A new Health Care Cost Institute study throws cold water on the popular idea that consumers can save themselves and the nation loads of money if they become savvier health care shoppers.
Source: Choice has small impact on health care spending
The governor of Virginia has signed a bill into law that permits fantasy sports websites to operate in the state provided they follow certain guidelines.
Source: Virginia law a major victory for fantasy sports
China’s exports contracted sharply last month, deepening worries over slowing growth in the world’s second-largest economy.
Source: China exports shrank 20% in February
Nike says it’s suspending its major endorsement deal with Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova after she admitted to failing at drug test at the Australian Open this year.
Source: Nike suspends Sharapova deal
Reuters News and Genscape Report attributed to today`s Oil Squeeze Move – couldn`t find more BS if you were assigned with cleaning out your horse`s barn stall. Follow the actual Oil Data Metrics and avoid the Rumor Mongering Market Garbage and Hearsay OPEC Gossip marketed as actual “Market Analytics”.
When OPEC actually gets their collective heads out of the sand and cuts production then this is a newsworthy event, and worth covering from a journalistic standpoint. The big takeaway until proven otherwise is everyone in the Oil Industry is going to make up for lower prices by maximizing volume in any manner possible. There is no such thing as a “fair price” for oil, and OPEC is sure not going to realize this fantasy talk scenario without concrete action, i.e., cutting production from the current daily over-supplied market.
One is sure not going to achieve a “fair price” for oil from a producer standpoint if one continues to produce over 2 million barrels per day over actual demand. Freezing oil output levels at all-time record levels is just further evidence that OPEC is clueless, myopic and just doesn`t have a handle on the market. Wake me up when OPEC actually cuts production, until then they are the boy that cried wolf far too many times!
© EconMatters All Rights Reserved | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Email Digest | Kindle
Source: A Whole Lot of BS Behind Monday`s Oil Move (Video)
The U.S. government is imposing export restrictions on Chinese telecom manufacturer ZTE over an alleged scheme to dodge sanctions against Iran.
Source: U.S. punishes Chinese tech giant over Iran trade
By Tyler Durden
Submitted by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“That's the way the ruling class operates in any society. They keep the lower and the middle classes fighting with each other… Anything different—that's what they're gonna talk about—race, religion, ethnic and national background, jobs, income, education, social status, sexuality, anything they can do to keep us fighting with each other, so that they can keep going to the bank!”
– Comedian George Carlin
“We the people” have been utterly and completely betrayed.
The politicians “we the people” most trusted to look out for our best interests, protect our rights, and ensure that the nation does not slip into tyranny have cheated on us, lied to us, swindled us, deceived us, double-crossed us, and sold us to the highest bidder.
Time and again, they have shown in word and deed that their priorities lay elsewhere, that they care nothing about our plight, that they owe us no allegiance, that they are motivated by power and money rather than principle, that they are deaf to our entreaties, that they are part of an elite ruling class that views us as mere cattle, that their partisan bickering is part of an elaborate ruse to keep us divided and distracted, and that their oaths of office to uphold the Constitution mean nothing.
Incredibly, even in the face of their treachery and lies, the great majority of Americans persist in believing that the politicians have the people’s best interests at heart.
Despite the fact that we’ve been burned before, most Americans continue to allow themselves to be bamboozled into casting their votes for one candidate or another, believing that this time they mean what they say, this time they really care about the citizenry, this time will be different.
Of course, they rarely ever mean what they say, they care about their constituents only to the extent that it advances their political careers, and it never turns out differently. We are as easily discarded the day after the elections as we were wantonly wooed in the months leading up to the big day. Those same politicians who were once so eager to pose for our pictures, smile at our jokes, and glad-hand us for our votes will, upon being elected, retreat behind a massive, impenetrable wall that ensures we are not seen or heard from again—at least, until the next election.
The joke is on us.
As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, all of the caucuses, primaries, nominating conventions, town hall meetings, rallies, meet and greets, delegates and super-delegates are sophisticated schemes aimed at advancing the illusion of participation culminating in the reassurance ritual of voting.
