Politics are dominant. Obama has a good shot at a second term. The Senate will stay Democratic. I have no guess on the House as yet.
These two represent the current thinking in Europe.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/9607750/The-origins-of-our-current-woes-and-the-way-to-escape-from-them.html
3:58PM BST 14 Oct 2012
80 Comments
The corollary is that we are suffering from a shortage of aggregate demand.
The intriguing question is why – and why can so little apparently be done
about it? After all, it is supposed to be supply that limits what we can
have. What we want is supposed to be limitless.
Aggregate demand has been depressed by not one economic malady but many.
Several of these have their origins in one major shock – the extended period
of financial excess and the subsequent financial collapse in 2007/8. In the
aftermath, consumer balance sheets in many countries are excessively
leveraged, so consumers are cautious about spending. Meanwhile, banks,
weakened by the financial crisis and now hemmed in by tighter regulation,
are reluctant to lend. Also, in several countries, including the UK, but
importantly not the US, residential property remains over-valued, with the
result that the market is frozen, while prices remain vulnerable.
And the weakness of the public finances pushes governments to reduce their
borrowing. The origins of this weakness, though, predate the financial
crisis. In the good times, government debt was too high, with the result
that the downturn soon sent it to dangerous proportions.
Ironically, given today’s widespread pessimism, this excessive debt originated
in over-optimism about the future.
Yet over and above these factors, we are simultaneously experiencing the
failure of the greatest monetary experiment in history, namely the euro.
Admittedly, the financial crisis made this worse but it did not cause it.
This failed experiment is condemning the eurozone, which accounts for about
a sixth of world GDP, to depression. The peripheral countries are lumbered
with excessively high costs. Meanwhile they, and other countries, are forced
to submit themselves to draconian and collectively self-defeating fiscal
tightening, not least because without this they are perceived to impose a
burden on the other euro members.
Outside the euro straitjacket, the sensible thing would be for these countries to go easy on the tightening and/or to default and devalue.
Yet the current depression isn’t all about the aftermath of the financial collapse and the euro crisis. The world suffers from a persistent tendency towards deficient aggregate demand, because umpteen countries are chronic over-savers, with a tendency to run large current account surpluses. These countries fall into three groups: the Asian rapid growers, led by China; the Middle East oil producers and Russia; and an oddball group of European countries comprising Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland.
Can an individual medium-sized country such as the UK pull itself out of this mess by expansionary policy? To some extent. I have repeatedly urged more fiscal action to boost demand, based on increasing public investment and trying to pump-prime private spending.
Even so, I reckon that the feasible scope for such action falls well short of what is required to restore the economy to full capacity usage.
Why not go further? After all, any adverse reaction from the bond markets could be countered through aggressive Quantitative Easing. I have always thought, however, that the big danger lies not in the bond markets but rather in the foreign exchange markets. If they saw the UK going hell-for-leather in pursuit of “Keynesianism in one country” they would send sterling sharply lower. Now you might think that this would be a good thing, since it would improve our competitiveness. This is, after all, the policy that we warmly embraced in 2008.
But the danger is that another major drop of the pound would cause inflation to rise sharply and that would eat into consumer real incomes before any boost to net exports appeared.
Moreover, since this would be a “beggar-thy-neighbour” policy, it would be badly received by our trade partners, possibly provoking an unhelpful response.
Interestingly, neither of these objections holds against a policy of co-ordinated Keynesianism in many countries, as advanced by Gordon Brown. But political barriers against a new global stimulatory programme happening any time soon look formidable.
In the UK, as well as carefully calibrated fiscal action, the best hope for recovery rests with falls in inflation gradually causing real incomes to rise. Tuesday’s inflation figures should bring another instalment. Even so, recovery is going to be slow. Unfortunately, despite being unashamedly Keynesian, I reckon that we will have to endure high levels of unused capacity for some time while the severe structural problems described above are sorted out. Radical action by the UK alone could make our problems worse.
Roger Bootle is managing director of Capital Economics. roger.bootle@capitaleconomics.com"
Outside the euro straitjacket, the sensible thing would be for these countries to go easy on the tightening and/or to default and devalue.
