Apple cash enough to pay $556 to every American

My first understanding of money was the coin changer hanging from the belt of the ice cream man who drove the truck slow, slow, slowly down our Detroit street while playing music through a speaker.

He took our money for an ice cream bar and Bam!  Gave back change faster than a gun fighter shooting bad guys.

Click, click, nickels and dimes and a quarter.  

Man, that was fast.

The next big understanding as a kid was doing a chore then getting paid.  Sweep, shovel, deliver: get cash.

A twist in that last understanding was getting money as a Catholic altar boy for some services like a funeral or a wedding.

Hmmm?  For a regular Mass, I gladly served for free.  I served out of a sense of duty and honor and a desire to help.  (I wouldn't have said honor back then.)

Yet, to serve at a wedding or funeral, I got paid a five, a ten, and occasionally a twenty.  Nice!  Getting that money felt good.

But, who decided who does those Masses and how can I do more of those?

The answer was someone else decided, and someone else gave those assignments by saying this was special.

But I realized quickly that what was given like this could just as easily be taken away.

This was my first wisdom about money. 

I think about this as I read a headline at CNBC that an iconic American company has so much cash it could give away a decent amount of dollars to every American.   

Give away?  Should that be redistribute?

So, my question to you is this: what's your impulse when you read about that cash: should other people get that cash or should Apple keep it?

What I know is that everyone with an impulse to redistribution wants to skim much more than an equal share.  Deep down the redistribution people know they are better and smarter than you.  They deserve more.

They want to control where favors go.  PB
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From CNBC:

Apple's first-quarter earnings announcement had retail investors buzzing Wednesday morning about the company's $18 billion profits, the largest ever reported by a public company.

Apple's revenue is equivalent to collecting $10 from every person in the world.

And the tech giant is hanging on to a lot of that cash.

Its massive reserves of $178 billion are enough to pay every American $556, which outpaces the next-biggest player, Microsoft, at only $319 in reserves per U.S. resident.
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Link: http://www.cnbc.com/id/102376662

Barack Obama, Corporate Liberal - And secret friend of the one percent.

From Jay Cost at the Weekly Standard:

...don’t be fooled.

Obama may seem like the newest member of Occupy Wall Street—chanting “We are the 99 percent!”—but his record shows him to be a corporate liberal, and a closer look at last week’s proposals confirms it.

The corporate liberal offers the following deal: In exchange for greater authority—to tax, to regulate, to distribute—government will dispense benefits to the top and bottom of society.

The poor will receive more generous social welfare benefits; the wealthy will be granted special provisions, exemptions, and benefits.

Often those at the top get to reap a private profit for distributing benefits on the government’s behalf.

Obamacare is a perfect illustration.

The government subsidizes health insurance, but it does so through private companies, which are not forced to participate. Instead, insurers agree to get involved because they believe it will make them better off.

The government implicitly guarantees that insurers will profit in the individual marketplace.

Far from being a flaw in corporate liberalism, this is its dominant feature: The welfare state is expanded, and powerful corporate interests are drawn into a web of client-patron relationships.

The more interests are drawn in, the more our Madisonian system resists reform, and the more ensconced in power corporate liberalism becomes...

corporate liberals, at least the Democratic variety, can sound like down-on-the-farm populists when they talk about the top marginal tax rate for individuals.

But for those at the apex of the economic pyramid, the cost of “paying their fair share” is a pittance compared with the windfalls they can reap from favorable regulations, tax preferences, and redistributive schemes...
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Link: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/barack-obama-corporate-liberal_824300.html

A shattered foundation: black homeowners are underwater

From the Washington Post online:

African Americans for decades flocked to Prince George’s County to be part of a phenomenon that has been rare in American history: a community that grew more upscale as it became more black.

The county became a national symbol of the American Dream with a black twist.

Families moved into expansive new homes, with rolling lawns, nearby golf courses and, most of all, neighbors who looked like them.

In the early 2000s, home prices soared — some well beyond $1 million — allowing many African Americans to build the kind of wealth their elders could only imagine.

But today, the nation’s highest-income majority-black county stands out for a different reason — its residents have lost far more wealth than families in neighboring, majority-white suburbs.

And while every one of these surrounding counties is enjoying a strong rebound in housing prices and their economies, Prince George’s is lagging far behind, and local economists say a full recovery appears unlikely anytime soon.

The same reversal of fortune is playing out across the country as black families who worked painstakingly to climb into the middle class are seeing their financial foundation for future generations collapse.

Although African Americans have made once-unthinkable political and social gains since the civil rights era, the severe and continuing damage wrought by the downturn — an entire generation of wealth was wiped out — has raised a vexing question: Why don’t black middle-class families enjoy the same level of economic security as their white counterparts?

...The recession and tepid recovery have erased two decades of African American wealth gains.

Nationally, the net worth of the typical African American family declined by one-third between 2010 and 2013, according to a Washington Post analysis of the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, a drop far greater than that of whites or Hispanics.

