middle class-available on a sliding scale to those with incomes up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level. That means subsidies would be available for those with incomes ranging from $30,480 for a single individual to as much as $130,389 for a married couple with seven children. A typical married couple with two children would qualify for a subsidy if their income were below $63,000. What we don't know is how many of those receiving subsidized insurance were truly uninsured and how many had insurance that either they or their employer was paying for. Studies indicate that substitution of taxpayer-financed for privately funded insurance is a common occurrence with other government programs such as Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP). Massachusetts has attempted to limit this "crowdout" effect by requiring that individuals be uninsured for at least six months before qualifying for subsidies. Still some substitution is likely to have occurred. The subsidies may have increased the number of Massachusetts citizens with insurance, but as many as 400,000 Massachusetts residents by some estimates have failed to buy the required insurance. That includes the overwhelming majority of those with incomes too high to qualify for state subsidies. Fewer than 30,000 unsubsidized residents have signed up as a result of the mandate. And that is on top of the 60,000 of the state's uninsured who were exempted from the mandate because buying insurance would be too much of a financial burden.

Billion-Dollar Overrun

According to insurance industry insiders, the plans are too costly for the target market, and the potential customers — largely younger, healthy men — have resisted buying them. Those who have signed up have been disproportionately older and less healthy. This should come as no surprise since Massachusetts maintains a modified form of community rating, which forces younger and healthier individuals to pay higher premiums in order to subsidize premiums for the old and sick. Thus, between half and two-thirds of those uninsured before the plan was implemented remain so. That's a far cry from universal coverage. In fact, whatever progress has been made toward reducing the ranks of the uninsured appears to be almost solely the result of the subsidies. The much ballyhooed mandate itself appears to have had almost no impact....

AND IT JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER! SEE LINK FOR THE REST


Michael Tanner is director of health and welfare studies at the Cato Institute. He is the author of Leviathan on the Right: How Big-Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution and coauthor of Healthy Competition: What’s Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It, just released in a new edition.

November 8, 2013

Those Depressing Germans By PAUL KRUGMAN

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/04/opinion/krugman-those-depressing-germans.html?_r=0



German officials are furious at America, and not just because of the business about Angela Merkel’s cellphone. What has them enraged now is one (long) paragraph in a U.S. Treasury report on foreign economic and currency policies. In that paragraph Treasury argues that Germany’s huge surplus on current account — a broad measure of the trade balance — is harmful, creating “a deflationary bias for the euro area, as well as for the world economy.” The Germans angrily pronounced this argument “incomprehensible.” “There are no imbalances in Germany which require a correction of our growth-friendly economic and fiscal policy,” declared a spokesman for the nation’s finance ministry. But Treasury was right, and the German reaction was disturbing. For one thing, it was an indicator of the continuing refusal of policy makers in Germany, in Europe more broadly and for that matter around the world to face up to the nature of our economic problems. For another, it demonstrated Germany’s unfortunate tendency to respond to any criticism of its economic policies with cries of victimization.

First, the facts. Remember the China syndrome, in which Asia’s largest economy kept running enormous trade surpluses thanks to an undervalued currency? Well, China is still running surpluses, but they have declined. Meanwhile, Germany has taken China’s place: Last year Germany, not China, ran the world’s biggest current account surplus. And measured as a share of G.D.P., Germany’s surplus was more than twice as large as China’s. Now, it’s true that Germany has been running big surpluses for almost a decade. At first, however, these surpluses were matched by large deficits in southern Europe, financed by large inflows of German capital. Europe as a whole continued to have roughly balanced trade.

