Insurance Companies

The Fed spends an inordinate amount of time focusing on increasing Lending with the idea that loan growth increases economic activity. Is it possible that it is Interest Income derived from Savings that is more important to economic growth?

Many seem to believe that if we worked our way out of debt problems in the past, we can do the same thing again. The same assets may have new owners, but everything will work together in the long run. Businesses will continue operating, and people will continue to have jobs. We may have to adjust monetary policy, or perhaps regulation of financial institutions, but that is about all. I think this is where the story goes wrong. The situation we have now is very different, and far worse, than what happened in the past. We live in a much more tightly networked economy. This time, our problems are tied to the need for cheap, high quality energy products. The comfort we get from everything eventually working out in the past is false comfort.

Now that Obamacare has been enacted, Americans across the nation are seeing their health insurance bills spiking, leading to what has been a documented slide in full-time hiring, a drop in consumer discretionary spending, not to mention stagnant and declining real wages. In short: a broad economic contraction (yes, yes, who could have possibly foreseen this). But how is it that insurers set their prices? As Bloomberg explains, insurers are calculating what to charge for health plans in 2015, which is no simple task. Actuaries can’t easily forecast how often the millions of new Obamacare enrollees will go to a doctor. New federal rules and expensive drugs will also increase costs. Wrong guesses could wipe out profits. Here is a quick and dirty way to understand why premiums are going up.

The biggest congressional leakage scandal in the past year is the most recent one to cross the rabit hole of all-out absurdity: According to Reuters, the Ways and Means panel said on Friday it should not have to comply with a federal regulator's demand for documents sought for an insider-trading probe involving the staff director of a subcommittee and a lobbyist. The House Ways and Means Committee argued in a court filing that U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe in New York should deny the Securities and Exchange Commission's attempt to subpoena documents from the committee and its healthcare subcommittee staff director Brian Sutter.

The most dangerous organization is the now French led IMF with Christine Lagarde at the helm, which has presented a concept report in which 'debt cuts for over-indebted states are uncompromising' and are to be performed more effectively in the future by defaulting on retirement accounts held in life insurance, mutual funds and other types of pension schemes, or arbitrarily extending debt perpetually so you cannot redeem. Yes you read correctly, The new IMF paper describes in great detail exactly how to now allow the private sector, which has invested in government bonds, will be expropriated to pay for the national debts of the socialist governments. This far-reaching plan for the expropriation of savers, investors and retirees clearly shows the reality of socialism.

• Must be an early winter: Housing Falters as Forecasters See U.S. Sales Dropping  (BBG)
• China Property Failures Seen as $33 Billion in Trusts Due (BBG)
• Polish Prime Minister Says Recording Scandal May Trigger Early Election (WSJ)
• Iraqi forces ready push after Obama offers advisers (Reuters)
• Priorities: U.S. cuts aid to Uganda, cancels military exercise over anti-gay law (Reuters)
• Kurds' Takeover of Iraqi City of Kirkuk Strengthens Their Hand (WSJ)
• U.S. says government lab workers possibly exposed to anthrax (Reuters)
• Netflix Up 21% With Tesla: The best U.S. stocks this month are ones that just a few months ago were the biggest losers (BBG)
• Architects of Iraq Invasion Return to Blame Obama (BBG)
• Nato claims Moscow funding anti-fracking groups (FT)
• Lawmakers Skeptical GM Bosses Were Unaware of Defect (WSJ)
• Corinthian Colleges Warns of Possible Shutdown (WSJ)
• Taiwan's Quanta to start mass production of Apple's smartwatch in July (Reuters)

One after another pundit has tried to explain the relentless bid for US Treasurys, and failed. First it was the March geopolitical shock, and the "capital outflows" from Russia that were supposedly entering the "safety" of US paper. Well, today Russian stocks just hit a bull market from the recent sell off (despite, or perhaps in spite of, Draghi's idiotic "estimate" of €160 billion in Russian capital outflows), however without a comparable move lower in the 10 Year, meaning it was not Russian capital reallocation that was pushing US Treasurys higher. Then, a new theory appeared, namely that pension funds, seeking to lock up equity upside, will "reverse rotate" out of stocks and into bonds. Judging by where US stocks are trading, they certainly did not rotate nearly enough, and now courtesy of Bank of America which parsed the latest Flow of Funds report, we learn that the in fact "buying of bonds by pension funds slowed down significantly in 1Q."

Four years after its passage, Obamacare has now been largely implemented, and millions have had their coverage disrupted. For years, the administration has propagated a number of myths about Obamacare. Some have already crumbled, and others will fall as Obamacare continues to change the American health system.