It’s not about Red Republicans or Blue Democrats. It’s about Green Donors—i.e, those with money who can afford to pay for access.
Votes might elect politicians, but as a 2014 field experiment by political scientists at Yale University and the University of California, Berkeley, makes clear, …read more
Source: Just Shut Up & Vote: The Futility Of Representative Government In An Age Of Robber Barons
By Tyler Durden
By now, the world is largely familiar with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s fabled “Tigers and Flies” campaign.
Since taking office in 2013, Xi has embarked on an ambitious effort to root out party corruption and ensure that the directives passed down from on high in the Politburo are executed faithfully among the sprawling rank and file. As The Atlantic wrote last year, the discipline “problem” is “made more urgent by a slowing economy,” an economy which desperately needs to be reformed.
“Reform, however, requires the ability to enact policy,” The Atlantic flatly adds. “That in turn necessitates bureaucrats who follow the central government’s orders.”
Publicly there have been more than 1,500 announced cases against party officials. But that’s just “publicly.” Knowing the Party’s reputation for “disappearing” those who “disappoint” or otherwise act in morally objectionable ways, the real number is impossible to know but is likely orders of magnitude higher.
When China’s stock market began to crash last summer as the country’s margin “miracle” finally buckled under the weight of the millions of illiterate daytrading housewives who poured their life savings into everything from umbrella manufacturers to industrial companies-turned P2P outfits, Beijing extended the corruption probe to those “responsible” for the equity meltdown.
Soon, the quest for stock market “manipulators” and those (like journalists) who would otherwise seek to harm the national interest by, well, by reporting the facts became part and parcel of a kind of mini Tigers and Flies campaign focused specifically on China’s financial markets. That campaign eventually ensnared quite a few officials, prominent money managers, and eminent businessmen, including Guo Guangchang, a self-styled “Chinese Warren Buffett.”
But all of this wasn’t good enough for China. No, a “true” police state must be able to monitor all things at all times and prevent transgressions against the prevailing order before they happen. So more “Minority Report” than NSA.
This is especially true now that Beijing’s quest to rein in “zombie companies” and curb overcapacity is likely to mean hundreds of thousands of industrial job losses and thus quite a bit of grumbling among the downtrodden (and recently jobless) masses.
Well don’t look now, but China is attempting to use big data, a military contractor, and a camera network known as “Skynet” to predict crimes before they happen.
“China’s effort to flush out threats to stability is expanding into an area that used to exist only in dystopian sci-fi: pre-crime,” Bloomberg reports. “The Communist Party has directed one of the country’s largest state-run defense contractors, China Electronics Technology Group, to develop software to collate data on jobs, hobbies, consumption habits, and other behavior of ordinary citizens to predict terrorist acts before they occur.”
(“Big Uncle” Xi is watching)
Make no mistake, China is a fertile testing ground for such an experiment because, well, because the public has no rights.
“The program is unprecedented because there are no safeguards …read more
Source: China Goes Full "Minority Report", Creates "Pre-Crime" Program
The Italian banking system is a “leaning tower” that truly could completely collapse at literally any moment. And as Italy’s banks begin to go down like dominoes, it is going to set off financial panic all over Europe unlike anything we have ever seen before. I wrote about the troubles in Italy back in January, but since that time the crisis has escalated. At this point, Italian banking stocks have declined a whopping 28 percent since the beginning of 2016, and when you look at some of the biggest Italian banks the numbers become even more frightening. On Monday, shares of Monte dei Paschi were down 4.7 percent, and they have now plummeted 56 percent since the start of the year. Shares of Carige were down 8 percent, and they have now plunged a total of 58 percent since the start of the year. This is what a financial crisis looks like, and just like we are seeing in South America, the problems in Italy appear to be significantly accelerating.
So what makes Italy so important?
Well, we all saw how difficult it was for the rest of Europe to come up with a plan to rescue Greece. But Greece is relatively small – they only have the 44th largest economy in the world.
The Italian economy is far larger. Italy has the 8th largest economy in the world, and their government debt to GDP ratio is currently sitting at about 132 percent.