The top half of African American families — the core of the middle class — is left with less than half of the typical wealth they possessed in 2007. The wealth of similarly situated whites declined by just 14 percent.

Overall, the survey found, the typical African American family was left with about eight cents for every dollar of wealth held by whites.

Not only is African American wealth down, but the chances of a quick comeback seem bleak. Just over a decade ago, homeownership — the single biggest engine of wealth creation for most Americans — reached a historic high for African Americans, nearly 50 percent.

Now the black homeownership rate has dipped under 43 percent, and the homeownership gap separating blacks and whites is at levels not seen in a century, according to Boston University researcher Robert A. Margo...
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Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2015/01/24/the-american-dream-shatters-in-prince-georges-county/

Photo Op in Paris: Je ne suis pas avec Charlie?

Last Sunday, the world saw images of solidarity among the world's leaders against Islamic terrorism.

Je suis Charlie?

Maybe the image was distorted.  PB
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From the British Independent newspaper online:

Around 40 world leaders joined more than one million people in a march to honour the victims of the Paris shootings [last] Sunday...

Now, a different perspective on the leader’s portion of the march has emerged in the form of a wide shot displayed on French TV news reports.

It shows that the front line of leaders was followed by just over a dozen rows other dignitaries and officials – after which there was a large security presence maintaining a significant gap with the throngs of other marchers.

The measure was presumably taken for security reasons – but political commentators have suggested that it raises doubts as to whether the leaders were really part of the march at all...

The FT’s Middle East correspondent Borzou Daragahi commented: “Seems world leaders didn’t “lead” Charlie Hebdo marchers in Paris but conducted photo op on empty, guarded street.”

Ian Bremmer, a US political scientist and founder of the Eurasia Group, said: “All those world leaders: Not exactly ‘at’ the Paris rallies.”

Another US commentator, Gerry Hassan, called the leaders’ contribution “pseudo-solidarity”...

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Link: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/paris-march-tv-wide-shots-reveal-a-different-perspective-on-world-leaders-at-largest-demonstration-in-frances-history-9972895.html

CNBC: New study paints bleak picture of manufacturing rebound

A study points to actual weakness in the manufacturing sectors of our economy.

The conclusion flies in the face of widespread evidence that job growth has been healthy since the bottom of the Great Recession of 2007 - 2009.

What this study promotes, however, is more government involvement in manufacturing, which remains our most heavily unionized private economic sector.  

CNBC calls the foundation "nonpartisan." 

That means nothing: this is about promotion of  involving government deeper into big corporate and big labor special interests.

Another way of putting this is government creates a protection racket that favors specific politically connected special interests in the name of "help" and "fairness" and "the sky is falling" assumptions if government doesn't act.   PB

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From CNBC.com:

One of the most encouraging aspects of the U.S. economic recovery is the halo effect on manufacturing, which accounts for 1 in 6 private-sector jobs.

Yet a new study is dismissing that renaissance as little more than a "myth."

The report by the nonpartisan Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington-based think tank, asserts that the sector's growth has been fueled in part by free trade advocates and government statistics that mask a sharp decline in manufacturing activity since 2000...

"American manufacturing has still not recovered to 2007 output or employment levels," the study says.

"Moreover, the lion's share of growth that has occurred appears to have been driven by a cyclical, rather than structural, recovery, and as such may represent only a temporary trend."

The report flies in the face of what many analysts consider a broad-based recovery in manufacturing, jump-started in large part by booming U.S. oil and gas production...

The foundation, however, says the recent job gains barely make a dent in what it calls the "unprecedented" decline in U.S. manufacturing since 2000.

The result is a sector still hobbled by high effective corporate tax rates and limited public investment in research, development and job training.

Even with the recent improvement, the study says the U.S. has lost roughly 1 million manufacturing jobs and 15,000 manufacturing establishments since 2000.

Trouble in the sector goes even deeper than that, the study says...

The report accuses free trade advocates of pushing the narrative of a manufacturing rebound despite the evidence to the contrary.

"They fear that an accurate portrayal of U.S. manufacturing will result not in a robust U.S. manufacturing strategy but in trade protectionism," the authors write.

As a result, the report warns that policymakers and business leaders are being lulled into complacency...
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Link: http://www.cnbc.com/id/102327907

Complaints about rising Health Care Costs from the Harvard Professors who educated the President!

This gift of hypocrisy from the credentialed, liberal moral frauds who promoted the President's singular failure is absolutely priceless.

Or, Harvard profs declare: Obamacare parked its car in our back yard!  PB
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Excerpts from "Harvard Ideas on Health Care Hit Home, Hard" in the New York Times:

In addition, some ideas that looked good to academia in theory are now causing consternation...

"deplorable, deeply regressive...”

"timed to come at precisely the moment when you are sick, stressed...”

