Sea Levels in Europe Could Rise up to 1m by 2100, Say Scientists

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My Comments: As a resident of Florida, I’m pleased that I chose to live in Gainesville, which is significantly higher above sea level than say, most of the suburbes in the Jacksonville area. And as a planner, I recognize I’ll be long gone in 2100 but probably not members of my family, some of whom do live in Jacksonville.

You can deny global warming ‘till the cows come home, but the reality is the planet is getting warmer, which means the ice at the poles is thawing, and the resultant extra water will first be seen along the coast lines. Which makes my decision to build a solid, permanent home in Gainesville a good one, sooner or later.

By Pilita Clark, Environment Correspondent

Cities around Europe could face sea level rises of a metre or more by the end of the century when storm surges are factored in, according to research that helps address some of the biggest uncertainties about climate change.

A mix of melting ice sheets, warming oceans, storm surges and other drivers mean places such as Sheerness, at the mouth of London’s Thames river, face rises reaching just under 1 metre by 2100 – enough to overwhelm the capital’s existing flood protection barriers – though the risk is relatively low and any increases would be intermittent.

Denmark’s seaport of Esbjerg could experience even higher rises of up to 1.15 metres, according to a four-year programme of study by scientists from 24 leading EU institutions, known as Ice2Sea.

The work was done to try to fill in some of the gaps left after the last big report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body set up to produce regular assessments of the latest state of climate knowledge.

Its 2007 report identified a number of shortcomings in scientists’ ability to predict how ice sheets contribute to sea level rises as they flow towards the coast, break away as icebergs and eventually melt into the sea.

Scientists are relatively confident about how warming oceans and melting mountain glaciers drive sea level rises but have been far less certain about the impact of ice loss from the ice sheets resting on Greenland and Antarctica.

The Ice2Sea work, which has been submitted to the IPCC for its next big report, due in September, suggests this continental ice loss could contribute between 3.5cm and 36.8cm to global average sea level rises up to 2100. There is also a small chance this rise could be as high as 84cm by the end of the century, but the probability is less than 5 per cent.

Though it will not be known for sure how this will affect the projections in the IPCC’s new report for overall sea level rises, it could push it up by about 10cm to 69cm, the Ice2Sea scientists say.

The EU-funded research, which focuses on consequences for Europe, shows sea level rises are likely to differ around the world, sometimes by tens of centimetres. The overall increase around European coastlines is expected be 10-20 per cent less than the global average, though regional variations mean some parts face much higher rises.

The flood barriers built to protect London, for example, are only expected to be breached once in 1,000 years. But a 1 metre rise in the Thames Estuary means “you would take that level of protection down from one in 1,000 years down to one in 10 years”, said the programme co-ordinator Professor David Vaughan, of the British Antarctic Survey.

“Obviously, one in 1,000 is probably acceptable to most people who live in London, 0.1 per cent per year. One in 100 years is maybe not acceptable. One in 10 years is clearly not acceptable.”

US Deficit Falls Faster Than Expected

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Social Security 3My Comments: It would be easy to get overly excited about this. Certainly it’s good news but to believe it’s a fundamental shift in the economy is stretching things. For one thing, the sequester that happened recently simply means that the Federal government is spending less money.

But for those of us looking for good economic news, this is worth a look. Keep your fingers crossed, however.

By James Politi in Washington | Financial Times

The US budget deficit is declining faster than expected as the rebound of the world’s largest economy helps the government collect more revenue from businesses, households and the two mortgage companies it rescued in the financial crisis.

The brighter fiscal outlook comes as other advanced economies are struggling to reduce their deficits through drastic spending cuts and tax rises at a time of weak or negative growth. Growth figures to be released on Wednesday are expected to show that the 17-country eurozone contracted again.

New figures released by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office showed the US budget deficit falling to $642bn, or 4 per cent of gross domestic product.

The CBO figures mark a $203bn improvement over its earlier projection only three months ago and a sharp reduction compared with the $1.1tn deficit of 2012, or 7 per cent of GDP. The CBO predicted the deficit would decrease further to 3.4 per cent of GDP in fiscal 2014 and 2.1 per cent the year after, before it starts rising again.

The figures were released as the New York Fed said households were continuing to reduce debt, by $110bn in the first quarter of the year. The number of loans that are more than 90 days behind on a payment also fell from 6.3 per cent to 6 per cent. The figures show the improvement in household finances, but also suggest that consumers will only increase their spending slowly.

