Banks
May Start Charging You Interest For Making Deposits - (www.businessinsider.com) Put
$100 in a certificate of deposit at a bank today, and in a year you’ll have
earned, on average, about 21 cents in interest. It’s trivial, right? In fact,
you’re actually losing money, in terms of purchasing power, when you consider
inflation. But at least it’s something. In dollar terms, the bank is paying you
more money than you deposited. But what if that were to change and banks
began charging you money for the service of keeping your money safe and giving
you access to the payments system? Your $100 CD is now worth about $99.87
at the end of a year. It may seem outrageous, but according to the Financial Times, U.S. banks are threatening to begin charging
interest on deposits if the Federal Reserve reduces what it pays banks on the
excess reserves—that is, reserve amounts over the minimum that the Fed requires
– held in the central bank.
[Morgenson]
$13 Billion, Yes, but What Took So Long? - (www.nytimes.com) “Without a doubt,” Eric H. Holder Jr., the attorney general, said in a statement,
“the conduct uncovered in this investigation helped sow the seeds of the mortgage meltdown.” Eager to see what the Justice
investigation had found, I consulted the statement of facts that accompanied
the settlement and that JPMorgan had to acknowledge. There, I reckoned, would
be some juicy, new evidence of the bank’s mortgage misdeeds “uncovered” by
assiduous investigators armed with subpoena power and other government might. Perusing
the 11-page document,
I quickly saw that I’d reckoned wrong. Much of it was the same-old-same-old, a
not-very-lively description of a corrupted Wall Street mortgage factory, based
largely on some facts that have been in the public domain for years. In other
words, although it took the Justice Department more than five years to pursue a
major bank for its role in the mortgage mania, the investigation seems to have
unearthed material that, by and large, could have been dug up with a spoon.
Merkel
tried to bounce Spain into IMF bailout: ex-PM - (www.reuters.com) On
a rainy day in November 2011 in the hulking concrete Palace of Festivals in
Cannes, where film stars strut on the red-carpeted staircase in warmer months,
Angela Merkel ambushed Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. With financial markets in
turmoil and speculation rife that the European single currency area could break
up, the German chancellor tried to bounce the then Spanish prime minister
without notice into taking an International Monetary Fund bailout, according to
his account of the meeting. It was just before the start of a Group of 20
economic summit described at the time as make-or-break for the 17-nation euro zone, and only weeks before a Spanish general
election. "She greeted me pleasantly and almost without any introduction
put forward a proposal about which we had not had any indication,"
Zapatero writes in a book to be published on Tuesday in Spain.
Akamai’s
German Business May Be Hit by NSA Spying Scandal - (www.bloomberg.com) The
U.S. National Security Agency’s eavesdropping on foreign heads of state will
probably hurtAkamai Technologies Inc.
(AKAM)’s
business in Germany, Chief Executive Officer Tom Leighton said. Akamai, which
helps corporate customers deliver online content faster, is caught up in the
growing backlash against American Internet companies, he said. Allegations that
the NSA gained access to e-mails between world leaders, including German
Chancellor Angela
Merkel and
Brazilian President Dilma
Rousseff,
and their staffs, have raised questions about the data being held and managed
by U.S. Internet companies. Akamai operates computer servers across the globe
to speed up the distribution and delivery of Web content, which means that data
being tracked by the NSA or any other authority most likely passes through its
network.
Obamacare
Cutbacks Shut Hospitals Where Medicaid Went Unexpanded - (www.bloomberg.com) Pam
Renshaw had just crashed her four-wheeler into a bonfire in rural Folkston,
Georgia, and her skin was getting seared in the flames. Her boyfriend, Billy
Chavis, pulled her away and struggled to dial 911 before driving her to the
nearest place he could think of for medical attention: an ambulance station
more than 20 miles away. The local public hospital, 9 miles from the crash, had
closed six weeks earlier because of budget shortfalls resulting from Obamacare
and Georgia’s decision not to expand Medicaid.
The ambulances Chavis sought were taking other patients to the next closest
hospital. It took two hours before Renshaw, in pain from second- and
third-degree burns on almost half her body, was flown to a hospital in Florida.
At least five public hospitals closed this year and many more are scaling back
services, mostly in states where Medicaid wasn’t expanded. Patients in areas
with shuttered hospitals must travel as far as 40 miles (64 kilometers) to get
care, causing delays that can result in lethal consequences, said Bruce Siegel,
chief executive officer of America’s Essential Hospitals, a Washington-based
advocacy group for facilities that treat large numbers of uninsured or
low-income patients.
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