USA: Income Inequality Is The Biggest Story For The U.S. Economy - by Nathaniel Parish Flannery

During Memorial Day weekend at a biker rally in Washington DC Donald Trump spoke to a group of supporters. “We’re going to give the right for those people to see a private doctor or even a public doctor and get themselves taken care of and we’re going to pay the bill,” he said. The message was tailored for the audience of veterans, but it touches on a common theme. Over the last few months I’ve seen my Twitter feed flooded with news stories about the increasing divide between people succeeding in the globalized economy and people who are just struggling to get by.

A lot of this stuff is old news. A study looking at pay packages in 2014 by the consultancy Payscale Human Capital found that CVS CEO Larry Merlo earned 422 times the average wage paid to the company’s employees. Merlo took home more a compensation package worth more than $12 million while the average employee earned $28,000. Goodyear, Walt Disney, and Honeywell also topped Payscale’s list for most egregious gaps between CEO and worker pay. In past years, however, the wealth gap has seemed like a niche topic in the news cycle. In the 2016 election season it feels like income inequality has become the dominant issue. Over the last few weeks I’ve seen a number of fascinating stories.

On May 3 I tweeted this Washington Post wonkblog article on the ongoing struggles of young people in the US. In the article reporter Max Ehrenfreund explains that despite being better educated than the previous generation that started their careers in New York City in 2000, the current group of young people in the city is earning less, despite being better education. Ehenfeund explains, “For most young adults in the city, though, incomes have declined. A typical 25-year-old made $43,000 in New York in 2000, adjusting for inflation. In 2014, a 25-year-old in the city could expect to make about $37,000.”

The percentage of young people working in low wage industries such as retail and hospitality increased from 23% to 33%. As of 2014 an astounding 45% of all 18 to 29-year-olds in New York City lived with their parents. “Wherever they live, young people are having a hard time getting a start on life in the modern American economy,” Ehrenfreund explains. 

Read the complete report: Media Roundup: Income Inequality Is The Biggest Story For The U.S. Economy - Forbes

Britain: Economists overwhelmingly reject Brexit in boost for Cameron

Nine out of 10 of Britain’s top economists working across academia, the City, industry, small businesses and the public sector believe the British economy will be harmed by Brexit, according to the biggest survey of its kind ever conducted.

A poll commissioned for the Observer and carried out by Ipsos MORI, which drew responses from more than 600 economists, found 88% saying an exit from the EU and the single market would most likely damage Britain’s growth prospects over the next five years.

A striking 82% of the economists who responded thought there would probably be a negative impact on household incomes over the next five years in the event of a Leave vote, with 61% thinking unemployment would rise.

Those surveyed were members of the profession’s most respected representative bodies, the Royal Economic Society and the Society of Business Economists, and all who replied did so voluntarily.

Paul Johnson, director of the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies, said the findings, from a survey unprecedented in its scale, showed an extraordinary level of unity. “For a profession known to agree about little, it is pretty remarkable to see this degree of consensus about anything,” Johnson said. “It no doubt reflects the level of agreement among many economists about the benefits of free trade and the costs of uncertainty for economic growth.”

The poll also found a majority of respondents – 57% – held the view that a vote for Brexit on 23 June would blow a hole in economic growth, cutting GDP by more than 3% over the next five years. Just 5% thought that there would probably be a positive impact.

The economists were also overwhelmingly pessimistic about the long-term economic impact of leaving the EU and the single market. Some 72% said that a vote to leave would most likely have a negative impact on growth for 10-20 years.

Just 4% of respondents who thought Brexit would mostly likely have a negative impact on GDP over the initial five years said it would have a positive effect over the longer term.

The findings – which come as 37 faith leaders write in a letter to the Observer warning that Brexit will damage the causes of peace and the fight against poverty – will bolster David Cameron and George Osborne, who have both argued strongly that the economy will be hit hard in the event of Brexit.

Read more: Economists overwhelmingly reject Brexit in boost for Cameron | Politics | The Guardian

EU-USA-TTIP: Obama’s Push for a New Transatlantic Relationship ( "with many flaws") - by Judy Dempsey

"TTIP not as good as being advertised"

U.S. President Barack Obama has only nine months left in office. He now seems a man in a hurry. During his visit to Europe on April 21–25, he made a big pitch for the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which would radically change the functioning of trade between European and U.S. companies.

Speaking in the German city of Hannover, where he opened one of the world’s biggest trade fairs, he told German Chancellor Angela Merkel and scores of leading company executives how time was slipping by to clinch this trade deal. “If we don’t complete negotiations this year, then upcoming political transitions in the United States and Europe would mean this agreement won’t be finished for quite some time,” he said.


Obama’s pitch is long overdue. TTIP is not only about establishing a trade deal that would set crucial standards for how business is conducted. It is also about underpinning if not reviving the West’s liberal economic order, which is coming under massive pressure from Russia and particularly China.

After annexing Crimea in 2014 and later invading parts of eastern Ukraine, Russia is now meddling in Europe through a sophisticated propaganda campaign that does everything to publicize populist and Euroskeptic movements and anti-U.S. sentiments.

Russia is doing everything possible to rattle NATO weeks before the alliance holds a summit in Warsaw, where it will discuss how to improve the security of its Eastern members in the face of increasing Russian intimidation.

Europe’s divisions over refugees and TTIP also play into the hands of Russian President Vladimir Putin. A weakened Europe and a weakened transatlantic relationship are to Russia’s benefit. And to China’s.
Second only to the United States in terms of economic power, China is making a big bid to set new trading standards through its sheer size and political ambitions. Beijing’s huge investments in Africa and Latin America are about seeking allies to assert its authority and influence on the global stage.

That is why TTIP matters. If the deal does not go ahead, the West will have lost a major chance to regain its influence and set trading standards for the coming decades. Above all, Europe and the United States will have lost the opportunity to build a new transatlantic relationship, as the old one, built from the carnage of World War II, increasingly lacks the strategic importance and direction that it once had.

Despite the political and strategic significance of TTIP, European leaders have shied away from speaking out in favor of the deal. Merkel has rarely weighed in on an issue that has so far been successfully hijacked by a highly organized anti-TTIP campaign, not just in Germany but across Europe. Hours before Obama’s arrival in Hannover, tens of thousands of people demonstrated against TTIP.

Critics of TTIP insist that only big corporations will be the winners, that the United States will reap most of the benefits, and that consumers across Europe will be affected by lower standards when it comes to food protection and social issues.

Tell that to Germany’s Mittelstand, the medium-sized companies that are the backbone of the country’s economy. The German mechanical engineering industry, for example, ships more than €16 billion ($18 billion) of goods each year to the United States.

But don’t think a gadget made in Germany can be sold in its original form to a U.S. retailer. “We have to replace our EU plugs with US plugs, even though they essentially look the same, have the same safety characteristics and perform the same function,” said Carl Martin Welcker, vice president of the German Mechanical Engineering Industry and managing partner of Alfred H. Schütte, a machine tool factory.

“We are not just talking about plugs. We use the metric system to standardise our threads, whereas the USA measures in inches – so we have to change the threads in certain safety pipes,” he added. “The EU and the USA even have different requirements when it comes to the content of operating instructions. We end up producing the same machine twice, only differently. We have to buy materials twice, store materials twice. Machines have to be tested twice and approved twice.”

Just imagine the extra costs if a European company wants to enter and compete in the U.S. market. TTIP would do away with these different standards, in turn creating more jobs for European companies—and cutting production costs. These benefits are rarely articulated, just as the long-term strategic implications of TTIP are almost never discussed.

Instead, TTIP has become associated with populist, Euroskeptic, and antiglobalization movements. And there is more than a tinge of anti-Americanism, as Obama surely sensed during his visit to London on April 22–24. Indeed, his public support for Britain to remain in the EU and his pleading for European leaders to support TTIP were really about the United States wanting a stronger Europe and a revitalized transatlantic relationship.

Unless there is a major shift across Europe in the coming months, Obama’s bid to clinch what would be a historic trade deal will elude him. Russia and China will no doubt be relieved.

Note EU-Digest: The above report in favor of the TTIP , put together by a a US Democratic Party supported Think-Tank also contains some major omissions which are not in favor of this TTIP. 