The much lower government deficits will reduce pressure on the White House and Congress to find a solution to the country’s longer-term debt woes, which remain as America faces soaring projected health and pension costs later this decade.

“You don’t want to use the progress we are making as an excuse not to fix the problem, and there’s a very real risk that will happen,” says Maya MacGuineas, president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which has been campaigning for a big deficit grand bargain.

The improved outlook is partly the result of increased tax revenues worth $105bn compared to the earlier projection from both businesses and individuals, as the economy continued to recover. The housing rebound also allowed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance giants under government control, to make $95bn in payments to the Treasury. Automatic spending cuts known as sequestration were already factored into the CBO’s calculations, helping drive the declining deficits.

The better picture has also shifted the deadline by which the US needs to raise its borrowing limit to avoid a default on its debt from August until October or even November, the CBO said.

The US debt limit will be reached over the coming weekend but the US Treasury can take a series of “extraordinary” cash-management measures to stave off default in the absence of a deal on Capitol Hill.

The later timeframe for the US to raise its borrowing limit means congressional negotiations over a fiscal deal have advanced much more slowly than previously expected. Democrats, who control the Senate, and Republicans, who control the House, have been bickering over the process by which they could reconcile their two vastly different budgets.

Meanwhile, the US political debate has been consumed by other matters, from the immigration bill to this week’s furore over reviews of the Tea Party by US tax authorities.

The improving economic indicators have removed some of the incentives for President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats to accept the need for additional spending cuts, particularly if they hit popular government health and pension programmes such as Social Security and Medicare. It will also make Republicans even less willing to consider the need for higher taxes since revenues are already rebounding significantly.

“A lot of the energy and appetite for a substantial [deficit] fix is gone,” said Doug Holtz-Eakin, the former Congressional Budget Office director and head of the American Action Forum, a moderate Republican think-tank in Washington.

But that is not to say all momentum has stalled.

The White House has continued talks with Republicans in the Senate who would be the most likely brokers of a deficit deal, and the president last week played golf with Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and Bob Corker of Tennessee, who could help craft a bipartisan deal.

House Republicans are meeting this week to discuss their demands for a debt ceiling increase. The congressional tax-writing committees led by Max Baucus in the Senate and Dave Camp in the House are also feverishly working on their tax reform plans, which could spur momentum for a broader deal.

Gabe Horwitz, director of the economic programme at Third Way, the centrist Democratic think-tank, said he accepted that “the bigger the fire, the more response you’re going to get out of Congress”.

But he said there should still be the political will to do a big deficit deal. Although short-term deficits are declining, by the end of the decade the US fiscal picture will darken again, as the retirement of the baby-boomer generation drives sharp increases in health and pension costs.

In addition, the White House and many lawmakers on both the right and the left of politics are unhappy with the present composition of deficit reduction, especially the $1.2tn in sequestration cuts.

These reductions, which took effect in March, disproportionately hit domestic agencies and programmes beloved by Democrats and the Obama administration, and hurt the Pentagon much more than Republicans would like. US government agencies have tried to blunt their effect – the Department of Defence on Tuesday announced a decrease in the number of enforced leave days for its civilian workforce from 14 to 11 – but many are still suffering badly.

3D Printers Now Available for Everyday Consumers

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My Comments: Yes, all the recent duscussion about printing a gun or hand grenade in your garage was a little disturbing. Not sure how that will be controlled or if it’s even realistic to think it can be controlled.

But clearly, the geni is out of the bottle so we can all look forward to more fun and games as this technology evolves and becomes less and less expensive.

Travis Andrews | Saturday, May 4, 2013

We talk about 3D printers around here an awful lot, but for most folks it remains a piece of science fiction. It’s fun to read about, but access to a 3D printer remains dubious at best. Until now, when you can simply purchase one from your local Staples.

The office supply chain is the first U.S. retailer to carry a 3D printer for the everyday consumer, meaning the only thing separating you from making your very own cookie cutters (or whatever) is the $1,300 it costs.

The printer Staples will begin stocking in stores next month is The Cube by 3D Systems, a solid 3D printer to keep around the house. It can print objects up to 5.5 inches tall, wide and long and can do so in 16 different colors. Check out the spot below to take a look.

