First comprehensive look at Obamacare patients finds they use significantly more health care than those in employer plans, says Blue Cross Blue Shield Association report.
Source: Obamacare patients sicker, pricier than expected
By Tyler Durden
Submitted by 'Jeremiah Johnson', retired Green Beret, via SHTFPlan.com,
Many of the things that are happening this very moment have direct parallels in literature of the past. Whether it is an account such as the “Gulag Archipelago” by Solzhenitsyn or a work of “fiction” such as “1984” by George Orwell is irrelevant. Elements of the history or the storyline (regarding the former and the latter works) are now becoming thoroughly inculcated into the fabric of modern reality.
All of the measures taken by the Soviet Union to crush and control its population are beginning to manifest themselves today in the United States. The courts are “stacked” to reflect the decision of the regime and not to rule by law. The Military Industrial Complex contracts are still being shuffled, along with government policies that just happen to substantiate those business interests with kickbacks for all. Laws serve political and corporate interests, and the lawmakers themselves do not represent any of their constituents: they are self-serving thieves, selling out their country and its populace for money and power.
The police departments have (for all intents and purposes) been “federalized,” with budgets and marching orders becoming increasingly dependent upon federal and not local or state policies. Sheriffs who follow their appointed roles as duly-elected law enforcement officials upholding Constitutional guidelines are being “phased out” of existence. The changed demographics of “forced” insertions of illegal aliens and “refugees” into populations are rapidly negating the remainder of the two-party system to ensure that the Democratic party takes control ad infinitum.
Orwell envisioned it. His work is labeled a work of fiction, although all of the measures Oceania pursued are either currently in place in the United States or they’re being developed. There is mass surveillance, increasing by the day. The “internet of things,” as coined by former General David Petraeus, is almost primed to allow “telescreens” to watch our every movement, and a camera on every corner to back them up. Orwell hated totalitarianism, having been exposed to it in his short but accomplished lifetime, and he knew man’s propensity was to move toward the enslavement of his fellow man.
The development of new weapons by DARPA and the MIC are not toward a foreign enemy so much as the purpose of using them against the citizenry. Drones, robots, nanotechnology, and every other “gizmo” able to be employed are all being drawn from behind the black curtain to unleash upon the citizens. Also, the world’s situation is directly paralleling “1984” as three great spheres of influence…Europe, Asia, and North America…are being created by the powers that be. Global governance in “thirds” is probably the NWO end state, as outlined by Orwell for a very significant reason: control with as much ethnic and cultural homogeneity as possible.
It stands to reason that an Oriental (“Eastasia,” in “1984”) empire/totalitarian state would control the Oriental nations, rather than split it up between populations …read more
Source: Yesterday’s Dystopian Fiction Is Today’s New World Order
Donald Trump played fact checker at Tuesday’s CNN Town Hall. He even brought notes.
Source: Trump plays fact checker at GOP Town Hall
By Tyler Durden
Indications are that the federal probe investigating the possible mishandling of classified materials on Hillary Clinton’s private email server while she served as Secretary of State is winding down. And so far, neither the FBI nor the prosecutorial staff at the Justice Department has come up with information that point to Hillary or her aides knowingly, or negligently, discussing classified secrets over her non-secure email system… contrary to the hopes and “political prayers” of every soul in the Republican Party.
Truth be said with logic and candor, Hillary faces little risk, if at all, of being prosecuted for using her private email system to conduct official business; and chances of her being found criminally liable approach the totally-unlikely. To deny Hillary the brains to handle appropriately classified, or sensitive information that could be “classifiable,” borders on the absurd; accusations of this sort solely sprouting from the usual stinging sources of ultra-right talk radio… the likes of Russ Limbaugh, Glenn Beck et al.
The lack of an indictment by the Justice Department, or even the lack of a more venial sin – the improper handling of some materials, will surely exonerate Hillary Clinton and put an end to the political controversy; but it does not clear her from a most important indictment of all: one where we, the governed citizens, accuse her of poor judgment; not just Republicans, but Democrats and Independents as well.
Hillary’s glass of very questionable judgment seems to have filled to the rim with bad political decisions going back to her support of Husband Bill’s poor decisions on international trade and criminal justice, cupped by her military hawkishness and consent to invade Iraq. And, as US Secretary of State, a far-from-bright decision to use her private server to conduct government business. Many would say that her allowable glass of bad judgment has spilled over; and with it, her qualifications to take the helm from Barack Obama.
As inconsequential as the email issue might seem to most of us, judgment matters!
