U.S. citizens are beginning to feel the ‘big financial pinch’ from big-government health care. And it is likely to get a lot worse….

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ObamaCare’s Wallet-buster Health Plans                                                WallStreetJournal 2-1-16 – Excerpts:

[Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce analysis]                                                        The findings: Nationally, premiums for individual health plans increased by an average of 14.9% between 2015 and 2016.

Consumers in every state except Mississippi faced increased premiums, and in no fewer than 29 states the average increases were in the double digits. For a third of states, the average premiums rose 20% or more.

Health-insurance premiums rose by more than 30% in Alaska and Hawaii; Oregon’s average rate increase was 23.2%. California’s premiums on average rose by a modest 1.5%.

Consumers in Kansas, Missouri, Iowa and Illinois faced increases exceeding 20% on average. The East Coast north of Maryland was the least hard hit (New York’s average premium increase was 6%), although Pennsylvania and New Jersey consumers faced premium increases of 14.6% and 13.1% respectively.

In 11 of the 16 states defined as southern by the U.S. Census Bureau, premiums rose by more than 10%. Premiums rose on average by 13.9%, and by more than 20% in Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, Alabama, North Carolina and Oklahoma. In Texas, where data was only available for 98.5% of individual-market health-care plans, premiums rose by 14.1%.

Average premiums in Tennessee rose 35.2%—mostly because of the state’s largest individual-market insurer, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, which sold 82% of all exchange plans in 2015. After losing $141 million on these plans last year, the company had little choice but to request average premium increases of 36.3%. The state insurance commission approved this request, lest the company leave the exchange altogether and leave 231,000 Tennesseans in the lurch.

Minnesota holds the dubious honor of having the highest year-over-year premium increases, 47.7%. Why? Because that state’s BlueCross BlueShield, the largest insurer, with over 90% of the market, lost tens of millions of dollars during the Affordable Care Act’s first two years. The company requested an average 49% rate increase, which was approved by state regulators.

Remember: These premium increases are only one piece of the health-care cost puzzle. Deductibles are also rising under the Affordable Care Act. Silver plans—the most popular on the exchanges—had average deductibles of nearly $3,000 in 2016, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This represents an 8% increase over last year.

Millions of Americans are coming to believe that the Affordable Care Act’s costs far outweigh its benefits. In 2014, the latest year for which data is available, roughly 7.5 million Americans paid the IRS penalty rather than purchase the law’s insurance. This penalty is rising to an average $969 per household in 2016 in an attempt to force people onto the exchanges. Yet even a $1,000 fine is cheap compared to thousands—and sometimes tens of thousands—of dollars for an Affordable Care Act-compliant plan.

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Big government is not providing health care solutions.  It is expanding America’s health care problems.

Decentralized health care is the solution, with U.S. citizens allocating health care resources in accordance with their own needs and desires:

The U.S. Health Care Freedom Plan – the one clean and affordable, comprehensive alternative to ObamaCare

In 2008, the Fed began ‘fire-hosing’ trillions of dollars into the financial system, specifically to ‘rescue’ major banks and insurers that were teetering on the edge of their self-made massive capital holes.

The banks were resuscitated.  Excess reserves propelled stock prices higher and higher, while the economy merely crawled…

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January 15, 2016                                                                                                                            The Chart That Explains Everything

by Mike Whitney

Excerpts:

What the chart [above] shows is that the vast increase in the monetary base didn’t impact lending or trigger the credit expansion the Fed had predicted. In other words, the Fed’s madcap pump-priming experiment (aka– QE) failed to stimulate growth or put the economy back on the path to recovery. For all practical purposes, the policy was a flop.

QE did, however, touch off an unprecedented 6-year bull market rally that pushed stocks into the stratosphere while the real economy continued to languish in a long-term slump. And the numbers are pretty impressive too. For example, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which bottomed at 6,507 on March 9, 2009, soared to an eye-popping 18,312 points by May 19, 2015, an 11,805 point-surge in just five years. And the S&P did even better. From its March 9, 2009 bottom of 676 points, the index skyrocketed to a record-high 2,130 points on May 21, 2015, tripling its value at the fastest pace in history.