For anyone who can’t wait a month to get his hands on a 3D printer, they’re also available on Staples’ website.

Here’s a YouTube video showing how this model works.

Source:

It’s Scary

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healthcare reformMy Thoughts About This: I think today is the day that the House of Representatives is scheduled once again to hold a vote to repeal the PPACA. I find this disturbing, ludicrous, a waste of taxpayer money, grandstanding and any number of other perjorative words.

This opinion by Darwin Carmichael points to the crux of the problem. Namely that the cost of health care in this country was and perhaps is, increasing at a rate that is totally unsustainable. And instead of attempting to get to the root of the problem, something which none of the players in the health care industry have the ability to do, those in Congress who are supposed to be focused US as US citizens, are simply trying to earn points so they can stay in power and get tax breaks and perks that the rest of us cannot enjoy.

I’m reminded of countries around the world where there are more than two political parties vying for control. If one of them wins an election, they have to form a coalition with another party to gain enough seats to possibly control the outcome when it comes to making policy decisions.

Before PPACA, can you imagine how you and I would be treated if the coalition in power to reform the health care delivery system in this country was in the hands of the insurance companies and hospitals. Would they work toward reform that was in our best interest or their best interest?

By Darwin Carmichael | May 13, 2013

Could health policymakers be missing something?

National Underwriter Life & Health recently ran an article about how Obamacare will affect brokers near an article about high hospital costs.

It just seems obvious to me that the real problem here is not with high insurance premiums but with the actual cost of health care.

Most of the members of Congress who created Obamacare just don’t seem to have understood the fact that insurance premiums are driven by actual costs.

When costs rise, insurance premiums must rise.

There was very little attention paid to actual costs in the Obamacare bill. The drafters seemed to want to demonize the insurance companies, and, while doing that, overlooked the real health care cost culprit: The cost of care.
The profit margin of insurance companies is among the lowest for any industry.

When you look at some of the underlying health care costs, it’s understandable that insurance premiums are very high.

Until the consumer becomes more involved in the cost of care the costs will continue to rise. If a consumer pays only $25 to $30 for a $300 prescription, the consumer really doesn’t care what the actual cost of the prescription is.
The same is true for hospital costs.

I recently handled a claim for a policyholder. Let’s call the policyholder “Jane.” (I’m changing a lot of the details here to protect the policyholder’s privacy.) Jane was 57-year-old female who had a heart attack. She died one day after the suffered the heart attack, and her total bill was almost $350,000.

It seems virtually impossible that two days of health care could cost that much.

The insurance company, of course, paid the majority of the bill. Guess what? The cost of that claim is ultimately passed along to the consumer in the form of higher rates.

It’s just really scary that legislators are making all the rules about something of which they have very little knowledge.

Move Over, Saudi Arabia, and Let North Dakota Take Over

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My Comments: How many of us saw this coming as little as five years ago?

By Gil Weinreich, AdvisorOne | May 14, 2013

A buyer’s market in oil is in the making and will bring about disruptive market change that should benefit American manufacturers and consumers and prove challenging for Middle Eastern producers and European refiners.

That is the International Energy Agency’s new forecast, released Tuesday in London, and the anticipated supply boom from North American oil fields in particular should contribute to what the IEA terms a “supply shock.”

America’s shale revolution, and abundant capacity in Canada’s tar sands, is well established, but “supply growth is even steeper than previously expected,” said IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven at an oil summit in London launching the organization’s Medium-Term Oil Market Report (MTOMR).

Van der Hoeven noted the irony that the country that was the cradle of the oil industry 150 years go, but which eventually fell into what seemed like irreversible decline, has now become the center of an oil boom.

But today’s oil bonanza in the U.S., she said, has powerful compound effects as well.

“What makes the tight oil boom truly transformative is not just the sheer production volumes unlocked but the combination of volumetric production growth with other factors: the crude’s distinctively light quality, the unconventional nature of both the plays from which it is extracted and the technologies which have unlocked it, the economic and market impact of the new production, and the chain reaction it is creating in the global transportation, storage and refining infrastructure,” a summary of the report says.

While U.S. law continues to ban crude oil exports, the growth in oil supply should be a boon to U.S. refiners in the coming years. Long a top importer of refined products, the U.S. is already a large net exporter, and steep production surpluses are expected to push the U.S. share of refined products up even more.