And if judgment matters, the text of Hillary Clinton’s speeches should be critical to the Democratic Party faithful when making up their minds whether they would want her to be the party’s nominee. The DNC’s complicity in failing to denounce the speeches’ secrecy is an affront to the truth, showing the machinations of dirty politics.
Damn, Hillary! Just tell us what you said in those pearly speeches that you gave folks at Goldman Sachs. Are you afraid that the text in such pricey speeches might give telltales of deceit? Could the transcripts be so damaging as to throw your campaign in disarray, and give Bernie the upper hand? And perhaps, just perhaps, deny you and Bill a second tenancy at the White House?
We might suspect that the speeches only provided soothing assurances that Hillary’s future candidacy to the …read more
Source: (Poor) Judgment Matters – Hillary’s "Inconsequential" Emails
By Tyler Durden
Submitted byMike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
While it might sound strange, a coronation of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary will mark the end of the party as we know it. There’s been a lot written about the “Sanders surge,” with much of it revolving around Hillary Clinton’s extreme personal weakness as a candidate. While this is indisputable, it’s also a convenient way for the status quo to exempt itself from fault and discount genuine grassroots anger. I’m of the view that Sanders’ support is more about people liking him than them disliking Hillary, particularly when it comes to registered Democrats. He’s not merely seen as the “least bad choice.” People really do like him.
The Sanders appeal is twofold. He is seen as unusually honest and consistent for someone who’s held elected office for much of his life, plus he advocates a refreshingly anti-establishment view on core issues that matter to an increasing number of Americans. These include militarism, Wall Street bailouts, a two-tiered justice system, the prohibitive cost of college education, healthcare insecurity and a “rigged economy.” While Hillary is being forced to pay lip service to these issues, everybody knows she doesn’t mean a word of it. She means it less than Obama meant it in 2008, and Obama really didn’t mean it.
– From the post: It’s Not Just the GOP – The Democratic Party is Also Imploding
I just finished watching a surprisingly good and honest 14 minute segment on MSNBC’s Morning Joe which covered how the Democratic National Committee has been rigging the primary in favor of Hillary Clinton. Host Joe Scarborough even went so far as to admit the media’s complicity in the process with regard to superdelegates. He notes:
“And I know the Republican party wishes they rigged the process as well as the Democratic party did right now, because they could rig it against Trump — but the Democratic party rigs their process so that these superdelegates, which by the way can move any direction they want, actually skew the process and the reporting so badly that the voters actually don’t have their say when it comes to voting.”
This is a key issue that has been driving me up a wall lately. It is journalistic malpractice for media outlets to include superdelegates in the total tally when these Democratic operatives can switch their support at any point between now and the convention. As we learned in the post Did Hillary Clinton Really Win More New Hampshire Delegates Than Sanders Despite a Landslide Loss?:
Q: From everything you’ve told me so far, I can’t understand why you’re calling Superdelegate votes “irrelevant.” It seems to me like they have the same voting power as a normal delegate, and this puts Sanders in a tremendous hole from the word “go.”
Source: MSNBC Host Admits Democratic Primary Rigged, While Station Simultaneously Rigs Coverage
100% Pure Garcinia Cambogia Extract – Appetite Suppressant – Carb Blocker Capsules – 2100 MG – 90 Caps
Looking for something special ? Find The Lowest Price HERE
By Tyler Durden
For the first two months of 2016, it seemed as if a modest, if stable, rebound was finally taking place among one of the hardest hit transportation sectors of 2015, rails. Alas, like virtually everything else, this too has proven to be nothing more than a dead cat coming back to life and getting run over by a train.
As RBC writes in a recent notes, rail traffic volume declines have again intensified. “On a Y/Y basis, traffic slowed by -14% Y/Y for week 11 as all rails posted stiff volume declines and on a segment basis only Motor Vehicles carloads were higher (+7% Y/Y). Since week 7 when volumes grew by +4% Y/Y, the sharpest traffic decline has come in Intermodal carloads (from growth of +17% Y/Y for week 7 to a -12% Y/Y decline last week). Coal headwinds have also intensified in recent weeks and the segment remains the major laggard so far this quarter (-30% Y/Y QTD).”
Visually:
And while we have touched on some of the primary catalysts for the ongoing decline in railroad traffic, chief among which the drop off in global trade and the plunge in oil transportation, a third – just as important factor – has been the situation involving US coal power plants, where as the EIA writes, “coal stockpiles at electric generating facilities totaled 197 million tons at the end of 2015, the highest level since June 2012 and the highest year-end inventories in at least 25 years.”