These include:

The disappearance of jobs in some sectors

Increased international competition will lead to fewer jobs in some sectors. Research has shown, for example, that jobs will be lost among producers and exporters of machinery and meat. The Netherlands is looking for ways to compensate for job losses. The Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation is consulting the trade unions on this issue.

TTIP must not have a negative impact on our European social model. The government seeks to safeguard labour relations and terms of employment in the Netherlands. The government has asked the Social and Economic Council (SER) for advice on protecting labour standards in TTIP.

Concerns about lower standards

There are concerns that TTIP will lead to lower European standards. Like standards on food safety, the environment, privacy and labour conditions. TTIP’s benefits must not be brought about at the expense of people, animals and the environment. The Netherlands and the EU want to see firm guarantees to this effect in the agreement. See What guarantees does the EU want to see in TTIP?

Concerns about TTIP’s impact on low- and middle-income countries

TTIP could have an adverse impact on some low- and middle-income countries and their products. Yet TTIP’s benefits for these countries seem to outweigh the disadvantages. Higher economic growth in the US and the EU means, for example, more market opportunities for other countries, including poorer ones. The agreement should also make it easier for developing countries to export to the EU and the US.

The economic benefits of TTIP must not be enjoyed at the expense of low- and middle-income countries. The Netherlands believes that the agreement must offer just as many benefits to these countries, too. It has consistently called for a focus on these countries’ interests. The Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation has commissioned a thorough study of TTIP’s impact on them. 

Concerns that companies will be able to do as they please

Some civil society organisations are concerned that the investment protection provided by TTIP will give companies too much power. They fear it will limit governments’ democratic scope to make laws and regulations. This is known as the regulatory chill effect. Foreign investors that feel they 
have been disadvantaged can, for example, challenge a government decision. 

The Netherlands and the EU want to see a chapter on investment protection in TTIP that will prevent this from happening. That can be achieved by setting clear rules for conflicts between governments and investors. TTIP presents an opportunity to improve the traditional system of investment protection. The European Commission and the Netherlands are pressing for balanced system of investment protection that precludes abuse.

Read more: Obama’s Push for a New Transatlantic Relationship - Carnegie Europe - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Apocalyptic Predictions: Countdown to Extinction - by Michael Lind

According to the online website The Death Clock, a man born on my birthdate can be expected to die 20 years from now in 2036. This assumes, however, that the entire human race does not become extinct before the estimated date of my demise.

In a February 9, 2012 post on the blog Arctic News, Malcolm Light writes there will be “Global Extinction within one Human Lifetime as a Result of a Spreading Atmospheric Arctic Methane Heat Wave and Surface Firestorm.” Light predicts “This process of methane release will accelerate exponentially, release huge quantities of methane into the atmosphere and lead to the demise of all life on earth before the middle of this century.” For those interested in more specific dates, Light has done the calculations:

The absolute mean extinction time for the northern hemisphere is 2031.8 and for the southern hemisphere 2047.6 with a final mean extinction time for ¾ of the earth’s surface of 2039.6 which is similar to the extinction time suggested previously from corrrelations between planetary orbital mechanics and the frequency increase of Great and Normal earthquake activity on Earth (Light, 2011). Extinction in the southern hemisphere lags the northern hemisphere by 9 to 29 years.

This certainly sounds scientific, doesn’t it? Light’s blog post is complete with charts and graphs and seemingly-precise figures. But his analysis has not undergone peer review by scientists or publication in a peer-reviewed journal. Not that any of that matters if we’re all about to die!

“If it bleeds, it leads,” the saying among editors goes. Predictions of imminent human extinction by scientists, or people who pretend to be scientists, are sure to be picked up during slow news cycles. “Humans will be extinct in 100 years says eminent scientist” screamed the headline on June 23, 2010 in Phys.Org. Frank Fenner, an emeritus professor of microbiology in Australia who had helped to eliminate smallpox, predicted that the human race would be gone within a century, thanks to climate change and overpopulation.

Fenner told The Australian he tries not to express his pessimism because people are trying to do something, but keep putting it off. He said he believes the situation is irreversible, and it is too late because the effects we have had on Earth since industrialization (a period now known to scientists unofficially as the Anthropocene) rivals any effects of ice ages or comet impacts.

Fenner passed away at the age of 95 in the same year, 2010, in which he made his apocalyptic prediction. But belief in the near-term extinction of the human race is a hardy perennial. “Steven Hawking Warns Humanity Could Destroy Itself in the Next 100 Years,” according to a headline of January 19, 2016. The culprits? The usual suspects —global warming and/or nuclear war — plus, genetically-engineered viruses. On a previous occasion he suggested that intelligent machines “could spell the end of the human race.”

It should come as no surprise that there is a Near Term Human Extinction movement (not to be confused with the anti-natalist Voluntary Human Extinction movement). Among its leaders are a retired natural scientist at the University of Arizona named Guy McPherson, who runs a blog called Nature Bats Last. In an October 4, 2014 blog post McPherson portrayed himself as a spurned prophet:

    I abandoned the luxury-filled, high-pay, low-work position I loved as a tenured professor to go back to the land. I led by example. Vanishingly few followed. I’m reminded of the prescient words attributed to American existential psychologist Rollo May: “The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.”….I no longer communicate with most of those colleagues, friends, and family. It’s too difficult to justify the occasional conversation.

He is not the first to feel this way:

    But Jesus said unto them, a prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. (Mark 6:4, KJV).

The method of many near term human extinction believers is to take the worst case scenarios from numerous projections, without treating them as low-probability events. In the case of my own extinction, it is possible that I will be killed, as Valerius Maximus reported that the Greek poet and playwright Aeschylus was killed, by a passing eagle that drops a tortoise on my head, but the odds are very low.

The near term human extinction movement has been subjected to devastating criticism by scientists and well-informed journalists, many of whom think climate change is a genuine danger. Critiques are easily found on the Internet and I will leave them as an exercise for the reader.

What I want to focus on here is the psychology of the apocalyptic mind. It is a subject which has fascinated me since my childhood in Texas, where I enjoyed listening to radio broadcasts by evangelical Protestant interpreters of “prophecy.” Every Sunday a preacher could be heard, interpreting current events in light of the Book of Revelation. This or that nation in the European Economic Community, the predecessor of the European Union, was one of the ten horns on the seven heads of the dragon in Revelation. For those who could read the Signs of the Times, it was clear that the latest crisis in the Middle East or in the Cold War proved that the Last Days were about to begin. In the next few years the seven-year Tribulation would begin, complete with the Battle of Armageddon, the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, and the beginning of the Millennial Kingdom of Christ on earth. It was all great fun.

My introduction to the secular environmentalist version of apocalyptic thinking occurred when I, at the age of 10 or so, received a letter from the great marine biologist Jacques Cousteau, whose television program about undersea exploration mesmerized me and countless other young viewers. “Dear Michael,” the great man began. I was very excited until my parents explained that it was a fundraising form letter.

According to Jacques Cousteau, pollution was destroying the world’s environment (this was in the 1970s, before global warming had displaced pollution as the greatest danger to humanity in Green thinking). By 1984 all of the plankton in the oceans would die, the oxygen in the earth’s atmosphere would become extinct, and…well, you know. Disaster might be averted by a tax-deductible contribution to Jacques Cousteau.

I don’t remember whether I sent money or not. But I do recall being extremely anxious on New Year’s Eve, 1983. After the ball dropped in Times Square, I took a deep breath … and discovered that there was still oxygen in the earth’s atmosphere in 1984, notwithstanding the prediction of my childhood scientist-hero.

The structure of apocalyptic predictions is similar, whether they are religious or scientific. Timing is everything. The apocalyptic event, be it the Second Coming or human extinction as a result of nuclear war, Peak Oil or climate change, has to be in the near term future, to generate excitement. Nobody is going to join a sect whose prophet claims that Jesus will return on May 2, 4158 A.D. And no news outlet in search of eyeballs is going to publish this headline: “Scientist predicts human race will become extinct within the next 10 to 20 million years.”

If the apocalypse can be averted or postponed by individual or collective repentance, then you need two futures: the near term future, in which human action can avert the catastrophe, and the medium term future, in which catastrophe is inevitable if human action is inadequate in the near term future. Much environmentalist writing takes this form: If humanity does not act within the next X years, then global disaster will take place in Y years.