As a news release announcing the report put it, “The supply shock created by a surge in North American oil production will be as transformative to the market over the next five years as was the rise of Chinese demand over the last 15.”

The report’s scenario was not entirely rosy for the U.S., citing three categories of challenge: infrastructural and logistical, legislative and regulatory, and environmental.

Though the U.S. contribution to oil production growth is expected to grow by 3.9 million barrels a day from 2012 to 2018, the market changes do not spell the end of OPEC but do suggest a lowering of its relative stature.

The Saudi Arabia-dominated oil cartel will also see its capacity rise, but by only 1.75 million barrels a day—about 750,000 barrels a day less than last year’s IEA forecast. The new report cites social and political turmoil in the wake of the Arab Spring as a factor in OPEC performance.

Another key IEA finding concerns the shift in demand from Western to emerging economies. While this development has been forecast before, the actual shift is expected to occur over the coming five years.

While emerging economies will blow past the developed world, the IEA sees a split within the developed economies—“a bifurcation has appeared between a North America energized by cheap natural gas and a euro area plagued by debt issues,” van der Hoeven said.
Beyond its slow growth and consequent tepid demand for oil, Europe will lose out in another significant way in the coming five years—specifically, it will cede its primacy as an oil refiner.

“OECD refining, notwithstanding a renaissance in the U.S., is increasingly relinquishing market share to the non-OECD region, a form of de facto offshoring not unlike the trend in other manufacturing sectors,” a summary of the IEA report says.

“Already most of the world’s refining capacity is located in non-OECD economies. In the next five years, virtually all net crude distillation capacity growth is forecast to take place in the emerging-market and developing economies.”

Stuck in the Mud: Beyond America’s Fiscal Trench Lines

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world economyMy Comments: I recall a conversation I had some three years ago where someone asked me if I followed Keynes or did I follow the Austrian approach. Not knowing at the time just what this person was asking, I responded “Keynes” since I knew more or less how Keynes mind worked and had no idea yet about how Hayeks mind worked.

Today that boils down to a political chasm between Democrats and Republicans. It need now be so but it is. And who is ulitmately right or wrong remains to be seen. Perhaps neither to the degree that today they are almost polar opposites. Meanwhile, the folks in Washington, those whom we presumably elected to represent us and every other citizen of this country, are mired in ideology and incapable of looking beyond their own narrow vision. Wish it were not so but …

By Edward Luce | The Financial Times | May 12, 2013

When historians look back on the meltdown of 2008 they will conclude that the country that triggered it – the US – was among the least bad in its continuing monetary and in its initial fiscal response. What a frustration, then, that the US finds itself endlessly relitigating the debate between Keynesians and anti-Keynesians.

In the past few weeks, the intellectual tide has turned sharply towards the former following revelations of errors by Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhardt. This has been assisted by the IMF’s change of heart about the merits of short-term stimuli. Moreover, austerians, such as Niall Ferguson, the Harvard historian, continue to aid their own discrediting by dredging up the canard about John Maynard Keynes’s “childless vision” – linking his homosexuality to an alleged reckless disregard for the long term.

Yet for all the academic sound and fury, US politics is unchanged and apparently unchangeable: mild fiscal contraction is set to dilute the US recovery for at least another year. Democrats are impotent against Republican stonewalling in the House of Representatives. And Republicans can do nothing about Barack Obama’s veto – or Democratic control of the Senate. Which means we are condemned to at least another year of hypothetical fiscal debates. Here, vindicated though they may be on counter-cyclical fiscal policy, Keynesians are guilty of sins of omission.

Like Gresham’s law, the fiscal debate tends to drive out others. Keynesians want bigger deficits. The Tea Party wants smaller government. The more dominant these battle lines, the harder it is to craft ways out. New federal investment may be off the menu. But US companies are sitting on almost $2tn in cash reserves and have almost the same again parked offshore – a multiple of any possible federal investment. Public action could crowd-in private investments without troubling the taxpayer. And the resultant boost to productivity would reduce the burden of future obligations. “What we need is not bigger or smaller government for growth, but narrower and stronger government,” says Paul Romer, the growth economist.