Yet the current depression isn’t all about the aftermath of the financial collapse and the euro crisis. The world suffers from a persistent tendency towards deficient aggregate demand, because umpteen countries are chronic over-savers, with a tendency to run large current account surpluses. These countries fall into three groups: the Asian rapid growers, led by China; the Middle East oil producers and Russia; and an oddball group of European countries comprising Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland.
Can an individual medium-sized country such as the UK pull itself out of this mess by expansionary policy? To some extent. I have repeatedly urged more fiscal action to boost demand, based on increasing public investment and trying to pump-prime private spending.
Even so, I reckon that the feasible scope for such action falls well short of what is required to restore the economy to full capacity usage.
Why not go further? After all, any adverse reaction from the bond markets could be countered through aggressive Quantitative Easing. I have always thought, however, that the big danger lies not in the bond markets but rather in the foreign exchange markets. If they saw the UK going hell-for-leather in pursuit of “Keynesianism in one country” they would send sterling sharply lower. Now you might think that this would be a good thing, since it would improve our competitiveness. This is, after all, the policy that we warmly embraced in 2008.
But the danger is that another major drop of the pound would cause inflation to rise sharply and that would eat into consumer real incomes before any boost to net exports appeared.
Moreover, since this would be a “beggar-thy-neighbour” policy, it would be badly received by our trade partners, possibly provoking an unhelpful response.
Interestingly, neither of these objections holds against a policy of co-ordinated Keynesianism in many countries, as advanced by Gordon Brown. But political barriers against a new global stimulatory programme happening any time soon look formidable.
In the UK, as well as carefully calibrated fiscal action, the best hope for recovery rests with falls in inflation gradually causing real incomes to rise. Tuesday’s inflation figures should bring another instalment. Even so, recovery is going to be slow. Unfortunately, despite being unashamedly Keynesian, I reckon that we will have to endure high levels of unused capacity for some time while the severe structural problems described above are sorted out. Radical action by the UK alone could make our problems worse.
Roger Bootle is managing director of Capital Economics. roger.bootle@capitaleconomics.com"
Bootle's analisis is unsound as is his conclusion.
He does not understand the liquidity trap.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/9607828/Eurolands-debt-strategy-is-an-economic-and-moral-disgrace.html
4:52PM BST 14 Oct 2012
"Drastic fiscal tightening in a string of interlinked countries does two to
three times more damage than assumed, especially if there is no offsetting
monetary stimulus.
Pushed beyond the therapeutic dose, it is self-defeating. At a certain point
it becomes pain for pain's sake.
The error has long been obvious in Greece. The EU-IMF Troika originally said
the economy would rebound quickly, growing 1.1pc in 2011, and 2.1pc in 2012,
and on from there to sunlit uplands.
In fact, Greek GDP contracted by 4.5pc in 2010, 6.9pc in 2011, and is expected
to shrink a further 6pc this year, and 4pc next year. If the Troika were a
doctor, it would face manslaughter charges.
The IMF now admits -- or rather those in the IMF who always feared this
outcome are at last able to say -- that this misjudgement goes far beyond
Greece. Tightening by 1pc of GDP in rich countries does not lead to a 0.5pc
loss of output over two years as thought.
The "fiscal multiplier" is not the hallowed 0.5 assumed by every
finance ministry in Europe. The awful evidence since the global bubble burst
in 2008-2009 is that the multiplier is between 0.9 and 1.7, or even higher
for EMU's crucifixion belt.
The model constructed over the long boom years -- and largely drawn from isolated cases, each able to export its way out of trouble -- is dangerously wrong in a 1930s-style excess savings crisis with much of the world is slump.
Steen Jakobsen from Saxo Bank says the IMF's mea culpa is the "biggest financial story of the year". Indeed it is. The authorities have repeated the blunders of the Great Depression, but with fewer excuses.
The IMF has now called for a change of course. The Greco-Latins should be given more time to cut their deficits. The AAA creditor bloc should stop cutting altogether until the eurozone is off the reefs.
"Reducing public debt is incredibly difficult without growth," said the IMF's Christine Lagarde. "Instead of frontloading heavily, it is sometimes better to have a bit more time."
One might expect a flicker of recognition from Germany's Wolfgang Schauble that something must change. But no, with half Europe sliding into a second and more menacing leg of depression, and with unemployment already at 25.1pc in Greece and Spain, and 15.9pc in Portugal, he refuses to brook deviation.