Frequently X — the short term period in which action may still be effective — is 10-15 years, while Y is around 30 years. These numbers make psychological sense. Arguing that we must act in the next decade or so can inspire people more than insisting that something must be done in the next half century. And global doom in the next three decades creates a greater sense of urgency than global doom in the next three centuries or the next three millennia or the next three hundred thousand years.

Examples of the 10-year rule and the 30-year rule were provided by Al Gore in 2006, in an interview with the Associated Press accompanying a screening of his documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

First, the 30-year timing, if the apocalypse is not averted (“a few decades”):

    If the pace of pollution continues, Gore’s projections for carbon-dioxide levels are off the charts within a few decades.

    Among the worst-case consequences: A new ice age in Europe, and massive flooding of regions in India, China and elsewhere that could make refugees of tens of millions of people.

Then, the 10-year rule for effective, short-term action:

    And politicians and corporations have been ignoring the issue for decades, to the point that unless drastic measures to reduce greenhouse gases are taken within the next 10 years, the world will reach a point of no return, Gore said.

10 years have now passed since Gore warned that we had only ten years to avert “a true planetary emergency.” Humanity failed to unite and act in time. So I reckon there is nothing to be done, except to reconcile ourselves to the coming global catastrophe “within a few decades.”

Will the human race in the near future be wiped out by a methane-caused firestorm —Malcolm Light’s prediction—or, at least in Europe, by a new ice age, as in Al Gore’s 2006 prophecy? Like Robert Frost, I would prefer the former:

    Some say the world will end in fire,

    Some say in ice.

    From what I’ve tasted of desire

    I hold with those who favor fire.

But it doesn’t really matter—if you’re extinct, you’re extinct. And extinction may not be as bad as people make it out to be. To quote the humorous verses that Ogden Nash wrote to accompany the section of “The Carnival of the Animals” by Camille Saint-Saens entitled “Fossils”:



Read more: Countdown to Extinction | The Smart Set

Freedom of Expression: Media Terror: Press Freedom in Turkey, Mexico and Russia

Turkey is ranked 151st out of 180 on press freedom as of 2016, according to the Reporters Without Borders’ annual Press Freedom Index.
2. That makes it the third-worst performer among the G-20 nations, after China and Saudi Arabia (165th).
3. As recently as 2006, Turkey ranked in the top 100 nations in terms of press freedom.
4. Turkey’s ranking has fallen in recent years because of increasing political pressure on journalists and the return of war at home and abroad.
5. The government also vigorously prosecutes alleged “insults” against top officials and seizes control of newspapers that it accuses of “terrorist” support.
6. Mexico ranks the next-worst (149th) in the G-20 after Turkey – and is the most dangerous country in the Western hemisphere for journalists.
7. Mexican drug gangs have used brutal tactics to intimidate the journalists reporting on their activities. Scores of journalists have been openly murdered.
8. Mexico in 2016 ranks next to Russia (148th), which makes the latter the fifth-worst performer among the G-20 nations.
9. Since Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012, the repression and consolidation of the media in Russia have been stepped up.
10. Russia also stands out because of its systematic failure to punish, or even pursue, those who have attacked or murdered journalists.

Read more: Media Terror: Press Freedom in Turkey, Mexico and Russia - The Globalist

France: McDonald's French HQ searched in tax probe

French investigators searched McDonald's French headquarters on May 18, targeting the U.S. fast food chain in a tax probe, sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Thursday.

One of the sources said a preliminary inquiry had been opened after former investigating magistrate and politician Eva Joly filed a lawsuit in December on the behalf of an employee committee.

"A search was indeed carried out at McDonald's headquarters in France on May 18," the other source said, confirming a report first carried by Les Echos business daily.

Read more: McDonald's French HQ searched in tax probe: Sources

USA Financial Industry: 21 year old expert making it all uappen

Financial wizard of 21 making big bucks.

Read full report - Click here

France - strikes hit fuel supplies: Here is where France is hit hardest by fuel shortages

With 2,400 petrol stations across France either empty or running out of fuel, here's a look at which parts of the country are the most affected.

Key points 

- 2,400 petrol stations empty or running low

- PM warns the French not to panic

- Total says 509 of its 2,200 stations empty or running low

- Read also: What can the French do if there's no fuel?

Authorities have tried to quell all talk of any fuel shortages, but 2,400 petrol stations out of 12,000 petrol stations around the country - that's one fifth - had either run out of fuel or were running very low.

And as the map below shows, it's looking extremely grim.

French oil giant Total said 54 percent of its stations in Brittany, 46 percent in Normandy, and 43 percent in the Pays-de-la-Loire region are totally or partially out of fuel.

In Nantes it’s proving almost impossible to find fuel. Posters announcing that pumps are empty greet motorists at almost every station. It’s a similar case in Vannes, where almost all stations are out of fuel.  

Read more: Here is where France is hit hardest by fuel shortages - The Local

China: A dark cloud on the future

The Plight Of China’s “Left Behind” Children By César Chelala 61 million children in China grow up effectively parentless. Imagine the consequences on their development. 61 million children in China grow up effectively parentless. Imagine the consequences on their development. ©2015 The Globalist ALL RIGHTS RESERVED You can join the conversation about this story on the original post on theglobalist.com. http://www.theglobalist.com/the-plight-of-chinas-left-behind-children/#noredirect Powered by Como: http://www.como.com

US Presidential Campaign-Funding : Donald Trump - the truth, the whole truth or a loan?

Even though Donald Trtump said he funded his primary campaign out of his own pocket, this was shown as not totally true.

So far Donald Trump has spent a total of $43 million on his election campaign, according to the Federal Election Commission, but the funds, they said, have been structured as a loan to his campaign.

This means, Trump can be legally reimbersed for spending, with new campaign donations, until August.

Insure-Digest

US Healthcare More Americans Want Socialist Healthcare Than You Think

The passage of the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, shows what it takes to create a new government benefit in 21st-century America. The debate over the bill during Obama's first term was a nationwide shoutfest that turned violent at times; since Obamacare became law in 2010, the Republican-controlled House has continuously voted to defund it, conservatives have challenged it in multiple court battles (at least one of which is still being fought), many GOP-run states have stalled the expansion of Medicaid that was supposed to come with the law, and every Republican candidate for president has promised to make repealing Obamacare a priority.

So it's no surprise that Republicans really, really hate the ACA, and most polls over the years have shown that more Americans disapprove of Obamacare than approve of it. But according to a new survey from Gallup, what they want to replace it with is the sort of socialist-style system Bernie Sanders and others have been backing for years.

In Gallup's poll, Democrat-leaning voters mostly supported Obamacare, but 72 percent of all respondents who approve of it said they'd like to replace it with a "federally funded healthcare program providing insurance for all Americans," or what's commonly known as a "single-payer" system. And even 41 percent of Republican-leaning respondents, who mostly dislike the ACA, told Gallup they'd rather have single-payer than Obamacare—a position that, as far as I can figure out, not a single Republican officeholder has ever endorsed. But if socialized medicine is actually so popular, why can't we have it? In other words, why has the healthcare debate been so out of touch with what people say they want?

Health insurance is a fairly complicated topic, and not top-of-mind for most voters during a campaign cycle that has focused on the economy and immigration. According to recent Pew polls, Republicans generally don't think the government should get involved in healthcare. But there's a not-insignificant amount of evidence that when you strip out the names of parties and candidates, support for government-run insurance cuts across partisan lines.

The new Gallup poll, notably, didn't remind participants that federal health insurance was opposed by the right; one 2015 Huffington Post/YouGov poll found that if you told people single-payer was Donald Trump's idea a lot more Republicans were suddenly onboard (and a lot more Democrats suddenly opposed universal healthcare).

Opposition to Obamacare is often synonymous with the right-wing effort to block the expansion of the federal government into citizens' lives. On the angrier corners of the fringe, this means Sarah Palin–esque denouncements of rationing care and "death panels," but more respectable right-wingers will tell you that the problem is the government shouldn't be able to force you to buy something you don't want to. An anti-ACA lawyer even admitted, during the famous 2012 Supreme Court battle over the law, that a single-payer program would be more constitutional than the current method of requiring people to become private health insurance customers or face tax penalties.

Less talked about is the significant number of people who thought that Obamacare didn't go far enough. Sanders has been the most prominent supporter of a government-run system since he introduced an obviously doomed amendment to adopt single-payer during the original ACA debate in the Senate. Beyond single-payer, though, there's something called the "public option," a scheme that would give people the choice of buying government-provided insurance or going to the private market.