What the chart shows is that the Fed knew from 2010-on that stuffing the banks with excess reserves was neither lowering unemployment or revving up the economy. The liquidity was merely driving stocks higher.

It’s worth noting, that the Fed knows that credit does not flow into the economy without a transmission mechanism, that is, unless creditworthy borrowers are willing to to take out loans. Absent additional lending, the liquidity remains stuck in the financial system where it eventually creates asset bubbles. And that’s exactly what’s happened. Instead of trickling down into the economy where it would do some good, the Fed’s monetary stimulus has cleared the way for another catastrophic meltdown.

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[Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke – November 2009]: “As a scholar of the Great Depression, I honestly believe that September and October of 2008 was the worst financial crisis in global history, including the Great Depression. If you look at the firms that came under pressure in that period. . . only one . . . was not at serious risk of failure. So out of maybe the 13 of the most important financial institutions in the United States, 12 were at risk of failure within a period of a week or two.”

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There is now a new liquidity “transmission mechanism” that will complete the story, reigniting economic growth power for main street America.

A Citizens Credit Facility, within The Leviticus 25 Plan, will serve as the conduit for  direct liquidity extensions to U.S. citizens – eliminating massive debt burdens and restoring financial health at the family level in America.

The Leviticus 25 Plan will help get millions of Americans off government social welfare programs and free them from dependence on government and over-stressed charity-based organizations.

The Plan will produce something else that the Fed’s 2008-2010 multi-trillion dollar financial system bailout could not do: millions of financially healthy, “credit-worthy” customers for U.S. banks.

The Leviticus 25 Plan 2017 –  $75,000 per U.S. citizen                                                         The Leviticus 25 Plan 2017 (1306)

Foreign banks with U.S. subsidiaries currently have $1.15 trillion parked with the Fed, earning what is called “interest on excess reserves” (IOER).

Over the past three years,the Fed has paid out $15 billion in IOER “riskless profits” to foreign banks.  And with the Fed’s December rate the IOER will effectively double, and foreign banks will pocket a cool $6 billion in additional IOER payments in 2016.

And if the Fed hikes three more times in 2016, as they have intimated, these handouts to foreign banks will top the $11 billion level in the year ahead…

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The Federal Reserve Will Hand Out $11 Billion In Riskless “Profits” To Foreign Banks In 2016  – ZeroHedge 12/21/2015 –  Charts / Excerpts:

The chart above shows that between early 2013 and today, foreign banks received another $9 billion in cumulative interest payments from the Fed, a grand total which now amounts to just shy of $15 billion.

And now, with the IOER doubling to 0.50%, it means that foreign banks will collect interest from the Fed at double the pace. Indeed, assuming all else is equal such as total excess reserves parked with foreign banks remaining flat at the current $1.15 trillion level, it means that just over the next 12 months, foreign banks will pocket another $6 billion, increasing the cumulative Fed cash payment from $15 billion currently to $21 billion.

[And… if the Fed raises rates one-quarter point three more times in 2016, the result will be] a riskless “profit” handout for foreign banks, subsidized by the most famous US “public” institution – the Federal Reserves – amounting to approximately $11 billion in just one year.

And since there is no plan in sight for unwinding the Fed’s gargantuan balance sheet and soaking up the trillions in excess reserves parked at both domestic and foreign banks, this handout of risk-free cash will continue indefinitely.

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The U.S. Federal Reserve is handing out billions of dollars in “riskless profits” to foreign banks – and is on course to provide even sweeter liquidity flows for those banks – with the Fed’s recent rate hike – thanks to millions of U.S. tax-paying citizens.

It is now time for millions of U.S. tax-paying citizens to receive liquidity flows of their own from that very same Fed:

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.

