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Strategies & Market Trends : Waiting for the big Kahuna -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Real Man who wrote (90187)	9/5/2009 1:11:04 PM
From: carranza2	Respond to of 94695

The real problem is lack of free markets due to crony capitalist system in which the government officials are bought by Wall Street. Unless this is fixed, resources will be allocated inefficiently. Exactly.

To: Real Man who wrote (90187)	9/5/2009 11:07:23 PM
From: puborectalis	Respond to of 94695

Sept. 5 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama announced a streamlining of rules and procedures intended to make it easier for Americans, particularly those who haven’t been setting aside money in private accounts, to save for retirement. The changes would streamline the process for small businesses to automatically enroll employees in savings programs, to let employers put payments for unused vacation time into retirement savings and to provide an option for individuals to have federal tax refunds paid as a savings bond. “Automatic enrollment has made a big difference in participation rates by making it simpler for workers to save,” Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address. “And that’s why we’re going to expand it to more people.” Obama announced the changes one day after the Labor Department announced that employers cut 216,000 workers from payrolls in August, sending the jobless rate to a 26-year high, at 9.7 percent. The August pace of job loss “slowed dramatically compared to just a few months ago,” Obama said, which was another sign “that the economy is turning around.” The changes announced by the president won’t require action by Congress, according to administration officials who briefed reporters on the plan. They are intended to complement initiatives to expand the number of Americans who are saving for retirement through private accounts that were contained in Obama’s budget plan released in February, the officials said. Navigation Help The president promised that the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department would create “a plain-English, easy-to-follow” Web site to help individuals and business owners “navigate what are often very complicated waters.” In his radio address, the president said the country’s savings rate is “essentially zero.” “We cannot continue on this course,” he said. “And we certainly cannot go back to an economy based on inflated profits and maxed-out credit cards.” The biggest part of the administration’s actions is clarifying and simplifying IRS rules in an effort to get employers and their workers to use tax-advantaged 401(k)s and IRAs, the officials said. As many as 78 million Americans, or about half the workforce, don’t participate in a retirement plan at work, according to an administration fact sheet. More Choices “Working Americans should be able to retire with dignity and security, but nearly half of the nation’s workforce has little or nothing beyond Social Security benefits to get by on in old age,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in a statement. “The measures will give more choices to families who want to save.” Boston-based Fidelity Investments, the largest U.S. provider of workplace retirement plans, did a study released in July that found automatic enrollment helped younger and lower- income employees -- many who otherwise have not saved -- the most. More than half of the automatically enrolled participants in Fidelity-managed plans were between 20 and 34 and 56% made less than $40,000 a year, according to the study by the Boston- based firm. Republicans used their address to assail Democratic plans to overhaul the U.S. health-care system being considered by Congress. Minnesota Representative John Kline, offering his party’s weekly response, said the Democratic proposals are “complicated” and “convoluted.” New Start “It’s not too late to start over,” Kline said. “This Labor Day, the folks running Washington should honor American workers by hitting the ‘reset’ button on health care reform.” Lawmakers are trying to extend coverage to millions of uninsured Americans, reduce costs, require employers to provide coverage and impose new rules on insurers to cover pre-existing conditions. Among the most contentious issues is a proposal to create a government program that would compete with private insurers such as Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc. Kline said consumers “are scared” about the attempts to overhaul health-care programs and are skeptical about changes that may cost as much as $1 trillion over 10 years. “They ask: What will happen to my coverage, and my choice of doctors? Will I have to stand in line to receive treatment? Or get approval from someone in Washington before getting a knee replacement or filling a prescription for the latest diabetes medication?” Congress is returning from a monthlong recess on Sept. 8 and will restart its debate on health care, Obama’s top legislative priority. The president plans to address a joint session of Congress Sept. 9.

To: Real Man who wrote (90187)	9/5/2009 11:14:07 PM
From: puborectalis	Respond to of 94695

September 6, 2009 Editorial President Obama’s Health Choices President Obama’s address to Congress about health care reform on Wednesday is the moment for him to stand tough for a large and comprehensive plan. This is no time to yield on core elements of reform or on the scale of the effort in search of enough Republican support to provide the veneer of bipartisanship, or even the one or two Republican votes needed to overcome a filibuster. As a political tactic, Mr. Obama has thus far simply issued broad principles for reform and left it to Congress to flesh out the details, leaving great uncertainty as to what reforms he considers essential. Given the raucous, often ill-informed attacks on Democratic proposals over the past month, and the clear aim of most Republicans to oppose any bill, no matter how much he compromises, Mr. Obama now needs to spell out in some detail what he wants and how it would benefit both the uninsured and most other Americans as well. Mr. Obama needs to highlight the concerns that got many people agitating for government help in the first place — the rising premiums and co-payments required for their health insurance policies, and the likelihood that, if forced to buy insurance on their own, perhaps after losing a job, they would be unable to afford it or even be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions. At a minimum, we believe Mr. Obama should declare himself in favor of covering as many of the uninsured as possible in the near future; should insist that insurers grant and renew coverage without regard to health status; and should insist on new insurance exchanges in which people without group coverage and those working for the smallest employers could buy insurance at large-group rates. Despite calls from Republicans that he jettison support for a new public plan to compete with private plans on those exchanges, he should not do so now. If he decides to bargain it away later, he should insist, minimally, that a strong public plan be introduced if private insurers fail to hold costs down in the future. We are alarmed at reports that the price for winning over Republicans and conservative Democrats might be a drastically scaled-down plan that would cost not $1 trillion over 10 years but perhaps only $700 billion or much less. That big a reduction would be a mistake. The insurance reforms that people most want — and the insurance industry is willing to accept — depend on achieving near universal coverage to spread the risks over a large group of healthy and unhealthy people. The big costs of reform involve expanding Medicaid to cover more of the poor and providing subsidies to help those with low or modest incomes buy insurance on the new exchanges. Scaling down too far would most likely result in subsidies too limited to really help people. Imagine the backlash if millions of Americans were required to carry insurance and found they could not afford to buy it. The other major element of reform is slowing the rise in medical costs while improving quality. Mr. Obama should say whether he believes pending bills need an extra dose of cost-cutting reforms, or pilot projects, in Medicare. Nobody in either party has a sure-fire solution to rein in medical inflation. Mr. Obama should insist on an independent commission to monitor reforms, expand those that work and drop those that do not. If Mr. Obama is reaching out for broader support, he may be too diplomatic to point out the cynicism of Republican opponents who are late-blooming advocates of deficit reduction. The Bush administration and a Republican-controlled Congress enacted a Medicare prescription drug benefit that will cost the government almost $1 trillion over the next decade without raising or saving a penny to pay for it. They also passed tax cuts for wealthy Americans that will cost more than $1.7 trillion over 10 years, again without making provisions to offset the costs. Now they are complaining that $1 trillion for health care reform — fully paid for over the next 10 years — is too much to spend on a problem that has been festering for decades. Rather than yield to Republican intransigence, the Democrats ought to resort to a parliamentary maneuver known as “budget reconciliation,” which would allow them to push through most reforms by majority vote.