finance – Page 18254

Banks: You Can Bank on It!

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We all knew that cultures were different and that we all had a unique way of doing things that run our daily lives. In Europe they tell the banks that they will die if they are weak (apparently, after the statement issued by Danièle Nouy, overseer of the Singe Supervisory Mechanism). In the US, it’s only the cost of lawsuits and legal expenses that stopped the banks from making all-time record highs in 2013 and still there is hardly a line written about the money that is being raked in. In the UK, they intend to sack 12, 000 people and say thank you very much by dishing out the biggest bonuses this-side of the Atlantic (for the top dogs, not the redundant low-life). Yay! If your kids are looking for something to do when they grow up, they need to become a high-flying banker. Even better, one of the fat cats that gets the cream, does the dozing and slips off with the sandman. Even better than better: Mr. Sandman could always throw the sand into the eyes of those that are losing their jobs, being made redundant and into the eyes of the public so that they don’t get to see it.

Danièle Nouy says that banks that are weak will have to say goodbye to the high life and die. But, please, this is Europe, she is French and there has to be a certain panache about this death. Even death has to be original, confident and accompanied by reckless courage and flamboyant acts. Let’s watch them go out with a glass of champagne. Remember, she wants them to die ‘in an orderly fashion’. Does that mean there won’t be any ‘crime passionnel’? The only crime of passion that will be committed may indeed be on Nouy herself when the people discover that she will have whittled down the banks to a handful that hold the purse strings even tighter. How very fitting that the one part of the male anatomy that she will have us all held by is also the very same word for ‘purse’ (‘bourse’) where she comes from.

USA

The USA is doing pretty well with the six biggest banks in the country (JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley). How have they been treated since being the main instigators of the financial crash which has put us in the predicament that we are in now? They have been treated very well indeed. Those six paid out $18.7 billion to settle lawsuits against them last year for financial misdemeanor and violations of the Banking Secrecy Act as well as misrepresentation of mortgage-backed securities. The list could go on. Even so, those six still made more profit than they had made before the financial crash (all we have to do is go back to 2006 to see figures higher than these ones).

Net income for the six rose by 21% and reached $74.1 billion. That was all thanks to the rise in the stock market, due to false hopes from the Federal Reserve and virtual booming of the economy. All of that looks today as if it may actually continue since Janet Yellen is announcing that it’s not time to pull the plug completely and the economy is still not out of danger. In 2006, when the housing bubble was raking in more money than ever before (right at the peak before it burst), those six earned $84.6 billion. JPMorgan Chase, for example, is expected to make $23 billion in profit alone this year. Wells Fargo is expected to see an increase in profit for the fifth year in a row, hitting $21 billion.

In the UK, things are marginally worse (if that is at all possible). Take Barclays Bank, for example. Not only have they leaked 27, 000 files related to customer data accidentally, but they have also just announced that they will be incurring a 32% fall in profits, making 12, 000 employees redundant and at the same time (in one fell swoop) they have decided to give investment bankers £1.6 billion in bonuses. Is this one of the weaker banks of the ilk spoken about by the French lady espousing the passions of crime? Total bonuses in fact stand at £2.4 billion (up by £0.2 billion from last year). Profits have fallen from £7 billion to £5.2 billion. So the bank is not weak, it’s just ‘misguided’, ‘mismanaged’…? Antony Jenkins, who was promoted to head Barclays after the £290-million Libor scandal defends the decision to make thousands of employees redundant. He shall have slightly more trouble rendering it more acceptable to swallow the bitter pill of losing the data (and subsequently not contacting any more than 300 customers) as well as handing out the bonuses. Barclays says they are ‘Fluent in Finance’. We obviously no longer speak the same language.

The Sandman has sent us all to sleep over the years while the banks are making more money today than they ever were in the past. Continually, it seems, we are still going round in circles. Once upon a time, the banks sacked the employees and paid the shareholders and gave the top financiers hefty bonuses. Now, even the shareholders are not getting as much as they used to. How long will it go on for until the financiers get lynched?

Originally posted: Banks: You Can Bank on It!

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Greed + Cartels = U.S. Sickcare/ObamaCare

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,

Sickcare/ObamaCare is fundamentally broken at every level.

The incremental nature of change makes it difficult for us to notice how systems that once worked well with modest costs have transmogrified into broken systems that cost a fortune. Exhibit # 1 is higher education: 40 years ago, four-year public universities were affordable and two-year community colleges were almost free. Now students have to borrow $1 trillion to pay for the exorbitant privilege of higher education.

And no, the difference isn't that states don't provide the same funding–the difference is costs have soared while the yield on the investment has plummeted. Please read:

The Mafia State of Mind

Our Two Most Onerous Taxes: College Tuition and Healthcare Insurance

Our Middleman-Skimming Economy

America's Make-Work Sectors (Healthcare and Higher Education) Have Run Out of Oxygen

Longtime correspondent Ishabaka (an M.D. with 30+ years experience in primary care and as an emergency room physician) responded to this article with an insider's account of what happens when greed and cartels take over healthcare. After reading What's wrong with American hospitals?, a scathing deconstruction of for-profit healthcare, Ishabaka submitted this commentary:

I could have told you what was wrong with our hospital system by 1989 – nobody would listen to me back then.

