Christine Lagarde, the IMF managing director, captured a sense of fragmentation last month when she spoke of a “three-speed” global economy. On this week’s evidence, however, there are even more speeds than that.

Falling commodity prices and a rising dollar show the broad picture: the global outlook is weakening a little and becoming more dependent on the US. For every country putting out good news, such as Japan, there are weaker data elsewhere – for example in China.

It is a global economy that lacks a strong source of demand growth.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • England / UK • Europe

Spring may have sprung, but not all economists are sprightly about the outlook for the global economy.

In fact, as a Toronto audience heard Wednesday morning, the risk of a recession in Canada is “higher than normal,” the U.S. is set for “unspectacular” growth, Europe is poised for another downturn and even the BRIC countries will not be the economic drivers they had been in the past decade.

Those are the views of one of the more Eeyore-ish research firms around: London-based Capital Economics, whose conference Wednesday was entitled: “Is the world on the road to recovery?” (The answer: Sort of. But it will be a “long and fairly bumpy” road, one in which Europe is in danger of veering off).

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • * International News & Commentary • Africa • America/U.S.A. • Asia • Canada • England / UK • Europe

Sandra Duck thinks she’s the victim of an undeclared Medicaid boycott. And she’s probably right.

When her artificial right hip became infected with the superbug MRSA in late 2009, Dr. Dale Mitchum, a general surgeon, drained, cleaned and closed the infected area. But when the infection returned in early 2010, Mitchum knew Duck needed another hip replacement surgery, which he couldn’t perform. He tried to find an orthopedic surgeon who would operate. More than a year later, he’s still trying.

“I cannot find a living soul that will touch her,” he said recently. “And I’ve tried everywhere, from Tallahassee to Pensacola.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Personal Finance • The U.S. Government • Medicaid • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Google is set to introduce a subscription music feature to compete against fast-growing new streaming services like Spotify, according to several people briefed on its plans.

Google is planning to introduce the new service on Wednesday at Google I/O, the company’s annual conference for software developers. The subscription feature will be connected to Play, Google’s online media hub, complementing its download store and “locker” feature, which lets people store their digital entertainment collections in the cloud, according to these people, who spoke on condition of anonymity before Google’s official announcement.

News of the announcement first appeared on The Verge. A Google spokeswoman declined to comment.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Music • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life

Today 12% of websites are pornographic, and 40 million Americans are regular visitors—including 70% of 18- to 34-year-olds, who look at porn at least once a month, according to a recent survey by Cosmopolitan magazine (which, let's face it, is the authority here). Fully 94% of therapists in another survey reported seeing an increase in people addicted to porn. It has become a whole generation's sex education and could be the same for the next—they are fumbling around online, not in the back seat. One estimate now puts the average age of first viewing at 11. Imagine seeing "Last Tango in Paris" before your first kiss.

Countless studies connect porn with a new and negative attitude to intimate relationships, and neurological imaging confirms it. Susan Fiske, professor of psychology at Princeton University, used MRI scans in 2010 to analyze men watching porn. Afterward, brain activity revealed, they looked at women more as objects than as people. The new DSM-5 will add the diagnosis "Hypersexual Disorder," which includes compulsive pornography use.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Pornography • Psychology • Sexuality • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Hospitals around the Lowcountry are billing Medicare at vastly different prices for the exact same procedures, according to data published Wednesday by the federal government.

For example, in 2011, Trident Medical Center billed Medicare an average $98,352 to insert a permanent pacemaker, while the Medical University of South Carolina billed $38,902 for the same surgery.

Read it all from the local paper.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • The U.S. Government • Medicare • * South Carolina

America's credit crunch is easing. For the past six years, consumers and businesses have struggled to borrow money, but slowly, things are getting easier.

Large U.S. companies are taking advantage of low interest rates to borrow record amounts of capital in bond markets. Banks are opening the spigots for commercial and industrial firms, and loans grew at an 11% annualized rate in the first quarter of this year, the sixth double-digit percentage increase in seven quarters, Federal Reserve data show. According to the Fed's survey of senior bank-lending officers released Monday, 28% of banks lowered the cost of credit lines early this year to smaller firms like Mr. Aaron's that have annual sales of less than $50 million. Residential lending began edging up last year, and even people with bad credit can get a loan to buy a car these days.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007--

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • * South Carolina

Employers kept hiring at a steady pace in April and the government revised up job tallies for February and March, easing fears that the economy is tumbling into a spring slump and propelling blue-chip stocks to record highs.

Nonfarm payrolls rose by 165,000 last month and the jobless rate ticked down to 7.5%, the lowest level since December 2008. The Labor Department also significantly raised hiring estimates for the two prior months, by a combined 114,000 jobs.

But the job gains in April, which were tilted toward the retail and business-services sectors, come alongside mixed signals for the economy almost four years into the recovery. While the housing and auto sectors are accelerating after years of industry turmoil, other major sectors are showing signs of trouble. In short: The Federal Reserve is looking for more broad-based and sustained job growth before easing up on its easy-money policies.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • Stock Market • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The U.S. Government • Federal Reserve

The economy lurched this spring into an even lower gear, from manufacturing to services to construction, leaving the Federal Reserve poised to prolong or expand its bond-buying stimulus.

Central bankers Wednesday kept benchmark rates near zero and quantitative easing purchases at $85 billion a month. But changes in their statement highlighted shifting emphasis.

"The Committee is prepared to increase or reduce the pace of its purchases to maintain appropriate policy accommodation as the outlook for the labor market or inflation changes," it said.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • The U.S. Government • Federal Reserve • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Millennials got a bad rap during the recession. They have been working less, earning less, and, as I’ve pointed out in this magazine before, buying far fewer houses and cars than their parents did—or than the economy needs them to in order to move forward. But all of this is poised to change. In the near future, these same young people may be the very ones to supercharge the recovery. How? By growing up.....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • History • Marriage & Family • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Personal Finance

On Tuesday, “Pope Francis: His Life in His Own Words,” a book of conversations with the man who was then Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, will be published in English (Putnam; $24.95). These interviews from 2010 with two journalists in Argentina yield cute facts about the new boss of the church — a favorite movie? “Babette’s Feast” — but not much interesting theology.

But one passage in the book, at first glance rather slight, ends up insinuating a radical note into the proceedings. On a close read, it seems that Pope Francis believes that we must — indeed, that God is calling us to — relax.

Responding to the question, “Do we need to rediscover the meaning of leisure?” Pope Francis replies: “Together with a culture of work, there must be a culture of leisure as gratification. To put it another way: people who work must take the time to relax, to be with their families, to enjoy themselves, read, listen to music, play a sport. But this is being destroyed, in large part, by the elimination of the Sabbath rest day. More and more people work on Sundays as a consequence of the competitiveness imposed by a consumer society.” In such cases, he concludes, “work ends up dehumanizing people.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Francis • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

The U.S. economy expanded in the first quarter but failed to gather as much steam as expected, raising concerns of another year of sluggish growth.

Consumer spending advanced during the first quarter despite tax increases, but those gains were held in check by slowing business investment and government cutbacks.

The nation's gross domestic product, a measure of all goods and services produced in the economy, advanced at a 2.5% annual rate between January and March, the Commerce Department said Friday. Economists had forecast a 3.2% expansion.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007--

In recent years, I often recall the first time I saw my dad pray. It was unsettling. I came upon him in church, where he was kneeling, his hands shading his eyes. He had a type of intensity that, at three or four years old, I had never seen before. Nor had I had ever seen him kneel before his God—or anyone else, for that matter.

My mind drifts back, because what I witness today in times of worship is such a contrast. My father was spiritual, as we might say today, but he was not very religious. It is not the memory of his posture that remains vividly with me; it was the demonstration of an aspect of his heart—a spiritual point of view—that captured my budding spiritual imagination. Today, we may kneel, but so many of us, I fear, have strayed far from the reverence of heart that our elders knew, not so long ago.

