May 14, 2024

Sam Bankman-Fried Is Not Entirely Wrong

FTX’s victims are getting up to 143 percent of their money back, because the system treated it like the fraud it was. As the Steward case shows, that’s not usually how bankruptcy works.

BY MAUREEN TKACIK MAY 13, 2024

In February, the Steward hospital chain was at the lowest point of a decade-long downward spiral. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services was threatening to shut down its Louisiana hospital over standards of care a Republican state rep described in a hearing as “cruelty.” Boston Globe columnist Brian McGrory had spent much of the winter detailing the yachts and private jets enjoyed by founder Ralph de la Torre. Creditors were threatening to sue to force the company into Chapter 7 liquidation, and Steward’s own defense attorneys began abandoning ship. Tony investment bank Lazard Frères contacted 14 lenders hoping to get an offer for some kind of financing deal, and all 14 refused. On February 16, a credit industry reporter even broke the news that Steward was about to file for bankruptcy protection.

But at the end of the month, another bridge loan finally came through, courtesy of two shadowy lenders: a Cayman Islands–based business loan shark called Chamberlain Commercial Funding, and the low-profile distressed-debt investor Sound Point Capital. A few of the more vociferous creditors were paid off. Heart valves and needles came in at some hospitals, and surgeons were allowed to schedule elective surgeries again—though so many of Steward’s admin staffers had been furloughed, they often had to call the patients themselves.

Last week, when Steward finally filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Houston, the company was forced to disclose to its thousands of creditors how much it had paid for those seven extra weeks of life: an annualized guaranteed interest rate of 255 percent, plus a senior claim on an unspecified portfolio of real estate, in addition to all its accounts receivable.

https://prospect.org/health/2024-05-13-sam-bankman-fried-not-wrong-steward-health-bankruptcy/

May 13, 2024

How to Check If You're Immune to Measles

Certain adults may need to get an additional dose of the measles vaccine. Here’s how to know if you have adequate immunity to measles

BY TARA HAELLE

May 13, 2024

The U.S. is in the midst of one of its largest measles outbreaks since the disease was declared eliminated from the country in 2000. Its elimination two decades ago meant that measles no longer circulates on its own in the U.S. But outbreaks can occur there when a traveler—such as an infected tourist returning from a country where measles has been spreading—introduces the virus.

As of May 2 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that so far this year there have been 131 cases in 21 states, stretching from California and Washington State to New York State and New Jersey. Measles is possibly the most contagious disease that can infect humans: it’s airborne and remains in the air several hours after an infected person leaves an area, and it stays on surfaces for up to two hours. Just one person with measles can infect nine out of 10 nonimmune individuals who encounter that person’s aerosols. And it’s estimated that in an unvaccinated population, one person with measles would infect about 12 to 18 people on average. Epidemiologists estimate that at least 95 percent of a population needs to be vaccinated to prevent measles from spreading. But the total measles immunization coverage of U.S. kindergarteners has dropped below that, to 93 percent.

SNIP

How do you know if you have immunity to measles?

People born before 1957 are presumed to be immune to measles because they had it in childhood. Those born in 1957 or later, however, are likely protected only if they have been vaccinated. Initially, U.S. children received just one dose of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, but that changed after a big measles outbreak that occurred from 1989 to 1991 and resulted in a reported 55,622 cases in the country. The outbreak killed 123 people and led to a congressional hearing.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-check-if-you-have-immunity-to-measles-or-need-another-dose/?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

May 4, 2024

An Oil Price-Fixing Conspiracy Caused 27% of All Inflation Increases in 2021

President Biden's sledgehammer Lina Khan at FTC.

Matt Stoller
MAY 03, 2024

I’m at the Google antitrust closing arguments, and I’ll have some thoughts on that soon. But today’s piece is about some bombshell evidence that just came out on a giant post-Covid conspiracy in the oil industry. And I do mean giant, because there’s now evidence that price-fixing in the oil industry alone may single-handedly be responsible for a little over a quarter of the total inflationary increase in 2021.

Let’s dive in.

Last Sunday, I wrote a piece alleging that U.S. shale oil producers colluded with the Saudi government from 2021-2023 to drive up gas prices. That essay was based on some reporting I had done, as well as a complaint from a savvy Kansas City class action law firm, Sharp Law, with special expertise in oil. The theory was that American producers, after a bitter price war from 2014-2016, got tired of competing on price with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or the OPEC oil cartel, and at some point from 2017-2021, decided to join the cartel and cut supply to the market. This action had the affect of raising oil prices, costing oil consumers something on the order of $200 billion a year.