If oil is “just another commodity,” then there shouldn’t be any connection between oil prices, debt levels, interest rates, and total rates of return. But there clearly is a connection. As we have seen, rising interest rates will bring an end to our current equilibrium, by raising costs in many ways, without raising salaries. It will also reduce equity values and bond prices. A rise in the cost of extraction of oil, if it isn’t accompanied by high oil prices, will also put an end to our equilibrium, because oil producers will stop drilling the number of wells needed to keep production up.  If oil prices rise (regardless of reason), this will tend to put the economy into recession, leading to job loss and debt defaults. The only way to keep things going a bit longer might be negative interest rates. But even this seems “iffy.” We truly live in interesting times.

The teleprompter is still hot from all the Obama spit unleashed in his latest sincerely passionate denial that his administration knew anything, anything at all, about what is merely the latest scandal to rock the president, this time surrounding the Veterans Affairs fiasco, and already a brand new scandal is taking shape, this one Obama however will not be able to sweep as easily under the rug. The LA Times reports that the "Obama administration has quietly adjusted key provisions of its signature healthcare law to potentially make billions of additional taxpayer dollars available to the insurance industry if companies providing coverage through the Affordable Care Act lose money." In other words, yet another taxpayer funded bailout.

Rinat Akhmetov - Ukraine's richest man with an estimated worth of $11.4 billion - has, as Reuters reports, acquired almost feudal status in the industrial hub of Donetsk in the past 20 years - but the separatist rebellions there have altered the dynamics of power. This is not acceptable to the billionaire and so he has demanded his miners and metalworkers join police on patrol on Mariupol. As pro-Russian rebels declaring independence seized public buildings across the steel and coal belt which is the basis of his colossal fortune, he issued repeated written statements in support of a united Ukraine... but the media-shy 47-year-old, who has a workforce of 300,000 people on his payroll in the Donbass, has to tread carefully around local sensitivities and has avoided specifically condemning the action of the separatists.

The risky borrowing indicators are troubling. They show that we’ve reverted to old habits of borrowing far more than we can fund with non-money savings. At almost 10% of GDP in 2013, risky borrowing is higher than in all but the early 1970s and middle part of the last decade. This tells us that we’re accumulating risk at a rapid clip, although not for as long as in those earlier episodes. (Yet.) Worse still, policymakers and mainstream economists are unperturbed, failing to acknowledge that some types of financing are riskier than others. It’s as if we’re stuck at a 1970s Pepsi Challenge booth, watching people debate cola tastes with no mention of health risks. With ample evidence of these risks, how can this be? One theory is that the current generation of mainstream economists staked their careers on the soda business, filling resumes with research on topics such as sweetness and carbonation, but nothing on health. It’s just too big a step for them to acknowledge that the old research is unhelpful and the resumes hollow. We can only hope that the unpopular, long-term thinkers who are willing to take that step become more influential over time. In the meantime, keep an eye on the sources of financing and, in particular, the three indicators of risky borrowing discussed below.

• Ukraine attacks rebel city, helicopter shot down (Reuters)
• Euro Unemployment Holds Near Record Amid Factory Gains (BBG)
• Yellen’s Fed Resigned to Diminished Growth Expectations (BBG)
• Junket Figure's Disappearance Shakes Macau's Gambling Industry (WSJ)
• China tried to undermine economic report showing its ascendancy (WSJ)
• Liquidity Trap Hitting AAA Bonds Has ATP CEO Sounding Alarm (BBG)
• AstraZeneca Snubs Pfizer Approach That U.K. Won’t Block (BBG)
• Missing Jet Recordings May Have Been 'Edited' (NBC)
• RBS turns corner as first-quarter profit trebles (Reuters)
• Japan household spending hits four-decade high, wages key to outlook (RTRS) while Real Incomes Drop 3.3% in March, 6th straight decline

• Headline of the day goes to... Cold weather seen temporarily slowing U.S. economy (Reuters)
• Americans Want to Pull Back From World Stage, Poll Finds (WSJ)
• U.S. Plans to Charge BNP Over Sanctions (WSJ)
• What about Jay Carney: Putin Threat to Retaliate for Sanctions Carries Risks (BBG)
• Fed expected to take further step toward ending bond buying (Reuters)
• A Fed-Watcher’s Guide to FOMC Day: Steady Taper, Green Shoots (BBG)
• Alstom accepts 10 billion euro GE bid for its energy unit (Reuters)
• BOJ projects inflation exceeding 2 percent, keeps bullish view intact (Reuters)

Finds the answer is: "very"