Our worship has been deeply influenced by a culture that is immersed in the consumption of media. We bring that point of view to our worship. What will it give me? What will I learn? Is it helpful? The focus has shifted from deity to the consumer.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Church of Canada • * Christian Life / Church Life • Spirituality/Prayer • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • * International News & Commentary • Canada • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

This week, legislators here will consider excise and sales taxes on marijuana of up to 30 percent combined. The proposal emerged from a task force of health officials, representatives of the state’s rapidly developing marijuana industry and others that was commissioned last year to help develop rules for marijuana.

The goal, task force members and lawmakers say, is to set taxes high enough to finance the administration of new laws, but not so high that customers are driven back to the black market.

“We should see a financial benefit as a state that can help pay for enforcement and other fundamental issues,” said Christian Sederberg, a Denver lawyer on the panel whose firm helped draft Amendment 64, the measure legalizing recreational marijuana. “The other side is that if you tax something too high, then you simply crowd out the regulated market. We’re confident we’ll find the right balance.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Health & Medicine • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Taxes • Politics in General • State Government

Culture change in financial services will not be achieved by "light touch" or "heavy touch" regulation, Archbishop Justin said at a Westminster discussion organised by the Bible Society.

Instead the banking sector must adopt "an aim of service to society and not mere rent-seeking, and a culture of virtue based in the realities of daily life and not a fantasy nirvana," he said.

Describing what this change of culture might look like, the Archbishop said it would require "a ruthless honesty and a deep willingness to be made very uncomfortable indeed through listening to things one does not want to hear".

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • --Justin Welby • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Credit Markets • Currency Markets • Euro • European Central Bank • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • Stock Market • The Banking System/Sector • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • Politics in General • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Imagine a world with machines that wash, press and dress you on the way to work and vacations via hologram visits to exotic beaches. In his new book, The New Digital Age, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt does just that — but it's no gee-whiz Jetsons fantasy.

Schmidt partners up with Jared Cohen, a foreign policy counterterrorist specialist poached from the State Department now working for Google Ideas. Together they forecast a raft of new innovations and corresponding threats that will arise for dictatorships, techno revolutionaries, terrorists and you.

Cohen and Schmidt chatted with NPR's Audie Cornish about negotiating the shifting balance between privacy and security in a rapidly changing technological landscape.

Read or listen to it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Books • Law & Legal Issues • Psychology • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

In March, 7.6 million Americans who want more hours were stuck in part-time jobs, about the same as a year earlier and three million more than there were when the recession began at the end of 2007.

These almost invisible underemployed workers do not count toward the standard jobless rate of 7.6 percent. A broader measure, which includes the involuntary part-timers as well as people who want to work but have stopped looking, stands at 13.8 percent.

“There’s nothing inherently wrong with people taking part-time jobs if they want them,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial in Chicago. “The problem is that people are accepting part-time pay because they have no other choice.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • History • Marriage & Family • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007--

My read of the evidence is that the Affordable Care Act will have a much tougher first year than was initially anticipated but it won’t be the catastrophe that Republicans hope. The exceptions will be a handful of states where Republican governors have purposefully made it a catastrophe, but that’s likely to make the Republican governors look bad, particularly if the law is working smoothly in states that have tried to make it a success.

Conservative commentary on the law, with its continuous predictions of explosive premium hikes (and continuous omissions of the offsetting subsidies) and gleeful celebration anytime anything looks to be going wrong, is risking the mistake that the Obama administration made early on with the sequester. When the predictions of pain and chaos didn’t instantly come true, the whole narrative shifted in an instant.

Republicans have done a very good job prepping the country for the pain of Obamacare. They’ve not done a good job prepping the country for the people who will be helped by Obamacare.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • The U.S. Government • Medicare • Politics in General • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

At this time of year, when most Americans have just filed their returns, exasperation with the income tax system reaches a peak. Hardly anyone denies it's a complex mess. In 2010, calculating their taxes cost Americans $168 billion, estimates the Taxpayer Advocate Service of the Internal Revenue Service. That's about 15 percent of taxes collected — a heavy overhead. Almost 60 percent of taxpayers pay accountants or other tax preparers. Public esteem for the tax system is low; in a 2011 Pew poll, 55 percent judged it unfair. Disaffection was fairly even politically: 47 percent among Republicans, 58 percent among Democrats and 56 percent among independents.

So “tax reform” ought to be a cinch, right? Well, no.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • Taxes • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The U.S. Government • The National Deficit • Politics in General • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

The bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts, which includes Worcester and surrounding communities, said today that he is against the proposal to locate at $200 million slots parlor on the former Wyman-Gordon Co. parcel in Green Island.

"For those who have little, the illusory chance that they can gain much, even in a game stacked against them, is tempting and ultimately destructive," said Bishop Douglas J. Fisher. "Our churches stand with the economically poor of our society, and that always means taking a stand against gambling establishments in our cities."

Bishop Fisher is the latest prominent church leader to take a stand against the proposal.


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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Gambling • Poverty • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Personal Finance • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Commodity prices have been falling since September, culminating in a rout over the past two weeks. That is a classic warning for the global economy.

It is becoming ever clearer that the roaring boom in global equities since last summer has priced in an economic recovery that does not in fact exist. The International Monetary Fund has had to nurse down its global growth forecasts yet again. We are still stuck in an old-fashioned trade depression, with pervasive over-capacity in manufacturing plant and a record global savings rate of 25pc of GDP.

German car sales fell 17pc in March. That should puncture the last illusions that Germany is about to pull Europe out of a self-inflicted slump.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • Stock Market • The U.S. Government • Federal Reserve • * International News & Commentary • Asia • Japan

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, one of the health reform law's chief authors, says he’s worried about a “huge train wreck coming down” if the Obama administration doesn’t improve its public outreach about the legislation.

Baucus, a Montana Democrat who is up for reelection in 2014, sharply criticized the administration’s outreach efforts in a budget hearing on Wednesday. He told Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that people and businesses “have no idea what to do, what to expect” from the law.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Personal Finance • The U.S. Government • Medicare • Politics in General • Senate • State Government • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

We have no way of knowing how this all ends. One problem is that the smartest solution—having Germany and perhaps a handful of other northern countries leave the euro for a new currency (the Deutche Mark 2.0, or a “neuro” for northern Europe)—would make life easier in the south. The south based euro would fall in value, but since debts and contracts are denominated in that currency, the adjustment would be the same as in a normal devaluation. This course would likely lead quickly to a new burst of growth in the south, though inflation and other problems would take a toll over time.

But the euro’s break up day would cause a lot of problems for Germany and its northern friends....

So we’re in an interesting situation. The crisis is crippling the south, but the south has no power to resolve the crisis. The crisis isn’t comfortable for the north but still looks less painful than the solution. So the north, which has the ability to resolve the crisis, doesn’t have the will to do it and the south, which has the will, lacks the ability.

Read it all (and please note that the Financial Times article by Wolfgang Münchau which is mentioned, entitled "The riddle of Europe’s single currency with many values," is indeed a must read as Mr. Read says).

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Currency Markets • Euro • European Central Bank • The Banking System/Sector • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Europe • --European Sovereign Debt Crisis of 2010

There is a great graphic here and some comment there.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Health & Medicine • Middle Age • Teens / Youth • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Personal Finance • Taxes • The U.S. Government • Budget • Medicare • Social Security • The National Deficit • Politics in General • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

The powerful blasts at the Boston Marathon finish line Monday underscore why the Federal Bureau of Investigation has spent years refining its "tripwire'' system for catching would-be bomb makers before they can build a deadly device.

For years, federal agents have asked businesses that sell materials useful in making bombs to alert authorities to any suspicious orders. The types of tripwires in place have shifted over the years. In the 1990s, law enforcement worried mostly about fertilizer-based bombs after such devices were used in the Oklahoma City attacks of April 1995. In the past decade, chemical-based bombs have come into focus as authorities adapt to the changing threat.

