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Sunday, July 1, 2012

Supreme Court Ruling on ObamaCare to Boost Insurance Premiums

Written by Brian Koenig

Now that the Supreme Court has delivered its final verdict on ObamaCare, which upheld the law’s contentious individual mandate, insurance providers and industry groups are warning of even greater premium increases on Americans’ health plans. While President Obama touted the law as a cost-savior for the healthcare industry — going so far as to call it the “Affordable Care Act” — insurance premiums have consistently risen ever since the law was enacted.

America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the industry’s chief lobbying group, issued a statement following the ruling, stressing the importance of “secure, affordable coverage choices,” but saying that “major provisions, such as the premium tax, will have unintended consequences of raising costs and disrupting coverage unless they are addressed.” AHIP CEO Karen Ignagni suggested that due to the inflated costs, “it’s time for people to roll up their sleeves and look very carefully at those provisions.”
Proponents of the law claim ObamaCare will eventually lead to a sharp reduction in insurance premiums because there will be an overall larger pool of insured Americans. FamiliesUSA, an advocacy group for the healthcare industry, called the Supreme Court’s ruling a “clear, unambiguous and complete victory for long-overdue health care reform.”
The group added that the law’s new regulations on insurance providers will also help consumers. "No one will be denied health coverage or charged a discriminatory premium due to a pre-existing condition, such as children with asthma or diabetes,” it said in a press release. “People with major health problems, like those in car accidents, will be protected against arbitrary lifetime or annual limits in how much insurance companies will pay for needed care.”
"The premiums paid for family health care rise by more than a thousand dollars simply to pay for the costs that have not been paid by the uninsured," FamilyUSA’s executive director Ron Pollack echoed in an interview with Fox News. "So as those people get coverage, our premiums will go down."
AHIP counters those claims, citing a study by the Urban Institute that shows premiums for single policy holders, aged 18 to 34, will boost by $1,400, from $3,600 to $5,000 a year.
According to a September 2011 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit research group, annual premiums for employer-sponsored family health coverage spiked to more than $15,000 last year, up a sizable nine percent from the previous year. The premium increase inflated much more quickly than employee wages (2.1 percent) and general inflation (3.2 percent).
Commenting on the analysis, president of the Health Research & Education Trust — which helped administer the study — Maulik Joshi said provisions in the law that will be implemented in the future could add to these costs, as he averred, "survey findings related to the impact of early provisions in health reform provide valuable insight for employers, providers, consumers, and policymakers as they prepare for additional provisions to take effect by 2014."
Further, AETNA, the country’s fourth largest insurance provider, disclosed that its health plans increased from one to two percent. “While rate increases are never easy, our rates are based on actuarially sound data and reasonable projection of future cost, which will impact approximately 16,000 customers,” the company affirmed in a recent statement. “Our Medical Loss Ratio is at 86.7%, which is higher than any of the filed rates by our competitors. Medical loss ratio is the percentage of health insurance premiums that insurers use to provide health care to their customers.”
Also disconcerting is the potential for Americans to drop or lose benefits through their employer-sponsored health plans. Fox Business explains why:

An estimated 134 million Americans with full-time employment have health coverage through their companies. But about two-thirds of those firms could decide that, under Obamacare, their premiums are too expensive, according to a study by insurance broker Willis Group. Kevin McCarty, Florida insurance commissioner and president of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, is among those who are "concerned about the potential for increased health insurance premiums and continued disruption to the stability of the marketplace" as a result of the ACA.

For companies that want to drop their own health insurance plans, the ACA offers an easy out: Pay a $2,000 penalty per employee. That's far less than the $10,000 average cost of a health care plan. And that's particularly true if you are a low-income or part-time worker at a company like McDonald's or Walmart that doesn't need to offer a Cadillac health plan to keep employees.