The Leviticus 25 Plan 2017 –  $75,000 per U.S. citizen                                                        The Leviticus 25 Plan 2017 (1256)

Global central bank policies have explicitly favored the Wall Street financial sector.  It is time to level the playing field…

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Nomi Prins: Crony Capitalism & Corruption – An Entirely Rigged Political-Financial System

ZeroHedge 11/16/2015   –  Via Jesse’s Cafe Americain,

Too big to fail is a seven-year phenomenon created by the most powerful central banks to bolster the largest, most politically connected US and European banks. More than that, it’s a global concern predicated on that handful of private banks controlling too much market share and elite central banks infusing them with boatloads of cheap capital and other aid.

Synthetic bank and market subsidization disguised as ‘monetary policy’ has spawned artificial asset and debt bubbles – everywhere. The most rapacious speculative capital and associated risk flows from these power-players to the least protected, or least regulated, locales.

There is no such thing as isolated ‘Big Bank’ problems. Rather, complex products, risky practices, leverage and co-dependent transactions have contagion ramifications, particularly in emerging markets whose histories are already lined with disproportionate shares of debt, interest rate and currency related travails.

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Prins:  “I’m talking about an entirely rigged political-financial system.”

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It is time to get the system “de-rigged.”

That means direct liquidity extensions to U.S. citizens to eliminate vast tracks of debt obligations to the banking system, particularly the large, politically-connected banks.

And here is the one and only plan to make that happen – via a Citizens Credit Facility:

The Leviticus 25 Plan 2015 –  $70,000 per U.S. citizen                                                   The Leviticus 25 Plan 2015 (1206)

Ukraine owes Vladimir Putin $3 billion, and Putin is demanding payment.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch maintains that the IMF will be stepping in to provide Ukraine with the requisite funds to make Vladimir Putin ‘whole,’ and to de-stress the situation:

The $3bn Russian bond is included in debt restructuring, but Russia will not participate in debt restructuring and will either be paid $3bn from reserves in December or there will be a political decision to agree on an extension, likely without haircuts. We believe the $3bn bond is likely to be classified as sovereign debt and the IMF would likely be forced to pay it (as a holdout) in order to continue the program in December.   Source:  ZeroHedge 8-28-15  Putin To Get $3 Billion From US Taxpayers After Ukraine Bond Debacle

And so, here we have the U.S. government, funneling U.S. taxpayer dollars through the IMF fire-hose to Russia’s Vladimir Putin … to help make Putin ‘financially healthy.’

It is now time to grant U.S. citizens the same access (to their own money) that has been provided to Vladimir Putin – to allow U.S. citizens to also become ‘financially healthy.’

The Leviticus 25 Plan 2015 –  $70,000 per U.S. citizen                                                  The Leviticus 25 Plan 2015 (1104)

Wall Street’s big bankers are doing fairly well these days.

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein is now worth $1.1 billion, with his 2.2 million Goldman shares having gained 123% over the past 3 years (CNN Money 7-26-15).

JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s total pay package hit the $20 million mark in 2014 (Reuters 1-22-15).  His net worth is a reported $1 billion.

In 2009, with the financial crisis winds blowing hard across the U.S., and major Wall Street getting billions of taxpayer dollars through TARP and billions more in ‘free money’ from the Fed’s emergency lending facilities and the Fed discount window, nine of these big banks also managed to lather up their bonus pay to the tune of $33 billion.

Those banks included Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon Corp, and State Street. 

Here’s the story:

Bank Bonus Tab: $33 Billion – WSJ

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Meanwhile here is the status of millions of U.S. citizens – whose money, and future purchasing power, helped support the bonus pay initiatives for Wall Street bankers ‘in their moment of need’…

Maudlin Economics                                                                                                  August 18, 2015                                                                                                 Distressed American Workers Expose the Fallacy of Improving Unemployment Numbers

Job Growth but No Wage Growth. Job seekers may find it easier to find a job, but good luck trying to find a job that pays enough to support a family.

The lightly followed Department of Labor’s quarterly Employment Cost Index (ECI) is Janet Yellen’s favorite wage indicator for good reason: it most accurately reflects the true cost of labor to businesses.

