« July 03, 2005 - July 09, 2005 | Main | July 17, 2005 - July 23, 2005 »
Behold the Subaru Tribeca.
Upside: nice looking car.
Downside: it won't drive north of 14th St.
Posted by dan at 10:20 AM
The FT splashes on its front page news that the U.S. expects China to revalue its currency. Talk about your faith-based policy.
Demetri Sevastopulo, Andrew Balls and Richard McGregor report:
The Bush administration has told key senators that it expects China to revalue its currency in August ahead of a planned visit to Washington by President Hu Jintao in September, according to people familiar with the matter.In a June meeting attended by Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve chairman, John Snow, Treasury secretary, told the senators that he believed China would allow the value of the renminbi to increase against the dollar in August, the people familiar with the discussion said.
Senator Graham and I believe that the administration is convinced that China will begin a revaluation process this summer, forced by our bill's success in the Senate,” Mr Schumer told the FT.
So, Chuck Schumer and Lindsay Graham believe that John Snow is coinvinced the Chinese government will strengthen its currency next month. That's two degrees of separation from moral certainty. And given Snow's track record for prognostication, it doesn't exactly sound like tradable news.
Posted by dan at 10:10 AM
As Senate Majority Leader and a possible Presidential candidate, Bill Frist has shown little interest in the problem of the uninsured. After all, the kinds of folks who are interested in universal health insurance -- labor unions, liberals -- aren't exactly his base.
But there's one constituency very close to Dr. Frist's heart that is probably hoping he and his colleagues will do something about the problem of health insurance: investors in HCA, the hospital company founded by Frist's daddy and once run by his brother, and in which the Frist family still has a huge stake.
HCA is now the nation’s largest hospital chain. It’s operations are concentrated in southern and western red states—states with growing populations and comparatively little competition. Alas, they also tend to be states where unions are weakest, and where workers are less likely to receive health insurance benefits. Which means an awful lot of unpaid hospital bills.
Last year, HCA's stock suffered under the weight of bad debt racked up by uninsured customers. Yesterday, HCA provided a preview of its second quarter earnings. And the results were almost as ugly as Dr. Frist's behavior in the Schiavo case.
HCA was forced to boost the “provision for doubtful accounts" to $725 million, a whopping 11.6 percent of revenues. Why? “Uninsured patient admissions increased approximately 5 percent in the second quarter compared to the prior year period.”
That’s tough to square with the notion of a broadly improving job market and rising economy. After all, more jobs and a tighter labor market should mean more people have health insurance. Could it be that the uninsured population in HCA's service area was somehow substantially more reckless or conspicuously less healthy in the second quarter of 2005 than it was in the comparable 2004 quarter?
A more likely explanation. With a job market remaining persistently weak for low- and middle-wage workers, employers continue to be able to meet their labor needs without having to offer health insurance. Nice.
HCA's stock fell nearly 9 percent on the news. According to HCA's 2004 proxy statement, the Frist family owned about 17 million shares of the company. Assuming the stake hadn't been sold, the Frists saw their net worth fall by about $83 million.
Maybe now the good doctor will start moving legislation on shoring up Medicaid.
Posted by dan at 05:32 PM
Who has a better credit rating? An industrial titan like General Motors or a longtime Latin American basket case like Peru? If you guessed GM, you may be wrong.
Hal Weitzman and Jennifer Hughes report in the Financial Times:
"Peru moved close to achieveing investment grade ratings yesterday after Standard & Poor's revised its outlook to positive from stable.The agency holds a long-term foreign currency rating of BB on Peru, anda long-term local currency rating of BB+, one notch below investment grade.
S&P said the change resulted form growing expectations that recent economic and fiscal improvements would continue."
Oh, and the help is coming not from University of Chicago economists or Jeffrey Sachs. It's coming from China, and China-inspired demand for commodities. Peru, after all, is the world's third largest copper producer, "which along wiht gold, zinc, molybdenum and silver has helped fuel 46 consecutive months of growth."
The FT concludes: "Peru's trade with China has bolstered growht in sectors such as textiles and chemicals."
Posted by dan at 05:21 PM
Today, July 11, 7-11 marks the 40th anniversary of the Slurpee, the frozen concoction around which my youth revolved.
Best of all, 7-11 is coming to Manhattan. Soon, poseurs and hipsters will be able to saunter in and create their own Proustian moments with large Coke slurpees.
Posted by dan at 02:43 PM
Alert Pat Choate! The world is flat—or at least the part that comprises the U.S. and Mexico. The U.S. government and U.S. businesses rightly scream about the blatant thievery of foreigners' intellectual property that goes on in China. But, as Joel Millman reports in the Wall Street Journal today, it can happen here, too.
The story details how a Mexican immigrant to the U.S., now based in Modesto, Calif., is selling ice cream under the brand name Michoacana, and with packaging and design that is essentially identical to the original iconic Mexican version—all without permission. But the Mexican firm that markets La Michoacana apparently doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on.
“With the explosive growth of immigration in the U.S., many old-country firms are discovering that their brands are being appropriated here. It may be unethical for a U.S. company to use a brand developed by a foreign firm outside the U.S., but U.S. law doesn’t make it illegal—unless the original brand has registered its trademark houses.”
Posted by dan at 11:00 AM
My latest high-concept essay, in the New York Times Week in Review.
Posted by dan at 09:10 AM