The full details from EIA’s Today in Energy, by Tim Shear:
As coal stockpiles at power plants rise, shippers are reducing coal railcar loadings
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Electric Power Monthly and Association of American Railroads
Coal stockpiles at electric generating facilities totaled 197 million tons at the end of 2015, the highest level since June 2012 and the highest year-end inventories in at least 25 years. More than 40 million tons of coal were added to stockpiles at electric generating facilities from September through December, the largest build during that timespan in at least 15 years. In addition to relatively low overall electricity generation, largely attributable to the warmest winter on record, coal-fired electricity has recently been losing market share to electricity produced using natural gas and renewable resources.
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Electric Power Monthly
Coal stockpiles typically follow a seasonal pattern in which stocks build during the lower electricity demand periods of the spring and fall and then get drawn down during periods of higher electricity demand in the summer and winter. In 2015, the stockpile build from August to December was 40 million tons, far higher than the 11 million ton average stockpile build for these months over 2001-14. Coal stockpiles typically decrease in December, averaging a roughly 3 million ton decline for the month over 2001-14. However, stockpiles this December increased by more than 8 million tons.
As stockpiles …read more
Source: Rail Traffic Volumes Tumble As Coal Stockpiles Soar At Record Rate
By Tyler Durden
To let CNN tell it, Donald Trump has women problems.
And we don’t mean in the sense that he has trouble finding an attractive dinner date:
Following a patently absurd spat with Ted Cruz that began when a supposedly unaffiliated anti-Trump group ran an ad featuring a GQ spread of Melania Trump and promptly ended when Trump publicly “schlonged” Cruz by re-tweeting a head-to-head beauty comparison between Melania and Heidi Cruz, some in the media are looking to rekindle the fire Megyn Kelly started last year when, at the first GOP debate, the Fox anchor asked the Republican frontrunner if he thought it was befitting of a presidential candidate to call women “disgusting animals.”
“Trump’s negatives among female voters are climbing,” Kellyanne Conway, a Republican pollster who runs the pro-Cruz super-PAC “Keep the Promise” says.
Conway is referring to a CNN poll from last week that shows 73% of women hold an unfavorable view of the billionaire. “The attrition is most striking among married and suburban female Republicans,” she remarked, adding that “They [women] can tolerate a snide remark or witty snark here or there, but draw the line at personal insults in place of policy prescriptions.”
Yes, “they draw the line at personal insults.” “Insults” like these (note the finale at 0:41):
That’s an ad bought and paid for by Our Principles PAC, a group run by staffers from Jeb Bush’s miserable failure of a campaign.
While Trump has thus far shaken off suggestions that comments he’s made in the past are alarmingly misogynistic, he seems to be making an attempt to mend some fences ahead of the Wisconsin primary. “After a week that found Trump launching attacks on Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s wife, Heidi Cruz, and tossing barbs at Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, the billionaire front-runner on Monday attempted to play down his degrading comments about women, saying they were made in jest,” Bloomberg writes.
“I never knew I was going to be running for office. And you joke, and you kid and say things, but you’re not a politician so you never think anybody cares,” Trump told Wisconsin’s FOX 11 in a phone interview.
Needless to say, Trump’s detractors don’t think “I never thought I would be running for President” is a good excuse for disparaging women.
“[You have problems with] conservative women who are repelled by your attitude and your treatment of females,” Wisconsin-based conservative radio host Charlie Sykes told the frontrunner yesterday. “[I’ve] hired tremendous numbers of women,” Trump responded. “I have been better to women than any of these candidates, frankly.” Here’s what Trump had to say on Twitter:
The media is so after me on women Wow, this is a tough business. Nobody has more respect for women than Donald Trump!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 26, 2016
“@pattiandsammi: @gullakhta99 @realDonaldTrump @Tytan01 @CNN WOMEN LOVE …read more
Source: Trump Explains His Women "Problems": "I Never Knew I Was Going To Run For President"
100% Pure Garcinia Cambogia Extract – Appetite Suppressant – Carb Blocker Capsules – 2100 MG – 90 Caps
Looking for something special ? Find The Lowest Price HERE
By Tyler Durden
The “short energy” trade worked great for a while and then, as we
It is these regional banks that Bloomberg finds are the object of shorts’ latest affection, as bearish bets have shot up 35% on average this year among the 10 most-shorted stocks in the KBW Regional Banking Index, and nowhere more so than at Cullen/Frost Bankers Inc. and Prosperity Bancshares Inc. in Texas, which have seen short interest surge about 60 percent.