"Increasing public debt doesn't create growth, it destroys growth," he snapped back. There is "no alternative" to debt reduction. Always the same pedantry.
He reminds us of the immortal Pfuhl in Tolstoy's War and Peace: "disposed at all times to be irritable", and unshaken in his military certainties even after the defeats of Jena and Auerstadt.
"Failure did not cause him to see the slightest evidence of weakness in his theory. On the contrary, failure was entirely due to the departures made from his theory."
So there will be no change in policy. "Europe is on the way to solving its problems," insists Mr Schauble.
The Latins will have to bear the full burden of adjustment. They alone must continue closing the North-South chasm in competiveness through an "internal devaluation", a posh term for a policy that works chiefly by throwing enough people onto the dole to break labour resistance to pay cuts. It redoubles the contractionary bias of the whole EMU system in the process.
Whether or not the Schauble plan shatters on the barricades of civic revolt is the great unknown. Growth forecasts are all over the place.
Is the Spanish government right to pencil in a fall just 0.5pc next year, with recovery starting by the summer, or is the the Spanish employers group right at -1.6pc, or Citigroup at -3.2pc (and -5.7pc in Portugal), or Nomura at -3pc and -1.5pc again in 2014?
Madhur Jha from HSBC fears that a further 1.5m people in Spain could lose their jobs by the end on 2013, pushing unemployment to over 31pc. His optimistic scenario is 28pc.
The Spanish private sector has born the brunt of cuts so far. The axe must now fall on state employees as well, and that will almost certainly be a condition for a sovereign bail-out. "Cutting jobs in the public sector is politically explosive. The flashpoint for the Spanish economy could be approaching," he said.
The EMU doctrine -- expounded by bail-out chief Klaus Regling as he tours world capitals with his charts -- is that carping "Anglo-Saxons" will have to eat their words about the perils of internal devaluations.
We are told that Ireland has largely closed the gap already, showing what is possible. Indeed it has, but Ireland has one of the most open economies in the world. Its exports are 127pc of GDP. It has a fat trade surplus.
It has never been seriously uncompetitive in the euro. It does not have a misaligned currency. Ireland tells us nothing about Spain, Italy, Portugal, or indeed France.
Spain clearly faces a much tougher task. It has a closed economy. Exports are less than 30pc of GDP. The current account deficit has narrowed from 10pc of GDP to 2pc -- nudging into surplus in July on the reviving tourists trade -- but the low-hanging fruit has been picked and the gains are flattening.
I do not wish to belittle the feat of Spain's formidable companies. They have almost matched the export growth rates of German peers since 2009. Commerce secretary Jaime García Legaz said last week that Spain's economy would be crashing at a 4pc rate without them.
Yet they cannot work miracles. If EMU policy settings had been more expansionary -- if the eurozone had not been forced back into recession by the incompetence of the EU authorities -- then perhaps they could have pulled off an export-led recovery. But the handicap imposed upon them is too great.
The credit crunch across Club Med has left Spanish firms facing a borrowing premium of 2pc or more compared to Northern rivals. The North-South gap is becoming hard-wired into the EMU system.
The reality is that even after a collapse in imports, Spain is still in deficit and has net external debts of 92pc of GDP. Trade equilibrium will be attained only with the economy in depression and only with unemployment at levels that no demcoracy can tolerate.
Mr Schauble thinks Spain has no choice. It must take its medicine. "There is no European country that would waste the smallest thought on giving up the common European currency," he said last week
This is not quite true. The head of the ruling party in Cyprus has openly discussed exit from the euro if Troika rescue terms are unacceptable.
It is also a misjudgement. Every sovereign nation has a choice, and the IMF's mea culpa changes the landscape. The issue is no longer whether Spain should adhere to the Schauble plan, but whether the plan can work at all.
In fairness, the German government has shifted ground. It is letting the European Central Bank engage in stealth mutualisation of EMU debt by ramping up its balance sheet. This makes it easier for Chancellor Angela Merkel to avoid a bruising showdown in the Bundestag.