"The tripwires have certainly been successful in the past,'' said Don Borelli, a former counterterrorism official at the FBI who now works for Soufan Group.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Police/Fire • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • The U.S. Government • Terrorism

At the end of 2012, buyers bought homes that were three times their annual income, up from 2.6 times before the housing bubble.

The disparity is stark in high-priced areas such as San Jose, where home buyers are purchasing homes for seven times their yearly salary. Meanwhile, in Detroit, the purchase price is typically just 1.5 times a buyer’s salary.

Homes appear more affordable because low mortgage rates are painting a distorted picture of the market, said Stan Humphries, chief economist at Zillow.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

France's experiment with the Tobin Tax has proved a spectacular flop. Its finance ministry admits that the scattershot levy on financial transactions has raised just a third of the money expected since August.

Total takings will be a paltry €800m in 2013, but that overlooks the much greater damage inflicted on French finance, industry and the government's own tax base. "France is shooting itself in the foot," said Paul-Henri de La Porte du Theil, head of French finance industry AFG.

Jean-Yves Hocher from Crédit Agricole said it would cost his company €17bn. One French banker told Les Echos that the tax was "a weapon of mass destruction that is going to ruin our financial sector".

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Stock Market • Taxes • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • England / UK • Europe • France

Rick Benisasia, who’s in the after-death business, is looking to build an empire.

Mr. Benisasia runs a South Asian-focused funeral home on Derry Road in Malton and wants to open a crematorium beside it. The land, money and demand is there, he says.

For more than three years, he’s waited for his rezoning application to be approved by the City of Mississauga. But a new Mississauga bylaw passed in March says new crematoriums must be a minimum of 300 metres from residential properties, due to concerns over the health effects from their emissions.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • * International News & Commentary • Canada

To hear Grier Allen tell it, BoomTown’s first office in the old Faber House on East Bay Street had rats.

Now several years on, the CEO’s workspace has a cinder block and glass brick wall and was once the seafood section of the former Jaber’s Market on Rutledge Avenue.

Moving a little over a mile in seven years, from live rodents to fish souls, might not scream success.

But Allen likes where he and his real estate software firm are. That’s because BoomTown has been covering ground in other ways. You might even say business is booming.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Housing/Real Estate Market • * South Carolina

Yummy Mummy, a little boutique on New York's Upper East Side, has suddenly become a health care provider/online superstore. The company has been hiring like crazy, and just opened an online call center and a warehouse in Illinois. Yummy Mummy even hired somebody to talk to customers' health insurance companies.

And new moms now seem more likely to splurge on fancy new breast pumps. Caroline Shany, a Yummy Mummy customer, spent her own money to buy a breast pump for her first baby. She may buy another one now because insurance will pick up the tab.

"Why not?" she says.

Read or much better listen to it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Philosophy • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • Politics in General

Erica Brown, a prominent rabbi in Washington, recently wrote an article complaining about a "customer service" problem in the Jewish community. "We walk into synagogues and schools . . . and no one says hello. Few know our names (maybe for months or years). A friend in an interfaith marriage says that when he takes his wife to shul, no one talks to them. When he goes to his wife's church, everyone comes over to greet them."

David Polonsky, director of communications at Adas, tells me that when he moved to Washington a few years ago and called around to find out about high-holiday services, he was told they would cost him hundreds of dollars. "I'm a young person calling them and asking them for a Jewish experience," he recalls, yet no one asked for his name, let alone invited him to the synagogue. Shabbat-Hopping at least makes people feel welcome.

The conservative Adas Israel, the reform Washington Hebrew Congregation, and the nondenominational Sixth & I Historic Synagogue have all made a big deal of welcoming young professionals—even when there is no Shabbat-Hopping event.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Psychology • Religion & Culture • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

American employers hired at the slowest pace in nine months in March, a sign that Washington's austerity drive could be stealing momentum from the economy.

The economy added just 88,000 jobs last month and the jobless rate ticked a tenth of a point lower to 7.6 percent largely due to people dropping out of the work force, Labor Department data showed on Friday.

Analysts polled by Reuters had expected a gain of 200,000.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The U.S. Government

MarketWatch: Since Nixon’s “abomination” as you call it, we have had some periods where government spending to GDP actually went down, like during the Clinton era. Doesn’t that show it’s just the choices made by Congress rather than the Fed to blame [for the problem of rising national debt as a % of GDP]?

Stockman: There is the issue that Congress ultimately is the fiscal authority. But my argument is, when the Fed becomes a massive buyer of bonds and debt and artificially suppresses interest rate below market-clearing levels, it’s a terrible signal to the Congress that debt is cheap, that running deficits is a viable strategy. So therefore they are induced to kick the can, to let it drift and avoid hard choices. Who wants to tell the public you are going to take your broccoli of higher taxes and lower benefits and spending if you can issue debt on a three-year basis for 40 basis points. That’s free. I was in Congress, they don’t do decimal math, OK? And they think the money is free, it’s a bad problem philosophically, we shouldn’t be doing this for the great long run, but it’s no harm today.

Then they have professors like Krugman who give them the disingenuous advice that the bond vigilantes don’t care. The market is saying, “fine with us, we don’t care, keep piling the debt on, we love it.” That is so much baloney. The reason the interest rate on the 10-year bond 10_YEAR -0.33% today is 1.8% or whatever it happened to settle today, is the market knows the Fed is buying half of the debt and is front running the Fed. And it is renting the bond on repo, 98 cents on the dollar, based on overnight money that’s free thanks to Bubbles Ben as well.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Credit Markets • Currency Markets • The U.S. Government • Federal Reserve • The National Deficit • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

The vast majority of U.S. businesses expanded at a slower pace, and private-sector firms hired less, adding to earlier warnings the economy is losing momentum.

The Institute for Supply Management said Wednesday its nonmanufacturing index fell to a seven-month low of 54.4 in March from 56 in February, indicating activity cooled off. Analysts expected it to remain steady. The report saw sharp decelerations in jobs, orders and exports.

ISM's factory gauge out Monday also showed slowing growth .

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Personal Finance • The U.S. Government

Thanks largely to the U.S. Federal Reserve, Jeffrey Nelson was able to put up a shotgun as down payment on a car.

Money was tight last year for the school-bus driver and neighborhood constable in Jasper, Alabama, a beaten-down town of 14,000 people. One car had already been repossessed. Medical bills were piling up.

And still, though Nelson's credit history was an unhappy one, local car dealer Maloy Chrysler Dodge Jeep had no problem arranging a $10,294 loan from Wall Street-backed subprime lender Exeter Finance Corp so Nelson and his wife could buy a charcoal gray 2007 Suzuki Grand Vitara.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Personal Finance • The U.S. Government • Federal Reserve

The Obama administration is engaged in a broad push to make more home loans available to people with weaker credit, an effort that officials say will help power the economic recovery but that skeptics say could open the door to the risky lending that caused the housing crash in the first place.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Housing/Real Estate Market • Personal Finance • The Banking System/Sector • The U.S. Government • Politics in General • Office of the President • President Barack Obama

Unable to meet tight deadlines in the new health care law, the Obama administration is delaying parts of a program intended to provide affordable health insurance to small businesses and their employees — a major selling point for the health care legislation.

The law calls for a new insurance marketplace specifically for small businesses, starting next year. But in most states, employers will not be able to get what Congress intended: the option to provide workers with a choice of health plans. They will instead be limited to a single plan.

This choice option, already available to many big businesses, was supposed to become available to small employers in January. But administration officials said they would delay it to 2015 in the 33 states where the federal government will be running insurance markets known as exchanges. And they will delay the requirement for other states as well.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Politics in General

Richard Bejtlich was a cyber-specialist for the U.S. Air Force in the 1990s, a time when the U.S. military was going on the offense in the cyberwar. He remembers the day he realized how important a software vulnerability can be to a cyberweapons designer.

