dkf
dkf's JournalPlutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances
"1) the world is dividing into two blocs - the plutonomies, where economic growth is powered by and largely consumed by the wealthy few, and the rest."
Drivers: "Disruptive technology-driven productivity gains, creative financial innovation, capitalist- friendly cooperative governments, an international dimension of immigrants and overseas conquests invigorating wealth creation, the rule of law, and patenting inventions. Often these wealth waves involve great complexity, exploited best by the rich and educated of the time."
"4) In a plutonomy there is no such animal as “the U.S. consumer” or “the UK consumer”, or indeed the “Russian consumer”. There are rich consumers, few in number, but disproportionate in the gigantic slice of income and consumption they take.
There are the rest, the “non-rich”, the multitudinous many, but only accounting for surprisingly small bites of the national pie. Consensus analyses that do not tease out the profound impact of the plutonomy on spending power, debt loads, savings rates (and hence current account deficits), oil price impacts etc, i.e., focus on the “average”consumer are flawed from the start."
http://politicalgates.blogspot.com/2011/12/citigroup-plutonomy-memos-two-bombshell.html?m=1
'Paralyzed Plutocrats' Keep Economy Locked Up, Too
http://m.cnbc.com//id/48417046/Paralyzed_Plutocrats_Keep_Economy_Locked_Up_TooAt this stage of the recovery, what the economy needs is for people with money to be spending and investing. The wealthy are often the “first in and first out” of recessions, taking the initial risk and seeing the earliest signs of light.
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The past few days have revealed a rapid decline in the spending and investing confidence of the wealthy. This morning's UBS earnings call highlighted similar trends at wealth-management firms and private banks around the world, where wealthy clients are hoarding cash, shunning stocks and running from risk.
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“The drops in millionaire confidence are particularly disturbing because generally millionaire households are more positive about economic conditions than others,” said Catherine McBreen of Spectrem. “The biggest concerns for investors when reviewing their own household’s outlook were the economy and company health.”
The paralyzed plutocracy also threatens consumer spending. The top 5 percent of earners account for more than a third of consumer outlays and their spending is highly discretionary and volatile.
CBO: Fiscal Cliff = Recession, 2,000,000 jobs lost, unemployment over 9%
Every time the Congressional Budget Office recalibrates its projections for the economic impact of the nation’s impending "fiscal cliff," the picture gets bleaker.
That’s the headline news from Wednesday’s CBO update on its budget outlook for the next decade: The $560 billion mix of spending cuts and tax hikes that make up the year-end fiscal cliff will "probably" cause a recession in 2013, as the economy would shrink by 0.5 percent for the year.
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Going off the fiscal cliff would increase the unemployment rate a notch more than previously expected. Without congressional action, unemployment would breach 9 percent come December of 2013. Previously, CBO expected it to come in at 8.8 percent.
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Likewise, while business investment is currently growing “strongly” and is “supported by favorable conditions in markets for corporate borrowing,” it is also being “restrained by businesses’ concern about possible major changes in fiscal policies.”
Many economists have recently ascribed at least some part of the slowing economy to uncertainty over the fiscal cliff, as the Monitor previously reported.
http://m.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/2012/0822/CBO-on-fiscal-cliff-newest-estimate-is-gloomiest-yet
Democratic comments on Romney's wealth pissing off some large donors...
R. Donahue Peebles, Obama Fundraiser, Says Attacks On Romney Woke 'Sleeping Giant'
"It's something that the 52-year old Peebles, whose company website touts The Peebles Corp. as "the country's largest African American real estate development company," has been adept at doing. But now Peebles, a top fundraiser for President Barack Obama and a member of his reelection campaign's finance committee, is pushing to enlarge his footprint in the national political media by seeking out political reporters and criticizing the president and his campaign's message."
"Almost a year ago, on Aug. 8, 2011, Peebles and his wife Katrina hosted the president for a fundraiser with roughly 140 people at their Washington home. The price of a ticket to the dinner was $15,000 per family, according to a pool report from that evening. Peebles has raised $100,000 to $200,000 for the president's reelection, according to the Obama campaign's list of top "bundlers.""