Jerry R. Green, a professor of economics and a former provost who has been on the Harvard faculty for more than four decades, said the new out-of-pocket costs could lead people to defer medical care or diagnostic tests, causing more serious illnesses and costly complications in the future.

“It’s equivalent to taxing the sick,” Professor Green said. “I don’t think there’s any government in the world that would tax the sick...”

“It seems that Harvard is trying to save money by shifting costs to sick people,” said Mary C. Waters, a professor of sociology.

“I don’t understand why a university with Harvard’s incredible resources would do this. What is the crisis?”
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Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/06/us/health-care-fixes-backed-by-harvards-experts-now-roil-its-faculty.html?

Pimco Total Return loses another $19.4 Billion

More large outflows hit the massive PIMCO Total Return since its founder Bill Gross left the company in September last year.

Gross had spent forty years at PIMCO, but left after a disagreement to manage the Janus Global Unconstrained Bond Fund.

Those two funds virtually tied each other in returns from the small sample size of the day Gross left PIMCO, September 26, to year end December 31, 2014.

We continue to suggest you follow Bill Gross with your money.

Why?  Think basketball: was the great Michael Jordan the overwhelming reason that his team won 6 NBA championships, or was it the Chicago Bulls' organization?

Now tell me this: who were the bench players that backed up Jordan during that run of 6 titles in 8 years? 

PIMCO is emphatically stating that its bench players are terrific.  It seems fund investors don't believe that claim.    PB
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From Forbes.com:

Investors pulled a net $19.4 billion out of the Pimco Total Return Fund in December, as it continues to experience significant outflows following Bill Gross’ departure.

The fund’s total assets now stand at $143.4 billion, down from a high of over $290 billion in 2013.

This is the fourth straight month of losses. It shed $23.5 billion in September, $27.5 billion in October and $9.5 billion in November...

The flagship mutual fund posted gains of 4.4% in 2014, trailing Barclay’s U.S. Aggregate fixed income index return of 5.97%...
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Link: http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurengensler/2015/01/02/pimco-total-return-fund-loses-another-19-4-billion/

Health Care Costs Crippling Middle Class

Middle class savings are getting bullied by health care costs.  And it will get much worse.  But...

Debbie Wasserman Schultz says America is roaring back to life.

USA Today reports how Obamacare costs are sticking it to the middle class.

And Debbie Wasserman Schultz says America is roaring back to life.

Billionaires have never been richer than under the current Democrat President - and income disparity never greater between the rich and poor... 

And Debbie Wasserman Schultz says America is roaring back to life.

Who is this Debbie?  Oh, she is a liberal Democrat Congresswoman.

Maybe she is roaring back to life.  Has the next campaign already started?

(See the links below to "Dilemma over deductibles: Costs crippling middle class" and "America is Roaring Back to Life.")  PB
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From USA Today online:

Physician Praveen Arla is witnessing a reversal of health care fortunes: Poor, long-uninsured patients are getting Medicaid through Obamacare and finally coming to his office for care.

But middle-class workers are increasingly staying away.

"It's flip-flopped," says Arla, who helps his father run a family practice in Hillview, Ky.

Patients with job-based plans, he says, will say: " 'My deductible is so high. I'm trying to come to the doctor as little as possible. … What is the minimum I can get done?' They're really worried about cost."

...health insurance now often requires workers to pay so much out-of-pocket that many feel they must skip doctor visits, put off medical procedures, avoid filling prescriptions and ration pills — much as the uninsured have done.

A recent Commonwealth Fund survey found that four in 10 working-age adults skipped some kind of care because of the cost, and other surveys have found much the same...

Meanwhile the size of the average deductible more than doubled in eight years, from $584 to $1,217 for individual coverage.

Add to this co-pays, co-insurance and the price of drugs or procedures not covered by plans — and it's all too much for many Americans...


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Link: http://www.usatoday.com/longform/news/nation/2015/01/01/middle-class-workers-struggle-to-pay-for-care-despite-insurance/19841235/

Link to Debbie Wasserman Schultz writing at CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/01/opinion/wasserman-schultz-america-roaring-back-to-life/index.html

Wall Street finishes year with solid gains

From Reuters.com:

U.S. stocks fell on Wednesday as crude oil prices continued their descent, but the S&P closed out a third straight year of double-digit gains.

For the year, the Dow ended up 7.5 percent, notching its sixth straight annual gain, and the Nasdaq rose 13.4 percent.

The best-performing S&P component in 2014 was Southwest Airlines Co., up 124.6 percent, while Transocean Ltd., down 62.9 percent, was the worst.

Equities lost steam heading into the New Year after rallying nearly 6 percent over eight sessions, sparked by the U.S. Federal Reserve's commitment to be "patient" about raising interest rates and positive economic data.

Still, the S&P 500 has risen in seven of the past ten sessions, hitting a series of intraday and closing records, and finished the year up 11.4 percent...
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Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/31/us-markets-stocks-usa-idUSKBN0K90P420141231