Reporting on the Kaiser study back in September, The New American explained that many employers are transitioning their workers to less comprehensive plans with higher out-of-pocket costs (higher co-pays, deductibles, and co-insurance) to curb rising premiums. As a result, 31 percent of insured employees in 2011 had at least a $1,000 deductible, up from 27 percent in 2010 — which many critics are attributing to the president’s healthcare overhaul.
"Without any real national discussion or debate, there’s a quiet revolution going on in what we call health insurance in this country," says Drew Altman, president and CEO of the Kaiser Foundation. "Health insurance is becoming less and less comprehensive … And we expect that trend to continue."
^{Photo: Senior couple shocked by the high cost of their medical bills via Shutterstock}

Wealthy Conservatives Working to Unseat Obama, Take Back Senate

Written by Bob Adelmann

Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson announced his intention on Friday to give $10 million to political action committees controlled by Charles and David Koch who in turn are themselves giving substantial sums to unseat President Obama and turn control of the Senate back to the Republican Party.
Earlier this year, Adelson, the CEO of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation which owns and operates the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino and the Sands Expo and Convention Center, and who is reputedly worth $25 billion, attended a Koch brothers-sponsored gathering of super-wealthy conservatives in Palm Springs, and after listening to the action plans and strategies to influence the November elections, decided to support their

efforts.
Adelson’s intentions are to give upwards of $100 million in support of conservative causes. He explained:

What scares me is the continuation of the socialist-style economy we’ve been experiencing for almost four years. That scares me because the redistribution of wealth is the path to more socialism, and to more of the government controlling people’s lives. What scares me is the lack of accountability that people would prefer to experience, just let the government take care of everything.

This is music to the ears of the Koch brothers, who have been providing support for conservative causes for years, starting with their father’s establishment of the Fred C. and Mary R. Koch Foundation in 1953. The senior Koch was an early member of The John Birch Society and noted in a speech in 1963 his concern about “a takeover” of the United States government by communists who would “infiltrate the highest offices of government in the U.S. until the president is a Communist, unknown to the rest of us.”
In a lengthy and controversial “exposé” of the Koch brothers in a New Yorker magazine article entitled “Covert Operations” in 2010, Jane Mayer interviewed Rob Stein, a Democrat party political operative who has studied the conservative movement’s finances for years. Said Stein, the Kochs:

are at the epicenter of the anti-Obama movement. But it’s not just about Obama. They would have done the same to Hillary Clinton [if she were president]. They did the same with Bill Clinton. They are out to destroy progressivism.

The Kochs’ conservative causes are spread across a large number of activist organizations and think-tanks, including support for the Cato Institute (initial contributors) and Americans for Prosperity (AFP). They also support the Federalist Society, the Mercatus Center, the Institute for Humane Studies, the Institute for Justice, the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Reason Foundation, and the American Enterprise Institute, among others.
In addition to their stated intent to provide $400 million in support to conservative causes during this election cycle, the Kochs are also considering providing financial support for a voter database project called Themis which played a major role in the recent Wisconsin recall efforts.
In addition to contributions by Adelson and the Kochs, organizations founded by GOP operatives Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie are raising another $300 million, while the Republican Party and the Romney campaign are planning on raising $800 million. That puts the amount Republicans expect to spend at more than $1 billion, and it could be significantly more as the election heats up. As Mike Allen noted in Politico:

The Republican financial plans are unlike anything seen before in American politics. If the GOP groups hit their targets, they likely could outspend their liberal adversaries by at least two-to-one…

^{Photos: David Koch (left) executive vice president of Koch Industries: AP Images; Sheldon Adelson, CEO of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation}

Government Won't Divulge Details of Drone Program

Written by Joe Wolverton, II

Although the Obama administration has been a bit more forthcoming lately in its admission of its policy of using drones to kill enemies by remote control, there is still an official reluctance to let too much information reach the public.

I
n the last year or so, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and a group of reporters have filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) petitions requesting that the federal government provide greater access to operational details of the drone program and the legal arguments forwarded by the Obama administration in justifying not only the use of the drones, but their use in the killing of thousands in Pakistan alone.

The first round of these FOIA requests was answered with a Glomar response. As I have written previously, in such a maneuver, the agency that is the subject of the FOIA inquiry “neither confirms nor denies” the existence of the material requested.

Named for a ship built by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to covertly recover a sunken Soviet submarine, a Glomar response typically is given in two scenarios.

First, where a refusal to forward the documents would have the effect of admitting that they actually exist, thus compromising national security.

Second, law enforcement agencies will give a Glomar response when producing the requested information would stigmatize a person named in the documents being sought.