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But in a 20-minute conversation with HuffPost Monday, Peebles went much further in blasting Obama's campaign messaging than he has before. He said, as he told other press outlets, that his frustration was sparked by receiving an email from the DNC that mocked Romney as "out of touch" for having a boat that fit 12 people, accompanied by a picture of the Republican presumptive nominee on vacation.
"That offended me. Now if I were on the fence, he'd have lost me," said Peebles, who described himself as nonetheless a "big supporter of the president's."
"What I get concerned about is the message from the Obama campaign that we only want someone who has not been successful to run for president. What do we want here? You can't be successful and run the country? We don't want somebody who has been successful to run it? That doesn't make sense," Peebles said. "So I look at that and I see that those things are becoming offensive to some of his strongest supporters, financially.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/10/r-donahue-pebles-obama-fundraiser_n_1663361.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
The guy goes on and on about this and he is not happy and he is ON OBAMA'S FINANCE COMMITEE. Small donors are going to need to ante up a lot more if the big donors are as exercised as this guy.
Health care spending on end-of-life treatment is irrational
Mercury News reporter Lisa Krieger's compelling, poignant tale Sunday of her father's final 10 days of life and the extraordinary hospital costs they entailed should be required reading for all. For doctors. For hospital administrators. For health care policy makers, both elected and professional. And, although it is painful, for every one of us with aging parents or friends -- or with a creeping sense of our own inescapable mortality.
Krieger puts it best: "My father's story -- the final days of a frail, 88-year-old with advancing dementia at the end of a long and rewarding life -- poses a modern dilemma: Just because it's possible to prolong a life, should we?"
Krieger chronicled her anguish over whether to continue measures to keep him alive despite his rapidly deteriorating health. He received excellent care, but the size of the bill was staggering: $323,658 for 10 days at Stanford Hospital. This for a man who had embraced a frugal life and had left advance directives discouraging extraordinary measures to keep him alive.
The federal government estimates that 70 percent of health-care expenditures are spent on the elderly, 80 percent of that in the last month of life -- and often for aggressive, life-sustaining care that is futile. Think what America could do if it invested that $140 billion a year in other arenas. By comparison, the 2012 budget request for the National Institutes of Health, the largest supporter of biomedical research in the world, is $31 billion.
The United States spends nearly twice as much per capita on health care costs compared with most Western nations, yet it leaves millions of people with no health insurance at all. The bubble of end-of-life care is one reason.
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_19905093
I'm confused. Does the ACA actually use Medicare part A funds?
If anything isn't the reduced cost of part B or part C benefits which is paid 25% by premiums and 75% by the federal government funding it?
Alan Simpson Confirms Reality: "All The Things You Love Will Not Come To Pass"
Conjuring images of Jack Nicholson in 'A Few Good Men', Alan Simpson laid out the sad and terrible truth that none of us or our politicians can handle in a very direct and sincere interview with Bloomberg TV's Deirdre Bolton. "Medicare costs stand to squeeze out the rest of domestic government spending," Simpson said, "it is on automatic pilot. It will use up every resource in the government." Simpson also said that the current path of debt, deficit and interest is “totally unsustainable” confirming once again the facade that his 18 years in Washington proved to him that he "never saw any projection of any economist ever come true." From Paul Ryan's plan to the 'simple math' of CBO budget projections, and whether older Americans should be afraid, Simpson pulls no punches as he sums up American society thus: "we don't care about our money, all we want is more money for our money."
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"You see, the thing is, the people that will control this debate do not have anything to do with the things to you and I are talking about right now. The people who will control this are ‘the markets.’ And the markets will say, and they have every reason to say it, the chaos between Election Day on November 6 and December 31 where there will be $5 to $7 trillion washing around ready to go somewhere. If you go too far one way, you end up recession. You have to do some balance and all you have to do is a plan. We have it in legislative language. It is circulating among a very good group of Democrats and Republicans. You do a plan and the markets will lay off of you. If you don't, they will say very simply, ok. We do not care about Republicans. We do not care about Democrats or Obama, or Romney, or Biden, or Ryan. We care about our money and we want more money for our money. And they will ask for more interest. 1% of interest will knock this country on its face. Where is everybody? I mean, it is absolutely nuts. When it happens, interest rates will kick up. The guy who gets hurt the worst -- the little guy. The little guy that everybody talks about day and night. What goofy, goofy hypocrisy."