"Myself and a couple other guys, we found a zero day vulnerability in Cisco routing equipment," Bejtlich recalls. "And we looked at it, and we said, 'Did we really find this? Can we really get into these Cisco routers?'"

They could, and so Bejtlich and his colleagues reported it to Cisco. They thanked him and said they'd fix it. Days later, he was talking to some friends who worked on the offensive side of the unit, and they had quite a different reaction to them reporting the bug to Cisco.

"They said, 'You did what? Why didn't you tell us? We could have used this to get into all these various hard targets,'" he says.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • The U.S. Government • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

China surpassed the U.S. to become the world’s biggest trading nation last year as measured by the sum of exports and imports of goods, official figures from both countries show.

U.S. exports and imports of goods last year totaled $3.82 trillion, the U.S. Commerce Department said last week. China’s customs administration reported last month that the country’s trade in goods in 2012 amounted to $3.87 trillion.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • History • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

1 Kings 18:21 describes a crucial moment of decision. It's the final showdown between the God of Israel and a false god called Baal. Elijah calls God's people to choose once and for all between the living God who delivered them, and this false god who has captured their affections: "'How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.' But the people said nothing."

They seem unable, or unwilling, to make a choice. They want to hedge their bets, sit on the fence, and keep their options open. How different are we Christians in the 21st century? Would you prefer to make an ironclad, no-turning-back choice, or one you could back out of if need be? Do you ever find that you're afraid to commit? Do you reply to party invitations with a "maybe" rather than a "yes" or "no"? Do you like to keep your smartphone switched on at all times, even in meetings, so that you are never fully present at any given moment? Will you focus on the person you're talking to after a church service, or will you look over her shoulder for a better conversation partner?

If so, you may be worshiping the god of open options.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Media • Movies & Television • Psychology • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Theology: Scripture

This one was my favorite--KSH..

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Religion & Culture • Sports • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life

Why is Facebook such a repeatedly bad actor in its relationship to its users, constantly testing and probing for ways to quietly or secretly breach the privacy constraints that most of its users expect and demand, strategems to invade their carefully maintained social networks? Because it has to. That’s Facebook’s version of the Red Queen’s race, its bargain with investment capital. Facebook will keep coming back and back again with various schemes and interface trickery because if it stops, it will be the LiveJournal or BBS of 2020, a trivia answer and nostalgic memory.

That is not the inevitable fate of all social media. It is a distinctive consequence of the intersection of massive slops of surplus investment capital looking desperately for somewhere to come to rest; the character of Facebook’s niche in the ecology of social media; and the path-dependent evolution of Facebook’s interface.

Analysts and observers who are content with cliches characterize Facebook as sitting on a treasure trove of potentially valuable data about its users, which is true enough. The cliched view is that what’s valuable about that data is names associated with locations associated with jobs associated with social networks, in a very granular way. That’s not it.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life

[Yesterday].. Netflix...release[d] a drama expressly designed to be consumed in one sitting: “House of Cards,” a political thriller starring Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright. Rather than introducing one episode a week, as distributors have done since the days of black-and-white TVs, all 13 episodes will be streamed at the same time. “Our goal is to shut down a portion of America for a whole day,” the producer Beau Willimon said with a laugh.

“House of Cards,” which is the first show made specifically for Netflix, dispenses with some of the traditions that are so common on network TV, like flashbacks. There is less reason to remind viewers what happened in previous episodes, the producers say, because so many viewers will have just seen it. And if they don’t remember, Google is just a click away. The show “assumes you know what’s happening all the time, whereas television has to assume that a big chunk of the audience is always just tuning in,” said Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s chief content officer.

The producer Glen Mazzara took a similar approach to AMC’s “The Walking Dead” this year. In the second half of the season, which will start in mid-February after a two-month break, “we decided to pick up the action right away — to just jump right in,” Mr. Mazzara said. Fans of the show, he said, have little tolerance for recaps, since many of them will have just watched a marathon of the first half to prepare for the second.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Movies & Television • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life

My question for you, kind GetReligion readers, is this: Did the newspaper reports bury the lede? Rather than sales figures and charity donations, is the bigger story here that two humans got together and found common ground? Or am I naive to expect that such dialogue might make headlines?

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Dieting/Food/Nutrition • Marriage & Family • Media • Religion & Culture • Sexuality • --Civil Unions & Partnerships • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • * Religion News & Commentary • Sexuality Debate (Other denominations and faiths)

The finances of the US’s multi-employer pension schemes have deteriorated so quickly over the past year that the body that insures them will almost certainly run out of cash in 20 years, according to a new report.

The chances of the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation – the publicly created but privately funded body that insures the nation’s occupational pension schemes – going bust went from 1 in 3 at the end of 2011 to more than 9 in 10 by the end of 2012, a report prepared for the PBGC and released on Tuesday said.

Read it all (may require subscription).

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • Pensions • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

The U.S. economy shrank for the first time in more than three years in the fourth quarter, underscoring the halting nature of the recovery. But the strength of consumer spending and business investment suggested that the economy will grow, albeit slowly, this year.

Gross domestic product—the broadest measure of goods and services churned out by the economy—fell at a 0.1% annual rate in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to the government's initial estimate out Wednesday.

The details weren't as discouraging as the headline. The drop, a surprise, was driven by a sharp fall in government spending and by businesses putting fewer goods on warehouse shelves, as well as by a decline in exports. The mainstays of the domestic private economy—housing, consumer spending and business investment in equipment and software—were stronger.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • The U.S. Government • Budget • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

A longtime Nashville daycare operation is being evicted, leaving dozens of families in the lurch, after it found itself caught in the middle of a brutal legal battle over the role of sexuality in the Episcopal Church.

The fight over sexuality and the Bible seemed like a legal disagreement between the Diocese of Tennessee and St. Andrew's Parish, but the innocent victim in all this is the daycare that sits on church property in Green Hills.

Cooperative Child Care has had a successful model - no scandals, no issues and 30 years of quality service - but now it has been given six months to get out.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: Tennessee • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Stewardship • * Culture-Watch • Children • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending

In 2012, the average cost of a movie ticket in the United States was $7.92.

This doesn't include all of the (expensive) extras that you usually get roped into buying when you hit the theater, such as popcorn, pop and chocolate bars. We are just talking about the actual ticket.

In 1910, the average cost of a movie ticket was $0.07. Adjusted for inflation, a movie ticket in 1910 would work out to about $1.71 in 2013 dollars.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Movies & Television • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Currency Markets

Single and retired, with no family nearby, 64-year-old Lorna Grenadier knows she'll need a better support system if she wants to grow old in her apartment in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington, D.C., where she has lived for 40 years. So she's added community organizing to her list of interests and is helping create a service network she hopes will enable her and others like her to remain in their own homes as they age.

For the past 18 months, Grenadier has been working with other volunteers to research and launch the Foggy Bottom West End Village network. The group aims to provide paying members ($600 a year for singles; $900 for households) a range of services, including transportation and connections to vetted local businesses, as well as serve as a contact point for emergencies. Some of the annual fee will also cover social activities for members.

"It’s also about providing peace of mind," says Grenadier -- a sort of insurance policy should someone need help. In a survey of potential members in the her area, 75 percent said they were interested in the concept, though just 50 percent said they would need the services today.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Housing/Real Estate Market • Personal Finance

Watch it all and you can find out more at their website there..

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Stewardship • * Culture-Watch • Children • Dieting/Food/Nutrition • Marriage & Family • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Each year, 2.5 million Americans die. For the majority, about 70 percent, deaths happen in a hospital, nursing home or long-term care facility. What happens afterwards is nearly always the same, with few exceptions for religious traditions: A doctor or nurse will sign a death certificate and the body will be whisked to the funeral home, where it's washed, embalmed, dressed, and prepared for a viewing and burial. A family usually sees the dead only a few times: when they die, if there's an open-casket viewing and in the rare case when a casket is opened during burial.