The reason why shorts’ attention has been redirected to energy banks is well-known to our readers as we have been covering the banks’ exposure to energy since January: “as oil prices plunged, concern over energy companies’ ability to pay back loans drove investors to unload or bet against financial stocks judged to have the most at stake in the sector. So far, the rebound that pushed oil to around $40 a barrel has done little to dilute that speculation. Stubbornly low interest rates are also squeezing profits in a group that trades at a premium of almost 40 percent to their larger brethren.”
“It’s generally a very tough environment,” said Stephen Moss, a New York-based analyst at Evercore ISI. “Beyond oil and the yield curve, we have seen signs of credit softening overall. So going forward, it feels like you are going to have incrementally higher credit costs, which obviously will pressure earnings.”
The details are also mostly familiar, but here is a quick recap from Bloomberg:
Energy loans account for 15 percent of Cullen/Frost’s portfolio, while they make up 4 percent of Prosperity’s, according to Moss. Of the 10 most shorted regional banks, the majority do business in states like Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas, centers of the drilling industry. Banks that have exposure higher than 4 percent to energy in their loan portfolios have slumped 22 percent since late 2014, Morgan Stanley’s Ken Zerbe wrote in a report earlier this month.
Bigger banks have also increasingly lured bears this year. Short interest makes up 6.2 percent of Zions Bancorporation’s shares outstanding and 4.5 percent percent of Comerica Inc. Seven percent of Zions’ loan portfolio is exposed to energy companies, and 6 percent of Comerica’s, according to Zerbe.
Being a smaller, regional bank instead of a TBTF, money-center bank means just that: “regional banks are more sensitive to the trajectory of interest rates, as a bigger proportion of their revenue stems from deposits and lending. The Federal Reserve scaled back its forecast for tighter policy on March 16, citing weaker global growth. That translates to lower-for-longer short-term rates, which crimp what local banks can charge on loans.”
But more so than the flat yield curve, the immediate catalyst are questions about the banks’ solvency if and when client O&G companies file bankruptcy, straddling the lenders with billions in bad debt.
Evercore ISI’s Moss said even if the Fed speeds up interest rates increases, a stronger dollar would hurt …read more
Source: Crushed By The Record Oil Squeeze, This Is How Energy Bears Are Shorting Crude Now
By Tyler Durden
Our analysis show that more than 3 mb/d of liquid production helped by US$55.5bn in credit facilities may be at risk as the spring re-determinations starts in April. It all comes down to the price deck used for reserve valuations. A 50 per cent increase in oil prices from mid-February thus provide ample ammunition for shale companies arguing their credit facilities should not be cut too much.
Acreage would have to be shut in; producers would have to consolidate or fold; with impairments felt across the US board.
However, at $45/b (probably nudged above $50/b on forward expectations), not only will these players get another six months credit lifeline prolonging the ‘market rebalancing’ agony, the Fed / White House will be pressing banks / lenders extremely hard again to keep the tight oil party going given that gets them all the way to November 2016 US Presidential polls. In the so called ‘shale vs. sheikh’ battle, OPEC is talking the market up at the exact time when it should be letting prices collapse.
Make no mistake, the race to put shale pen to refinancing paper before 17th April is now categorically on in the US, before the creaky Doha floor potentially collapses. By looking at speculative positions in the WTI market it is clear the recent rally has been unconvincing. Long positions hardly budged as prices rallied; coincidently with shorts being covered at an unprecedented pace. This was nothing more than the worst possible timed short squeeze. As the rally now comes to an end, expect prices to drop conspicuously, just as banks make their redetermination decisions on US$40 – 50 oil as compared to US$20 – 30 one month hence. Adding insult to OPEC injury, a flattening contango (we did say longs were unconvinced didn’t we) is destined to flood the market with stored crude, pushing prompt price down just enough to incentivize renewed inventory builds repeating the pattern ad infinitum. Killing shale softly is not the way to go. Aim for $10 /bbl and get the V-shaped recovery that just might save marginal OPEC countries from internal havoc. 
And that brings us to the final point which ultimately leads us onto longer term OPEC post-Doha ‘strategy’. On the one hand, OPEC already showed its interim hand from February meetings that it’s largely unwilling (or unable) to decimate prices below $20/b by increasing volumes to kill US shale. It’s the only chance the group has to orchestrate a classic ‘V shape’ recovery; buying more time to get fiscal houses in order back at elevated prices. Rather, what the freeze discussions essentially do, is make sure if US shale won’t ultimately budge at $40/b, it ensures a long and painful ‘U shape’ recovery where more fragile OPEC producers start blowing out instead on the back of depressed prices.
Whether the likes of Venezuela, Nigeria …read more
Source: The Doha Dilemma – Prolonging The Agony Deeper & Longer
Welcome to Esh Carmel Blog.
