Ebola doctor ‘lied’ - should we be shocked?

Credentials equal character?

Of course not: credentials have almost nothing to do with character in this contemporary world.

A doctor lies about his health?  Let's no longer be surprised.  PB
----

From the New York Post:

Ebola doctor ‘lied’ about NYC travels

The city’s first Ebola patient initially lied to authorities about his travels around the city following his return from treating disease victims in Africa, law-enforcement sources said.

Dr. Craig Spencer at first told officials that he isolated himself in his Harlem apartment — and didn’t admit he rode the subways, dined out and went bowling until cops looked at his MetroCard the sources said.

“He told the authorities that he self-quarantined. Detectives then reviewed his credit-card statement and MetroCard and found that he went over here, over there, up and down and all around,” a source said.

Spencer finally ’fessed up when a cop “got on the phone and had to relay questions to him through the Health Department,” a source said.

Officials then retraced Spencer’s steps, which included dining at The Meatball Shop in Greenwich Village and bowling at The Gutter in Brooklyn...
----
Link: http://nypost.com/2014/10/29/ebola-doctor-lied-about-his-nyc-travels-police/?

The Protocols of the Elders of Liberalism

William Kristol writing in The Weekly Standard:

"Protocols.” You can’t turn on your TV without hearing about them.

The last time the word featured so prominently in American public discourse was when Henry Ford took it upon himself to pay for and distribute half a million copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion almost a century ago. History, of course, isn’t repeating itself.

The publication of those Protocols was designed to foster fear and loathing of Jews.

The invocation of these “protocols” by Obama administration officials as they bungle the Ebola crisis is designed to shield themselves from justified fear and loathing on the part of the citizenry.

The bungling is a result of a toxic confluence of two major strains of contemporary liberalism—the bureaucratic ineptness of big government and the political correctness of the nanny state. Characteristically, the strains seek to conceal themselves.

Bureaucratic ineptness hides behind the “protocols” that Tom Frieden of the Centers for Disease Control and his colleagues endlessly cite.

Political correctness hides behind edifying exhortations like that of White House press secretary Josh Earnest that “we live in a global world.”

But the protocols and the exhortations have been mugged by reality.

It turns out protocols can’t substitute for sound policy and real leadership. It turns out the global world can’t substitute for the nation-state.

Government officials like Frieden and Earnest swear an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” and to “well and faithfully discharge the duties” of their offices.

They owe allegiance to the nation more than to the world, and they owe the nation their judgment more than their protocols.

They are not faithfully discharging their duties of office when they make their priority protecting bureaucracies and enforcing orthodoxies....
----
Link: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/protocols-elders-liberalism_816389.html

George W. Obama and his Hurricane Ebola

What?  What is this reporting from the New York Times?

Incompetence in Big Government hurting people's lives?

What?  Really?  Is there a small note of despise?    PB
----

From the New York Times online: 

Failures of Competence

Et tu, C.D.C.?

For years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been the most trusted agency in the federal government...

And then came Ebola.

The Ebola outbreak is not exactly enhancing the C.D.C.'s reputation for competence.

At first, the agency reassured the public that American hospitals were ready to handle any Ebola cases that came their way.

That has turned out not to be the case.

When Thomas Eric Duncan was diagnosed with Ebola in Dallas, the C.D.C. did not immediately fly in an expert team — something that the C.D.C. director, Tom Frieden, now says it should have done.

Most recently, the C.D.C. appears to have allowed one of the Dallas nurses who helped Duncan to take a flight from Ohio to Texas even though she had a slightly raised temperature.

When it became clear that she had contracted the virus — the second nurse to do so — Frieden was forced to admit that letting her on the plane was a mistake...

And now comes the C.D.C. — the most trusted agency in government — thrust in a role for which it was designed: advising us and protecting us from a potential contagion.

With every new mistake, it becomes, in the public eye, just another federal agency that can’t get it right.
----
Link:http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/18/opinion/joe-nocera-failures-of-competence.html

Obamacare: source of the New War on Women

From the New York Times comes a story....

Wait!  Breaking news from a few years ago!

"If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan...."

Is that true?  If you liked your plan, you can keep your plan? 