Up til the '70's, almost all hospitals in the United States were not for profit COMMUNITY HOSPITALS. They were LOCAL. The Board of Directors was made up of some senior doctors, maybe the head nurse, and various other prominent local businessmen and professionals. Others (mostly Catholic), were run as non-profits by religious orders. A very few, mostly very small hospitals were for profit, usually owned by a group of doctors, or even one doctor.

The mission of these community hospitals was to provide for the LOCAL COMMUNITY – one and all. Payment was various – private insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, self pay – and the idea was to collect just enough money to keep the hospital going, and provide care for the poor who had no money to pay. If your grandma got bad care – you could go – in person – to the local, say, banker, on the Board of Directors, and tell him – and he would CARE.

THIS SYSTEM WORKED, and kept costs DOWN. Remember, the hospital just needed enough money to stay in the black. Often local wealthy people would will money to the hospital in which they had been cared for.

In the '80's – there was the arrival of the for-profit cartels – and I use the world cartels specifically – these were run by people with the sociopathic Goldman Sachs type mentality – their sole goal was to acquire huge sums of money for themselves, their hospital directors, and their SHAREHOLDERS. They used a typical sneaky technique – they'd come into town, and tell the locals they could run the hospital much cheaper, because of their economy of scale. People believed this, and the cartels bought out most of the community hospitals.

I worked at one such for-profit hospital and had a 21-year old indigent man come in who'd been struck by a car while walking, and was rapidly bleeding to death. The hospital administrator refused to open the operating room, even though I had a surgeon right there, willing and able to operate for free to save this young man's life. The surgeon threw a fit, and he was a big wheel at the hospital and the administrator backed down – otherwise I firmly believe the young man would have died. This was LEGAL back then, before the EMTLA law was passed because similar abuses were rampant NATIONWIDE.

Around this time, the administrators of the remaining community hospitals found out the administrators of the for-profit hospitals were making tens of times their salaries – and bonuses based on profits – and started demanding similar salaries and bonuses based on PROFITS – a contradiction of the old concept of community hospitals (the article does touch on this).

How do you increase hospital profits? Number one – avoid any care for the poor you can weasel out of. Number two – cut staff to the bone and beyond (one of hospital's biggest expenses). Most American hospitals now have UNSAFE nurse to patient ratios because of this.

As far as patient care goes, nurses are the most important people in hospitals. I know of one lady who DIED while in a monitored bed, and wasn't found dead until several hours later due to the criminally low nursing staff ratio in a hospital I worked in. I HAD complained about the dearth of nurses, and was threatened with the loss of my job. Another side effect of this is, nursing in hospitals has become unbearable for nurses who really cared about their patients – many good hospital nurses have left hospital work for other fields. The results are appalling.

I saved the life of a patient an unqualified, under-educated nurse gave the wrong medicine to – a medicine that IMMEDIATELY MAKES YOU STOP BREATHING, because it was cheaper for the hospital to hire her than a knowledgeable and experienced nurse. The medicine is pancuronium bromide, if you want to Google it. The nurse didn't know one of the effects was cessation of breathing – this is Pharmacology for Nurses 101, this drug is used all day long in every operating room in America (where doctors WANT patients under anesthesia to stop breathing, and put them on breathing machines during the surgery – which is very safe if done correctly).

I could go on and on. Simple things, like the instruments you use to suture cuts – community hospitals used to buy Swiss or German made ones that were of the finest quality, sterilize and re-use them over and over. This changed to disposable instruments that sometimes literally fell apart in my hands. Bandage tape that didn't stick, instead of quality Johnson and Johnson tape – anything to save a buck.

It is not getting better, it is getting worse. The nurses I know tell me hospitals are cutting staff even MORE now in preparation for Obamacare.

I will end with a story that illustrates the difference between Old School and New School hospital administrators.

I had the pleasure of working five years in a real community hospital. One of the senior administrators (R.I.P.) was a gentleman who'd made his fortune in the grocery business. In his late 80's, he would arrive at the emergency department entrance every morning between seven and eight am, and proceed to walk throughout the hospital. He would ask various and sundry staff how they were getting along – everyone from janitors to senior physicians. If something was amiss – HE RECTIFIED THE SITUATION. Tragically, this hospital was bought out, and is now part of a chain.

I had the displeasure of working in a "community" (really for-profit) hospital with a middle aged administrator who NEVER set foot outside his office or conference rooms – he NEVER appeared in the (very large and busy) emergency department once. This was in the early 90's, and one year it was revealed that his compensation was $600,000 – and a brand new Lexus as a "performance bonus". He was on the golf course by three pm every single day. That was the hospital where the woman who was being "monitored" (alarms and all that) was found very cold and dead after a delay of who knows how many hours.