Yet such a policy falls between two stalls. It is too fitful, hesitant, and cribbed about with conditions to halt the crisis: but is enough to provoke a backlash from the German people as they realise their country is being smuggled into fiscal union without democratic assent.
The Latin bloc and like-minded allies could of course marshal their voting power in the EU Council and the ECB to ram through a reflation policy.
The effect would be to drive Germany and the AAA-periphery out of EMU by pushing domestic inflation in those countries to unbearable levels. You could argue that this process is already underway, though France is not yet feeling enough pain to force the issue.
Besides, to do that you need a Churchillian figure -- or indeed a Juan Pérez Villamil, the hero of the Levantamiento -- to raise the flag of defiance. No such leader has yet appeared."
The model constructed over the long boom years -- and largely drawn from isolated cases, each able to export its way out of trouble -- is dangerously wrong in a 1930s-style excess savings crisis with much of the world is slump.
Steen Jakobsen from Saxo Bank says the IMF's mea culpa is the "biggest financial story of the year". Indeed it is. The authorities have repeated the blunders of the Great Depression, but with fewer excuses.
The IMF has now called for a change of course. The Greco-Latins should be given more time to cut their deficits. The AAA creditor bloc should stop cutting altogether until the eurozone is off the reefs.
"Reducing public debt is incredibly difficult without growth," said the IMF's Christine Lagarde. "Instead of frontloading heavily, it is sometimes better to have a bit more time."
One might expect a flicker of recognition from Germany's Wolfgang Schauble that something must change. But no, with half Europe sliding into a second and more menacing leg of depression, and with unemployment already at 25.1pc in Greece and Spain, and 15.9pc in Portugal, he refuses to brook deviation.
"Increasing public debt doesn't create growth, it destroys growth," he snapped back. There is "no alternative" to debt reduction. Always the same pedantry.
He reminds us of the immortal Pfuhl in Tolstoy's War and Peace: "disposed at all times to be irritable", and unshaken in his military certainties even after the defeats of Jena and Auerstadt.
"Failure did not cause him to see the slightest evidence of weakness in his theory. On the contrary, failure was entirely due to the departures made from his theory."
So there will be no change in policy. "Europe is on the way to solving its problems," insists Mr Schauble.
The Latins will have to bear the full burden of adjustment. They alone must continue closing the North-South chasm in competiveness through an "internal devaluation", a posh term for a policy that works chiefly by throwing enough people onto the dole to break labour resistance to pay cuts. It redoubles the contractionary bias of the whole EMU system in the process.
Whether or not the Schauble plan shatters on the barricades of civic revolt is the great unknown. Growth forecasts are all over the place.
Is the Spanish government right to pencil in a fall just 0.5pc next year, with recovery starting by the summer, or is the the Spanish employers group right at -1.6pc, or Citigroup at -3.2pc (and -5.7pc in Portugal), or Nomura at -3pc and -1.5pc again in 2014?
Madhur Jha from HSBC fears that a further 1.5m people in Spain could lose their jobs by the end on 2013, pushing unemployment to over 31pc. His optimistic scenario is 28pc.
The Spanish private sector has born the brunt of cuts so far. The axe must now fall on state employees as well, and that will almost certainly be a condition for a sovereign bail-out. "Cutting jobs in the public sector is politically explosive. The flashpoint for the Spanish economy could be approaching," he said.
The EMU doctrine -- expounded by bail-out chief Klaus Regling as he tours world capitals with his charts -- is that carping "Anglo-Saxons" will have to eat their words about the perils of internal devaluations.
We are told that Ireland has largely closed the gap already, showing what is possible. Indeed it has, but Ireland has one of the most open economies in the world. Its exports are 127pc of GDP. It has a fat trade surplus.
It has never been seriously uncompetitive in the euro. It does not have a misaligned currency. Ireland tells us nothing about Spain, Italy, Portugal, or indeed France.
Spain clearly faces a much tougher task. It has a closed economy. Exports are less than 30pc of GDP. The current account deficit has narrowed from 10pc of GDP to 2pc -- nudging into surplus in July on the reviving tourists trade -- but the low-hanging fruit has been picked and the gains are flattening.
I do not wish to belittle the feat of Spain's formidable companies. They have almost matched the export growth rates of German peers since 2009. Commerce secretary Jaime García Legaz said last week that Spain's economy would be crashing at a 4pc rate without them.
