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Some Choice Comments on the Health Insurance Legislation

Some outstanding and brief comments from around town on the recent passage of that health insurance legislation.

From Kaiser Health News,

Most health industry sectors are winners – some bigger than others -- under sweeping health care legislation that will expand coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans over the next decade, analysts say.

Hospitals, doctors, drug makers and most health insurers will pick up armies of new paying customers. Nursing homes and Medicare's private health plans will face steep government payment cuts, however.

From professor of economics at Middlebury College, Robert E. Prasch, from the New Economic Perspectives site at the Univ. of Missouri,

The Global Agenda: Privatizing the Planet -- Part Deux

SDRs, PPPs, the IMF, UN and World Bank

In the first installment of The Global Agenda: Privatizing the Planet, I attempted to establish the suggestion of the underlying foundation and causation for Public-Private Partnerships (PPP), that being debt financing, which propagates debt trading, debt swaps and various and sundry securitizations and securitized financial instruments.

Within this post, I shall attempt to establish the connection between the IMF's Special Drawing Rights (SDR), the creation of debt and those private-public partnerships as debt-affiliated vehicles which are a major force in the privatization of everything.

Admittedly, these connections may appear tenuous to some, but it is definite food for thought.

Exhibit 1

From an International Monetary Fund (IMF) report, dated March of 2006:

63. Public/ private partnerships (PPPs) are currently not covered in statistical guidelines. At the January/February 2006 meeting, the AEG agreed that the PPPs are sufficiently important to be described in the revised SNA. It also agreed that a list of indicators would be useful to help determine the economic owner of the fixed assets associated with a PPP but that it was necessary to examine arrangements on a case-by-case basis. An annex on PPP will be included in the SNA, with an understanding to keep abreast of developments in international accounting standards.[1]

Exhibit 2

2.4 million jobs lost due to China from 2001-2008

Submitted by on

That's right. 2.4 million jobs lost in 8 years can be directed attributed to China.

Since China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, 2.4 million jobs have been lost or displaced in the United States as a result of the burgeoning trade deficit with that nation

Dr. Robert Scott, International Economist for the Economic Policy Institute, has a new paper, Unfair China Trade Costs Local Jobs and it's well researched, damning. The AAM has published the report in an easy scrolling presentation on the AAM website.

The research paper's bullet points are reprinted below:

A financial reform political circus

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While the Senate and House have debated the health care reform endlessly, fighting tooth and nail at every step, all the while being broadcast on network television, the financial reform bill is quietly moving along under the radar. On the same day that Senator Dodd proposed his sweeping reform bill, it passed committee.

“The bill that finally passes on the floor will be a much more business-friendly bill,” Miller said today. “They won’t get a bill done until Dodd and Shelby agree on the compromise, but Republicans do want to get a bill done this year. So there’s incentive for both sides to come to agreement.”

The fact that the bill is going to be watered down even more is a sad statement to an on-going tragedy.

The Global Agenda: Privatizing the Planet

Debt, Debt Trading and Why It Is Important

You don’t have to repay the advance we gave you last week, provided you spend half of it next week.

A bit of history on debt from Prof. Buckley of the University of New South Wales (Australia),

The beginning was in the early 1980s. And in the beginning were bad loans, and from the loins of these bad loans sprang debt-equity exchanges, which quickly begat debt-for-nature exchanges, and then debt-for-education exchanges, and most recently, debt-for-health exchanges. And today, when all the begatting has been done, the progeny are known mostly as debt-for-development exchanges, or sometimes as debt-for-investment projects (by those who wish to suggest for the technique a more commercial focus).

Where is the exchange when a rich country offers to cancel some of its loans to a poor country, if the poor country spends money on a development project? That’s like our saying to our daughter, ‘You don’t have to repay the advance we gave you last week, provided you spend half of it next week’. [1]

Thus we observe early forms of debt trading, of sorts.

In the debt-for-health segment of the professor's report, we also note:

The Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, is another UN initiative. It is a public-private partnership which seeks to finance public health initiatives in developing countries.[1]

The honorable professor mentioned the early 1980s, so let us examine a presidential-level cabinet meeting which was taking place in the White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, USA, at that time.

Must Read Posts for March 20, 2010

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On The Economic Populist you might have noticed the middle column. We try to list other sites and blogs who have exceptional insight and writing on what is happening in the U.S. economy.

Sometimes though, one cannot say it better but miss those who did.

Must Read Post #1

The Altanta Fed blog looks at Gross Domestic Income (GDI) and notes it's correlation to GDP and this recession's divergence.

Friday Movie Night - Bigger Than Enron

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hot buttered popcorn It's Friday Night! Party Time!   Time to relax, put your feet up on the couch, lay back, and watch some detailed videos on economic policy!

 

Considering how Lehman Brothers is looking good to be the new Enron, revisiting memory lane on the last $200 billion dollar Wall Street debacle is in order. Amazing isn't it? Ten years later and all that has happened is we get to have new Economic Armageddons that are 100 times worse.

The documentary is Frontline's Bigger Than Enron.

Chris Dodd's wife and derivatives trading - "all in the family"


It’s all in the family! Senator Chris Dodd writes a financial reform bill but forgets to regulate derivatives, “financial weapons of mass destruction.” Then we find out that his wife works for the owners of two exchanges that will very likely benefit from Dodd's “reform” legislation.

 

They make the rules. They take the money, all of it, and leave us with debt. And they tell us it’s all legal.

Here’s the story.

Dodd's Dud

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You may be wondering why you haven't seen a post overview on the latest Senator Dodd's Financial Reform Bill, Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010 (link has legislative summary and text). That's because, as usual, it's a dud.

Firstly a few summary points are listed here. The Huffington Post has a list of other criticisms, including the political on Dodd 2.0. Also, yet another New York Times op-ed points to the well known fact, putting the CFPA under the Federal Reserve will de facto kill consumer financial protection.

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