Monday, October 4, 2010
Barker's Newsbites: Monday, Oct. 4, 2010
Me two, Gretchen... me two...
And representing the Age of Obama... (*SHRUG*)
Hey, folks... let me throw out some thoughts and observations and if anyone can tell me I'm wrong... well... give it your best shot!
Our own government - in the form of the Federal Reserve and the Department of the Treasury - is deliberately subverting our nation's currency; their actual policy is to devalue the dollar.
Those who follow current events - and certainly those who regularly avail themselves of "Barker's Newsbites" - are aware that the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department have at this point basically come right out and announced that official U.S. governmental policy is... er... pro inflation.
(Again, if anyone cares to dispute this I invite you to cite your sources and make your best case; I cite my sources and make my own case each and every day.)
I could go on and on, but I'll let past, present, and future newsbites and other posts continue to make my points for me.
We're in deep, deep trouble as a nation... as a society.
Our federal government is dysfunctional. Many of our state governments are dysfunctional. (New York, California, Illinois to name just a few.) The inmates are running the asylum and even if the GOP takes back the House (and perhaps even the Senate - but frankly that would be a double-edged sword as I've previously noted) we're talking trading one group of self-serving incompetents for a group of... (*SIGH*)... hopefully lesser self-serving incompetents.
In order to set this country to rights we'll need to do a heck of a lot more than simply "repeal" - or more likely "defund" - ObamaCare.
We are so screwed up on so many levels that frankly... I'm afraid there's no real long-term hope.
I pray I'm wrong. I pray that every day.
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704483004575524232993529218.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
There will be no more tax-funded bailouts - period," said President Obama on July 21, the day he signed the Dodd-Frank financial reform into law.
This week, the board of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation will use the new powers it received under Dodd-Frank to decide which bank creditors will receive . . . tax-funded bailouts.
(*SHRUG*) I KNOW... I KNOW... I'M A BROKEN RECORD.
On July 21, Mr. Obama said that "there will be new rules to make clear that no firm is somehow protected because it is 'too big to fail,' so we don't have another AIG."
But under the new law, firms deemed too big to fail by the new Financial Stability Oversight Council can be "protected" from bankruptcy, if regulators so desire, and instead put into an "alternative" process managed by the FDIC.
* i.e. BAILOUTS, BAILOUTS, AND MORE BAILOUTS... (*SIGH*)
Regulators and the bill's authors have unanimously agreed not to call this a bailout program.
(*SMIRK*)
During the Congressional debate on Dodd-Frank, we warned about the discretion afforded the FDIC to discriminate among such creditors, offering bailouts to some while punishing others.
Last week, FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair confirmed that the "problem" exists, though she still won't use the word "bailout." Ms. Bair said, "The authority to differentiate among creditors will be used rarely and only where such additional payments are 'essential to the implementation of the receivership or any bridge financial company.'"
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
[L]eaving the door open for a rescue of, for example, lenders due to be repaid within six months or a year would only encourage the short-term funding model that helped destroy Bear Stearns and so many other firms in 2008. Rather than eliminating moral hazard, it will simply concentrate it in a particular category of financial instruments.
Whether Washington calls firms "essential," or "systemic," or "nationally recognized" as in the case of credit-ratings agencies, the government always goes wrong when it anoints particular firms for special favors they can't secure in the market or before a judge. Repealing ObamaCare has captured the public imagination for obvious reasons, but the next Congress should also repeal the new system of bailouts enabled by Dodd-Frank.
http://blogs.forbes.com/billisaac/2010/10/01/was-tarp-worth-it/?boxes=Homepagelighttop
The purpose of the TARP, as peddled to Congress by then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, was for taxpayers to purchase $700 billion of “toxic assets” from large financial institutions. Paulson theorized this would relieve firms of the burden of carrying the toxic assets and inspire them to lend again. This rationale was having trouble passing the collective smell test, so Paulson added that the program would calm customers of money market funds who were beginning to panic and bank depositors who might also panic.
In truth, customers of money market funds had already been calmed when Treasury issued a 100% guarantee of their money – before TARP was enacted; the FDIC had the authority to reassure depositors under existing law, as was in fact done shortly after the TARP was enacted.
(*SMIRK*)
Two weeks after the TARP was enacted, Paulson abandoned the toxic asset plan and announced that the money would instead be used to shore up the capital of banks.
Treasury made two egregious mistakes on the capital program and many smaller ones. The first blunder was to order nine large financial institutions - CitiGroup, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Bank of New York/Mellon, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and State Street - to accept $125 billion of taxpayer money that most of them did not need or want. The second blunder was to announce in February 2009 that 19 large financial institutions would undergo “stress tests” to determine their viability. Just as things were beginning to stabilize for banks, the Treasury destabilized the system with this announcement. Bank regulators were appalled - one large bank executive publicly called the announcement “asinine.”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average stood at 8,200 prior to the stress test announcement and fell to just over 6,500 the following month. The KBW Bank Stock Index dropped nearly 50% during this period. Forced to do damage control, the government declared that none of the 19 large banks would be allowed to fail no matter what the stress test results.
Imagine how that action sits with smaller firms competing with the 19 banks.
(*SMIRK*)
Rubbing salt in the wound, the Treasury decided to loan TARP funds to Chrysler and General Motors and their finance arms. The chances that taxpayers will recover in full the funds invested in AIG and the auto industry are extremely remote.
Proponents of the TARP warned that if Congress rejected the program, the Dow Jones Industrial Average would drop by 1,000 points. Once the bill passed, the markets sobered up to the fact that Congress just authorized $850 billion (counting the pork added to buy votes) the Treasury did not have to pay for a bill that would do no good.