Well… the ECI increased by 0.2% in the second quarter of 2015. That was not only way below what Wall Street was expecting, it was also the slowest pace of wage growth since 1982 when ECI record keeping started!

Those are bad numbers, but it is really worse if you dig below the headlines:

Devilish Detail #1: Government Worker Wages, Not Private Sector.

The overall ECI was up by 0.2%, but that is only because compensation for government workers increased by +0.6%.

What about the private sector? Change in compensation: 0%. Yup… ZILCH… NADA… ZERO… not a penny.

Devilish Detail #2: Benefits, Not Wages, Are Rising.

In the past 12 months, the ECI is up 2%. Sure, that kind of increase is nothing to shout about, but 2% is better than a sharp stick in the eye.

Hold on… not so fast!

Remember, there are two components of labor costs: (1) wages and (2) benefits like paid vacation, Social Security, workers’ compensation, and health insurance. Wages are roughly 70% of ECI, and benefits make up the remaining 30%.

Over the last 12 months, the cost of benefits has increased by +1.7%. My guess is that the lion’s share of that increase can’t be attributed to higher health insurance costs.

Moreover, the trend these days is for employers to pass on some or all of the higher costs of health insurance to employees, thus reducing take-home pay.

You know where else these measly wage gains are showing up? In homeownership.

Despite record-low interest rates, an increasing number of Americans are renting rather than buying. The Census Bureau reported that the US homeownership fell to 63.4%, the lowest level in 48 years.

The homeownership rate peaked in 2004 at 69.2%, but has been falling ever since.

Moreover, the rate of homeownership hasn’t been this low since 1967, when it was 63.3%.

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There is one economic acceleration plan that levels the playing field for U.S. citizens.  This plan does not ‘tax’ the big banks, like Elizabeth Warren proposes, to redistribute wealth to the lower classes.

This plan simply grants U.S. citizens the same access to liquidity that Wall Street banks received during ‘bailout mania.’

There is one economic acceleration plan that restores economic liberty, revives financial health for American families, reignites economic growth, shrinks the deficit, and pays for itself over 10-15 years.

The Leviticus 25 Plan 2015 –  $70,000 per U.S. citizen                                                  The Leviticus 25 Plan 2015 (1087)

IRS Admits Refunding Billions On Fake Tax Returns | Zero …

The report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration shows the Internal Revenue Service continued to pay refunds on hundreds of thousands of fraudulent tax returns in recent years, and sent dozens of checks to the same addresses, including in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. As The Wall Street Journal reports,

The new IG report says the IRS took steps for the 2013 filing season that resulted in “increased detection and prevention of identity theft tax returns.” But it said the agency continued to be hampered by several factors, including its inability to look at employer income data during the early weeks of the annual filing season.

The IG found that the IRS missed almost 800,000 potentially fraudulent tax returns.

In response, the IRS said it disputed some of the IG’s methodology. It thinks more than half of the nearly 800,000 returns identified by the IG should not be considered potentially fraudulent.

“Much more work remains, but it’s important to note that our actions have led to an increasing number of fraudulent returns being detected and stopped — despite challenging budgets in recent years,” the IRS said in a statement.

Where are the fraudulent returns going?

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The U.S. government has been paying out billions of dollars in false tax returns.

Billions of dollars have also been sent over to bail out Greece, to help them pay off some of their massive debt obligations to major banks and hedge funds.

The U.S. government also paid out billions to bailout Ukraine.

And the government back-stopped Wall Street’s financial services industry with trillions of dollars in emergency lending, credit guarantees, and toxic asset purchases when their subprime gambling binge hit the mountain.

It is now time to give direct access to liquidity to the people who deserve it the most –  U.S. citizens.

The Leviticus 25 Plan 2015 –  $70,000 per U.S. citizen                                                  The Leviticus 25 Plan 2015 (958)

Thank you Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner, and Ben Bernanke – from the bottom of Warren Buffett’s heart…

The U.S. government, responding to a critical need to rescue the Wall Street financial sector and resuscitate the economy during the 2008-09 financial crisis, funneled trillions of dollars in direct cash transfers, emergency loans, credit guarantees, and balance-sheet-clearing toxic mortgage debt purchases – to many of America’s premier financial corporations.