Yet they cannot work miracles. If EMU policy settings had been more expansionary -- if the eurozone had not been forced back into recession by the incompetence of the EU authorities -- then perhaps they could have pulled off an export-led recovery. But the handicap imposed upon them is too great.
The credit crunch across Club Med has left Spanish firms facing a borrowing premium of 2pc or more compared to Northern rivals. The North-South gap is becoming hard-wired into the EMU system.
The reality is that even after a collapse in imports, Spain is still in deficit and has net external debts of 92pc of GDP. Trade equilibrium will be attained only with the economy in depression and only with unemployment at levels that no demcoracy can tolerate.
Mr Schauble thinks Spain has no choice. It must take its medicine. "There is no European country that would waste the smallest thought on giving up the common European currency," he said last week
This is not quite true. The head of the ruling party in Cyprus has openly discussed exit from the euro if Troika rescue terms are unacceptable.
It is also a misjudgement. Every sovereign nation has a choice, and the IMF's mea culpa changes the landscape. The issue is no longer whether Spain should adhere to the Schauble plan, but whether the plan can work at all.
In fairness, the German government has shifted ground. It is letting the European Central Bank engage in stealth mutualisation of EMU debt by ramping up its balance sheet. This makes it easier for Chancellor Angela Merkel to avoid a bruising showdown in the Bundestag.
Yet such a policy falls between two stalls. It is too fitful, hesitant, and cribbed about with conditions to halt the crisis: but is enough to provoke a backlash from the German people as they realise their country is being smuggled into fiscal union without democratic assent.
The Latin bloc and like-minded allies could of course marshal their voting power in the EU Council and the ECB to ram through a reflation policy.
The effect would be to drive Germany and the AAA-periphery out of EMU by pushing domestic inflation in those countries to unbearable levels. You could argue that this process is already underway, though France is not yet feeling enough pain to force the issue.
Besides, to do that you need a Churchillian figure -- or indeed a Juan Pérez Villamil, the hero of the Levantamiento -- to raise the flag of defiance. No such leader has yet appeared."
Ease off on austerity, IMF warns Chancellor George Osborne
14 Oct 2012
| 187 Comments
Euroland's debt strategy is an economic and moral disgrace
14 Oct 2012
| 409 Comments
Greek euro exit will damage eurozone
14 Oct 2012
| 112 Comments
The Guardian:
-
Europe prepares for another Franco-German tussle in Brussels
14 Oct 2012: A new EU summit will see more prevaricating and bickering, but the slow process adds up to a seismic shift in European politics
-
14 Oct 2012: Phillip Inman: For the average German, shopaholics are to blame, but Angela Merkel understands why creditors and borrowers must share the pain
Pure road rage.
The Krugman blog:
Foreigners and the Burden of Debt
A number of comments on my non-burden of the debt post were along the lines of “But what if the debt is owed to foreigners?” OK, this takes a bit more thinking.
Another thought experiment: suppose that for some reason the Chinese and a bunch of domestic investors do an asset swap: the Chinese sell off $500 billion of Treasuries and buy an equal amount of, say, corporate bonds, while the domestic investors do the reverse. Has America become any richer (or any poorer)? Obviously not — as a nation we still owe the same amount to the rest of the world.
What this tells us is that when we’re trying to assess the burden or lack thereof of debt, foreign ownership of government debt doesn’t really matter. What does matter is our net international investment position, the value of the overseas assets owned by all domestic residents minus the value of all domestic assets owned by foreign residents..
Now, this ties right in with what Brad said about the burden of the debt: we’d all agree that deficits make us poorer if they crowd out investment spending — which they would if the economy were near full employment, but won’t if we’re deeply depressed. All we have to do is realize that net foreign investment — purchases minus sales of assets from and to foreigners — is also a form of investment. Or to put it a bit more simply, sure, budget deficits can make us poorer as a nation if they lead to bigger trade deficits.
So far, nothing like this has happened. Here’s the U.S. budget deficit (all levels of government) and the current account deficit, both as a percentage of GDP:
U.S. borrowing from abroad is way down, not up, in recent years.