But a small and growing group of Americans are returning to a more hands-on, no-frills experience of death. In the world of "do it yourself" funerals, freezer packs are used in lieu of embalming, unvarnished wooden boxes replace ornate caskets, viewings are in living rooms and, in some cases, burials happen in backyards.

Nobody keeps track of the number of home funerals and advocacy groups, but home funeral organizations have won battles in recent years in states such as Minnesota and Utah that have attempted to ban the practice. Most states have nearly eliminated any requirements that professionals play a role in funerals. It's now legal in all but eight states to care for one's own after death. And the growth of community-based, nonprofit home funeral groups and burial grounds that are friendly to the cause point to an increasing demand.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Psychology • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Americans seem to be falling in love with stocks again.

Millions of people all but abandoned the market after the 2008 financial crisis, but now individual investors are pouring more money than they have in years into stock mutual funds. The flood, prompted by fading economic threats and better news on housing and jobs, has helped propel the broad market to within striking distance of its highest nominal level ever.

“You’ve got a real sea change in investor outlook,” said Andrew Wilkinson, the chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak Associates.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Stock Market

Governments continue to ask Google for more data about its users, with more than two-thirds of requests in the U.S. made through a subpoena, which usually doesn't require asking a judge for a search warrant.

User data requests of all kinds have increased by more than 70 percent since 2009, Google said in its biannual "transparency report" that tallies government requests for users' data. For the six months from July through December 2012, the company said it has received about 21,389 information requests for some 33,634 users -- up slightly from 20,938 requests for 34,615 users during the first half of the year.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • The U.S. Government • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Every year in America, 2.5 million people die. In 2011, the last year for which numbers are available, 42 percent were cremated, according to the funeral directors association. That's double the rate of just 15 years ago. In some states, largely in the West, the cremation rate tops 70 percent. In Washington, it's 72 percent; in Nevada, almost 74 percent. (The lowest rate of cremation... is Mississippi's, at 15.7 percent.)

So why the big jump in cremations? There are lots of reasons. One is the softening of the Catholic church's views of the practice. For centuries - until 1963, in fact - the church outlawed it. The church's laws still express a preference for burial. But the outright ban is a thing of the past and now, under some circumstances, bishops can permit a funeral mass with cremated remains present.

Another reason for the rise in cremations is the decline in nuclear families. As more and more Americans live far from hometowns and parents, and as family burial plots have waned in popularity and accessibility, millions have turned to cremation as a practical and cost-effective way to care for a loved one's remains.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Secularism • * Theology • Eschatology • Pastoral Theology

While planning her dream wedding, Celeste Aslanyants fell in love with a picturesque manor that serves as a popular ceremony and reception site in Texas. But she soon learned the spot wouldn't work for her fiancé's Armenian family, who had made requests she wanted to honor. They hoped a priest would officiate, and that could only happen in a church. They wanted Armenian food and drink, but there were catering restrictions. And the guest list had quickly exceeded the location's capacity.

The solution? Have two weddings. Ms. Aslanyants and her husband, Arsen, got married at a traditional Armenian ceremony and reception in September 2011 and then, two weeks later, they had an American wedding at the manor.

"I didn't have to please everyone at once," says Ms. Aslanyants, 28, who lives with her husband north of Dallas....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Marriage & Family • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Personal Finance

A large and growing share of American workers are tapping their retirement savings accounts for non-retirement needs, raising broad questions about the effectiveness of one of the most important savings vehicles for old age.

More than one in four American workers with 401(k) and other retirement savings accounts use them to pay current expenses, new data show. The withdrawals, cash-outs and loans drain nearly a quarter of the $293 billion that workers and employers deposit into the accounts each year, undermining already shaky retirement security for millions of Americans.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Stewardship • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The U.S. Government • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

On Tuesday, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg will sit in judgment on a series of cases that have far-reaching implications for religious freedom in this country. Two of the cases involve devout women who were banned from wearing the most important symbol of the Christian faith – the cross.

Shirley Chaplin, an experienced nurse, had worn her confirmation cross on a small chain around her neck, without incident, throughout nearly 30 years of frontline nursing. Then, one day, she was told to remove it.

In the case of British Airways check-in clerk Nadia Eweida, a national campaign was mounted when BA banned her from wearing her cross. But the airline refused to compensate her for months of being suspended without pay and subsequent tribunals have disputed her claims of discrimination.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • Europe

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life

Vicki Grantham of the Cremation Society of Illinois slid open a gray metal door. “This is where everything starts,” she said.

Visitors peered into a huge room chilled to 35 degrees and fitted with stacks of long metal shelves on each side.

Homewood, Ill., Mayor Richard Hofeld backed away a few steps. He supports cremation and intends at some point to be a consumer. Still, he found the sight of the cooler where bodies are kept slightly discomfiting. “We know it’s going to happen, but we don’t want to think about it.”

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life

America has too many malls.

I’ve recently blogged that many traditional brick-and-mortar retailers are being threatened with "economic destruction" by their advantaged online competition. In an interview with Bloomberg TV, anchorwoman Nicole Lapin asked about the implications of this dynamic on retail real estate. I said I hadn’t studied it, but I thought the ramifications would be very big and very negative (I believe the phrase "apocalyptic" was used).

I’ve since had the opportunity to spend some time looking at this issue, and I believe we’re seeing clear signs that the e-commerce revolution is seriously impacting commercial real estate. Online retailers are relentlessly gaining share in many retail categories, and offline players are fighting for progressively smaller pieces of the retail pie. A number of physical retailers have already succumbed to online competition including Circuit City, Borders, CompUSA, Tower Records and Blockbuster.....

Read it all.

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Personal Finance • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Even if you're not going to the Consumer Electronics Show, running Tuesday through Friday in Las Vegas, you can still test drive one of the world's newest gadgets this week.

With the right kind of smartphone you can find what's hot at certain hotels and even find out when a big jackpot last hit on a particular slot machine.

The new product, called TecTile, will be unveiled Tuesday (today) at various Caesars Entertainment resorts on and near the Strip. The manufacturer, Samsung Mobile, is installing 4,500 programmable stickers throughout the various properties as a way to make information easier to access.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life

Particularly vulnerable to the high rates are small businesses and people who do not have employer-provided insurance and must buy it on their own.

In California, Aetna is proposing rate increases of as much as 22 percent, Anthem Blue Cross 26 percent and Blue Shield of California 20 percent for some of those policy holders, according to the insurers’ filings with the state for 2013. These rate requests are all the more striking after a 39 percent rise sought by Anthem Blue Cross in 2010 helped give impetus to the law, known as the Affordable Care Act, which was passed the same year and will not be fully in effect until 2014.

In other states, like Florida and Ohio, insurers have been able to raise rates by at least 20 percent for some policy holders. The rate increases can amount to several hundred dollars a month.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Personal Finance • The U.S. Government

The goal of your local church’s marketing effort is to increase the number of inbound leads and to drive conversions.... This is no different than the goal of commercial marketing, except we’re dealing in spiritual rather than tangible goods. Understanding how to increase inbound leads (people who express an interest in your church) and drive conversions (people who actually join your church) is not hard, but it does take leadership, planning, creativity and sustained effort. In other words, it takes a little work.

Most churches are already engaged in some forms of marketing. Any of the basic functions of parish life are marketing processes, including outreach, hospitality, ushering, preaching, maintaining the parish’s website and Facebook page, tweeting, and promoting the Sunday worship schedule. The challenge is to move from efforts focused on maintenance to efforts focused on growth.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • * Theology

The budget deal passed by the U.S. Senate [and House]... would raise taxes on 77.1 percent of U.S. households, mostly because of the expiration of a payroll tax cut, according to preliminary estimates from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center in Washington.