Read more: More Americans Want Socialist Healthcare Than You Think | VICE | United States

Have and have's not: 5 Powerful Forces Driving Inequality: Bby Branko L Milanovic

 Income inequality is driven by both political and economic forces and it waxes and wanes over time. In my just-published book, “Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization,”

I introduce the concept of Kuznets waves to describe this rise and fall.

The name comes from the famous American economist Simon Kuznets, who in the 1950s and 1960s argued that as societies underwent the Industrial Revolution they become more unequal, with labor moving from agriculture to industry.

This is followed by a period of declining income inequality as highly educated labor becomes more plentiful and social transfers increase. So it seemed that the rich countries were destined to become more egalitarian and stay that way.

For the complete  report click here: 5 Powerful Forces Driving Inequality - Bloomberg View

US Media:The Mainstream Media and Its Discontents - by CJ Hopkins

It’s easy to forget at times, living in the social bubbles that we all do, that approximately two-thirds of Americans are not university graduates, and thus have not completed the process of “internalizing the framework of belief and attitudes of the surrounding power system in the society”, whereby Noam Chomsky noted:

"Those of you who have been through college know that the educational system is very highly geared to rewarding conformity and obedience … it is kind of a filtering device which ends up with people who really honestly (they aren’t lying) internalize the framework of belief and attitudes of the surrounding power system in the society.

Throughout the 2016 primary elections season to date, the “mainstream media,” both “liberal” and “conservative,” along with the establishments of both the Republican and Democratic parties, have been desperately working — at times in a state of barely-concealed panic — to contain, divert, coopt and otherwise neutralize a tsunami of discontent among the “uneducated,” “working class” masses, many of whom are “stubbornly” refusing to cooperate with the extremely expensive simulation of democracy that the corporate plutocracy is forced to stage for us every four years.

These “discontents” have already handed the Republican presidential nomination to Donald Trump, a buffoonish billionaire real estate mogul whose incoherent demagogic ramblings make George W. Bush sound articulate in comparison, and are “childishly” dragging out the coronation of Democrat Hillary Clinton by continuing to vote for a 74-year-old self-proclaimed “socialist” who has had the audacity to talk about Clinton’s shady ties to Wall Street, and the rest of the transnational corporate elite that more or less rules the world at this point, and things like that.

Now, when we talk about the “mainstream media,” it’s easy to end up speaking in overly simplistic terms, as if they were some sort of neo-Orwellian Ministry of Information pumping out bald-faced lies and propaganda that they wanted everyone to mindlessly parrot … but what we’re talking about is something much subtler and more insidious than that, generally.

As Chomsky notes in the brief article referenced above (and in detail in Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, with co-author Edward S. Herman), the mainstream media is an informal network of news and opinion sources (i.e. corporations) that together define the “acceptable” boundaries of political and cultural discourse (i.e. what one is allowed to say and how one is allowed to say it), a network owned and operated by people who have “internalized the framework of belief and attitudes of the surrounding power system in the society.” In our case, of course, “the surrounding power system in the society” is global Capitalism, or Neoliberalism, or whatever you want to call it. And it is this internalization of capitalist values, and not any type of conspiracy or direct editorial censorship, that produces the mainstream media’s monolithic aspect, despite the fact that reporters and editorialists are “free” to write whatever they want.

The current election season in the US is providing us with a rather clear example of this. Anyone halfway paying attention has witnessed the mainstream media (both “left” and “right”) operating as a superficially diverse yet essentially monolithic echo chamber … manufacturing public opinion in perfect synchronization as if following a Hill+Knowlton script. According to this script, Clinton is the only reasonable choice for “normal, intelligent grown-ups,” Sanders is the “unrealistic” protest-vote candidate (who is also racist, sexist and sometimes anti-Semitic, depending on the publication and whether he has just won another primary), and Trump is … well, Hitler. One could go back and catalogue the mainstream media’s coverage of the campaign season so far — in both “liberal” and “conservative” news sources — and marvel at their dogged adherence to this simplistic narrative.

Now it remains to be seen whether Trump can be transformed into some “mainstream” version of himself that the liberalize GOP establishment can possibly live with. At the moment, the odds of that happening seem pretty slim, and the big liberalize money is flowing toward Clinton, who has proven her allegiance to the global banking and corporate elites time and time again. (Although I wouldn’t put anything past Trump, who has no real principles whatsoever.) Sanders, meanwhile, is doomed, and appears to be preparing his supporters for the day when he will herd them all into the Clinton camp (i.e. the mainstream) and instruct them to ignore Clinton’s corrupt ties to Wall Street, and her war-mongering and coup-inciting, and so on, because, well … Hitler.

Read the full report: The Mainstream Media and Its Discontents

Half of Europeans think Britain will leave the EU "but poll shows all of them think their country should stay in" – by Vince Chadwic

BREXIT

Half of Europeans in eight EU countries think Britain will vote to leave in the June 23 referendum, according to a poll published Monday.

The Ipsos MORI survey also found that almost half of those questioned think their country should follow Britain’s lead and hold a referendum on EU membership.

The online survey of between 500 and 1,000 adults under the age of 65 in eight countries, plus the U.K., found 45 percent want an EU referendum, and 33 percent would vote to leave if given the choice today.

In Italy, 48 percent would vote to leave in a hypothetical referendum, compared to 41 percent in France and 39 percent in Sweden. Only 22 percent of Poles and 21 percent of Spaniards would vote to go.

“A topic that unifies [Poles] to a large degree is our membership of the European Union,” Polish President Andrzej Duda told Polsat news in a recent interview. “There are no serious politicians today who say that we should leave the European Union.”

Do you think your own country should hold an EU referendum?

 

Blue Yes - Red No
 In the event of an EU referendum in your own country, how would you vote?

Blue Remain: Red: Opt out

SOURCE: Ipsos MORI Brexit poll May 9

Read more: Half of Europeans think Britain will leave the EU – POLITI

Brexit Impactw3: The Economics of Brexit: A German View - by Holger Schmieding

The British “in or out” EU referendum on June 23 poses the top economic and political risk for Europe this year. Germany would love the UK to stay in the European Union.

The UK is simply part of Europe. Managing relations with the UK is much easier in the established framework of the EU than it would be on an awkward bilateral basis.

Beyond making economic and political sense for all sides (except for Vladimir Putin and some other interested politicians), a vote to stay in the EU would also avoid ‎a host of potential complications that could stem from a Brexit.

What might be the economic impact of Brexit on the continent? And how far would Germany go to offer the UK good terms of access to parts of the Common Market after a Brexit?

As a highly‎ open economy that specializes in the export of cyclical goods such as high-end machines and cars, Germany tends to be affected by any spike in global or European uncertainty more than most other countries.

A potentially turbulent Brexit could thus dampen the near-term outlook for German investment and exports noticeably.

Instead of expanding at an annualized clip of around 1.6% in the second half of 2016, German growth may slow to less than half that rate. Other eurozone countries would, on average, not do better than that.

Fortunately, Germany tends to be good at overcoming short-term shocks. As long as a Brexit does not cause the remainder of the EU to unravel, the direct impact of a Brexit would be brief. German and Eurozone growth can be expected to rebound back to its trend rate by the end of 2017.

Read more: The Economics of Brexit: A German View - The Globalist

Brexit: Britain's opposing camps intensify EU referendum campaigns

 Prime Minister David Cameron on Saturday stepped up his campaign for Britain to remain in the EU, warning that exiting the bloc would cost Britain billions of pounds in investment.

Both Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn, leader of main opposition Labour Party, were each out on the Remain campaign trail in search of voter support, as was leading Leave campaign member Boris Johnson, an MP within the prime minister's Conservative party and recently the London mayor.

Johnson will be speaking in the southwest of England, while a rally in the northwest will see Conservative former cabinet minister Owen Paterson argue that a vote to remain will consign Britain "to being a colony of an EU Superstate".

With less than six weeks to go before the June 23 vote, the Remain and Leave camps are neck-and-neck at 50 percent each, according to the What UK Thinks website's average of the last six opinion polls.

The official Britain Stronger In Europe campaign said that it is staging 1,000 pro-Remain events across the UK on Saturday, with Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron and the Greens' Caroline Lucas also among those taking to the streets.