After being rebuffed in this way by the government, the ACLU (and the New York Times) filed suit claiming that the requirements that justify a Glomar response were not met, as the Obama administration had already admitted to using the drones and to the deaths caused by them, including the “inadvertent” deaths of many civilians.

Last week, lawyers for the President and the Justice Department filed a motion for summary judgment arguing that the suits were barred by exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act which protected certain types of information that pertained to national security.

The government argues:

The Executive Branch has determined that, while the government can acknowledge the existence of some documents responsive to the FOIA requests that form the basis of this lawsuit, for the most part it cannot provide public details regarding the classified documents that are withheld; even to describe the numbers and details of most of the documents would reveal information that could damage the government’s counterterrorism efforts.

This reasoning amounts to little more than a restatement of its earlier Glomar response and demonstrates once again this administration’s rock-ribbed determination to act in secret and to defend that secrecy from anyone who would dare attempt to reveal the scope and severity of the acts being carried out in the name of the United States.

As readers are aware, the use of these drones has become a hot political issue among constitutionalists and other friends of liberty.

Furthermore, in recent weeks the use of the drones to hunt and kill suspected terrorists believed to be hiding in the mountainous region of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border has caused tension in the relationship between the United States and Pakistan — its erstwhile ally in the “War on Terror.”

It seems that not a day passes without reports of “militants” being killed by remote control. Drones patrol Pakistan using high-powered optics to find and fire on those considered enemies by the men with the joysticks.

A couple of weeks ago, for example, an American drone attack killed at least three of these suspected belligerents in northwest Pakistan, a region described by American intelligence and military officers as a “hotbed” of Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives.

Hissing through the pre-dawn silence, two missiles were fired from the drone into a market in Miranshah, the administrative headquarters of the North Waziristan agency of the tribal region of Pakistan. Miranshah is located along the banks of the Tochi River in a wide valley between the foothills of the Hindu Kush mountains. It is just a few miles from the border with Afghanistan.

In an article chronicling the bombing, AFP quoted a local official of the Pakistani government: "A US drone fired two missiles on the first floor of a shop in the main market and at least three militants were killed.”

That same week, sources in Peshawar confirmed the death of four “insurgents” within the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan (FATA) bringing the two-day total of known dead by drone in Pakistan to seven.

As The New American has reported, the number of American drone strikes in Pakistan has increased significantly in the last 30 days and is likely to continue that crescendo in light of the failure of the two allies to reach an agreement on the end to Islamabad’s blockade of crucial mountain passes that could choke the removal of NATO forces and materiel from Afghanistan scheduled to be completed by December 2014.

Readers may recall a similar fatal drone attack earlier this month when Hellfire missiles fired from American drones killed over a dozen people at a “militant hideout” in Hesokhel, a village located in the North Waziristan region near Miranshah.

South Waziristan was abuzz with the unmanned aerial vehicles earlier this month, as well, as U.S.-controlled Predator drones launched four Hellfire missiles that killed nine men branded as militants living in a village near Wacha Dana. A statement made to CNN by a local government official confirmed the body count.

That brings the total number of suspected terrorists confirmed killed by American drones in June to about 30.

Of course, these numbers of dead by drone, as harrowing to the conscience and humiliating to the Constitution as they are, likely do not include the women, children, or other non-militants, as President Obama is known to prefer disregarding such collateral murders when counting up the bodies left behind by his beloved drone program.

Although Pakistan has demanded that the United States cease the drone attacks within its sovereign borders, the Obama administration has ignored this request; in fact the number of drones in the air, missiles fired by them, and the body count all continue increasing exponentially under orders issued by Barack Obama.

Recently, in response to the United States’ refusal to apologize for the death of 24 Pakistani soldiers who were killed last November in an American drone airstrike, Pakistan has shut down the well-worn NATO supply trail that runs through some of the roughest terrain in the country, as well as booting the U.S. and its Predator drones off an airbase in the southwest region of the country.

According to a report published by The New America Foundation, American drones have killed nearly 3,000 people in Pakistan since 2004.