More than 80 percent of households with incomes between $50,000 and $200,000 would pay higher taxes. Among the households facing higher taxes, the average increase would be $1,635, the policy center said. A 2 percent payroll tax cut, enacted during the economic slowdown, is being allowed to expire as of [December 31]

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Personal Finance • Taxes • The U.S. Government • Budget • Medicare • Social Security • The National Deficit • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate

Congress approved a plan to end Washington’s long drama over the “fiscal cliff” late Tuesday after House Republicans surrendered to President Obama’s demand to let taxes rise on the nation’s richest households.

The House voted 257 to 167 to send the measure to Obama for his signature; the vote came less than 24 hours after the Senate overwhelmingly approved the legislation.

Read it all.

Update: Here are the new numbers for 2013 in Congress--Democrats control of the Senate by 55 to 45 (change of 2) and Republicans control of the House of Representatives by 234-201 (change of 8)

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Personal Finance • Taxes • The U.S. Government • Budget • Medicare • Social Security • The National Deficit • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

For many, Christmas is a couple of weeks of massive over-consumption. Two facts say it all: four million Brussels sprouts are purchased in the week before Christmas, and more than 8,000 tons of wrapping paper are used at Christmas, which the Government estimates is enough to wrap the whole island of Guernsey!

--(The Rt. Rev.) David Gillett, Bishop of Bolton, a number of years ago (astute blog readers may know that he stepped down in 2008 to care for his wife).

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • * Christian Life / Church Life • Church Year / Liturgical Seasons • Christmas • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

Perhaps we should not be so pessimistic. After all, history builds nodal points into the affairs of humankind which offer the prospect of change. Within a few short months, we will have a new governor of the Bank of England, a new director-general of the BBC, a new Archbishop of Canterbury. Maybe between them they can usher in simultaneous economic, cultural and spiritual renewal.

"Unhappy is the land that needs a hero," Brecht had his Galileo idealistically say. But this disconsolate country could do with more than one. We should not have unrealistic hopes. But Mark Carney, the new man at the helm of monetary policy and financial regulation, has a good track record as head of Canada's admittedly smaller central bank. Tony Hall comes to the BBC with not just a solid journalistic reputation but having now sorted out the financial, artistic and political mess at the Royal Opera House. And Justin Welby, a former oil executive turned priest, will arrive as the new Cantuar with useful experience of managing complex processes and organisations which should come in handy in a bitterly divided church which has lost much moral authority in speaking to the rest of society.

The challenges they each face are formidable....

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

Senate leaders are racing against the clock to reach a "fiscal cliff" deal the House and Senate can approve on New Year's Eve.

Leaders in the upper chamber narrowed their differences Sunday as Republicans agreed to drop a demand to curb cost-of-living increases to entitlement benefits, while Democrats showed flexibility on taxes.

Yet after months of talks on ways to avoid the fiscal cliff of tax hikes and spending cuts at the end of 2012, House and Senate lawmakers find themselves approaching the new year without a bill to present to their members.
Significant differences remain over two key parts of a deal — the automatic spending cuts known as the sequester and the estate tax.

Read it all.

Update: a BBC article is there.

I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Taxes • The U.S. Government • Budget • Medicare • Social Security • The National Deficit • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate

Understanding the developing attitude of the central banks, and the effects of their actions, obviously remains central for investors in all financial assets. The “big picture” for global financial assets, involving very low government bond yields and a gradual shift of risk appetite into credit and equities, is unlikely to change until one of two events takes place.

The first would be a decision by the central bankers themselves that the era of unlimited quantitative easing must end, either because of the risk of inflation and asset price bubbles, or because of concerns about fiscal dominance over the monetary authorities. The second would be a realisation by the markets that further action by the central bankers is irrelevant because they have run out of effective ammunition. Either of these events would probably remove the central prop from the equity bull market which began in March, 2009, but neither seems very likely in 2013.

There is certainly no sign that the central bankers themselves will call a halt to the extension of their balance sheets.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Credit Markets • Currency Markets • Euro • European Central Bank • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The U.S. Government • Federal Reserve • The United States Currency (Dollar etc) • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China • Japan • Europe • --European Sovereign Debt Crisis of 2010

Whether or not there is a deal, the weeks since the election have produced a stark display of political gridlock. "The government is not working," said Steve Bell, senior director of the Bipartisan Policy Center, who was a senior budget adviser to Senate Republicans for many years. "There is no doubt that the policy-making apparatus in this town has collapsed."

Following the tea-party wave in the 2010 election, the 112th Congress looks set to be the least productive in recent history. By the end of November, the House had passed 146 bills over the previous two years, by far the smallest number for any Congress since 1948. The Senate passed fewer bills in 2012 than in any year since at least 1992.

Rather than smoothing over differences, the November election appears to have hardened them. "We came out of the election with both sides thinking they won and had an equal mandate," said Ross Baker, a professor at Rutgers University who is now interviewing lawmakers on Capitol Hill for a book on bipartisanship. "One problem is we don't have a common narrative to guide us."

Read it all.

I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Taxes • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The U.S. Government • Budget • Medicare • Social Security • The National Deficit • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

We don’t need to abandon wholesale the tinsel and bells and mistletoe like Frank, but we do need to be particularly vigilant to keep ourselves, and those we love, from being occupied with everything that has become Christmas, save Jesus.

For the Christian, the best answer to the Christmas mess isn’t Festivus — entertaining as the idea of “playful consumer resistance” made for a beloved sitcom. Our best response is clarity and explicitness about the true miracle of Christmas, that God himself, in the person of Jesus, took a true human body and a reasonable human soul (as the ancient creed puts it) that, fully God and fully man, he might bring us humans from our mess to himself.

In the midst of layer after layer of holiday common graces that quickly become distraction after distraction of the celebration’s true essence, it is a beautiful thing, when for a memorable, unhurried moment, everything stops and Linus reads from chapter two of the Gospel of Luke.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church Year / Liturgical Seasons • Advent • Christmas • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Theology • Christology

...there is one thing often said by defenders of the American gun laws that ought to make us think about wider questions. ‘It’s not guns that kill, it’s people.’ Well, yes, in a sense. But it makes a difference to people what weapons are at hand for them to use – and, even more, what happens to people in a climate where fear is rampant and the default response to frightening or unsettling situations or personal tensions is violence and the threat of violence. If all you have is a hammer, it’s sometimes said, everything looks like a nail. If all you have is a gun, everything looks like a target.

People use guns. But in a sense guns use people, too. When we have the technology for violence easily to hand, our choices are skewed and we are more vulnerable to being manipulated into violent action.

Perhaps that’s why, in a passage often heard in church around this time of year, the Bible imagines a world where swords are beaten into ploughshares.

Read or listen to it all.

I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • --Rowan Williams • * Culture-Watch • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Brian Rants never thought his contribution to the world would be a $15 lamp. But for schoolchildren in Swaziland and earthquake survivors in Haiti, these solar lamps have made all the difference. Rants's Denver-based company—Nokero, short for "no kerosene"—have allowed African students to read at night and increased safety for Haitian families living in tent cities. As vice president of marketing, Rants's job is to get these lamps into the hands of millions of families in the developing world.

Since its founding in 2010, Nokero has sold over half a million solar lights and chargers in 120 countries, but Rants believes their work has just begun. With over a billion people worldwide still using kerosene as their primary fuel source, the need is vast. In a comprehensive study on the industry, The Economist lauded solar lights as the next big innovation for the world's poor, noting that solar lighting is "falling in price, improving in quality and benefiting from new business models that make it more accessible and affordable to those at the bottom of the pyramid. And its spread is sustainable because it is being driven by market forces, not charity."

Nokero's lamps replace the need for kerosene lighting and eliminate the sweeping problems that accompany its use.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Poverty • Religion & Culture • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life

If you haven’t finished your holiday shopping yet, don’t bother.

Skip the mall and the neighborhood store, resist the urge to shop online and, by all means, don’t buy anything you don’t truly need.

