Nuclear Threat

Despite the fact that we should not read RT or any Russia generated Internet postings, this one has merit. RT notes:

By training its European allies to use their nuclear arms, the US is moving towards an atomic war with Russia, forgetting that it would mean the end of the human civilization, retired Lieutenant General Evgeny Buzhinsky told RT. The US military is preparing the armed forces of the European countries for the use of tactical nukes against Russia, Sergey Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, said on Wednesday. He added that the presence of American non-strategic nuclear weapons in Europe is a major stumbling block in the path of disarmament. “No one can say how serious the threat really is” from the US actions, Buzhinsky, the Chairman of the Executive Board of the PIR-Center, said. However, he pointed out that “the military people are getting ready. The Russian military is preparing and the American military does the same. And it’s for the politicians to warn the public that such preparations are being made.”

 

As we have noted in our review of the  Ellsberg book, any nuclear attack would be world ending. Furthermore control of nuclear weapons must be tight. No surprises. If we want to argue against any proliferation in a rogue state such as Iran or PDRK then we must hold the reins ever so close ourselves. The Russians have a point. With the distribution amongst NATO allies we potentially create a deadly threat. A world ending threat!

A Deal is not a deal until the money is in the bank; for a week!

Back to the West Virginia Teachers strike. Yes I have a stake in it, four grand kids in the state. But as the Governor may have agreed you have to line up all the ducks so to say. Or is it herding cats! The Legislator is still rambling about.

Two other other aphorisms are worth noting:

1. Delay is the deadliest form of denial.

2. Trust no one, not even your father!

You see, trust is a key element in a civil society. But trust can easily be lost. When it is, then everything gets second guessed.

Apparently the real problem is not the $1,000 to $2,000 pay raise, it is the $7,000 to $9,000 per annum increase in health insurance! Yep, give with one hand and take back with both!

Where does the money come from? I think that is what the Legislators get paid to come up with.

So this deal is not done, it is delayed, and well you get the picture!

Battle of Blair Mountain, Redux

Now I am not a big union fan, yet more than half my family are union members. So here goes. The Blair Mountain strike resulted in one of the largest battles in the US post the Civil War. It was the Mine Workers Union versus the coal mine owners in West Virginia.

Now the teachers are on strike. The problem is not just salary, one of the lowest in the US, but health care, in my opinion the worst in the US. It appears that now the Governor is calling the teachers "dumb" and "red necks".

The Governor, a rather portly fellow to say the least based upon observation, tends to regally dismiss the teachers. Perhaps the Governor would do better to listen and get support for the teachers rather than pontificate.

Good luck to the teachers!

I Don't Like Bats But...

Bats and I are not friends. It is not that vampire thing it is just that they tend to leave their droppings everywhere, and carried rabies. But New Scientist has an interesting piece that has some import. They note:

Bats provide a refuge for some of the most lethal viruses known, including Ebola, Marburg, Nipah and SARS. Now we may know why the animals tolerate these lethal viruses – and it’s because flying is such hard work. Peng Zhou of the Wuhan Institution of Virology in China and his colleagues studied the immune systems of bats and flightless mammals. They focused on free-floating DNA within cells. This can happen as the result of a viral infection, as the viruses hijack the cells’ DNA replication apparatus to copy their own genetic material. But it can also happen during strenuous exercise, which creates chemicals called free radicals that build up in cells and damage the DNA, releasing fragments of it. Most mammals don’t have to perform hugely strenuous exercise, so their own DNA rarely leaks out into their cells. As a result, if their immune system detects any free DNA, it interprets it as an emerging viral threat and begins fighting back. The trigger for action is a sensor molecule called STING, which swamps the viral infection with antiviral substances called interferons. However, bats fly and this is extremely strenuous, so their DNA often does leak out. This could lead the bat’s immune system to mistakenly attack the animal’s own tissues. To avoid this, bats appear to have evolved milder reactions to viral infections, allowing the bats and the viruses to tolerate each other.

This is an interesting phenomenon and worth the study. It is even more of a reason to beware of bats. If they can do rabies then they can do all of the above. I understand the benefits of bats but the downside should be considered also. Just a thought!

Scholars? Fact or Fiction!

Another academic seems to be clueless, in  my opinion, regarding Social Security and Medicare.  The Stanford person states:

Federal entitlements intended to lift people out of poverty now benefit the middle class, Stanford scholar says.While U.S. federal entitlement program expenditures are intricately woven into the fabric of American society, they have grown into a costly burden with a reach far beyond what was originally intended, Stanford scholar John Cogan says.

The article continues:

U.S. federal programs – such as Medicare and Social Security – are now a costly burden that actually distribute most of their aid to middle class households, said Stanford scholar John Cogan. Also known as federal entitlements, these programs include  Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the GI Bill and military pensions.

This is in my opinion based upon substantial evidence absolute nonsense! Pensions are earned. Social Security and Medicare are paid for! In fact many people on Medicare never get back anything near what they paid into the program. Medicaid however is a social program. Medicare is NOT.

How do academics get away making these in my opinion baseless claims. Medicare is a program that people pay 3% of their annual salary and 3% of any capital gains for their entire life. Then they also pay often in excess of $4,000 per annum to stay on the program and in addition pay for added benefits to pay for what Medicare does not pay for. A decade ago we wrote an extensive analysis of the Medicare issue which was covered in the Washington Post. Perhaps if this Stanford academic spent a bit of time examining the facts their screeds would change.