Finally, there is word out of Turkey that drone fever may be catching as Ankara has requested that the Obama administration sell it a few Predator drones for use in its war against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Reports originating in Turkey indicate that the Turkish government’s use of the drones to search for and destroy “militants” is following the path laid out by Washington. Unfortunately, that includes the realization that the drone airstrikes will cause “collateral damage” and that civilian deaths are not as easily accepted by the people.

Last December, for example, the armed forces of Turkey killed 35 Kurdish villagers mistakenly identified as PKK militants. The attack that resulted in the murder of those villagers was approved by Ankara after intelligence data gathered by an American drone on loan to Turkey reported the convoy of vehicles.

For now, to the chagrin of Turkey and other nations, the Obama administration has adhered to its own unofficial policy of refusing to approve any sale of arms that includes a request for armed drones.

^{Photo: An MQ-9 Reaper drone aircraft}

Court: Egyptian Military May Not Make Arrests

With the choice of Mohamed Morsi as Egypt’s first freely elected president since the birth of the Egyptian Republic in 1953, the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood is moving to consolidate its control of the country. The presidential election came down to a choice between the militant Islamist ideology of Morsi and Ahmed Shafik, the man perceived to represent the interests of the military forces that have ruled the republic since it was first declared.

Egypt has been undergoing a transition since the “Arab Spring” uprising in early 2011 toppled the government of President Hosni Mubarak. The events in Egypt, in turn, led to a wave of uprisings that have still not come to a conclusion; for example, Syria continues to suffer from the ongoing battle between the army of President Bashar al-Assad and rebel forces.

Throughout the 16 months that have passed since the downfall of the Mubarak government, the Egyptian military has overseen a process of "democratization" that has included free elections for the parliament and the presidency. Despite widespread rumors that the military was planning to renege on its promises, the process has continued. In the words of one anonymous official who spoke to Reuters:

"The military council has done its duty in keeping the election process free and fair, a true example of democracy, to the world," said the official, who asked not to be named.

"The onus now is on the new president to unite the nation and create a true coalition of political and revolutionary forces to rebuild the country economically and politically."

However, rebuilding a nation could easily prove to be vastly more difficult than tearing down the military government. As reported previously for The New American, even as the elections committee was preparing to declare Morsi the winner of the elections, thousands of his followers returned to Tahrir Square, denouncing "military rule."

An Egyptian court has further limited the power of the military in the new government by determining that military forces may not arrest civilians. As Yasmine Saleh wrote for Reuters, the military had sought the power to make such arrests in the days leading up to the final vote in the presidential elections because supporters of Morsi were threatening to take to the streets if their candidate was not declared victor. However, the courts have overturned that military decision:

But rights groups and politicians challenged the decision, accusing the military of reviving emergency powers that stymied opposition to Hosni Mubarak until a popular uprising ended his three-decade rule in February last year.

On Tuesday, a court agreed with them.

"The court declares in its ruling that the Minister of Justice raped the authority bestowed by the constitution by issuing a decision to give members of the military police and military intelligence powers of arrest," a document from the Cairo court explaining Judge Ali Fikry's ruling read.

The Justice Ministry has the right to appeal the administrative court's ruling, which is effective immediately.

The original decree restored the military's mandate to enforce law and order before a new constitution is written — a process expected to last well beyond the July 1 date by which the ruling military council is due to hand power to president-elect Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood.…

"This ruling not only adheres to the constitution," said Gamal Eid, a lawyer and rights activist. "It chimes with the current political climate because many people feel the military council is trying to suppress the civil direction in which the state is supposed to be heading."

While Western governments may take such limitations on the intervention of the armed forced into domestic politics for granted, such has obviously not been the case in Egypt. The military sought the power to make arrests only days after a Mubarak-era emergency law expired — perhaps they imagined that the reassertion of such powers could pass unnoticed, or at least without such definitive opposition. In either case, the move was a serious miscalculation. As the Washington Post reported, human rights activists in Egypt recognize that the court action was a significant affirmation of basic liberty:

Heba Morayef, a Cairo-based researcher with Human Rights Watch, said Tuesday’s ruling might discourage the security forces from seeking to restore the type of vast, unchecked authority inherent in the old emergency law.

“This is a victory of a civilian court versus the kind of arbitrary expansion of military powers that would be a recipe for further abuses,” she said.