So says Kalle Lasn, 70, maestro of the proudly radical magazine Adbusters, published in Vancouver, British Columbia. Mr. Lasn takes gleeful pleasure in lobbing provocations at global corporations — and his latest salvo is “Buy Nothing Christmas.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • Media • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Energy, Natural Resources • * International News & Commentary • Canada • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Last year, there was a clear winner among books for the holiday gift of choice: “Steve Jobs,” by Walter Isaacson. This year, despite a lineup of offerings from literary heavyweights, many of whom have commanded strong sales in the past, there has not been a breakout hit for the holiday season, booksellers say.

Books like Bob Woodward’s “Price of Politics,” Tom Wolfe’s “Back to Blood” and Salman Rushdie’s “Joseph Anton” have each sold well under 100,000 copies by the end of last week according to Nielsen Bookscan. (In contrast, the Jobs biography sold 379,000 copies in the first week after its release in October 2011.)

While Bookscan does not include e-books and covers only roughly 75 percent of retail outlets, this year’s figures provide a snapshot of the fragmented holiday sales picture as a whole: independent bookstores report that a range of books are moving nicely, but there are mixed numbers from Barnes & Noble, the nation’s largest book chain, and solid but not stellar growth in digital sales....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending

The shape of a deal to avert the US fiscal cliff is at last emerging, with at least $1tn in new taxes, up to $1tn in fresh spending cuts and an increase in America’s debt ceiling, as negotiators scramble to reach an agreement before the end-of-the-year deadline.

Barack Obama, US president, and John Boehner, Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, held their third face-to-face meeting in eight days at the White House amid signs of growing momentum in the talks. If they strike a deal in the coming days, and are able to pass it through Congress, it would remove a huge cloud of uncertainty hanging over the global economy.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Taxes • The U.S. Government • Medicare • Social Security • The National Deficit • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate

A Muslim taxicab driver is suing the city of St. Louis, the Metropolitan Taxicab Commission and a private security company, saying he has been harassed and arrested because he insists on wearing religious garb.

Raja Awais Naeem, who works for Harris Cab and manages a shuttle service called A-1 Shuttle, says his religious beliefs require him to wear modest, loose-fitting clothing and a hat called a kufi. But that garb has run afoul of the taxicab commission’s dress code for cabbies, Naeem claims in the suit filed Thursday morning in St. Louis Circuit Court.

Naeem, originally from Pakistan but now a U.S. citizen living in St. Louis County, said he has been told he must adhere to the commission’s rules requiring a white shirt, black pants and no kufi. Baseball caps are allowed, as long as they have no logo other than the taxi certificate holder.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam

The actions on the eve of the Fed’s centenary year underscore Bernanke’s hallmark commitment to experimentation and forceful action, derived in part from his research showing too little monetary stimulus produced large economic costs for the U.S. in the 1930s and for Japan in the 1990s. He called the current state of the labor market, with unemployment at 7.7 percent, “an enormous waste of human and economic potential” and said the benefits of more bond buying outweigh the potential risks.

“Bernanke is pulling out all the stops to kick this economy back into a higher gear,” said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. in New York. “They are buying everything in sight -- Treasuries, mortgage-backed securities -- and will keep rates low until everyone who wants a job has one.”

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Update: Brian Milner has some interesting thoughts on this there.

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The U.S. Government • Federal Reserve

The Federal Reserve refashioned its bond-buying programs on Wednesday, extending its far-reaching effort to revitalize the jobs market and boost the economic recovery into 2013.

In addition, the Fed shifted its communications strategy by specifying the levels of unemployment and inflation that might prompt it to begin raising short-term interest rates, which are now near zero.

The central bank's policy committee, in its final meeting of the year, said Wednesday it would "initially" begin buying $45 billion of long-term Treasury bonds each month. The latest stimulus from the Fed will replace an expiring program known as "Operation Twist," in which the Fed has been buying about $45 billion of long-term Treasury bonds each month and selling about the same amount of short-term Treasurys.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Credit Markets • Currency Markets • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The U.S. Government • Federal Reserve

Your medical plan is facing an unexpected expense, so you probably are, too. It’s a new, $63-per-head fee to cushion the cost of covering people with pre-existing conditions under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.

The charge, buried in a recent regulation, works out to tens of millions of dollars for the largest companies, employers say. Most of that is likely to be passed on to workers.

Employee benefits lawyer Chantel Sheaks calls it a “sleeper issue” with significant financial consequences, particularly for large employers.

Read it all from the front page of yesterday's local paper.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • The U.S. Government

Several hundred of the most popular educational and gaming mobile apps for children fail to give parents basic explanations about what kinds of personal information the apps collect from children, who can see that data and what they use it for, a new federal report says.

The apps often transmit the phone number, precise location or unique serial code of a mobile device to app developers, advertising networks or other companies, according to the report by the Federal Trade Commission, released Monday. Regulators said such information could be used to find or contact children or track their activities across different apps without their parents’ knowledge or consent.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Budget negotiations between the White House and Republican House Speaker John Boehner have progressed steadily in recent days, people close to the process said, breathing life into talks that appeared to have stalled.

Both sides still face sizable differences before any agreement might be reached by the end of the year, and talks could well falter again over such controversial issues as taxes and Medicare before any deal is ultimately reached.

The people familiar with the matter say talks have taken a marked shift in recent days as staff and leaders have consulted, becoming more "serious." Both sides have agreed to keep details private, according to the people, who declined to detail where new ground was being broken.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Credit Markets • Currency Markets • Taxes • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The U.S. Government • Budget • Medicare • Social Security • The National Deficit • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama

This is not a good time to be starting out in life. Jobs are scarce, and those that exist often pay unexpectedly low wages. Beginning a family — always stressful and uncertain — is increasingly a stretch. The weak economy begets weak family formation. We instinctively know this; several new studies now deepen our understanding.

When the labor market operates smoothly, it creates an economic escalator. Just out of high school or college, young workers typically switch jobs frequently until they find something that fits their talent and temperament. Job changes often mean higher pay; people move to advance themselves. The more they succeed, the more confident they feel in marrying and having children.

The most startling evidence of the broken escalator is the collapse in marriages and births....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Psychology • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007--

America's employers added jobs at a slow pace in November, easing fears that uncertainty about U.S. budget policies would stifle hiring, but fueling concerns about the robustness of the economic recovery.

The Labor Department's latest snapshot of the job market said employers added 146,000 jobs last month. That is an improvement from the previous two months, but below the average job growth per month of about 150,000 over the past two years. Payroll growth in September and October also was revised down by about 50,000 jobs.....

...November's figures also show that jobs are growing too slowly to significantly lower unemployment or boost the economy's overall growth, which faces headwinds. To keep up with population growth, the economy needs to add about 120,000 new jobs every month just to keep the unemployment rate from rising.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007--

Americans have a long tradition of pampering and memorializing their pets. Now, technology lets precious friends become precious gems.

The idea of turning the carbon in ashes into man-made diamonds emerged a decade ago as a way to memorialize humans. Today, departed pets are fueling the industry's growth, with a handful of companies selling diamonds, gemstones and other jewelry out of pet remains, including hair and feathers.

Some gems start at about $250, while pet diamonds cost at least $1,400, with prices based on color and size. The diamonds have the same physical properties as mined diamonds, purveyors say.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • * General Interest • Animals • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

From there:

[Here is a list of]...the most expensive tax breaks in the current tax code, based on what those breaks would cost the U.S. Treasury in lost revenue from 2013 to 2017:

1) Exclusion of employer contributions for medical insurance premiums & medical: $1 trillion

2) Mortgage interest deduction: $606 billion

3) Deduction for 401(k) plans: $429 billion

4) Accelerated depreciation of machinery & equipment: $375 billion

5) Exclusion of net imputed rental income: $337 billion

6) Capital gains: $321 billion

7) Charitable contributions: $293 billion

Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Taxes • The U.S. Government • Budget • The National Deficit • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Islands that are most vulnerable to rising oceans are seeking an insurance program to protect against damage related to climate change, adding to pressure on industrial nations to increase aid committed to fight global warming to more than $100 billion a year.