Think about Patricia Wanderlich, and others who purchased Obamacare, mentioned in a New York Times article.  She can't afford health care under Obamacare.

My God, what has Obamacare done to women?

Obamacare is just another intrusive Big Government Waste Machine that restricts people's choices.  It is self-congratulatory while hurting real people.

What this tells us is that the biggest fraud in our current American life comes from self described 'reality based' progressives and liberals.

Reality based?  These are the true bigots of our times.

Liberal, progressive bigots: we need a cure.  Fast!  PB
----

NYT: Unable to Meet the Deductible or the Doctor

Patricia Wanderlich got insurance through the Affordable Care Act this year, and with good reason:

She suffered a brain hemorrhage in 2011, spending weeks in a hospital intensive care unit, and has a second, smaller aneurysm that needs monitoring.

But her new plan has a $6,000 annual deductible, meaning that Ms. Wanderlich, who works part time at a landscaping company outside Chicago, has to pay for most of her medical services up to that amount.

She is skipping this year’s brain scan and hoping for the best.

“To spend thousands of dollars just making sure it hasn’t grown?” said Ms. Wanderlich, 61.

“I don’t have that money...”

A survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that the average deductible for individual coverage in employer-sponsored plans was $1,217 this year.

In comparison, the average deductible for a bronze plan on the exchange — the least expensive coverage — was $5,081 for an individual and $10,386 for a family...
----
Link: www.nytimes.com/2014/10/18/us/unable-to-meet-the-deductible-or-the-doctor.html

Everyday Low (Banking) Prices

Why hate Walmart?

Walmart is a good friend to the poor.  Low prices.  Wide selection.  In metro Detroit's inner ring of suburbs you will find Walmart frequented by Blacks, immigrants, the working poor and other smart shoppers.

I like shopping with them.

The liberal bigots of America despise Walmart.  Why?  Their illusions are not served by Walmart's truly helpful low costs.

Now a real boon to the poor is being introduced with inexpensive banking products. 

Liberal bigots like to point to diversity brochures.

With much greater meaning, Walmart serves our country's living, breathing, shopping diversity of real people who have a real need for cost saving in their real lives.

The real world that shops at Walmart is well served by Walmart.  It's time to start loving that store.  PB
----

From NYmag.com:

It is expensive to be poor...

Have a healthy paycheck and a cash buffer built up?  It costs you close to nothing to maintain your checking and savings accounts.

Live hand-to-mouth, cashing your checks and taking out payday loans?  You get hit with fee after fee as well as three-digit interest rates.

Enter wallet-friendly retail giant Walmart.

This month, the big-box store is unrolling a low-fee checking account across the country.

The response on the left, at least, has tended to be skeptical: a “new scheme to prey on America’s poor,” an “awful idea,” and so on.

But the big-box retailer — and the competition it might pose to banks and other financial institutions — might help make banking accessible to millions of currently ill-served low-income families...

Walmart and Green Dot have made their fees low and simple. They have targeted the low-income families that banks so often eschew and the unbanked families that banks generally ignore.

Already, Walmart has become an important financial-services center for those families, with its dirt-cheap fees for things like check cashing.

It is also not hard to see how over time they might begin to chip away at banks’ broader customer base or force banks to lower fees and compete a little harder to keep their customers.
----
Link: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/10/everyday-low-banking-prices.html

PIMCO's assets drop 5%

More fallout from the resignation of Bill Gross.  PB
----

From Reuters.com:

Pacific Investment Management Co., whose co-founder Bill Gross stunningly departed on Sept. 26, said late Friday that the Newport Beach, Calif.-firm had assets under management of $1.876 trillion as of Sept. 30, a 5 percent drop in the third quarter.

Gross, one of the bond market's most renowned investors and the former manager of the flagship Pimco Total Return Fund, quit PIMCO for distant rival Janus Capital Group Inc.

Since Gross's departure, PIMCO has seen heavy outflows, with $23.5 billion leaving the Pimco Total Return Fund in September alone.
----
Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/10/us-pimco-allianz-totalassets-id

Wages stagnate; Unemployment Rate below 6%

From the Wall Street Journal online:

The nation’s unemployment rate slipped below 6% for the first time since the recession...