Still, you could argue that a bigger budget deficit would, other things equal, lead to a bigger trade deficit — because it would expand the economy and lead to higher imports. (This is in contrast to business investment, which is almost surely crowded in, not out, by deficits under current conditions). So in this very limited sense you could tell a burden of deficits story. But surely it’s not what debt alarmists have in mind: “Hey, deficit spending could bring us back to prosperity, which might lead to more imports, so let’s not go there!”
The bottom line is that while foreign ownership of U.S. assets — not just government debt — is a complication, the common claim that deficits mean that we’re selling our birthright to the Chinese makes no sense at all.
So far"
Another thought experiment: suppose that for some reason the Chinese and a bunch of domestic investors do an asset swap: the Chinese sell off $500 billion of Treasuries and buy an equal amount of, say, corporate bonds, while the domestic investors do the reverse. Has America become any richer (or any poorer)? Obviously not — as a nation we still owe the same amount to the rest of the world.
What this tells us is that when we’re trying to assess the burden or lack thereof of debt, foreign ownership of government debt doesn’t really matter. What does matter is our net international investment position, the value of the overseas assets owned by all domestic residents minus the value of all domestic assets owned by foreign residents..
Now, this ties right in with what Brad said about the burden of the debt: we’d all agree that deficits make us poorer if they crowd out investment spending — which they would if the economy were near full employment, but won’t if we’re deeply depressed. All we have to do is realize that net foreign investment — purchases minus sales of assets from and to foreigners — is also a form of investment. Or to put it a bit more simply, sure, budget deficits can make us poorer as a nation if they lead to bigger trade deficits.
So far, nothing like this has happened. Here’s the U.S. budget deficit (all levels of government) and the current account deficit, both as a percentage of GDP:
Still, you could argue that a bigger budget deficit would, other things equal, lead to a bigger trade deficit — because it would expand the economy and lead to higher imports. (This is in contrast to business investment, which is almost surely crowded in, not out, by deficits under current conditions). So in this very limited sense you could tell a burden of deficits story. But surely it’s not what debt alarmists have in mind: “Hey, deficit spending could bring us back to prosperity, which might lead to more imports, so let’s not go there!”
The bottom line is that while foreign ownership of U.S. assets — not just government debt — is a complication, the common claim that deficits mean that we’re selling our birthright to the Chinese makes no sense at all.
So far"
The Krugman column:
Death By Ideology
" Mitt Romney doesn’t see dead people. But that’s only because he doesn’t want to see them; if he did, he’d have to acknowledge the ugly reality of what will happen if he and Paul Ryan get their way on health care.
Last week, speaking to The Columbus Dispatch,
Mr. Romney declared that nobody in America dies because he or she is
uninsured: “We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their
apartment because they don’t have insurance.” This followed on an earlier remark by Mr. Romney
— echoing an infamous statement by none other than George W. Bush — in
which he insisted that emergency rooms provide essential health care to
the uninsured.
These are remarkable statements. They clearly demonstrate that Mr.
Romney has no idea what life (and death) are like for those less
fortunate than himself.
Even the idea that everyone gets urgent care when needed from emergency
rooms is false. Yes, hospitals are required by law to treat people in
dire need, whether or not they can pay. But that care isn’t free — on
the contrary, if you go to an emergency room you will be billed, and the
size of that bill can be shockingly high. Some people can’t or won’t
pay, but fear of huge bills can deter the uninsured from visiting the
emergency room even when they should. And sometimes they die as a
result.
More important, going to the emergency room when you’re very sick is no
substitute for regular care, especially if you have chronic health
problems. When such problems are left untreated — as they often are
among uninsured Americans — a trip to the emergency room can all too
easily come too late to save a life.
So the reality, to which Mr. Romney is somehow blind, is that many
people in America really do die every year because they don’t have
health insurance.
How many deaths are we talking about? That’s not an easy question to
answer, and conservatives love to cite the handful of studies that fail
to find clear evidence that insurance saves lives. The overwhelming
evidence, however, is that insurance is indeed a lifesaver, and lack of
insurance a killer. For example, states that expand their Medicaid coverage,
and hence provide health insurance to more people, consistently show a
significant drop in mortality compared with neighboring states that
don’t expand coverage.
