TOP STORIES:
Closely Watched Inflation Gauge Falls to Lowest Level in 14
Years - (online.wsj.com) An
inflation gauge closely watched by Federal Reserve officials has fallen to the
lowest level in more than 14 years, extending a decline that investors and
analysts say could complicate the central bank’s plan to raise interest rates
this year. The so-called five-year forward five-year break-even rate, which
measures annual inflation currently expected by investors between 2020 and
2025, tumbled to 1.8648% on Tuesday. That is the lowest level since Dec. 22,
2000, said Jonathan Rick, interest-rate derivatives strategist at Crédit
Agricole in New York, and below the 2% inflation that Fed officials have set as
the ideal level for annual price increases. The decline is noteworthy because
many analysts and traders believe officials will be loath to raise interest
rates, tightening financial conditions, when the economy is showing signs of
softness.
The Great
Obamacare-Medicaid Bait 'n' Switch - (www.cnbc.com)
Hey, are you one of the 9.7
million Americans who have been put onto the Medicaid rolls since 2013 mostly
as a result of the Affordable Care Act? Congratulations! But
that and $2.75 will get you one ride on the New York City subway. That's
because finding a doctor who accepts Medicaid payments – never all that easy to
do even before 2013 – is getting harder than ever thanks to a steep drop in
reimbursement rates for doctors who treat patients on Medicaid. When I say
"steep," I mean it. We're talking an average of 43 percent nationwide
and almost 60 percent in California. Incidentally, California has added 2.7
million more people to Medicaid since 2013. The result is simple: more and more
doctors are simply not accepting Medicaid patients and/or dropping the ones
they already have. And before you call those doctors greedy or evil, consider
the alternative: Most private-practice doctors literally care for Medicaid
patients at a personal financial loss. Do that too much and you start not being
able to practice at all, and that will hurt everyone.
Obamacare: You can't fix
stupid - (www.cnbc.com) It was supposed to be the most burning crisis
in America: the 30 million, 40 million, or even 50 million of us, (depending on
which politician was screaming the loudest), who didn't have health insurance
and were clamoring to get it in order to avoid everything from bankruptcy to
death. So the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress, gave us the Affordable Care Act. And they did it with such urgency
that they didn't care that not a single Republican in Congress voted for it,
and they didn't care that it took legislative chicanery to pass it despite the
Democrat super-majority. Nope, the millions of uncovered Americans desperate
for affordable health insurance just couldn't wait any longer. So when the
Obamacare exchanges finally opened for business in October, of course the tens
of millions of insurance-starved Americans stampeded over each other to sign up
and finally get covered. Except they didn't. The reality has been shocking
even to the biggest Obamacare detractors. A McKinsey Report estimates that just 10 percent of
the roughly 4 million enrollees in the ACA are people that did not previously
have health insurance. Just 1 in 10!
Venezuela
Just Had A 'Let Them Eat Cake' Moment - (www.businessinsider.com) In Venezuela, a plunge in oil prices, the
country's main export, has turned a goods shortage problem into an unmitigated
national disaster, but the tragedy seems lost on the country's food
minister, Yván José Bello Rojas. Venezuelans can wait in grocery-store
lines for days to find products that may not even be on the shelves — this has
been the case for over a year. But when a reporter
asked Rojas if he ever waits in lines, he said: "I've been in
tons of lines. I went to my favorite sports team's game this weekend, and I had
to get in line to get a parking space. I got in line to buy my ticket. And then
... I made a line to get into the stadium. And you know what, I made a line to
find my seat. And then you know what," Bello finished with satisfaction,
"I went to go buy an arepa [Venezuelan sandwich] ... and I had to wait in
line there, too." Reporter Ana Vanessa Herrero then asked him about a
woman she'd recently interviewed who was looking for diapers for two days and
couldn't find them. NTN24Venezuela's Food Minister Yván Bello
Rojas. "She's exaggerating," he said, "no one would wait in line
for six days for anything," he added, interrupting the chorus of reporters
throwing out anecdotes to the contrary.
What
Matters Is the Debt Shale Drillers Have, Not the Oil - (www.bloomberg.com) U.S.
shale drillers may tout how much oil they have in the ground or how cheaply
they can get it out. For stock investors, what matters most is debt. The worst
performers among U.S. oil producers in a Bloomberg index owe about 5.7 times
more than they earn, before certain deductions, compared with 1.7 times for
companies that have taken less of a hit. Operations, such as where the
companies drill or how much oil versus gas they pump, matter less. “With oil
prices below $50 and approaching $40, we’re in survivor mode,” Steven Rees, who
helps oversee about $1 trillion as global head of equity strategy at JPMorgan
Private Bank, said via phone. “The companies with the higher degrees of
leverage have underperformed, and you don’t want to own those because there’s a
fair amount of uncertainty as to whether they can repay that debt.”
Janet Yellen Now Faces One of the Most Bizarre Problems The Fed
Has Ever Seen - (www.businessinsider.com)
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