The profits that took the Dow to all time highs needs an adjustment as the people that provided the 'means' of such profit taking are losing their quality of life and homes. Gee, who cares about them, huh? (click here) Bush's economy is an artifical economy. It has been bolstered by running illegal wars, scalping the USA Treasury and calling it an economic plan. The current 'trend' if you want to call it that, is directly related to the exploitation of consumers regarding energy.Chevron lifts profit 24% on strong fuel margins (click here)
Production declines 1% but matches forecasts
By Steve Gelsi, MarketWatch
Last Update: 5:56 PM ET Jul 27, 2007
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Chevron Corp., the nation's No. 2 oil company, said Friday its second-quarter net income rose 24%, propelled by robust refining margins in its core West Coast fuel market and a $680 million gain from the sale of its stake in Houston power company Dynegy.
said profit for the three months ended June 30 advanced to $5.4 billion, or $2.52 a share, from $4.4 billion, or $1.97 a share, a year earlier. Revenue for the quarter rose nearly 5% to $56.1 billion.
Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial predicted the San Ramon, Calif., would hand in net income of $2.30 a share on $50.35 billion in revenue. There is only one aspect of this New York Times editorial, at the above title link, I agree with and they really should try to make an effort to come to understand the national movement Americans are engaged in to return their economy to American values and American labor:...They could start by reforming health insurance to ensure that workers who lose their jobs don’t also lose affordable health care....That is an astounding statement from in an editorial that is Pro-Globalization as a reason to continue to expand trade markets. Who needs them? So far all our trust has resulted in minimally a contaminated food supply to the USA. And does Bush demand that Homeland Security clean up it's act. Heck, no. The underfunding of Homeland Security could not begin to address the issues of such a nature while they twittle all their monies away on trying to federalize the National Guard. What would happen to the economy of the USA with a single payer system?UAW Begins Contract Negotiations With GM, Ford; Companies Likely To Seek Health Care Concessions (click here)The United Auto Workers on Monday began contract negotiations with General Motors and Ford Motor, with the companies likely to seek health care concessions from the union, the AP/Boston Globe reports. UAW on Friday began contract negotiations with the Chrysler Group. UAW contracts with the three companies will expire on Sept. 14. According to the AP/Globe, UAW and company officials declined to "talk specifics about what they expect to get out of the negotiations," but "company officials have said privately that they need to cut retiree health care and other costs to better compete with the Japanese." Officials for GM -- which last year lost $2 billion and spent $4.8 billion for health care for employees, retirees and dependents -- have cited health care costs as the largest competitive disadvantage for the company.However, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said that the union previously agreed to health care and other concessions with GM and Ford to help the companies become more competitive. He added, "I think it's fair to say we've given a lot." He also said that UAW plans to seek four-year, rather than two-year, contracts with the companies and that strikes are possible (AP/Boston Globe, 7/24)....In "SICKO," which is having huge success across the USA, Michael Moore didn't embark on a discussion of what the positive effects would be to the economy of the USA should a single payer system begin. This article is dated, but, gets the point across.Rising Healthcare Costs Put Small Business Owners Under Pressure (click here)
On average, larger employers (200 + employees) experienced a 10.2 percent increase in premiums this year; smaller employers (three-199 employees) experienced a 12.5 percent increase. The smallest employers (three-nine employees) were hit the hardest with an average increase of 16.5 percent. New Jersey employers saw their premiums jump even higher. And more increases are expected in 2002.
Paul Sylvester, president of Charon/ECA, a Newark-based health care consultancy, said he expects New Jersey premiums to rise 40 percent over the next 13 months. Michele Guhl, president of the New Jersey Association of Health Plans, said she feels New Jersey employers will face premium increases of 15-25 percent starting January 2002....
You'll never hear this from Republicans and don't ask me why either, because, streamlining American healthcare would relieve every benevolent company in the USA of the burden of expensive healthcare plans for it's employees where one exists and would prevent 'shopping' among the draconian plans currently available that allow the people of the plans to die at the hands of free wheeling profiteers.
There are some companies in the USA, including incorporated and merged 'health care systems' that self insure while hiring lethally minded administrators to cut the costs to the bone. These self-insured companies are worse in many aspects than even the draconian companies cited in "SICKO." It is not always evident to employees they are insured by their companies either. When they have to call administrators for benefits they frequently believe these are separate 'providers' than their companies.
Did it ever occur to the companies that invoke self-insured plans and the commercial draconian plans as part of an employee benefit that they may be as liable as the insurance companies that provide the benefit? After all the employers provided healthcare plans as a compensation to their employees including a wage. Those employees have no choice in accepting what they are offered, so literally they are trapped into accepting adverse decisions by their employers' healthcare provider.