And surely the fact that the United States is the only major advanced
nation without some form of universal health care is at least part of
the reason life expectancy is much lower in America than in Canada or
Western Europe.
So there’s no real question that lack of insurance is responsible for
thousands, and probably tens of thousands, of excess deaths of Americans
each year. But that’s not a fact Mr. Romney wants to admit, because he
and his running mate want to repeal Obamacare and slash funding for
Medicaid — actions that would take insurance away from some 45 million
nonelderly Americans, causing thousands of people to suffer premature
death. And their longer-term plans to convert Medicare into Vouchercare
would deprive many seniors of adequate coverage, too, leading to still
more unnecessary mortality.
Oh, about the voucher thing: In his debate with Vice President Biden,
Mr. Ryan was actually the first one to mention vouchers, attempting to
rule the term out of bounds. Indeed, it’s apparently the party line on
the right that anyone using the word “voucher” to describe a health
policy in which you’re given a fixed sum to apply to health insurance is
a liar, not to mention a big meanie.
Among the lying liars, then, is the guy who, in 2009, described the Ryan
plan as a matter of “converting Medicare into a defined contribution
sort of voucher system.” Oh, wait — that was Paul Ryan himself.
And what if the vouchers — for that’s what they are — turned out not to
be large enough to pay for adequate insurance? Then those who couldn’t
afford to top up the vouchers sufficiently — a group that would include
many, and probably most, older Americans — would be left with inadequate
insurance, insurance that exposed them to severe financial hardship if
they got sick, sometimes left them unable to afford crucial care, and
yes, sometimes led to their early death.
So let’s be brutally honest here. The Romney-Ryan position on health
care is that many millions of Americans must be denied health insurance,
and millions more deprived of the security Medicare now provides, in
order to save money. At the same time, of course, Mr. Romney and Mr.
Ryan are proposing trillions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthy. So a
literal description of their plan is that they want to expose many
Americans to financial insecurity, and let some of them die, so that a
handful of already wealthy people can have a higher after-tax income.
It’s not a pretty picture — and you can see why Mr. Romney chooses not to see it."
China inflation rate dips to 1.9%
China's policymakers are given more room to boost stimulus measures after the country's inflation rate dips in September.
Singapore and Germany in tax deal
Singapore and Germany agree to increase the level of information they exchange in a bid to crack down on tax dodgers.
China sees September export surge
China's exports grow faster than expected in September, helping to ease worries about a slowdown in the economy.I will sign up for Medicare. The time is now.
Snacking on low glycemic foods and lots of exercise. A coach helps.
I have heard good things about Medifast.
I far prefer spectacles to any surgical adjustment. They come off at night
and can be adjusted as necessary. They also stop chips and grit.
Portraits are a skill I have yet to master. I will have to practice.
Looking at the result does not help much.
I have been surprised at how poorly a thermos bottle works.
There are twelve volt microwave ovens that might be more satisfactory.
The best is a lunch counter or a Deli. Really it depends on where and how many. A brown bag lunch has much to recommend it.
A microwave is not a stove. Food and expectations will have to be adjusted.
For VOIP Skype seems to be the way. It is still free for personal use.
My dumb cell claims a ten cent a minute rate for the continental U.S.
Skype would give me a giggle every time I used it. A small blow against Microsoft, the DMCA, and Verizon / AT&T.
Electric utilities like the grid backed solar systems because they demand peaking power and thus utility growth. I would need to read the local contract very carefully. I would like to charge batteries and only call on the grid at 10.5 volts. If I can get about three days power in four sunny days it will do the job most of the time.
Most of the time is just that. I can do a great deal of load shedding before I must go to back-up power. A gas generator will not get me the subsidy but the line in is not subsidized. Contracts and calculator time.
I will continue to use the AVG one shot tuner on my systems.
It is the advantage of owning the operating system code.
I have not wanted for work for years.
Getting paid is always a problem.
I just don't want to spend the attention necessary to sell effectively.
Let me accumulate a line of product and I will consider getting involved with a sales person.
Maybe I need to consult with sales about what a product line should be.
Demand driven is best. I do want to avoid fashion in so far as possible.
I like the margins in goods that are not commodities.
I will know much more about the state of the world Monday evening.
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