Medicare and Social Security: What you paid compared with what you get

Did Prescription Meds Cause Amherst Man's Pistol Permit to be Revoked?

Wow my potential SS disability benefit is more than my benefit at age 62.

Looking up my SS estimated benefit and no wonder people are applying for SSDI in droves.

If you don't have anything saved and are going to retire on just SS you are better off getting the disability benefit.

Waiting til full retirement age gets me an extra $50/month. Retiring early at 62 is over $500 less.

I wonder what will happen when this trust fund runs out in approximately 2016.

Cyprus committee halts probe into bank transfers

A parliamentary committee looking into who transferred money out of Cyprus before the island’s banking system was locked down in March suspended its probe on Tuesday, complaining of not being given all the data it had demanded from the central bank.

The report it was given showed that 6,000 individuals and legal entities withdrew tens of millions of euros in cash from Cypriot banks and sent it abroad in the period from March 1-15.

The head of the Cypriot Parliament’s ethics committee, which was due to look into a list detailing transfers of more than 100,000 euros from the two major banks – Bank of Cyprus and Cyprus Popular Bank – said the list fell short of what he had requested.

“It was with great disappointment and anger that, when we opened the envelope, we realized it contained data for only 15 days even though we had asked for a year,” lawmaker Demetris Syllouris told reporters.

http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite2_1_09/04/2013_492789

Analysis: Health Exchanges And The Litigation Landscape

By far the broadest and potentially most damaging of the legal challenges turns on whether Congress intended that tax credits and subsidies to help consumers buy health insurance be available only through state-created exchanges. Many states are signaling that they may not create their own exchanges, leaving the federal government to do so, as the law requires.


If subsidies and tax credits aren't available in states with federally run exchanges, conservative legal scholars say, then two other lynchpins of the law would also be undermined: the requirements that employers of a certain size offer insurance and that most individuals buy insurance.


As even some health law supporters concede, the claim that Congress denied to the federal exchanges the power to distribute tax credits and subsidies seems correct as a literal reading of the most relevant provisions. Those are sections 1311, 1321, and 1401, which provide that people are eligible for tax credits and subsidies only if "enrolled . . . through an Exchange established by the state" (emphasis added).

Last year, the Internal Revenue Service issued an interpretive rule saying that federal exchanges also would have the power to distribute the tax credits and subsidies.

But Oklahoma Attorney General E. Scott Pruitt, a Republican whose state has refused to set up an insurance exchange, has urged a federal district court to invalidate the IRS rule and thereby nullify the employer mandate in Oklahoma.

http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2012/November/29/health-law--litigation-and-exchanges.aspx?p=1

As Aereo threatens to alter TV landscape, major networks promise a fight

For consumers who want to cut their cable cord and get all of their television from the Internet, there’s been a major obstacle: It’s hard to get live sports and local news.

Now a Web start-up, called Aereo, is offering to remove that last barrier with a simple method. It is using antennas to pick up programming from public airwaves and then deliver shows into homes that have a Web connection — for as little as $10 a month.

With Aereo planning to expand its service to Washington and 21 other markets this summer, CBS, ABC and other big networks have attacked the upstart company with renewed vigor.

In lawsuits, they argued Aereo is little more than a content thief. But their efforts to persuade federal courts to shut it down have failed. On Monday, Fox television’s parent company fired back, saying it might consider delivering its shows only through cable connections, no longer broadcasting them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/as-aereo-threatens-to-alter-tv-landscape-major-networks-promise-a-fight/2013/04/08/adc01b52-a077-11e2-be47-b44febada3a8_story.html?hpid=z3

ZH: The Real Cyprus Template (The One You're Not Supposed To Notice)

Japan stimulus will start currency war, say Chinese economists

Many of China's top economists are livid at what they view as an effective currency devaluation by Japan and are calling on the People's Bank of China to retaliate by weakening the yuan to defend itself in what they see as a new currency war.

These economists, including Tsinghua University professor Li Daokui and ANZ Bank's Liu Ligang, see Japan's plan to double its monetary base within two years as "blackmail" and have criticised the Japanese central bank's decision to open the liquidity floodgates to bump up the economy.

Liu said Japan's unprecedented easing programme, aimed at ending more than two decades of deflation, was "a monetary blackmail" targeted at other export-driven Asian countries such as China and that the central bank should sell more yuan and buy the US dollar to push down the yuan.

He also called on authorities to guard against a fresh wave of hot money into China's fragile financial markets, warning that Japan's move would reignite the so-called carry trade, under which investors borrow in low-interest yen and invest in high- interest markets.

http://www.scmp.com/news/article/1208127/japan-stimulus-plan-will-start-currency-war-say-china-economists

Greece: Some 30,000 households a month have power supply cut

Some 30,000 households a month have power supply cut


By Yiannis Elafros

About 1,000 electricity connections are cut every day in Greece as Public Power Corporation customers are increasingly unable to pay their power bills on time, while accumulated debts to the country’s electricity giant stood at more than 1.3 billion euros at the end of 2012. This is not only due to the economic crisis that has eaten into household incomes, but also to the special property tax paid via power bills.

PPC data show that some 700,000 customers had had their debts rearranged with new payment plans by the end of last year, up from 400,000 at the end of 2011. The situation is set to deteriorate this year due to the increase in PPC rates and expected further reductions in household incomes.

The corporation’s customer service offices are filled with people on a daily basis as they seek to get new payment plans or to have their houses reconnected by paying a part of their debt. PPC data point to a great share of the 30,000 houses and companies whose supply is cut off every month being reconnected a few days later.

There is, however, a particular problem with the special property tax. While the Council of State has banned the disconnection of houses for not paying the property charge through the PPC bill, if customers do pay for their electricity, PPC’s software cannot distinguish between payment for the property tax and that for electricity. As a result, the corporation cannot tell whether consumers have paid toward their power bill or just a part of their property tax unless they have paid the full amount.

http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite2_1_07/04/2013_492349

Trust in Gold Not Bernanke as U.S. States Promote Bullion

Distrust of the Federal Reserve and concern that U.S. dollars may become worthless are fueling a push in more than a dozen states to recognize gold and silver coins as legal tender.

Lawmakers in Arizona are poised to follow Utah, which authorized bullion for currency in 2011. Similar bills are advancing in Kansas, South Carolina and other states.

The measures backed by the limited-government Tea Party movement are mostly symbolic -- you still can’t pay for groceries with gold in Utah. They reflect lingering dollar concerns, amplified by the Fed’s unconventional moves in recent years to stabilize the economy, said Loren Gatch, who teaches politics at the University of Central Oklahoma.

“The legislation is about signaling discontent with monetary policy and about what Ben Bernanke is doing,” said Gatch, who studies alternative currencies at the Edmond, Oklahoma-based school. “There is a fear that the government, or Bernanke in particular and the Federal Reserve, is pursuing a policy that will lead to the collapse of the dollar. That’s what is behind it.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-08/trust-in-gold-not-bernanke-as-u-s-states-promote-bullion.html