However, critics of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood raise questions about the commitment of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party to such high ideals: Only days before the runoff election, Islamists in the parliament sought to remove Shafik from the ballot — an action that would have preempted the election and almost certainly would have automatically made Morsi president of Egypt. Only an action of Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court was able to block the action of the parliament.

Now, with the election of Morsi, it appears that the Muslim Brotherhood will not be content merely to have beaten Shafik: The former candidate may have fled Egypt for fear of corruption charges. As reported by Ahram online, the charges followed in the immediate aftermath of the elections:

Less than 24 hours after Ahmed Shafiq lost the presidential contest to Mohamed Morsi, several lawyers have filed complaints with the office of the prosecutor against Mubarak's last prime minister charging him with corruption.

A high-level judicial source said that councillor Osama El-Seidi, a Justice Ministry investigator, will receive this week the report prepared by experts in the Illicit Profiteering and Real Estate Agency who have examined procedures for the allocation of land sold by the Cooperative for Construction and Housing for Pilots, which was headed by Ahmed Shafiq in the 1990's.

Former MP Essam Sultan of Al-Wasat Party issued a complaint against Shafiq as the former head of the cooperative, accusing him of selling a piece of land in the area of 40,238 square metres to Alaa and Gamal Mubarak in 1993, at an extremely low price of only 75 piasters per square metre.

Given that the alleged cases of corruption date back nearly 20 years, and that the charges came within hours of Shafik’s opponent attaining the presidency, critics could say that the Muslim Brotherhood is not even trying to give the appearance that the charges are anything other than political "payback." When an organization that spent over 80 years as a “secret society” suddenly achieves political power, such tactics can hardly be surprising. As Frida Ghitis wrote for CNN.com:

For many years the Brotherhood was banned in Egypt, so it operated underground. Since the revolution, Egyptians have had a chance to see it in action. What they have seen so far is an organization impressively capable of modulating its message to suit specific audiences to achieve political gain.

More importantly, the Brotherhood has revealed a troublesome habit of breaking its word.

When Hosni Mubarak fell, they pledged they would not try to control Egyptian politics. But they promptly changed their minds.

The Muslim Brotherhood leaders promised to contest only a minority of seats in the legislature, rather than trying to win a majority. They broke that promise. They promised, through Morsi himself, "We will not have a presidential candidate. We are not seeking power."

They broke that promise. They vowed to run a thoroughly inclusive process for developing a new Egyptian Constitution. They broke that promise, too.

Clearly, the Brotherhood, and the soon-to-be Egyptian president, have developed something of a credibility problem.

Since the Brotherhood has established such a track record in a mere 16 months, critics cannot help but ask how much time will transpire before those very powers that the military has been denied will be brought into the service of the reigning Islamists.

^{Photo: In this photo released by Middle East News Agency, the Egyptian official news agency, President-elect Mohammed Morsi shakes hands with an Egyptian police general in Cairo, Egypt, June 26, 2012. : AP Images}

JP Morgan Trading Loss Balloons to $9 Billion

Written by Bob Adelmann

When the New York Times reported that the losses resulting from the failed trade made by JP Morgan Chase (JPM) earlier this year could reach $9 billion instead of the $2 billion initially reported, some said it didn’t matter, while others called for more regulations. Few considered that such trades, and consequent losses, were inevitable and would likely continue because of the implied taxpayer backstop.

First, it should be noted that, contrary to JPM CEO Jamie Dimon’s statement that the trade was due to “errors, sloppiness and bad judgment,” and was “flawed, complex, poorly reviewed, poorly executed and poorly monitored,” the people in JPM’s London office knew exactly what they were doing. Furthermore, Dimon was aware of what they were doing, was warned in advance of potential losses, and did nothing about it.
The people in the London office of JPM that executed the series of trades were the best and the brightest in the business. Ina Drew, the chief investment officer for JPM, was considered “one of the best managers of balance-sheet risks” and was applauded by an outside money manager, who called her “an amazing investor [who has] done a really good job over a lot of years.” She reported directly to Dimon who often flew to London in order to stay current on her office’s trades. When she resigned she took with her a $14-million paycheck.
The other key player in the London office, Bruno Iksil, was known in the trading community as the “London Whale” for his outsized and bold bets with company money. In 2011 his aggressive trades, approaching $1 billion, earned JPM $450 million.
But when he began putting on trades late last year, using margin and derivatives to multiply his leverage, he got the attention of senior management. One senior manager looked into what the “whale” was doing and recommended that the firm create a separate reserve account to offset any losses he might incur if one of his bets went south. His recommendation was ignored, and soon after that the “whale’s” trades went south.
The trades were complicated, involving bond index funds, but in essence Iksil bet the farm on the idea that bond prices would move in a certain direction. He took so many trades, using so much leverage, that when his bets started going against him, other traders piled on, taking positions against him. As Felix Salmon wrote in Reuters:

Whenever a trader has a large and known position, the market is almost certain to move violently against that trader — and that seems to be exactly what happened here…

Once your positions become public knowledge, the market will smell blood.

Some tried to put the losses into perspective. After all, JP Morgan has total assets of $2.3 trillion, a net worth of $190 billion, and earned $25 billion last year. What’s $2 billion — or $9 billion for that matter — compared to that? In any event, as Chief Executive magazine put it: “The loss will be borne by JPMorganChase’s shareholders, not by depositors, creditors, customers or more to the point, and most important — not by taxpayers.” In fact, a number of chief executive officers meeting at a recent Yale CEO Summit asked: Why all the fuss over such a trivial matter? Specifically,

Why is public attention focused on a $2 billion nominal loss when both the government and media are stone silent over the $4 trillion loss represented by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the twin darlings that precipitated the financial collapse in the first place?

To date there have been no hearings and no one at either institution has been indicted…

There is at least one good reason. JPMorgan sucked up nearly $390 billion from the Fed as the financial collapse occurred. And the reason for that was that JPM was “too big to fail” thus creating the moral hazard that Dimon and his “whale” were manipulating for the bank’s benefit. After all, if there is no real “downside” risk, why not pile on? The fact that JPM could eat this trade is beside the point.
In reviewing the matter, two highly regarded commentators came up with the same solution: Put the risk back into the game and let the participants enjoy the rewards and suffer the losses and leave the taxpayers and their guarantees — real or implied — out of the equation altogether. Gerald O’Driscoll, writing for The Freeman, said:

Large financial institutions will continue taking on excessive risks so long as they now they can offload the losses onto the taxpayers, if needed…

Until that discipline is reintroduced, there will be more financial bets going bad at these banks.

It’s the deadly combination of high risk and no punishment that leads to trouble. If that trouble is large enough to threaten the existence of a bank as large as JP Morgan, then the taxpayer will ever be holding the bag. But if the gambling division is separated from the banking division, then losses will be limited, and such highly risky trades are less likely to occur. As O’Driscoll noted:

In the past I have dubbed today’s banking practice of placing dangerous financial bets “casino banking.” It differs little from the activities conducted at gaming tables in Las Vegas and has little or no reference to the fundamentally healthy activity of matching viable businesses with capital and credit.

Lew Rockwell agrees. Every bank that has depositors’ money should tend to its knitting: securing those deposits, investing them conservatively, and concentrating on serving their customers. Banks that want to invest their own funds — not customers’ money — should be free to do so, but separately and without taxpayer backup. That way, says Rockwell, “The end result is that banks would be banks…” and casinos would be casinos, and never the twain would meet.