"This is bigger than party politics," Cameron said.

"Its effects will last longer than our lifetimes. So we are saying with one voice: make sure Britain is stronger, safer and better off -- and vote to remain in a reformed European Union."

Even so, Corbyn was set at a rally in London to attack the Conservatives, arguing that responsibility for many of the country's problems "lies in 10 Downing Street, not in Brussels".

Cameron added in a statement Saturday that a vote for Brexit would mean an end to Britain's membership of the European Investment Bank, which in the past three years has given more than £16 billion ($23 billion, 20 billion euros) for UK projects.

Read more: Flash - Britain's opposing camps intensify EU referendum campaigns - France 24:

European Regulators Drawn Into Debate on Drug Pricing - by Zachary Brennan

Although drug regulators aren’t supposed to be concerned with pricing when making decisions on products’ safety and efficacy, they’re increasingly being drawn into what two representatives of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the heads of two national regulators call an “acrimonious debate” over drug costs.

In a New England Journal of Medicine editorial published Thursday, EMA’s Executive Director Guido Rasi, its Senior Medical Officer Hans-Georg Eichler, the Executive Director of the Dutch Medicines Evaluation Board Hugo Hurts and President of the German Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices Karl Broich cautioned against the growing sentiment that the value of regulators is declining.

“Without evidence that has been vetted by regulators, why would anyone pay more for any drug than they would for, say, a dietary supplement?” they write. “If we eliminated regulation, the current biopharmaceutical business model would collapse — and so would science-based drug development.

Without a requirement for regulatory approval, companies would have no incentive to conduct expensive clinical trials of their products. Lowering regulatory standards would be unwise for both patients and organizations that invest in pharmaceutical R&D. Robust regulation improves public health and creates economic value.”

And for the sake of affordability, they also argue that regulators should not yield to pressure to lower standards or be oblivious to the growing budget pains caused by newly authorized products.

The article comes just a day after former US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Margaret Hamburg and former National Institutes of Health Director Elias Zerhouni called for more regulatory harmonization worldwide. The European Commission also released a report in February on drug pricing, regulators and policy options.

The EU authors also call for fast-tracking additional generic approvals when “companies are taking advantage of monopoly conditions.”


And while consumer advocates criticize the number of me-too drugs that provide limited or no added value over available drugs, the authors say that “some me-too products that were originally criticized have benefited patients and provided additional treatment options.

More important, sometimes the availability of these products can drive down prices almost as much as the availability of generics.”

The regulators use the example of the entry of hepatitis C medications similar to Gilead’s Sovaldi (sofosbuvir), which reduced prices and expanded access to treatment.

Thirdly, the EU authors point to the idea of including payers at the table when regulatory decisions are made in order for drugmakers to provide more information upfront on measures of quality of life or health care resource utilization.

EMA, and some EU member states, have hosted nearly 70 “parallel scientific advice” sessions so far, during which regulators, health technology assessment experts and drug developers discuss premarket clinical trial designs.

And finally, the authors say that regulators can facilitate the collection of other kinds of data that payers need.
“Increasingly, payers and pharmaceutical companies are considering outcome-focused deals tying a drug’s price to the results achieved,” Rasi, et al. write. “Although pay-for-performance schemes are attractive in theory, practical hurdles have prevented widespread adoption.

 Most important is the difficulty of collecting and interpreting the relevant patient-level data in a given health care system. Regulators, at least in some countries, can facilitate data collection by considering payers’ needs when asking companies to conduct post approval studies.”

And the EMA is now exploring with HTAs new ways to collaborate on collecting postmarket data. In conclusion, the authors are wary of placing all of the onus for drug pricing on regulators, particularly because as price gouging continues.

“Regulators alone cannot solve the growing problem of high drug prices. We understand that new drugs should command prices that reward and provide incentives for R&D investment. However, we fail to comprehend prices that, like Sovaldi’s, recoup the entire investment within the first few months after a product’s launch but are so unaffordable that patients in need are denied access. We are committed to doing our part to facilitate continued access to effective and safe treatments.” 

Read more: European Regulators Drawn Into Debate on Drug Pricing | RAPS

Britain: Cracking down on corruption: world leaders meet in London - by Catherine Hardy

The Channel island of Jersey is only 9 kilometres wide and 15 kilometres long. However, it manages an estimated 1.6 trillion euros of international wealth.

The authoritiesthere are also watching today’s events in London closely.

While the island has historically low tax, it is not a haven, according to officials like Jersey’s Assistant Chief Minister, Senator Philip Ozouf:

“Every individual that wants to open a bank account in Jersey, that information is going to be transferred automatically on an annual basis to their home tax authority, so there’s no hiding place. So it cannot be said that Jersey is a tax haven. This is a label which needs to be consigned to the history books.”

Jersey maintains a private register revealing the beneficiaries of each company.

However, it has refused calls from leading economists like Richard Murphy, to sign up to a public one.

He is one of hundreds of leading economists who are urging the UK government to persuade its Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories like Jersey to sign up to one.

“A tax haven exists to create legislation for the benefit of people who aren’t there and provides a veil of secrecy to make sure those people can’t be identified to be doing so. That’s how we now define a tax haven.
This is what Jersey is doing – a low tax rate for the benefit of people who are not really in that island to undermine the tax system of another country.”

Read more: Cracking down on corruption: world leaders meet in London | euronews, world news

Medical Industry: 3rd Top Cause of Death: Medical Errors - by Aby Haglage

A new study published in BMJ Tuesday suggests that if experts classified medical error as a disease, it would be the third leading cause of death in the United States.

Helmed by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, the paper estimates that medical errors cause 250,000 deaths a year, surpassing chronic lower respiratory diseases—the third leading cause of death—by more than 100,000. The authors blame limitations in death certificates for the lack of accurate data on the topic, and suggest the way fatalities are reported be revised.

Medical error is loosely defined as a “preventable adverse effect of care, whether or not it is evident or harmful to the patient.” The authors of the BMJ study cite specific types of error, which include “the use of a wrong plan,” “the failure of a planned action to be completed as intended,” and “an unintended act.”

It’s a phenomenon that’s virtually invisible in death statistics due to the United States reliance on what’s called the International Classification of Disease (ICD). Approved by the World Health Organization (WHO), it is used by 117 countries worldwide as a standard diagnostic tool for measuring mortality and morbidity statistics.

The system provides specific codes that correspond to causes of death, but leaves no room for physicians or others to denote a cause that resulted from a medical shortcoming. As a result of this limitation, there is no way to track how much medical error plays into the death rate worldwide.

Studies on the amount of deaths caused by medical error in the U.S., as a result, have been scant. The “seminal” study on the topic, as far as science is concerned, is a 1999 paper from the Institute of Medicine (IOM), which the authors call “limited and outdated.” The report estimates anywhere from 44,000 to 98,000 deaths per year from medical error.

Since 1999, several more studies on the topic have been released; one in 2008 suggested that as many as 400,000 people die a year from this cause. To update the current number, the researchers combined all of the studies since 1999 and performed a weighted analysis. The result: a mean rate of 251,454 deaths per year from medical error.

Martin A. Makary, the leader of the study and an oncologist at Johns Hopkins, attributes the lack of knowledge surrounding the issue to the CDC’s failure to create a system in which deaths due to medical care could be catalogued.

“Currently, deaths caused by errors are unmeasured and discussions about prevention occur in limited and confidential forums, such as a hospital’s internal root cause analysis committee or a department’s morbidity and mortality conference,” writes Makary. “These forums review only a fraction of detected adverse events and the lessons learnt are not disseminated beyond the institution or department.”

The researchers give one example case of a death caused by medical error, that of a “young woman” who had successfully recovered from a transplant surgery. A few days after going home, she came back to the hospital with “non-specific symptoms.” At that point, doctors performed “extensive tests,” some of which the authors deem “unnecessary.”

When she returned days later, she was suffering from intra-abdominal hemorrhage and cardiopulmonary arrest. “An autopsy revealed that the needle inserted during the

pericardiocentesis grazed the liver causing a pseudoaneurysm that resulted in subsequent rupture and death,” the authors write. “The death certificate listed the cause of death as cardiovascular.”

Stories like these, says Makary, perfectly capture the problem with death statistics, and highlight the need for both the U.S. and the World Health Organization to pursue a better system.