Thank you, Ishabaka, for telling it like it really is. Needless to say, ObamaCare (the Orwellian-named Affordable Care Act–ACA) purposefully ignores everything that is fundamentally broken with U.S. sickcare and extends the soaring-cost cartel system, essentially promising to stripmine the taxpayers of however many trillions of dollars are needed to generate outsized profits for the cartels.

Only those with no exposure to the real costs of ObamaCare approve of the current sickcare system. Government employees who have no idea how much their coverage costs, well-paid shills and toadies like Paul Krugman, academics with tenure and lifetime healthcare coverage–all these people swallow the fraud whole and declare it delicious.

Only those of us who are paying the real, unsubsidized cost know how unsustainable the system is, and only those inside the machine know how broken it is at every level. Greed + cartels = Sickcare/ObamaCare. Love your servitude, baby–it's affordable, really, really, really it is.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1fk9R8g Tyler Durden

Letta Resigns; Meet Italy’s New Unelected Prime Minister

Matteo Renzi’s Democratic Party has voted to back his proposal fore a new government… and Prime Minister Letta has resigned. This will bring the 65th government in Italy since World War II and the 3rd consecutive government that would not have been elected (the last elected Prime Minister was Berlusconi in 2008).

Renzi’s speech in preparation for the vote was farcical and confused:

*RENZI SAYS ITALY CANNOT CONTINUE TO LIVE IN UNCERTAINTY
*RENZI SAYS ITALY NEEDS TO EXIT SWAMP, NEEDS CHANGE (but same coalition parties)
*RENZI SAYS NEW ELECTIONS WOULDN’T GUARANTEE CLEAR MAJORITY
*RENZI SAYS THIS IS TIME TO BE RESPONSIBLE, TAKE RISKS

While Letta had his “57-page plan” of reforms, Renzi does not differ greatly (and thus there will be no change) as the confrontation hinges on who is better placed to implement them. Markets are rallying on the news.

Via WSJ,

Mr. Renzi’s own proposals don’t contrast with those of Mr. Letta. The confrontation hinges on which of the two are better placed to implement their plans.

…

Ten months ago [Letta] gave his government—Italy’s first left-right coalition since the late 1940s—18 months to carry out an ambitious program including constitutional reform, a new electoral law and measures aimed at bolstering what has been the euro zone’s weakest economy since 2000. Progress has been slow and, as Mr. Letta lamented on Wednesday, many laws have been passed but their enactment decrees never promulgated.

…

“We would regard a Renzi premiership as a positive development for Italy, possibly imparting a new drive to the reform agenda,” Citigroup C -0.90% analysts said in a note.

On the other hand, he risks having to operate within the current parliament without a clear electoral mandate, which could compromise both his influence and his image as a novelty in Italian politics, said J.P. Morgan analyst Alex White.

…

Italy’s last elected prime minister was Silvio Berlusconi, who won an ample majority in the 2008 elections.

Meet the new unelected PM of Italy,

Matteo Renzi, the charismatic young mayor of Florence, was elected last December as leader of Italy’s most powerful political organisation, the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) – the dominant faction in the current coalition government.

Matteo Renzi is just 39 years old and has never been a member of parliament. Now he has called publicly for a new government, directly challenging Prime Minister and party rival Enrico Letta.

The young party leader is sometimes called Il Rottamatore (“The Scrapper”). The nickname refers to his call to scrap the entire Italian political establishment, which is widely regarded as discredited, tainted by corruption, and as having failed the nation decade after decade.

His rise has been seen as a sign of much-needed generational change, and he enjoys by far the highest approval rating of any politician in the country. He is in his own words “hugely ambitious”.

Mr Renzi presents himself as a break with the past in every way, BBC Rome correspondent Alan Johnston reports.

He exudes a restless energy. He likes to pace the stage in black jeans and attends meetings in shirt sleeves. He travels around either in a small car or on a bicycle.

He is relaxed and easy – fast and fluent as he speaks without notes, ranging across Italy’s many problems, and offering broad-brush solutions.

Restoring belief
He always seeks to instil a belief that politics can be done differently, that change is possible.

He once finished a televised debate by saying he would offer something very rare in Italy: “Hope.”

“People are weary and disillusioned,” he said. “They don’t believe anymore. I believe, and that’s why I do politics – because I still believe.”

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1g1YQdz Tyler Durden

Letta Resigns; Meet Italy's New Unelected Prime Minister

Renzi’s speech in preparation for the vote was farcical and confused:

*RENZI SAYS ITALY CANNOT CONTINUE TO LIVE IN UNCERTAINTY
*RENZI SAYS ITALY NEEDS TO EXIT SWAMP, NEEDS CHANGE (but same coalition parties)
*RENZI SAYS NEW ELECTIONS WOULDN’T GUARANTEE CLEAR MAJORITY
*RENZI SAYS THIS IS TIME TO BE RESPONSIBLE, TAKE RISKS