The Dow plunged from 10,831 on October 1, 2008 to 8,175 on October 27.
It continued its downward spiral to a low of 6,547 on March 9, 2009.
It is difficult to imagine how rejection of the bill could have produced worse results.
Objectively, the TARP did nothing to stabilize the financial system that could not have been done without it.
The negative aspects of the TARP far outweigh any possible benefit.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/248520/you-can%E2%80%99t-keep-plan-you-have-marc-siegel
* THE AUTHOR OF THIS PIECE, MACRC SIEGEL, M.D., IS AN ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE AT NYU
Last year, I ordered a CT scan of the chest on a 63-year-old patient whose chest X-ray had revealed a lung nodule. I had no problem getting the test approved by his private insurance company. The radiologist suggested that I repeat the CT scan this year to make sure the nodule hasn’t turned into cancer.
But this year, the same insurance company is denying the test, having clamped down on several elective services while also raising its premiums.
This company now has to cover children with pre-existing conditions and can place no lifetime limits on care. It is struggling to preserve its profits as Obamacare kicks in - profits that, to begin with, are only approximately 4% of its total revenue.
Next year, my patient will have Medicare. He can’t afford a secondary insurance plan (Medicare Part B covers only 80% of most charges), and he doesn’t qualify for Medicaid as his secondary, so he was hoping to join a Medicare Advantage plan - a private insurance plan that seniors can choose to receive, partly at government expense, instead of Medicare. But in 2011, Medicare Advantage is due to be cut $140 billion by the new law, and it is doubtful that the plan he wants will still be available.
Harvard Pilgrim, the second-largest insurer in Massachusetts, has just dropped 22,000 patients from its Medicare Advantage plan in anticipation of these cuts. Soon seniors everywhere will have the same problem. In fact, the Medicare actuary estimates that 7 million out of the 11 million people with Medicare Advantage will be set adrift over the next seven years.
My medical office is changing, and not for the better. As I write this, I have a patient waiting in the next room who has to pay cash to see me because his employer’s contribution to his plan has dropped this year, and his deductible has gone up. Many employers are getting ready to dump their employees on the state exchanges in 2014. They are adopting plans that won’t “grandfather in” under the draft regulations of the new law, which mandate low deductibles and low co-pays. I am treating my patient for high blood pressure, which may be due to his worrying over his medical bills. My bill is minor compared to the hundreds of dollars that the laboratory charges him for the routine blood tests his insurance no longer covers.
* THE ARTICLE GOES ON TO TELL THE TALES OF SEVERAL PATIENT ADVERSELY IMPACTED BY OBAMACARE... I URGE READERS TO FOLLOW THE LINK AND READ THE FULL PIECE IN ITS ENTIRETY.
The president can keep telling Americans that their health care won’t change. But for my patients, it already has.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/our_pakistan_problem_1TqxfBu89mDxSlZHUtHj2K
The photos showing NATO supply trucks being set ablaze by insurgents in Pakistan should send a chill up the spine of every American. So should the State Department's travel-alert warning on yet another Pakistan-inspired terror threat.
President Obama's Pakistan policy is going up in smoke, just like those NATO trucks.
The bitter irony is that even as Obama is trying to get out of the war in Afghanistan, he may be heading us into one in Pakistan.
Consider:
In 2009, we launched 45 Predator drone attacks into Pakistan. In 2010, we may almost triple that number, with 22 in September alone.
US-led NATO forces in Afghanistan are now running crossborder raids into Pakistan to flush out Taliban insurgents, even though the Pakistan government has vigorously protested. ... One raid last week killed three Pakistani border guards, which led the Pakistani government to close a key border crossing to a NATO supply convoy - which militants then burned down to the tire rims.
Raids by the CIA's Counterterrorism Pursuit Team - with its 3,000 Afghan troops - into Pakistan are also becoming routine. According to Bob Woodward's book "Obama's Wars," CIA chief Leon Panetta wants even more powers to wage what is in effect a secret CIA war inside Pakistani territory.
All this adds up to a US effort in Pakistan highly reminiscent of the one we undertook in Laos in the 1960s - one of the springboards into the Vietnam quagmire.
Yet despite these efforts, or perhaps because of them, Pakistan has increasingly become the epicenter of terror plots against this country, from the abortive Times Square bombing plot to the Mumbai-style attacks thwarted last week.
If Obama's growing pressure on Pakistan destabilizes that government, the only thing keeping that country's nukes out of the hands of al Qaeda may have to be US troops. That's a shooting-war scenario...
The Obama administration insists that the supply-route closure is temporary. Yet the shutdown still bodes ill. Almost 80% of the non-lethal supplies for our war in Afghanistan flows through Pakistan. Another bad omen is the fact that NATO helicopters following insurgents across the border are routinely shot at by Pakistani troops.
Gen. David Petraeus and the rest of the Obama team know it's impossible to win in Afghanistan until the Pakistan sanctuaries are blown up or shut down. But the current policy isn't bringing us any closer to that goal - and may ultimately destabilize the Pakistan regime.
It also ignores the two important points of leverage we have, which could still turn the situation around.
[First...]
Administration officials complain that the Pakistanis are too focused on India, not Afghanistan. Instead, we should use that obsession to our advantage. Our unique relations with both India and Pakistan, the two nuclear powers but also the region's biggest democracies, offer an opportunity to work out a durable detente between the two nations that would allow Pakistan to refocus on suppressing militants and see winning the War on Terror as a victory for all three nations.
[Second...] Afghanistan itself.
Obama doesn't see that his obvious eagerness to leave makes the Pakistanis more, not less, reluctant to help us against the Taliban, because they may have to deal with the Taliban running the country again.
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