Read more: 3rd Top Cause of Death: Medical Errors - The Daily Beast

Insure-Digest

kleptocracy Rules: The Panama Papers & Capitalism -Today:Neo-liberalism’s World of Corruption

TTIP: legalizing Kleptocracy

Of course corruption has always existed in capitalism. But neo-liberalism, the ‘free market’ system that started in the 1980s, promoted it on a vast scale for two reasons:

1. Neo-liberal deregulation and privatisation promoted the dominance of financial capital and the expense of industry and the state. Financialisation and low capital gains taxes have turned big companies and utilities into cash cows, virtual banks with huge wealth, looking to maximise the interest on their money and minimise their tax. Finance capital is, after all, basically about swindling. In the middle ages they called it usury.

2. The shift to the right crashed ‘socialist’ command economies and undermined nationalist governments in the third world, replacing both with corrupt and usually highly authoritarian neoliberal regimes. Getting hold of the state apparatus has become a royal road to mega-wealth for dozens of dictators and their cronies through simple theft.

The core of it is the banking system. European and American banks receive (read: launder) billions of dollars every year from international mafias, and in particular from drug dealers. Sometimes by accident some of this comes to light. In 2006 Mexican soldiers intercepted a drug shipment in Ciudad del Carmen and found a cache of documents showing the Sinaloa drugs cartel had made payments of $378 billion to the American bank Wachovia, a subsidiary of the financial giant Welles Fargo.

Roberto Saviano, the author of the best-selling Gamorrah which exposed the workings of the Neapolitan crime organisation Camorra, claims that London is the centre of money laundering for Latin American drug money. Even the British National Crime Agency says:

“We assess that hundreds of billions of US dollars of criminal money almost certainly continue to be laundered through UK banks, including their subsidiaries, each year.”

Saviano says that Mexico is the ‘heart’ of the drugs trade and London its ‘head’. Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Crime and Drugs Agency, says drug dealers invested $352 billion in Western banks in 2008, and this was key in keeping some major banks from collapse.

So corruption – receiving money from crime and drug cartels – is deeply ingrained in the culture of US and European banks. And this is not going to stop, given the vast profits involved.

The klepocratic state is an old story. It’s reckoned that no Mexican president leaves offices with less than $100m. Key Western allies from the 60s and 70s, like Mobutu, president of Zaire (DRC) from 1965-97 and Suharto, president of Indonesia from 1967-98, both established murderous regimes and systematically looted their respective peoples of billions of dollars.

Direct corruption by the state is one thing, influence is something else. In western democracies influence is stacked in favour of the rich and powerful. In the United States and increasingly in Britain it is professional lobbyists who fight their corner. The Atlantic magazine in the US points out:

“Corporations now spend about $2.6 billion a year on reported lobbying expenditures—more than the $2 billion we spend to fund the House ($1.18 billion) and Senate ($860 million). It’s a gap that has been widening since corporate lobbying began to regularly exceed the combined House-Senate budget in the early 2000s.

“Today, the biggest companies have upwards of 100 lobbyists representing them, allowing them to be everywhere, all the time. For every dollar spent on lobbying by labour unions and public-interest groups together, large corporations and their associations now spend $34. Of the 100 organizations that spend the most on lobbying, 95 consistently represent business.”

The above account doesn’t include the direct payments and other gifts given to members of Congress by big companies, not least the health insurance and healthcare companies who have fought so long and so successfully against a universal US healthcare system.

Britain is going in the same direction. As in the United States, business and politics are often revolving doors with former minister joining the boards of companies they dealt with when in power. Seumas Milne says:
“…lobbying doesn’t begin to cover the extent of corporate influence. More than ever the Tory party is in thrall to the City, with over half its income from bankers and hedge fund and private equity financiers. Peers who have made six-figure donations have been rewarded with government jobs.

“But the real corruption that has eaten into the heart of British public life is the tightening corporate grip on government and public institutions – not just by lobbyists, but by the politicians, civil servants, bankers and corporate advisers who increasingly swap jobs, favors and insider information, and inevitably come to see their interests as mutual and interchangeable. The doors are no longer just revolving but spinning, and the people charged with protecting the public interest are bought and sold with barely a fig leaf of regulation.”

Corruption everywhere has the effect of transferring huge amounts of wealth from the poor to the rich. If poor individuals are not directly robbed, then their economic situation, their public services, their health service, their transport, their education – all these are robbed when taxes are avoided and government revenues robbed.

You can’t analyse corruption today by looking for illegal activity alone. Many of the practices that happen in rich and poor countries are legal or in a grey area where it’s difficult to tell criminal from the lawful.

For example, property dealing in Britain is profoundly corrupt. House prices in London (and thus in the whole country indirectly) are pressured by the huge amount of hot money from corrupt Russian oligarchs and assorted gangsters of various nationalities invested in the expensive end of the market. But nothing here is illegal, as far as the house purchases in Britain are concerned. It’s just that they are bought with corrupt money and force up the living costs of millions of ordinary British people.

Look at the purchase of rare earth minerals from the Congo, essential for computers and mobile phones. Much of this mineral wealth is controlled by war lord armies, guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The companies who buy the mineral products they control – the moral equivalent of blood diamonds – have no contact with them at all. Dealers act as a buffer and through their transactions – perfectly legal – wealth based on rape and murder is miraculously washed clean.

Finance capital is by definition corrupt. The investment banks typically do not disclose their fees to investors in advance (they call their charges ‘consideration’) by deduct self-decided amounts as they go along. Free charging professionals like lawyers, and in many countries doctors and dentists, make up their own huge fees. Isn’t this corrupt? But there’s nothing illegal about it.

The tax dodges by major companies like Amazon, Facebook and Starbucks, are perfectly legal. They pay all the tax they are required by law – or by agreement –in countries like Ireland and Luxemburg where they are registered. Whether these practices are illegal in the UK for example is a very grey area. But corruption it certainly is.

All these examples have the same effect: robbing the poor to further enrich the wealthy.

 Read more: CADTM - The Panama Papers & Capitalism Today: Neo-liberalism’s World of Corruption

Greece approves controversial austerity bill

Parliament narrowly passed the governing coalition's latest budget proposal, which includes more belt-tightening and economic reforms.

The 153 lawmakers of the ruling Syriza/Independent Greeks government coalition all voted for the bill. All opposition members in the 300 seat parliament opposed the bill.

The vote came on a day that police clashed with angry demonstrators on the streets of Athens - the latest in a series of ongoing protests and crippling general strikes that have beset the country.

Many Greeks oppose the austerity measures that amount to $6.2 billion (5.4 billion euros). The law will increase social security and pension contributions and raise taxes for most people.

The European Union and international creditors are demanding the tough measures in exchange for an 86 billion-euro ($95 billion) bailout agreed to last July. It is the third such bailout for debt-laden Greece since 2010.

Read more: Greece approves controversial austerity bill | News | DW.COM | 08.05.2016

China versus India:Can India Surpass China’s Economy by 2050?

1. For several decades to come, China will almost certainly hold its new spot at the top of the global economic table.

2. However, by 2050, it is possible India’s economy will have edged out not only the United States but also China, to take the top spot.

3. A little more than a decade after China launched its market-based reforms, India jumped into the growth game as well.

4. India’s economic liberalization policies of 1991 led to an increasing role for the private sector and opened the economy to foreign investment.

5. As of 2014, India’s $7.3 trillion economy was the world’s third-largest, measured in terms of purchasing power parity.

6. However, it is at present only a little over 40% as large as the U.S. and Chinese economies.

7. While India’s growth has not been as strong as China’s over the past two decades, its growth rate is expected to outpace China’s in the coming decades.

8. To realize its potential, India will need to sustain its reform policies and increase investment in infrastructure, education (especially women) and better governance.

9. The Indian economy is expected to be about 2% larger than the U.S. economy by mid-century — but about 30% smaller than China’s.

Read more: Can India Surpass China’s Economy by 2050? - The Globalist

Netherlands Insurance Industry: Reinsurance Group Arm to Grow Life Insurance in Netherlands - by Zacks Equity Research

Leidsche Levensverzekeringen Maatschappij N.V., the Netherlands-based life insurance subsidiary of Reinsurance Group of America, Incorporated (RGA - Analyst Report) has agreed to purchase the life insurance policy portfolio of PGGM Levensverzekeringen. However, the terms remain undisclosed.