Billionaire Warren Buffett lobbied hard for the massive bailouts, and with good reason. At least eight of these companies receiving billions of dollars of taxpayer bailouts were owned by Mr. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.

Buffett’s Betrayal: Rolfe Winkler | Reuters  / Aug 4, 2009

Excerpts:                                                                                                                                 A good chunk of his [Warren Buffett’s] fortune is dependent on taxpayer largess. Were it not for government bailouts, for which Buffett lobbied hard, many of his company’s stock holdings would have been wiped out.

Berkshire Hathaway, in which Buffett owns 27 percent, according to a recent proxy filing, has more than $26 billion invested in eight financial companies that have received bailout money. The TARP at one point had nearly $100 billion invested in these companies and, according to new data released by Thomson Reuters, FDIC backs more than $130 billion of their debt.

To put that in perspective, 75 percent of the debt these companies have issued since late November has come with a federal guarantee.

Without FDIC’s debt guarantee program, even impregnable Goldman would have collapsed.

And this excludes the emergency, opaque lending facilities from the Federal Reserve that also helped rescue the big banks. Without all these bailouts, the financial system would have been forced to recapitalize itself.

Banks that couldn’t finance their balance sheets would have sold toxic assets at market prices, and the losses would have wiped out their shareholder’s equity. With $7 billion at stake, Buffett is one of the biggest of these shareholders.

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Meanwhile, back at the ranch in 2015… the country’s second richest man is back, ‘sticking it to’ the very people whose billions of dollars bailed him out seven short years ago – U.S. taxpayers.

Warren Buffett, Slumlord – Predatory Loans, Kickbacks & Preying On The Poor   ZeroHedge /  04/06/2015                                                                                           Excerpts:

Buffett’s mobile-home empire promises low-income Americans the dream of homeownership. But Clayton [controlled by America’s second richest man – billionaire Warren Buffet] relies on predatory sales practices, exorbitant fees, and interest rates that can exceed 15 percent, trapping many buyers in loans they can’t afford and in homes that are almost impossible to sell or refinance, an investigation by The Seattle Times and Center for Public Integrity has found.

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U.S. citizens deserve nothing less than the same access to liquidity that was granted to wealthy elites during the Wall Street bailout.

The Leviticus 25 Plan 2015 –  $70,000 per U.S. citizen                                                    The Leviticus 25 Plan 2015 (864)

Bloomberg’s Bob Ivry discovered, through an FOIA request, that the Federal Reserve had been running a “secretive bailout operation between March and December 2008, under which banks borrowed as much as $855 billion over the time frame for a rate as low as 0.01%.”

The Fed subsequently disclosed: “The Federal Reserve System conducted a series of single-tranche term repurchase agreements from March 2008 to December 2008 with the intention of mitigating heightened stress in funding markets.

These operations were conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with primary dealers as counterparties…this program helped to address liquidity pressures evident across a number of financing markets and supported the flow of credit to U.S. households and business.”   (Source: ZeroHedge 07/06/2011  – Fed Releases Details On Secret $855 Billion Single-Tra… )

The 5 heaviest borrowers were foreign banks – raking in a cool $593 billion:                Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, RBS and Barclays.

UBS Securities, LLC ($56.9 billion) was #6 on the list.

#7 Goldman Sachs received $53.4 billion – much of it borrowed at a rate of .01% (one basis point).
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The Fed ‘created’ various funding facilities during the financial crisis to bailout Wall Street’s financial market:
Term Auction Facility (TAF)
Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF)
Primary Dealer’s Credit Facility (PDCF)
Term Securities Lending Facility (TSLF)
Asset-backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility (AMLF)

Wall Street financial institutions also received massive liquidity transfusions at the Fed’s Discount Window (DW).