The upbeat report was tempered by weak earnings growth and continued high underemployment, reflecting workers stuck in part-time jobs...

Indeed, Friday’s report highlighted underlying ills that threaten the economy’s long-term potential to grow and lift Americans’ living standards.

The labor-force participation rate—reflecting the share of working-age Americans who have a job or are looking for one—fell last month to a three-decade low of 62.7%. Before the recession it stood at 66%.

Only part of the decline is due to aging baby boomers; even among Americans in the prime working ages of 25 to 54, participation is historically low...

And workers’ wages still have yet to climb significantly.

Among private-sector workers, average hourly earnings actually fell a penny last month, to $24.53. They have risen 2% over the past year.

This is the second expansion in a row including the recovery after the 2001 recession, where economic growth hasn’t translated into rising incomes for most Americans.

While the economy is in the middle of a pickup, weak productivity growth and the downsized labor force point to limited gains in overall growth in the long term, said Morgan Stanley economist Ted Wieseman. “It’s just a dismal picture,” he said...
----
Link: http://online.wsj.com/articles/u-s-job-growth-rebounds-in-september-1412339557

Just In Time! $617 Billion Japanese Fat Finger Trades Stopped at Last Minute

From Bloomberg.com:

Japan’s over-the-counter market was bombarded with $617 billion of erroneous stock orders in dozens of Asia’s biggest corporations.  They were canceled before they could be executed.

More than 40 requests to transact shares totaling 67.78 trillion yen ($617 billion) -- greater than the size of Sweden’s economy -- were voided at 9:25 a.m. in Tokyo before they could be matched, according to data compiled by Bloomberg...

The biggest order was for 1.96 billion shares of Toyota Motor Corp., or 57 percent of outstanding shares in the world’s biggest car maker, for 12.68 trillion yen through an off-exchange transaction...

One of the biggest American market makers, Knight Capital Group Inc., was pushed to the brink of bankruptcy in August 2012 when its computers spewed mistaken orders on to U.S. markets.

In that case, the orders found buyers and resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in losses to the Jersey City, New Jersey-based firm. The company was later bailed out and sold.

While no such losses were recorded today because the orders weren’t filled, there should be an explanation to alleviate concerns [a market strategist said]...
----
Link: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-01/oops-possible-617-billion-trading-error-in-japan.html

Bill Gross leaves - money follows

About Bill Gross leaving PIMCO: money is following.  From the Wall Street Journal and CNN:

Billions Fly Out the Door at Pimco
About $10 Billion Is Withdrawn After Departure of Gross

Pacific Investment Management Co. suffered roughly $10 billion of withdrawals following the Friday departure of co-founder Bill Gross, a person familiar with the matter said, a sign of how quickly Mr. Gross's surprise move is reshaping the bond-investing landscape.

Pimco is bracing for more outflows on the heels of the veteran investor's departure after months of internal strife over his leadership...
----
Link: http://online.wsj.com/articles/billions-fly-out-the-door-at-pimco-1411948188


Bill Gross exit could cost Pimco $400 billion

According to Morgan Stanley (MS), investors could yank a whopping $400 billion of assets from Pimco following the surprise exit of Gross on Friday.

Morgan Stanley based that huge figure on the 6% drop in the share price of Pimco parent Allianz (ALIZF). The investment bank said in a report Monday that implies a loss of around 20% of the Pimco's total assets.

Pimco and Allianz executives scrambled over the weekend and on Monday to soothe nervous clients and analysts after Gross shocked the financial world by leaving the firm he founded in 1971 for Janus Capital (JNS).

Gross directly managed about $300 billion of assets, although Morgan Stanley estimates he had "influence" over around $500 billion...
----
Link: http://money.cnn.com/2014/09/29/investing/pimco-bill-gross-outflows-janus/index.html?

ESPN - NFL - Conflicts of Interest

Hypocrisy and serious conflicts of interest bind ESPN and the NFL. The story below examines the corporate motivations of ESPN when it 'covers' issues like wife beating, concussions, big money, etc.

In the same light, consider the influence of corporate motivations when you ask this about your investments: what and where are the conflicts of interests?