PGGM, also based in the Netherlands, provides asset management, pension fund management and consultancy services to its institutional clients. Per the closed-block transaction, PGGM will transfer 75,500 life insurance policies to Reinsurance Group.

With the acquisition, the company’s portfolio run-off solutions will find a market in Europe. Plus, Reinsurance Group will benefit from the ‘realignment of the financial services industry’.

Reinsurance Group remains focused on strategic buyouts that strengthen its operations. Recently, the Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) insurer acquired Elite Sales Processing, Inc. in an attempt to bolster its underwriting business in the U.S. In April, the company bought Aurora National Life Assurance Company. Reinsurance Group’s strong liquidity supports its inorganic growth initiatives.

Reinsurance Group holds a niche position in the U.S. and Canada reinsurance markets. Moreover, the company is expanding its international operations to reap the benefits of diversification. It is poised to benefit from the changing life reinsurance pricing environment. Its expanding business in the pension risk transfer market also looks promising.

Reinsurance Group Arm to Grow Life Insurance in Netherlands - August 21, 2015 - Zacks.com

Brexit: London Mayor Elections 2016: Amid Tight Brexit Polls, Pro-EU Sadiq Khan Poised For Victory

With the referendum on the U.K. leaving the EU looming June 23, a so-called Brexit has become a prominent topic of debate leading up to the London mayoral election, in which Khan is facing off against pro-leave politician Zac Goldsmith to become the leader of the nation’s capital.

While the London mayor exhibits limited power over the outcome of the referendum, a pro-Brexit mayor would have been seen as a symbolic defeat both for the Prime Minister David Cameron and for his entire pro-EU campaign, experts said. London has historically been heavily integrated into the EU financial and political system as well as statistically anti-Brexit.

“It’s crucial [for the EU campaign] that Goldsmith won’t be winning,” said Charles Lichfield, an EU analyst for risk consultancy Eurasia, saying Khan’s win is “certainly not something that the pro-Brexiters could use.”

Nearly 60 percent of Londoners who responded to a recent YouGov poll said they supported the U.K. staying in the EU. London has long been considered not only an international capital but a European one where EU nationals from across the continent live, work and study. With the London stock exchange and a thriving financial services sector, the capital is a financial hub that facilitates trade within the EU and beyond, and many citizens have expressed fear the city would lose some of its status and economic standing.

The debate over a Brexit centers on national sovereignty, security and economic strength. Supporters of the U.K. leaving the EU say the country would be better able to control its national borders without constraints from the EU while maintaining London would keep its economic prowess with or without the EU trading bloc. Proponents of staying in the EU argue the country’s membership is part of what has contributed to security and a thriving economy. The margin between the two camps has remained tight in the weeks leading up to the June vote, and the latest results from the Financial Times’ Brexit poll tracker — which takes the average of recent polling data — put support for remaining in the EU at 46 percent, and support for leaving at 43 percent.

If Goldsmith wins — a seemingly unlikely possibility as Khan was leading according to the most recent polling information — pro-Brexit campaigners would have been able to point to London as a symbol of the necessity for a Brexit, arguing if the European hub could recognize the necessity of leaving Europe, then everyone could, Lichfield explained.

Current London Mayor Boris Johnson came out in favor of a Brexit in February, going against the stance both of his Conservative Party and of the prime minister, a close political ally. A pro-Europe London mayor such as Khan would complete a pro-European trifecta of the prime minister, the London mayor and the chancellor of the exchequer — three of the most powerful positions in the U.K., all lobbying for the U.K. to stay in the EU.

Read more: London Mayor Elections 2016: Amid Tight Brexit Polls, Pro-EU Sadiq Khan Poised For Victory

Turkey - Turkish lira hammered as political turmoil rattles investors

The Turkish lira remained under pressure Thursday as political uncertainty rattled investors after it emerged Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is set to step down in a move giving President Recep Tayyip Erdogan even more power.

The lira lost almost 4 percent in value against the dollar on Wednesday -- its heaviest daily loss this year -- as news broke that crisis talks between Davutoglu and Erdogan had failed to resolve tensions between the two men.

After that hammering, the lira rallied slightly Thursday to trade at 2.91 to the dollar, a gain of 1.35 percent, but still still well off its 2.85 level against the dollar before the news broke.

"Politics has once again emerged as a major risk for the lira, which is likely to remain vulnerable in the coming days," analysts at Rabobank said in a note to clients.

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is now set to hold an extraordinary congress where Davutoglu is expected to surrender his twin jobs of party chairman and prime minister.

The equity also took the news badly, with participants fearing the development was a move by Erdogan to tighten his grip on all areas of policy, including the economy.

The Istanbul stock market's benchmark 100 Index lost 1.40 percent to trade at 78,274 points.

Rabobank said Davutoglu had been perceived by markets as being "far more moderate" than Erdogan. "If Davutoglu indeed resigns, it will be a major blow for the lira and Turkish assets," it added.

Erdogan's reputation as a safe pair of hands on the economy was harmed last year when he piled pressure on the nominally independent central bank to cut interest rates for the sake of growth at a time of high inflation.

Read more: Flash - Turkish lira hammered as political turmoil rattles investors - France 24

US Presidential Elections: For Clinton vs. Trump, the battle will happen in three arenas - by Judith Timson

Hillary Clinton has miles to go before that triumphant historical moment can arrive.

First there is the still pressing primary need to once and for all vanquish Bernie Sanders.

Then she must pivot to face a bully boy opponent, so big lipped, out of control and menacing that if she were 12 and it was recess, she’d be flanked by a platoon of grim protectors.

Instead it was Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, who had Clinton’s back on CNN on the morning of the Indiana primary, saying convincingly that in Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton would be facing “the most sexist, bigoted, misogynist candidate” they’ve ever had in presidential primary cycles.

The stage is set for a big old retro battle of the sexes in America.

Meanwhile, up here in progressive sunny ways land, our male PM proudly asserts he’s a feminist, and departing PQ leader Pierre Karl Peladeau weeps openly about his fragmenting family and the need to be with his kids. Evolving gender roles, folks.

In the U.S, not so much. They’re fighting bitterly over transgender bathroom rights, shutting down abortion clinics, and threatening to take that right away altogether.

The GOP has all but anointed a Republican front-runner who openly judges women on a scale of one to 10 (“A person who is very flat-chested is very hard to be a 10”), has called them fat pigs, and is now whining that Hillary Clinton is playing the “woman card” and benefiting from a “double standard” in terms of how her controversial remarks are treated. Said Trump, “Frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don’t think she’d get 5 per cent of the vote.” 

And if the Donald were a woman? As New York Times columnist Gail Collins put it “Do not ask yourself how many votes Donald Trump would get if he were a woman and he was the way he is. Truly, you don’t want to go there.”

This honking gender war will be nauseating, toxic (and admit it, occasionally grimly entertaining). But it will also, I hope, settle something along the way: what real modern women will put up with in a leader.

If Clinton vs. Trump comes to pass, here are three arenas of battle for the candidates, as seen through a gender lens.

First, likability:

Sheryl Sandberg, author of Lean In, the bestselling feminist book on women and work, argued in it that women in leadership roles suffer from a “likability penalty” and that as they “get more powerful, they get less likeable.” I certainly have female colleagues who have felt increasingly unloved as they rose through the ranks. 

In Hillary’s case, her unpopularity has plummeted and soared based on unique circumstances. Husband cheated on her? A globe trotting Secretary of State? Love that woman! A First Lady who tried to ram health care down Congress’s throat? Benghazi, errant emails? Burn her at the stake! Wall Street speeches, main street inauthenticity, she’s a disaster. But still? Consistently one of the most admired women in America. Hillary Clinton has weathered all levels of popularity. She is beloved by her long-serving staff and on the trail, and despite her default stiffness, there are hints of warmth, wit and real passion.

And how fortuitous for Clinton that she may be battling the most unpopular GOP candidate in history (Ted Cruz is even more loathed.) So far, with very good reason, Donald Trump is especially unpopular with women. He doesn’t seem to be doing anything to change that. So despite the “likability penalty” for women, I would give this advantage to Hillary.