The islands are proposing a “loss and damage” mechanism that would insure and compensate countries that suffer from extreme weather, erosion and drought. The request is raising tension levels among more than 190 industrial and developing nations at United Nations climate talks in Doha this week.

“All we are asking is that they help us with these issues that aren’t our doing,” Malia Talakai of Nauru, lead negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States, or AOSIS, a bloc of 43 island nations, said in an interview in Doha. “We are trying to say that if you pollute you must help us.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Energy, Natural Resources • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

The question of who rules the Internet and how is being debated at a 12-day conference in Dubai.

The World Conference on International Telecommunications, which started Monday, aims to draft a new treaty to underpin international telecommunications regulations. The current rules were put in place in 1988. The conference is sponsored by the International Telecommunication Union, the United Nations agency for information and communication technologies.

The bid to change the rule book has unleashed fears of a grab for centralized control of the Internet by the U.N. The process has also come under criticism for its lack of transparency, with documents unpublished and proposals up for debate kept secret.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Globalization • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Middle East • UAE (United Arab Emirates)

....seasoned Washington hands say that once this rather gloomy back and forth has played out - and it might take another week or more - the work towards reaching a solution that both sides can sell to their parties and their lawmakers will begin in earnest.

A deal by Christmas, a week before the fiscal cliff deadline, remains uncertain but not out of the question. The so-called fiscal cliff is a combination of U.S. government spending cuts and tax increases due to be implemented under existing law in early 2013 that may cut the federal budget deficit but also tip the economy back into recession.

The pattern of little happening until very close to a holiday is well-established on Capitol Hill. The past three pre-Christmas seasons brought important eleventh-hour developments on health care in 2009, tax cut extensions in 2010 and the payroll tax holiday in 2011.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • Stock Market • Taxes • The U.S. Government • Budget • Medicare • Social Security • The National Deficit • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate

I’m applying to law school. I’m sure there are many schools that could provide me with a decent education; I’m less confident that a degree from some institutions will get me a job. In fact, some schools, while charging outrageously high tuition, place fewer than half of their recent graduates in long-term, full-time legal positions. Is it moral for schools like these to keep enrolling students and collecting tuition dollars knowing that their product is a risky (or outright bad) investment?

Read it all from "The Ethicist".

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

For decades, doctors in picturesque Boise, Idaho, were part of a tight-knit community, freely referring patients to the specialists or hospitals of their choice and exchanging information about the latest medical treatments.

But that began to change a few years ago, when the city’s largest hospital, St. Luke’s Health System, began rapidly buying physician practices all over town, from general practitioners to cardiologists to orthopedic surgeons.

Today, Boise is a medical battleground....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Personal Finance

This week we learned of yet another fire in a garment factory in Bangladesh, this one killing more than 100 people. Before the nine-storey building blazed, workers at Tazreen Fashions Ltd. in Dhaka were making clothes for Wal-Mart and Walt Disney, among other retailers. The International Labor Rights Forum estimates that since 2005, more than 700 garment workers have died in Bangladesh as a result of safety violations in buildings. Survivors of the Tazreen fire told The Guardian that managers stopped workers from leaving the building after a fire alarm and locked the doors. Then came a panicked crush; bodies were charred beyond recognition. All this for a job that earned most workers less than $40 a month.

So this is the dark side of “more.” And we are consuming more, for less money, than we used to. In 1969, Canadians spent 10.5 per cent of household income on clothing and accessories; in 2010, that figure dropped to 6.5 per cent. An insatiable appetite for makeover shows and a mainstreaming of the fashionista ideal have coincided with a total transformation of clothing production. According to a recent article in The New York Times Magazine, it now takes “fast fashion” leader Zara two to three weeks to move an item from an idea in a studio to a hanger in a store....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • * International News & Commentary • Canada • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

A steep decline in births among immigrant women hard hit by the recent recession is the driving force behind the record low U.S. birthrate, according to the Pew Research Center.

The annual number of births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44 dropped 8% in the U.S. from 2007 to 2010 to 64 births per 1,000, according to a report released Thursday by the nonpartisan Pew center. The U.S. birthrate peaked during the baby boom, at 122.7 in 1957.

Immigrant women, both legal and illegal, still have a higher birthrate than the U.S. population as a whole. Yet the rate for foreign-born women dropped 14% between 2007 and 2010, to 87.8 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44, compared with a 6% decline for U.S.-born women, to 58.9 births. The birthrate plunged 19% for immigrants of Hispanic origin during that period; among Mexicans, the largest group among Hispanics, the rate plunged 23%.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

U.S. households owe a bit less than they did at the peak of the bubble. But they still owe a lot: $11.4 trillion, give or take a few billion. Mortgage and home-equity debt is still by far the biggest chunk of that debt.

Read it all and carefully look over the graphs.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Personal Finance • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

After six years of declines, lending for so-called Helocs will rise 30 percent to $79.6 billion in 2012, the highest level since the start of the financial crisis in 2008, according to the economics research unit of Moody’s Corp. Originations next year will jump another 31 percent to $104 billion, it projected.

Lending tied to real estate is reviving as record-low mortgage rates spur the housing recovery while an improving job market makes it easier for people to borrow. A rise in home equity lines is in turn helping the economy, fueling purchase of goods like televisions and refrigerators. Consumer spending, the biggest part of the economy, accelerated to a 2 percent annual rate last quarter from a 1.5 percent pace in the prior period.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Housing/Real Estate Market • Personal Finance • The Banking System/Sector • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Hemp, once a major US crop, has been banned for years because of its close association with cannabis. But several states now want to resume hemp farming, and two states voted this month in favour of legalisation of cannabis. Could change be in the air?

There's an all-American plant that weaves its way throughout the nation's history.

The sails of Columbus' ships were made from it. So was the first US flag. It was used in the paper on which the Declaration of Independence was printed.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Energy, Natural Resources • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Tony Dokoupil..likes.the for-profit regulatory model in Colorado [going forward]...

"There's a ban on advertising," he explains. "There are cameras that track the marijuana from bloom to end-consumer, so the diversion into the black market is limited. There are extensive background checks on people who are part of the marketplace — so if you want to open a marijuana shop, you have to go through an extensive background check."

Once that model is in place, the consumer side of things might look a lot like Starbucks.

"I think you will have a variety of products at different levels of intensity, exactly like Starbucks," Dokoupil says. "You might be able to walk in there and in the case they'll have 12 different strains of cannabis. Behind the counter there might be hash. There might be edibles, like fizzy drinks or brownies. There could be a hot dog wheel turning. You could put THC in anything."

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Politics in General • State Government

Among the many disconcerting leaps of logic taken by the federal government is the omission of food and fuel prices from its measures of the consumer price index — inflation. Somehow that doesn’t ease the bottom-line purchasing pain at the grocery store and the gas pump.

OK, so as of Friday, the average price of a gallon of regular had fallen by more than 30 cents over the last month.

Still, that was more than 6 cents higher than it was on that date a year ago — and nearly double what it was in early 2008.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Dieting/Food/Nutrition • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Personal Finance • The U.S. Government • Energy, Natural Resources

Dubai announced plans for a huge tourism and retail development including the largest shopping mall in the world, a fresh sign that the glitzy emirate has recovered its commercial ambitions after a crippling corporate debt crisis three years ago.

The development, on the outskirts of Dubai's current downtown area, will include a park 30 percent bigger than Hyde Park in London, said Dubai's ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, also prime minister of the United Arab Emirates.

A retail complex named the "Mall of the World" will be able to host 80 million visitors a year and include over 100 hotel facilities, Sheikh Mohammed said in a statement on Saturday.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • * International News & Commentary • Middle East • UAE (United Arab Emirates)