Yesterday, the Federal Trade Commission released evidence confirming that collusion played a serious role in hiking oil prices at that time. Pioneer Natural Resources CEO Scott Sheffield, a leader in the fracking field, “exchanged hundreds of text messages with OPEC representatives and officials discussing crude oil market dynamics, pricing and output.” Sheffield was explicit about his goal, saying that “if Texas leads the way, maybe we can get OPEC to cut production. Maybe Saudi and Russia will follow. That was our plan,” he said, adding: “I was using the tactics of OPEC+ to get a bigger OPEC+ done.” He talked to shareholders, publicly threatened rivals, and ultimately achieved output cuts across the industry regardless of price. “Even if oil gets to $200/barrel,” he said, “the independent producers are going to be disciplined.”
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/an-oil-price-fixing-conspiracy-caused

April 18, 2024

Let me get this straight: A worker at McDonald's could be forced to sign a non-compete clause ?

New low for Mickey D's with Lina Khan to the rescue.


https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/1780585102528975343

April 15, 2024

The $6 Trillion Decision

The stakes of the election can be laid out in 13-figure sums.

BY DAVID DAYEN APRIL 15, 2024


Could not be clearer.Pass it on to anyone ambivalent regarding Joe Biden, there is one clear path for equity and it will never be with a Republican demagogue as president.

Enormous amounts of presidential election messaging and coverage will unfurl between now and November 5. You will surely hear a lot about abortion, immigration, and inflation. You will hear about a fight for the future of American democracy. Even more likely, you’ll hear about polls, strategies to attract working-class and minority voters, or what one candidate said or tweeted or posted, or designated a surrogate to say or tweet or post. Oh, and court cases. Lots and lots of court cases.

What you might not hear as much about are the stakes of the election’s outcome for all the money in the country. On Tax Day, of all days, it seems like a good time to lay that out.

Nearly all of the provisions of the 2017 Trump tax cuts affecting individual tax returns expire at the end of 2025. Who is in control of the government at that time will depend, of course, on the outcome of the elections. The people then in charge will determine the next American tax policy, and economic and fiscal policy.

Will we simply make permanent the Trump tax cuts, with all their attendant inequities? Will we revert back to an Obama-era tax code that still has too many of the assumptions of Reagan-era tax policy embedded within it? Or will we use the moment to revolutionize tax policy and make a lasting break with the past four decades of trickle-down? The choice here will determine whether we use revenues generated by a new tax code for benefits for the American people, or forsake them in favor of shielding the wealthy and well-connected from paying their fair share.
https://prospect.org/economy/2024-04-15-6-trillion-dollar-decision-tax-policy/

https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1779966425316155489

April 10, 2024

The Truth About the Comstock Act

The anti-obscenity law is unenforceable and probably unconstitutional. Conservatives still want to use it to ban medication abortions.

BY HASSAN ALI KANU APRIL 9, 2024


Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito apparently took a cue from extremist anti-abortion activists last month when he asked during oral arguments on the legal availability of abortion medication called mifepristone why the Food and Drug Administration hadn’t “at least considered the application of 18 U.S.C. 1461” when the agency approved it for public use.

Alito was stealthily referring to the Comstock Act, a 150-year-old zombie statute that’s also referenced by code name only in Project 2025, the Republican Party’s platform for a potential second Trump presidency.

The 1873 statute made it a federal crime to mail anything “obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile,” anything designed for “immoral use,” and specifically in one section, any items “adapted or intended for producing abortion.” It’s worth bearing in mind that the general anti-vice provision, not the anti-abortion one, comes first in the statute.

https://prospect.org/justice/2024-04-09-truth-comstock-act-mifepristone-abortion/

April 10, 2024

TSMC Chips Deal Promotes the Logic of Biden's Industrial Policy

It rebuts the idea that a lack of skilled U.S. workers is an impediment to manufacturing growth.

BY DAVID DAYEN APRIL 10, 2024

For months, executives at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) insisted that skilled American workers weren’t available to build their chip factories, that this shortage was delaying construction of their first U.S. fabrication plant in Arizona, and that this exposed the key weakness of the Biden administration’s industrial-policy agenda, too concerned with creating win-win scenarios and not focused enough on removing barriers to building. The usual suspects in the media gleefully parroted TSMC’s claims as proof of their belief system.

Within a few days, this entire edifice fell down.

TSMC abruptly announced that pilot production would actually begin this month, and chips would start rolling out in Arizona by the end of the year, several months ahead of schedule. The timeline, former Prospect scribe Lee Harris quipped, was being “preponed.” A few days later, TSMC and the Commerce Department announced a deal under the CHIPS Act that would deliver $6.6 billion in grants to the manufacturer and another $5 billion in loans, not only to stand up the two Phoenix plants already promised, but to build a third that will make two-nanometer chips, some of the most technologically advanced in the world.
https://prospect.org/economy/2024-04-10-tsmc-chips-deal-biden-industrial-policy/