Hello, America?
But, to return to the 'idea' that a single payer system would actually benefit the American economy, the article above regarding the negotiations of the UAW would literally be mute and the cost of healthcare now a part of the package from the employers could be translated into proportional wage increases over time. In other words, the UAW could literally bring about wage increases to the employees while their healthcare was covered outside the company, by the USA.
What does that do? It increases the economy. How? By placing wellness as a priority of efficiency that we are witnessing already by the reports regarding sodas.
Soda drinkers more likely to have heart problems (click here)
It doesn't matter if you prefer diet drinks or the calorie-clogged variety. People who consume at least one soda a day increase their risk of developing heart disease by nearly 50 percent. The findings, published earlier this week in the journal Circulation, dash hopes that diet soda may be a better heart option than the real deal. The study focuses on what doctors call "metabolic syndrome," or a combination of risk factors that have been linked to cardiovascular disease. Bottom line: People who drink any kind of soda regularly are more prone to develop metabolic syndrome. Read on for more information about the research....
When nations provide health care to their citizens, tracking the trends in disease is far easier. When disease trends such as those that occur over decades including heart disease and cancer are realized as an expense in treatment to a nation's treasury there can be the best minds of modern medicine to combat those trends by setting national standards for wellness and seeking enlistment in that standard with the citizens. That was alluded to in "SICKO" when the British physician spoke about increasing his pay by increasing the wellness 'habits' of his patients. Physicians in the UK act as an advocate to stop deadly health trends in a nation. A group effort of sorts. Only. A larger group. And that advocacy would include all of those that accessed American Health Care, not just those with healthcare plans and government insurance policies. Many of those in need of such advocacy are out of the reach of those physicians allowing adverse quality of life in the face of ignorance and lack of incentive. Wouldn't it be nice if 'Skid Row' actually disappeared due to a country that legitimately cares.
Then there is the issue of small business owners and the self-employed. Would that be a blessing or what? They could conduct their businesses without worrying about obtaining health insurance for themselves which is very expensive on 'individual plans' and 'small group' plans. There would be more incentive for innovators of the American economy to step out of the oppression of high business costs right into the mainstream for upstart industries that return manufacturing to American jobs including textiles and automobiles using electric rather than gas. Quite literally, dreams of entrepreneurship could take hold in the USA and drive out these huge companies that literally have the wealth of the USA by the throat. In other words, good-bye to Walmart and hello to Mom & Pop.
Let me give you an example of an enterprise that can actually happen. Let's say someone wants to manufacture high end clothing. Clothing made of top quality cotton. Sounds great doesn't it? Do you know the longevity of a 100% cotton garment? Nice.
What if that same someone wanted to make their product to society exceptionally unique. So unique that the product would circumvent any and all USA cotton, but instead imports cotton from Burkina Faso.
Farmers organizations in Bénin, Mali and Burkina Faso are asking that cotton producers in North America and Europe are not given price support in order to continue growing cotton in competition with African cotton. (click here)
Is it possible for such an enterprise to take flight? Absolutely. With an individual with a vision and the ability to minimize upstart costs in their neighborhood by working with local authorities and recruiting local employees, an entrepreneur can literally link an economic trend in manufacturing and benefit for not only their own town and it's citizens but also those of another country that grow the 'raw material.' The people of Burkino Faso don't have the resources to produce specialty products, but, they can produce cotton for their manufacture.
But, wait, what would that do to the American farm community? Community? Where? The American family farm has literally disappeared from the American landscape. American agriculture has become huge corporate venues that service other huge corporate venues such as Green Giant and the like. At least for the foods that aren't imported to date. What such entrepreneurship can do is return the viability of the American Family Farm.
What would demising corporations adverse to the American landscape do? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. If anything it would provide a huge tax base in that there would be new companies with minimal 'costs' and expanding markets as those products produced by corporations are lost and the new expanding American-made markets thrive.
The tax base to returning America to Americans is huge. Not only will there be reasonable taxes on business profits, but, also income tax from people that are actually working. People will return to paying taxes into their national treasury rather than wasting their lives looking for jobs that don't exist.
Returning America to Americans is huge. It not only provides new venues of success to communities and the citizens of the USA but also improve the quality of products available to consumers. New entrepreneurship would have to meet demands for quality by literally their communities of consumers. That would eliminate any lack of quality to products and the consumerism of the USA. We could have safety in consumer products at the conscience of their operators since the government has deregulated quality at every turn by the Republican corporate advocates.