Hidden fees?  Compromised referrals?  Crony networks of advisers scratching each other's back at your expense?  What about the selection of investment choices that are offered to you?

What is clear to us is that almost all investors have no clue how much of their money is lost to costs.

When we show investors the actual cash they pay in fees today, and how much that builds over time, every single person is stunned at the large amounts of money that are lost to costs.

There is a better way to protect your investments from conflicts of interest and save more of your money from being lost to costs: own the lowest cost, most reliable index ETFs.  Then keep them for life.  PB
----

From The Motley Fool online:

The engine that makes ESPN go

Every once in a while, the media's dirty little secret gets paraded about for all to see.

The latest example is ESPN's three-week suspension of Bill Simmons after the popular columnist accused NFL commissioner Roger Goodell of lying about being previously unaware of a video showing former-Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice knocking out Rice's now-wife in a hotel elevator...

So, here's the issue: Did ESPN suspend Simmons because of his obscenities-laced comments, or did the sports network do so because Simmons attacked the head of ESPN's most important business partner, the NFL?

Allegations concerning a conflict of interest between ESPN and the NFL are nothing new.  In 2012, the network teamed up with PBS's Frontline to produce an investigative piece about the league's handling of head injuries.

The tenor of the resulting two-part documentary, League of Denial, was that the NFL knew more about the permanent damage done to its players' brains than it had publicly acknowledged.

Somewhere along the way, however, ESPN withdrew its support from the project, explaining that it ended the partnership because of a misunderstanding over editorial control...

Taking all of this into consideration, there is little question that ESPN at least appears to have a conflict of interest between its relationship with the NFL...

Underlying it is a $15.2 billion deal giving ESPN the right to broadcast Monday Night Football games through the 2021 season.

...if ESPN were a stand-alone business, it would have a higher market capitalization than 408 of the components on the S&P 500, handily outpacing the likes of Fedex, Delta Air Lines, and Target.

And it's worth roughly twice that of CBS Corporation, which owns dozens of cable networks and local television and radio stations throughout the nation's largest media markets...
----
Link: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/09/26/espn-the-nfl-and-conflicts-of-interest.aspx

PIMCO CIO William H. Gross to leave the firm

From PIMCO.com:

September 26, 2014, (Newport Beach, CA): PIMCO, a leading global investment management firm, announced that Co-founder and Chief Investment Officer (“CIO”) William H. Gross, has resigned and will leave the firm, effective immediately.

The firm has a succession plan in place and its Management Board, comprised of its Managing Directors, will confirm shortly the election of a new Chief Investment Officer. Relevant portfolio management assignments will also be announced at that time.

Said Mr. Hodge: “While we are grateful for everything Bill contributed to building our firm and delivering value to PIMCO’s clients, over the course of this year it became increasingly clear that the firm’s leadership and Bill have fundamental differences about how to take PIMCO forward...”
----
Link: http://www.pimco.com/EN/PressReleases/Pages/PIMCO-CIO-William-H-Gross-to-leave-the-firm.aspx

Bond Traders just Fffffffade Away...

Not just looking for a job - looking for a new career.  PB
----

From Businessweek.com:

In the 1980s bonds were the center of action on Wall Street, and traders—like the fictional Sherman McCoy in The Bonfire of the Vanities—were “masters of the universe.”

Those days are gone...

The size of the bond market in the U.S. ballooned to $37.8 trillion at the end of 2013, up $5.1 trillion since 2008 ... even so, trading in dollar-denominated bonds declined 22 percent...

As profits fell, so did pay. Total compensation at the biggest banks has fallen as much as 50 percent for high-yield and investment-grade traders and up to 25 percent for distressed-debt traders since 2010...

While veterans shuffle from job to job, some younger traders have gotten out and moved into industries ranging from real estate to public relations to information technology.

The ones who remain face long odds, says Michael Maloney, president of his own fixed-income recruiting firm. “For every 10 of them, there’s going to be three or four left,” he says.

“What’s the time frame? Well, everybody I know is looking for a job—not looking for a job, looking for a career.”
----
Link: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-09-25/bond-traders-fade-away-as-industry-shrinks