Medicare and Social Security are NOT entitlements. They are paid for. Unfortunately Congress spends the money! Most of it seems to go to California! Perhaps we should stop all Federal payments west of the Rockies! Thank God I did not decide to go to Stanford!

Told You So

Some nine years ago when we started this process I noted that the Electronic Health Record, as proposed by the previous administration, would be a disaster. First it was designed by an academic, second it was driven by the Government, and third it was provider specific rather that patient specific.

Now comes JAMA and the Harvard Gazette who states:

Electronic health record systems doesn’t reduce costs for bill processing. In fact, a study finds that it leaves primary care services with an average $100,000 tab per provider.

 Providers now have to hire scribes to record the EHR content. Each provider does not interconnect with others. For example in New York Presbyterian, a fairly decent provider, I have an ophthalmologist at Weill Cornell and a urologist at Columbia. The systems do not interconnect and they are on different platforms. Not that urology and ophthalmology need to connect, not even I can find a nexus, but there are many areas that demand a connection.

JAMA concludes:

In a time-driven activity-based costing study in a large academic health care system with a certified EHR system, the estimated costs of billing and insurance-related activities ranged from $20 for a primary care visit to $215 for an inpatient surgical procedure. Knowledge of how specific billing and insurance-related activities contribute to administrative costs may help inform policy solutions to reduce these expenses.

 Overall this was a multi billion dollar expense, and its net result is more cost, reduced care, and increased overhead! Welcome to Government!

Cultural Exchange?

The Saudi Arab News reports on a cultural exchange with the Irish Embassy. They note that at an exchange where an Irish film was aired to a large Saudi audience:

These festivals attempt to educate Saudis about different cultures and promote exchanges between Saudi Arabia and European countries. The film was screened on a moonlit veranda, and attendees enjoyed the film as well as the nice breeze that filled the open space. “Waking Ned” introduces Saudis to two best friends, Jackie O’Shea, played by Ian Bannen, and Michael O’Sullivan, played by David Kelly, as they chance upon someone in their village who has won the lottery and they want in on the cash. When the lottery winner dies from shock, the entire village rounds up to convince an inspector that O’Sullivan is the deceased to split the reward. “We chose this movie, as opposed to last year’s horror film because we wanted to break routine. Everyone’s joining us after a long day at work and they just want to relax,” the office manager at the consulate, Rodaina Harb, told Arab News. “We wanted to display Irish culture, it’s beautiful music, the simplicity of their life, and to distinguish it, as most Saudis believe it to be a part of Britain, when it’s its own country. in fact,” she added. Fatima Mazin, a female in attendance told Arab News: “I thought the movie was hilarious, and the fact that the people put their wits together to fool someone and get that much money was very amusing.”

Now this is a bit of a strange cultural presentation. Humor can be a powerful tool if used properly. On the other hand one thing I learned is that one should never open a talk with a joke. They always backfire. And a movie about a dead winner and a couple of con artists is hardly a way to present a country. 

A Terrifying Chart

The chart above is the Treasury debt, marketable, by maturity. Recall from the previous chart that we have seen the short term rates explode. Then look at the above and see that most of the debt is short term and will be turning over but at higher interest rates! So 6 trillion at a 2% interest rate change is an interest increase of $120 billion. Just where is that in the Budget!

Interest and the Market

The yield curve shows two characteristics. First it is still flattening. Second it is rising.

The rise is worrisome but the lifting of the low rate is truly of concern. We have been presenting this for almost a year now. As the low end rises as rapidly as it does and as deficit increases as it is, then the cost of that debt, most of which is short term, explodes! The cycle becomes unstable.

The above is an example. We shall examine the FED balance sheet again as it unrolls debt, almost all worthless, and at the same time finances the excess. This could be a deadly embrace.

MIT and Student Unions

The Tech, the MIT student paper, notes a positive response to unionizing graduate students. They note:

Another survey question asked respondents to select which union-related issues they would want to see addressed in a collective bargaining agreement. Salary, healthcare, and housing came out on top — 65 to 70 percent of all respondents selected them. Most other issues fell in the 40 to 50 percent range, with the exception of safety, which only 30 percent “gave a shit about,” the committee wrote in its email. The exploratory committee that organized the survey consists of four PhD students who hope to initiate dialogue around the issue of graduate student unionization at MIT, although they are not explicitly pro-union. They requested to remain anonymous, for fear that if they were seen as leaders of an unionization movement, they would be subjected to “undue scrutiny” from administrators and disapproval from their advisors.

As I had noted when Harvard started this process, this is very dangerous. Getting a PhD is often an individual process, an examination of the candidates qualities not some groups. Now the article also notes:

167 of the survey respondents self-identified as PhD students, and 38 self-identified as Master’s students. Undergraduates and other MIT affiliates were also able to respond, but graduate student data was extracted and analyzed separately. Respondents ranked their level of support for a potential MIT graduate student union on a scale of 1 (“definitely oppose”) to 7 (“definitely support”). Overall, PhD students averaged 4.86, while Master’s students averaged 5.29.

Thus of the near 5,000 grad students this sample is 200+ which are less than randomly selected. I won't belabor the statistics of selection but in what appears to be an ever growing group-think, proto-socialistic environment, MIT may place itself in a perilous position. Schools like MIT rely upon alumni and Government support. There may come a point when these actions become the "last straw" and result in financial collapse, and loss of academic rigor.