Not only that but it would give Americans a chance to get out from under the 'freebee' economy of corporate domination. How many people actually want 'free anything' when it literally adds to the cost of products. There aren't free give aways but only the 'selective selling points' to corporate overruns and 'overstocks.' Who needs it? America when manufactured by Americans is where this country needs to go. Good paying jobs with benefits that aren't weighted down by expensive and draconian healthcare insurance programs or the reality that a small business owner has to face poor or NO health care for themselves and their employees. There is a lot of opportunity for Americans to return a better and REAL economy to their country, but, it needs to begin with a single payer government healthcare system. The Bush economy: Strong and stronger (click here)
"I want the American people to take a good look at this economy of ours," said President Bush in a "media availability" appearance Friday morning.
Bush says the economy is strong. In a 351-word statement, he said "strong" seven times, sometimes twice in the same sentence, in case we missed it the first time around. His main basis for this assertion was Friday's news that the economy grew 3.4 percent in the second quarter of 2007, a sharp rebound upward from the first quarter's barely perceptible growth.
According to the Wall Street Journal, he declined to respond to a question from a reporter about Thursday's 300-point market plummet. (Presumably, he would also be inclined to ignore Friday's 200-point drop.) And no reference whatsoever was made to by far the biggest economic story of the week: the implosion of Wall Street's credit markets. The price of insuring against default, as measured by a variety of different indexes, hit record highs on Thursday.
"Risk aversion" is the new battle cry. Easy money? Not so much.
But a fear of risk isn't strong, is it? Some might even say it is a sign of weakness.
But that raises a good question. How the World Works spends a lot of time reading the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal and following a score of finance geek bloggers who love nothing better than to spend all day trying to explain the difference between a credit swap and a collateralized debt obligation. In this realm, what happened on Thursday was a very big deal, with potentially vast implications for the world of high finance.
If, for example, you are the kind of person who cares about whether one of the biggest private equity operators in the world, Kohlberg-Kravis-Roberts, will be forced to postpone its planned public offering, the collapse of credit markets rocks your world. KKR's leveraged-buyout business strategy just doesn't work when the cost of racking up billions of dollars of debt goes through the roof. And if you have long harbored the suspicion that the vast edifice of "structured finance" erected via the innovative financial experiments of Wall Street's derivatives geniuses is really a big pyramid scheme, then you can't take your eyes off the current traffic wreck. Everyone wants to know: What will break next? How many more hedge funds will self-destruct? What happens to the bottom line of the big investment banks that are the linchpin of the whole system?
But should we care? So a bunch of rich investors have to take a timeout. They can afford it. If the nuts-and-bolts economy is motoring along reasonably well at 3.4 percent -- lagging the global economy's brisk 5 percent growth rate, to be sure, but still, not too shabby -- why should the rest of us care that mergers and acquisition activity appears to be screeching to a halt?
(I can already hear my readers sharpening up their quills as they prepare their screeds on how GDP growth means nothing if the benefits of that growth are not equitably distributed. Fine. It's still better to have some growth than none.)
There's a simple answer to why we should care. Credit crunches spark recessions. If money gets expensive, companies don't just stop buying each other, they also find it harder to raise capital to do anything. Growth slows. People get laid off.
President Bush -- you might want to rethink that advice about taking "a good look at the economy." By definition, that means digging a little deeper than just the most recent GDP numbers. Because it's just possible that such an exercise would explain why investors are suddenly scrambling for high ground.
-- Andrew LeonardIt's the only way an inventive America can do away with corporate influence in their country and political 'bidding' over the best interests of citizens. If the USA had a single payer system of health care when carbon dioxide was found to be dangerous to Earth, would we still be pandering to car companies that can't get out of their own 'advertising' way of insuring ONLY the internal combustion engine existed on the American market? I think not. If the USA was 'entrepreneurly fluid' rather than 'corporately rigid' in their choices to their consumerism we would not be facing the oppression in our elections or suffering from 'poor choices' by corporate manufacterers that seek 'cheap labor' outside the USA while STILL depriving America of effective choices for a benevolent country.Break the bonds of corporate bondage. Do we actually need another Iraq?Corporate America, where corruption lives !Associated PressEx-Qwest Boss Gets Six Years (click here)By SANDY SHORE 07.27.07, 3:04 PM DENVER -
Former Qwest Communications chief executive Joe Nacchio was sentenced to six years in prison Friday for making $52 million in illegal stock sales while a multibillion-dollar accounting scandal brought the telecommunications company to the brink of bankruptcy.
U.S. District Judge Edward Nottingham also ordered Nacchio to forfeit the $52 million within 15 days, imposed a maximum $19 million fine and ordered him to serve two years' probation after serving his sentence.
The judge denied Nacchio's request to be granted bail while he appeals his conviction. He ordered Nacchio to report to authorities within 15 days once a federal prison is chosen for him....