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/alan-simpson-confirms-reality-all-things-you-love-will-not-come-pass
The Medicare you pay for through payroll taxes only covers part A.
That is the hospitalization part. It DOES NOT COVER DOCTORS even when you are in the hospital.
Part B which does cover doctors is funded with Medicare premiums which only cover 25% of the cost: "Part B Premiums. At the end of each year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announce Part B premiums for the next year. The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 permanently set standard Part B premiums to cover 25% of projected per capita Part B program costs for beneficiaries aged 65 and older.14 If projected Part B costs increase or decrease, the premium rises or falls"
http://aging.senate.gov/crs/ss20.pdf
What isn't covered by premiums, and interest on the surplus is paid for through the regular budget.
http://www.medicare.gov/navigation/medicare-basics/medicare-benefits/medicare-benefits-overview.aspx?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1
For Part D it is similar: "On average, a beneficiary’s premium covers about one-fourth of the value of a standard coverage plan and the federal government pays for the remaining three-fourths."
http://aging.senate.gov/crs/ss20.pdf
Originally the Medicare Part B premium was 50% of the cost but with the restriction that the premium could only equal the SS cola it's fallen to 25% and was fixed there in 1997.
"When the program began, premiums were set to cover one-half of total part B costs. Starting in 1975, the annual percentage increase in the amount of premiums was capped at the percentage increase in Social Security retirement benefits, which in turn is tied to the increase in the consumer price index (CPI). Because part B expenses rose at a faster rate than general inflation, the percentage of part B costs covered by enrollee premiums decreased and by 1982 represented less than 25 percent. A series of laws temporarily required premiums to cover 25 percent of program costs and that level was made permanent by the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 (BBA)."
http://rs9.loc.gov/medicare/history.htm
Medicare benefit payments are expected to total $551 billion in 2011 (Figure 1):
Part A – Hospital Insurance (HI) = 35%
Part B – Supplementary Medical Insurance (SMI) = 29%
Part C – Medicare Advantage (private health plans) = 23%
Part D – Prescription drug benefit = 12%
http://www.kff.org/medicare/upload/7305-06.pdf
Hawaii Primary Today.
Voters across the state will head to the polls on Saturday in Hawaii's first-ever primary election held in August.
Hawaii primaries have previously been held the third weekend in September.
The polls open at 7 a.m. and close at 6 p.m.
To find your polling place, enter your address by clicking here or call 453-VOTE.
Be sure to have your picture ID with a signature on it for verification of your identity. You will be asked to sign a poll book to record that you voted at that polling place. Your voter registration notice is not an acceptable form of identification.
http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/19251551/voting-poll-hours-and-other-important-information
Hold the Butter: Artificial Flavoring on Popcorn Linked to Alzheimer’s Disease
Though I’m a pretty healthy eater most of the time, one of my few junk food weaknesses is movie theater popcorn -- and the more butter, the better. That oily, artificially flavored buttery topping is what makes the snack worthwhile! It’s also what makes it terrible, apparently. Long suspected as a cause of lung damage, researchers are now linking butter flavoring to Alzheimer’s disease.
The key culprit is a substance called diacetyl, which adds a buttery taste to foods without using any actual butter. It’s found in everything from microwave popcorn and the buttery topping used at movie theaters to snack foods, pet foods, margarines and baked goods. You would probably never know it from looking at ingredient lists, however: Most manufacturers will only list “artificial butter flavoring” without noting the specific compounds that make up that flavoring.
In a new study, researchers from the University of Minnesota found that diacetyl can cross the blood-brain barrier and cause a brain protein called beta-amyloid to clump. This clumping of beta-amyloid is one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease. Diacetyl can also inhibit the brain’s ability to clear beta amyloid as well as stop a protective protein called glyoxalase I from working.
Whether toxic levels of diacetyl are achieved in various body compartments upon mere (over) consumption of diacetyl-containing food substances is an unanswered but an important question,” said lead researcher Robert Vince.
http://blog.aarp.org/2012/08/09/hold-the-butter-artificial-flavoring-on-popcorn-linked-to-alzheimers-disease/
http://www.webmd.com/alzheimers/news/20120808/popcorn-butter-flavorant-linked-to-alzheimers
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