The one the Fed tried hard to keep out of the spotlight involved the “secret” single-tranche  OMO’s – through which they ‘ladled out’ a whopping $855 billion.

Again, the Fed deemed this necessary to mitigate the “heightened stress in funding markets” (translation: Wall Street’s leveraged speculation strategies got broad-sided by the great mortgage market default wave, and funding markets ‘seized up’).

In the Fed’s own words, the secret ST OMO program “helped to address liquidity pressures evident across a number of financing markets and supported the flow of credit to U.S. households and business” (translation: the biggest and mightiest financial institutions on Wall Street had suddenly developed gaping capital holes… many were on the verge of ‘going under’… and they needed a liquidity lifeline to survive).
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It is now time to “mitigate heightened stress” and to “address liquidity pressures” being experienced by American families.

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.

The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.

The Leviticus 25 Plan 2015 –  $70,000 per U.S. citizen                                                    The Leviticus 25 Plan 2015 (833)

HSBC Holdings Plc, a British bank and financial services company, is reputed to be the world’s largest bank, operating in 80 countries around the globe. It was founded in 1991 as the Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC).

HSBC came under investigation in 2012 for allegedly laundering billions of dollars for drug lords and terrorists. A Senate subcommittee indicated that much of the $7 billion transferred by HSBC from Mexico to its U.S. subsidiary had been related to “drug dealing.”

HSBC was accused of “actively circumventing U.S. safeguards to block transactions involving terrorists, drug lords and rogue regimes, including hiding $19.4 billion in transactions with Iran.”

HSBC admitted wrongdoing and paid a record $1.92 billion in fines to resolve the charges of laundering billions of dollars for Latin American drug cartels (Bloomberg, Jul 3, 2013).

“HSBC was accused of failing to monitor more than $670 billion in wire transfers and more than $9.4 billion in purchases of U.S. currency from HSBC Mexico, allowing for money laundering, prosecutors said. The bank also violated U.S. economic sanctions against Iran, Libya, Sudan, Burma and Cuba, according to a criminal information filed in the case.
…. Lack of proper controls allowed the Sinaloa drug cartel in Mexico and the Norte del Valle cartel in Colombia to move more than $881 million through HSBC’s U.S. unit from 2006 to 2010, the government alleged in the case.”
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During this same “2006 to 2010” period that HSBC was laundering money for drug cartels and violating sanctions on behalf of various state terror sponsors, HSBC was also caught up in the subprime debt crisis – and began receiving emergency funding from the U.S. Federal Reserve (and ultimately, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers).

According to Bloomberg (Nov 22, 2011), HSBC accessed several billions of dollars from Fed emergency funding facilities throughout the fall of 2008 and into the summer of 2009. These included the Term Auction Facility (TAF), Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF), Temporary Security Lending Facility, Single-Tranche Open Market Operations (STOMO) and the Fed’s Discount Window (DW).

Peak Amount of Debt on 3/12/2009: $3.7B
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And here is the latest, hot off the presses – HSBC is at it again:                                             (Bloomberg (Feb 9, 2015) – The private-banking unit of HSBC Holdings Plc made significant profits for years handling secret accounts whose holders included drug cartels, arms dealers, tax evaders and fugitive diamond merchants, according to a report released Sunday by an international news organization. 

These latest charges include laundering money for Russian billion oligarchs with close ties to Putin.

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And now for our question of the month:
If large multi-national banks, including foreign banks like HSBC, can conspire against the security interests of the United States and at the same time be granted direct access to billions of dollars through Fed liquidity lines, then what could possibly be the rationale for U.S. citizens NOT being granted equal access…?

Answer:  There isn’t any.

And here we have one of the biggest U.S. taxpayer ‘screw-overs’ of the past 20 years.  And U.S. citizens cannot get the same direct liquidity access that our government provided for HSBC.

It is a travesty of the highest order.

The answer: The Leviticus 25 Plan 2015 – $70,000 per U.S. citizen                             :                     The Leviticus 25 Plan 2015 (773)