Second, knowledge and experience:

Most women will tell you their male colleagues not only brag more about their achievements but they regularly apply for jobs well beyond their expertise. In Clinton vs. Trump, there isn’t a scintilla of doubt that, as a former First Lady, New York Senator, and Secretary of State, Hillary holds all the cards (yes, #womancard included) in terms of on the job experience. Trump will try to nail her on “stamina” and “judgment”. But his own judgment — even in his one area of expertise—business—has been at times disastrous. So again, advantage Hillary.

Lastly, tone:

Tone may well decide the election. Look show brilliantly now PM Justin Trudeau did by countering former PM Stephen Harper’s grim, mean, fear-mongering tone. His optimistic platitudes — “in Canada, better is always possible” — worked.

Clinton will need to work hard on the right tone-upbeat, slightly humorous, knowledgeable, tough, but civil — to counter Trump’s id-fuelled toxicity. His tone will dispirit America in a way that nothing else has, but it will also guarantee him many more angry, needy and not so knowledgeable followers.

Trump may try to be “presidential” but in an added irony of this all out gender war, Hillary Clinton, at her simple best, exudes “presidential.”

So in theory, Hillary’s got this, right? That’s what will make it so confounding if she is not elected president. Politics is unpredictable. War is hell. And a political gender war is a very unpredictable hell indeed.

Read more: For Clinton vs. Trump, the battle will happen in three arenas: Timson | Toronto Star

EU Brexit ‘could boost eurozone GDP’ - by Chris Giles

Eurozone economies would gain at the expense of Britain if the UK voted to leave the EU, a leading French economist has predicted, with a relocation of financial activity out of London causing sterling to plummet.

Mathilde Lemoine, a prominent member of the French government’s budgetary watchdog and chief economist of the Edmond de Rothschild private bank, said sterling could rapidly fall 34 per cent against the euro.

The report by the private bank demonstrated how European finance houses could profit from Brexit if the Leave campaign wins the referendum on June 23.

Ms Lemoine, also a former adviser to the French prime minister, wrote that the rapid relocation of financial activity would add to the “brutal drop” in sterling she expects after a vote for Brexit. 

Such a vote, she said, would “immediately” reopen the question of the location of clearing houses for eurozone business, which are mostly in London after the UK government won a case last year in the European Court of Justice. It ruled against the European Central Bank’s requirement that clearing houses of euro-denominated business between European banks had to be based in the eurozone and regulated by the ECB.

After a Brexit vote, “it is certain that the grounds for the European Court of Justice’s decision would no longer exist,” Ms Lemoine wrote. “As a result, the European Council could immediately require clearing houses handling euro transactions to be located in the eurozone. On our calculations, sterling would fall 34 per cent against the euro in the space of three months”.

A fall in sterling of that size would hit incomes by raising import prices and UK inflation substantially, while helping British exporters of price-sensitive goods.

While the Edmond de Rothschild report suggested the overall effect of Brexit in the short term is hard to quantify, the relocation of financial activity would hit UK gross domestic product by about 1 per cent, it said.

“Brexit would undeniably require major short-term adjustments on both sides of the Channel,” Ms Lemoine said, with a reduction of trade, the value of sterling, higher prices and a greater cost to servicing debt.

Read more: Brexit ‘could boost eurozone GDP’ - FT.com

British Economy: Devaluation is a dangerous game. But Britain may have to try it - by William Keegan

Ever since his first written evidence to the Treasury committee, the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has hinted that he understands the UK’s real deficit problem. This is not the budget deficit, of which chancellor Osborne has made such a fetish, but the balance of payments deficit.

Indeed, that distinguished former permanent secretary to the Treasury and cabinet secretary, Lord Turnbull, recently pointed out that debt owed to citizens of this country is not a problem – and that by not borrowing more for infrastructure at such low rates, Osborne is actually impoverishing future generations. He is, said Turnbull, “playing a dirty game”.

On the real deficit problem, it is obvious from his various pronouncements that Carney can, for a central bank governor, be quite relaxed about a fall – let us call it an “adjustment” – in the foreign exchange value of the currency if it is necessary to restore, or at least prevent a further deterioration, in Britain’s competitiveness in international trade.

Thus it emerged last week that the governor had written to Andrew Tyrie, the chairman of the Treasury committee, explaining that a 10% fall in the pound would boost economic growth by reducing the price of exports (or making exports more profitable) and encouraging companies and private individuals to buy more domestically manufactured goods.

And the impact on inflation – which is already well below the official target – would hardly be sensational.

But he distinguished between the effects of such a depreciation arising “for no underlying reason” and a run on sterling that might result from a vote to leave the European Union – commonly known as “Brexit”.

He explained: “If increased uncertainty were a key underlying cause of this depreciation, aggregate demand might be affected.” Firms might postpone investment projects and households defer spending.

Well, to judge from recent figures for gross domestic product in general and retail sales in particular, the economy may already be affected by concerns about the outcome of the referendum.

These are deep waters, because our sensationally bad balance of payments position suggests that a major devaluation of the pound is needed anyway. I do not know whether Carney has read my good friend Sir Douglas Wass’s magisterial work on the 1976 sterling crisis,

Decline to Fall, but I assume he worries that a necessary devaluation could get completely out of hand – as happened in 1976, when the balance of payments position was not nearly as bad as it is now, although inflation certainly was.



Read more: Devaluation is a dangerous game. But Britain may have to try it | Business | The Guardian

The Global Economy: Time for a Global Restart, But How?-by Daniel Stelter,

 The Western World is running a gigantic Ponzi scheme. The unwelcome, but undeniable truth is this: The higher the leverage in the system, the lower the real economy impact of new debt.

More and more new debt is issued only in order to keep up the illusion that the existing debt is still valuable. The debt capacity of the world is reaching its limit.

China, the country which saved us from a global depression by starting a historic debt-financed boom in 2009 now faces its own debt crisis.

All over the world, bad investments, overcapacities and bad debts depress global growth, increase deflationary pressure and lead to what people call “secular stagnation.” There are plenty of “zombies” around – both financial institutions and real economy debtors, which only stay alive thanks to zero or soon negative interest rates.

Debt is not just a problem of Europe. It is a global problem. Japan leads the pack and is facing a direct monetization of debt via the balance sheet of the central bank.

The United States, Canada, Australia, big parts of South America, emerging Asia and notably China all have to deal with significant indebtedness of some or all of the sectors of their economies.

Wherever we look: The world needs a reset. As with a computer that freezes, we need a reboot of the global economic engine. Ideally, we do it in one step for the entire world.

As the rumor goes, the G20 agreed at its last meeting to refrain from competitive devaluations. This is good news. A global currency war would only amplify our problems and increase the likelihood of a major depression.

It would be even better if the G 20 decided to deal with the debt problem in a concerted way. That is possible, but requires bold thinking.

Central banks are free in the evaluation of the assets on their balance sheet. Remember, they can buy anything they like for any price – and they can do so with money they produce themselves.

Ideally, they would buy a good which would not lose its value over time. For example, they could buy and store oil.

However, given the world supply and reserves as well as the costs to store oil, this would not be an efficient approach. Much easier would be a homogeneous good with limited supply and easy storage: gold.

Adding all of the gold that exists all over of the world in one place would fit into a cube measuring 21 meters in every direction.

The additional advantage: The central banks would not need to buy gold as they are, in spite of selling gold over the past decades, still the biggest owners of gold. Gold is an asset on their balance sheets.

Central banks could declare overnight to buy all gold in the world for a given price, say $10,000 dollars or euros per ounce.

The existing holdings of gold could be immediately re-evaluated and the resulting profits paid out to the governments to pay back government debt. Problem solved.

If we assume a revaluation of gold to a level of $10,000 dollars per ounce, central banks would generate sizeable profits (numbers based on March 2016 gold holdings of states and rounded):

    US: $2,615 billion
    Germany: $1,087 billion
    Italy: $788 billion
    France: $783 billion
    Greece: $36 billion

The shocking news: A revaluation by $10,000 dollars would not be enough! To get rid of all U.S. government debt would require a revaluation to a level of $70,000 dollars per ounce. For Italy and France, a level of $25,000 dollars would do. For Germany, $18,000.

For Greece, $80,000 and for Japan, which commands not so much gold, it would need to be around $410,000 dollars to get rid of all government debt in one stroke.

This would be much more efficient than the currently discussed concept of helicopter money, i.e., the direct funding of public or private spending by the central banks. Helicopter money would add to the debt stock. A gold revaluation would reduce the debt level

Read more: Time for a Global Restart, But How? - The Globa