Then came the crisis, and flows of capital to Europe’s periphery collapsed. The debtor nations were forced — in part at Germany’s insistence — into harsh austerity, which eliminated their trade deficits. But something went wrong. The narrowing of trade imbalances should have been symmetric, with Germany’s surpluses shrinking along with the debtors’ deficits. Instead, however, Germany failed to make any adjustment at all; deficits in Spain, Greece and elsewhere shrank, but Germany’s surplus didn’t. This was a very bad thing for Europe, because Germany’s failure to adjust magnified the cost of austerity. Take Spain, the biggest deficit country before the crisis. It was inevitable that Spain would face lean years as it learned to live within its means. It was not, however, inevitable that Spanish unemployment would be almost 27 percent, and youth unemployment almost 57 percent. And Germany’s immovability was an important contributor to Spain’s pain. It has also been a bad thing for the rest of the world. It’s simply arithmetic: Since southern Europe has been forced to end its deficits while Germany hasn’t reduced its surplus, Europe as a whole is running large trade surpluses, helping to keep the world economy depressed. German officials, as we’ve seen, respond to all of this with angry declarations that German policy has been impeccable. Sorry, but this (a) doesn’t matter and (b) isn’t true.

Why it doesn’t matter: Five years after the fall of Lehman, the world economy is still depressed, suffering from a persistent shortage of demand. In this environment, a country that runs a trade surplus is, to use the old phrase, beggaring its neighbors. It’s diverting spending away from their goods and services to its own, and thereby taking away jobs. It doesn’t matter whether it’s doing this maliciously or with the best of intentions, it’s doing it all the same. Furthermore, as it happens, Germany isn’t blameless. It shares a currency with its neighbors, greatly benefiting German exporters, who get to price their goods in a weak euro instead of what would surely have been a soaring Deutsche mark. Yet Germany has failed to deliver on its side of the bargain: To avoid a European depression, it needed to spend more as its neighbors were forced to spend less, and it hasn’t done that. German officials won’t, of course, accept any of this. They consider their country a shining role model, to be emulated by all, and the awkward fact that we can’t all run gigantic trade surpluses simply doesn’t register. And the thing is, it’s not just the Germans. Germany’s trade surplus is damaging for the same reason cutting food stamps and unemployment benefits in America destroys jobs — and Republican politicians are about as receptive as German officials to anyone who tries to point out their error. In the sixth year of a global economic crisis whose essence is that there isn’t enough spending, many policy makers still don’t get it. And it looks as if they never will.

November 2, 2013

Basic Income and the Atavistic Appeal of Austerity A MUST READ ARTICLE!

http://www.pieria.co.uk/articles/basic_income_and_the_atavistic_appeal_of_austerity

Today, Basic Income, the proposal that the government provide each and every citizen an income sufficient to meet his or her minimal needs, sounds utopian, maybe even ridiculous. Soon it will merely seem impractical and a little later, it will be recognised as obvious, inevitable and necessary, not because it will provide a safety net for our poorest citizens or even reduce inequality, worthy as those goals are, but rather because it creates demand, the only thing our economy currently lacks. Basic income may well prove to be the best tool to preserve our capitalist system.

These days capitalism and technology have made us so efficient that creating goods and services requires ever less labour. A dozen workers can make steel it used to take hundreds to produce. Three men and a tractor can pick as much cotton as 1000 sharecroppers. White-collar workers are not immune to productivity gains. The personal computer is doing to office workers what the internal combustion engine did to the horse 100 years ago, making them obsolete. On the micro level, of course, this is wonderful. Productivity increases mean you can make more stuff with fewer inputs. If I need fewer workers, I can keep more profit.

On a macro level, however, it is problematical. Since my workers are your customers, if I hire fewer workers (or am able to pay them less) they spend less in your shop, which means you buy less inventory and fire some of your workers and this demand deficit ripples through the economy, creating a gap between potential and actual output. A guaranteed basic income, giving citizens money they will spend straight away creates demand and ultimately stimulates the animal spirits of the private sector. If you think about it a bit, it is a no brainer.

But the functioning and advantages of basic income is not the point of this essay. I want to look instead at why it still seems utopian and ridiculous. Lets think about George Osborne and his economically illiterate advocacy of austerity. Even the IMF tells us British GDP has suffered because of this misguided policy. Why then, does the Chancellor continue to claim that reducing government spending is vital to economic recovery?

WHY INDEED? SEE LINK FOR ANSWERS