There is no way that Europe has the resources or the ability to handle a full meltdown of the Italian financial system. Unfortunately, that is precisely what is happening. Italian banks are absolutely drowning in non-performing loans, and as Jeffrey Moore has noted, this potentially represents “the greatest threat to the world’s already burdened financial system”…
Shares of Italy’s largest financial institutions have plummeted in the opening months of 2016 as piles of bad debt on their balance sheets become too high to ignore. Amid all of the risks facing EU members in 2016, the risk of contagion from Italy’s troubled banks poses the greatest threat to the world’s already burdened financial system.
At the core of the issue is the concerning level of Non-Performing Loans (NPL’s) on banks’ books, with estimates ranging from 17% to 21% of total lending. This amounts to approximately €200 billion of NPL’s, or 12% of Italy’s GDP. Moreover, in some cases, bad loans make up an alarming 30% of individual banks’ balance sheets.
Things have already gotten so bad that the European Central Bank is now monitoring liquidity levels at Monte dei Paschi and Carige on a daily basis. The following comes from Reuters…
The European Central Bank is checking liquidity levels at a number of Italian banks, including Banca Carige and Monte dei Paschi di Siena , on a daily basis, two sources close to the matter said on Monday.
Italian banking shares have fallen sharply since the start of the year amid market concerns about some 360 billion euros of bad loans on …read more
Source: The Collapse Of Italy’s Banks Threatens To Plunge The European Financial System Into Chaos
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
Everyone knows America’s campaign in Afghanistan has been an enormous foreign policy success.
The Taliban harbored al-Qaeda before and after 9/11 so naturally, the US had to oust Mullah Omar and company on the way to chasing Osama bin Laden through the mountains whilst laying waste to whatever civilization existed prior to the American invasion.
But the $133.1 billion spent on the war was well worth it. Bin Laden was captured in a matter of months, the Taliban was driven into relative obscurity, a stable government was elected by the people for the people in Kabul, and today, Afghanistan stands as a democratic oasis in an otherwise strife-ridden wasteland.
Oh, wait.
Actually it took a decade to find Bin Laden, the country is still mired in violence, Mullah Omar finally died with his one eye but it wasn’t part of some dramatic US raid, the Taliban is resurgent and now controls more territory than it has since before 9/11, and in October, Obama had to backtrack on his pledge to pull American troops out of the country.
Accoring to Afghan government sources there was a “secret” meeting in Doha in February between the Taliban and officials from Kabul where, according to the government, “they [the Taliban] wouldn’t simply reject that they’re going to meet [us] face to face [for the talks in March].” If that doesn’t sound promising to you, you’re a pragmatist and should be praised for it.
So that of course means more taxpayer dollars will continue to be plowed into this misadventure and before you know it, American boots will have been on Afghan ground for longer than some of the soldiers fighting there will have been alive.
For those who enjoy seeing how their tax dollars are wasted on Washington’s perpetually wrong-footed Mid-East foreign policy, NBC has the following hilarious (and remarkably candid, considering the source) tribute to utter military frivolity.
* * *
NBC News spoke to SIGAR’s Special Inspector General John F. Sopko about 12 of the most bizarre and baffling cases highlighted by his team’s investigations.
1. $486 million for ‘deathtrap’ aircraft that were later sold for $32,000
“These planes were the wrong planes for Afghanistan,” Sopko told NBC News. “The U.S. had difficulty getting the Afghans to fly them, and our pilots called them deathtraps. One pilot said parts started falling off while he was coming into land.” Sopko called the planes “one of the biggest single programs in Afghanistan that was a total failure.”
The “modern” diesel plant exported just 8,846 megawatt hours of power between February 2014 and April 2015, SIGAR said in a letter to USAID last August. This output was less than 1 percent of the plant’s capacity and provided just 0.35 percent of power to Kabul, a city of 4.6 million …read more
Source: 12 Ways Your Tax Dollars Were Squandered In Afghanistan
Welcome to Esh Carmel Blog.