More Banks — 11 in Brazil — Face Credit Downgrades

Thursday, 28 June 2012 15:06

More Banks — 11 in Brazil — Face Credit Downgrades

Moody’s downgraded the credit ratings of 11 Brazilian banks on June 27 — some a single level, and some three levels. This action was tied to the sovereign debt credit rating of the government of Brazil. All major banks that had credit ratings higher than the Brazilian sovereign debt rating of Baa2 were affected, and these included Banco do Brasil SA, Banco Sanfra, Banco Santander (Brasil), HSBC Bank Brasil — Banco Multiplo SA HSBAR.UL, Banco Bradesco, Banco Itau and Banco Itau Unibanco SA. Moody’s put it thus: “
Our review indicated that there are few, if any, reasons to believe that these banks would be insulated from
a government debt crisis.”
The number of loans defined as “bad loans” in the Brazilian banking system hit as 10-year high in May to $1.03 trillion. Dilma Rousseff, the president of Brazil, had been encouraging banks to grant more loans in order to stoke the economy and this was following the policies of her predecessor, former President Luiz Inada Lula da Silva.
This action by Moody’s comes on the heels of a review of the ratings of European banks. On June 25, Moody’s reduced the credit ratings of 28 out of 33 Spanish banks which had ratings. The reduction, in some cases by as much as four levels, came a few weeks after Moody’s reduced the sovereign debt credit rating of the government of Spain to a level just above junk bonds.
Moody's concerns about Spain were similar to those related to Brazil: "The reduced creditworthiness of the Spanish sovereign ... affects the government's ability to support the banks. The banks' exposures to commercial real estate will likely cause higher losses, which might increase the likelihood that these banks will require external support."
In May 2012, Moody’s downgraded the credit rating of 26 Italian banks. Perhaps more ominously, Moody’s also in February 2012 announced that the credit ratings of 114 different financial institutions in 16 different European nations were on review for possible downgrade, citing the sovereign debt crisis of the eurozone as a primary reason for the possible downgrades.
There has been action by Moody’s since February. On March 28, seven Portuguese banks were downgraded one to two levels. On May 17, Moody’s downgraded 16 Spanish banks by one to three levels. At the end of May, Moody’s had downgraded the credit rating of nine Danish financial institutions by one to three levels. On June 6, Moody’s downgraded the credit rating of the three largest Austrian banks by two levels.
Not only Europe has been affected by these downgrades in credit rating. On June 22, 2012 Moody’s reduced the credit rating of 15 banks, five of which are American banks, including Bank of America, Goldman-Sachs, J.P. Morgan-Chase, and Citigroup.
Other rating services, notably Standard & Poor’s and Fitch, had already downgraded many European banks last year. This past April Standard & Poor’s downgraded the credit rating of 16 different Spanish banks. Last December Fitch downgraded the credit rating of seven very large banks on both sides of the Atlantic. Moody’s actions reflect a general concern by private credit rating services.
Analysts are not viewing these downgrades as anything but bad news. Phllipe Boderau of Pacific Investment Management in London stated: “I’d like to say the views of the rating agencies don’t matter anymore but, unfortunately, they do. This is a setback for the banks, particularly when you consider how much progress they have made in making themselves safer and more transparent.”
Huw van Steenis, a banking analyst at Morgan Stanley in London, notes: “The more the cost of wholesale funding goes up, the more likely it is that banks will want to retreat closer to a loan- to-deposit ratio of one. That adds to the intense pressure to deleverage, which will be a drag anchor on European economic recovery.”
The interconnectivity of banks and governments compounds the problem of these credit reductions. When the sovereign debt of government bonds of European nations is downgraded, then the value of those bonds as assets in bank portfolios drops, when means that the asset-to-debt ratio of banks holding the sovereign debt of these nations drops too and the ability of the banks to loan money shrinks (or the credit rating of banks which continue to have loans at the same monetary level is downgraded).
Banks also hold assets in the form of various corporate security interests such as stocks and bonds. The general decline economically caused by the sovereign debt crisis in Europe means that the value of these assets drops too. Stock loses market value and debt instruments of private corporations held by banks is downgraded.
The light at the end of the tunnel, if there is any, is faint and very far away.

Obama Admin. Uses Prison Labor to Advance “Green” Agenda

The Obama administration is utilizing the U.S. prison system to help bolster its green-energy agenda, while boosting foreign companies and funneling cash into the hands of Obama’s largest campaign donors,
according to a startling new report by the Washington Free Beacon.
Federal Prison Industries, more commonly known as UNICOR, is a wholly owned corporation of the U.S. government that uses penal labor from the Federal Bureau of Prisons to produce various products and services. Established in 1934, the organization was designed as a voluntary vocational-training program for federal prisoners, but has recently gone into business providing green-energy technology to federal agencies.
Federal inmates in Oregon and New York are earning between $.23 and $1.15 per hour building solar
panels, which are then sold to a range of government agencies. In rationalizing the program, administration officials say it provides federal agencies with an opportunity to buy solar panels from domestic manufacturers. UNICOR emphasizes this rationale on its website, asserting that its panels “are domestically sourced and produced, meeting the requirements of the Buy American Act, Trade Agreement Act, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.”
However, in 2009 UNICOR entered into a $219-million contract with a Taiwanese company that supplies the solar cells used to build the panels. It’s the typical maneuver to work around the “Buy American” rhetoric, Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.) charged, because products built using foreign parts are still considered “American-made” as long as they are physically assembled in the United States. “It’s yet another outrage on what is happening with our tax dollars,” Huizenga said in an interview with the Beacon.
One of the more evident problems is that the effort produces virtually no benefit to the private sector, as the parts are foreign-made, and everything is assembled by prison inmates. And if that’s not enough, the law requires that government agencies buy the products from, ironically, the government agency itself.
Officials contend that the effort “prepar[es] inmates for the green economy” and that it “reduces the recidivism rate among prisoners.” However, as the Beacon affirms, a 2011 report by the Congressional Research Service debunks those claims, asserting that they are “not conclusive.”
Further yet, UNICOR has an extensive history of undercutting private enterprise. For example, a military clothing manufacturer with a long history of selling to the Defense Department was recently undercut by UNICOR for a $45-million contract. The company’s CEO, Steven Eisen, said he had to lay off about 100 workers after losing the contract. “Our government screams, howls and yells how the rest of the world is using prisoners or slave labor to manufacture items, and here we take the items right out of the mouths of people who need it,” he charged.
Such practices have become so widespread that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) intervened to prevent UNICOR from pirating business from the private sector in his home state.
UNICOR oftentimes partners with private businesses to install the solar panels and assist government agencies in implementing other energy-efficient measures. One prominent beneficiary is Constellation Energy, an energy-efficient supplier that was recently acquired by the Exelon Corporation, a Chicago-based utility company intimately tied to the Obama administration.
Only weeks after the two companies merged, Constellation was awarded a 20-year contract to supply renewable energy to 10 State Department buildings, as well as a segment of the White House campus. In what was called a “first-of-its-kind federal contract,” the effort will help “contribute to President Obama's executive order to reduce federal-wide greenhouse gas emissions 28 percent by 2020,” according to a press release from the company.
Constellation has secured a market that the bankrupt solar firm Solyndra sought to tap before it filed for bankruptcy late last year, despite raking in a half-billion-dollar, taxpayer-backed loan guarantee from the federal government. Like Solyndra, Constellation collected hundreds of millions of dollars from Obama’s 2009 economic stimulus package.
The firm’s new parent company, Exelon, has become one of the most politically connected companies in the country, and has been a prominent investor in Obama’s campaign endeavors. Company employees, including many top executives, have doled out more than $240,000 to the President since 2007. “Chicago-based Exelon stands out as one of the best patrons throughout Obama’s political career,” Politico recently reported. “Its employees make up the largest group of donors this cycle from the energy and natural resource sector.”
Exelon was the President’s fourth-largest campaign donor during his 2006 Senate run, funneling more than $73,000 to Obama’s campaign. Frank Clark, a retired CEO of another Exelon subsidiary, was an advisor to Obama before his 2008 presidential campaign. The Beacon reported further:

Exelon board member John Rogers has bundled more than $500,000 for the president this cycle, as he did in 2008, and has personally contributed at least $100,000 to the pro-Obama Super PAC Priorities Action. Rogers, who played on the Princeton basketball team with Obama’s brother-in-law, Craig Robinson, recently attended the wedding of senior White House adviser Valeria Jarrett’s daughter in Chicago.

The connections extend well beyond the large campaign contributions of top executives. Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod is a former consultant to the company. Former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel helped broker the $8.2-billion merger between PECO Energy and Unicom that led to the firm’s creation in 2000. It was the biggest deal of Emanuel’s two-year career as an investment banker in Chicago, during which he pocketed more than $16.2 million, according to congressional disclosure forms.

All in all, the intimate relationship between the green-energy industry and the Obama White House has been prolific, and UNICOR has been a driving force in forging these two parties together. “Why are we going to use taxpayer dollars to purchase materials that are literally taking business away from the private sector?” Rep. Huizenga asked. “And let’s be honest, let’s pull the pin on the hand grenade. If this was Chinese prison labor, we’d be rejecting every single one of these imports.”

Photo: AP Images