Might there still be ways in Washington around these entrenched positions? Next week, John Delaney, a freshman Democratic congressman, will test that proposition when he launches a bill designed with an eye both on what is economically useful and politically sellable. The Rebuild America Act would give companies that repatriate foreign earnings a tax break on whatever they invest in a new infrastructure fund. Unlike a public bank, the fund would underwrite bonds to fund state, local and municipal projects – there would be no new federal bureaucracy.

It is hard to see how Republicans could object on substance to a bill that gave tax breaks to companies to improve US infrastructure. We shall see if they treat it on merit or politics. It will also be interesting to see how many other Democrats, and Keynesians, embrace its logic. Mr Delaney, who had a long career in private equity, has an accurate diagnosis of US politics. “Intransigent partisanship is getting in the way of our country having a proactive, pro-growth government,” he says. “Our tired fiscal impasse is not only a daily headache in Washington, it’s become a real competitiveness issue for our economy.”

To be sure, his biggest challenge – and that of almost any legislator taking any initiative – will be to get around the scorched-earth caucus in the Republican party, that opposes anything that could be seen as a success for public action. But there are cynics on both sides. Last month, Barack Obama appointed an industry insider, Tom Wheeler, as the next head of the Federal Communications Commission. People who have donated generously to Mr Obama’s campaigns were happy with Mr Wheeler’s nomination. Others less so.

The FCC could make simple changes to stimulate more investment in the cable and wireless sectors, which would help return US average internet speeds to the top of international tables. Mr Wheeler could also accelerate the FCC’s dilatory schedule for auctioning off public spectrum. “In just the same way that mergers result in job losses, creating and licensing multiple platforms for technology will create jobs,” says Reed Hundt, who was Bill Clinton’s highly successful FCC chair in the booming 1990s.

Defenders of Mr Wheeler say he will be keen to establish his distance from an oligopolistic industry that hired him as their advocate. They make the same argument, too, for Mary Jo White, the new chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who has spent her career representing Wall Street. Recent SEC moves give little cause for cheer. In isolation, bills such as Mr Delaney’s, or the rulings of federal agencies, do not match the importance, or scale, of the fiscal debate. But the US budget is stuck in the mud. And there are other sources of growth.

It is worth remembering that Keynes was a champion of the “middle way”. Yet foes, and occasionally friends, reduce him to a free-spending caricature. “I suggest that the state encouragement of new capital undertakings by employing the best technical advice … and by lending the credit and the guarantee of the Treasury to finance them more boldly, is becoming an inevitable policy,” Keynes wrote in the 1920s. These are the thoughts of an economist looking to the long term. With the possible exception of the final clause, they are also a good description of Mr Delaney’s bill.

Goodbye Capital Gains Tax Breaks

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USA EconomyMomentum is building for a tax code overhaul, and lower taxes on stock transactions could be doomed.
By Joy Taylor, May 6, 2013

Tax breaks for capital gains and dividends are likely to end by 2015, as lawmakers look for ways to broaden the tax base, allowing income tax rates on individuals to be cut. There is precedent for this — the tax break for long-term capital gains was axed in 1986, the last time that lawmakers significantly reformed the tax code.

Tax overhaul won’t happen swiftly. Lawmakers won’t have time to complete tax reform until 2014, and when they do finish it, the effective date probably will be prospective, so changes aren’t likely to occur until 2015. There will be plenty of time to mull the impact on your investment portfolio and contemplate actions to minimize the tax wallop.

But discussions will intensify in the coming months. One reason: Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), who heads the Senate committee responsible for writing tax laws, has announced that he’ll leave the Senate when his term ends at the end of 2014. Look for him to push hard for tax reform before he leaves, making a revamped tax code his policymaking legacy.

In the end, we expect long-term capital gains and dividends to be taxed as ordinary income — a big change from the 20% maximum rate they now incur. If President Obama succeeds in winning a top income tax rate on individuals of more than 28%, however, it’s possible that the maximum rate on long-term capital gains and dividends will be limited to 28%.

Consider taking gains before 2015 to lock in the lower rate currently in place. But be careful not to let the tax tail wag the investment dog. Tax savings aren’t the only consideration when culling your portfolio; your moves should also make financial sense. Note that we expect taxwriters to keep the stepped-up basis rule for inherited assets, so 100% of pre-death appreciation on those assets will escape income tax when the heirs sell, regardless of the capital gains rate.

Take care in engaging in installment sales before then. The 1986 law provided that installments received after the capital gains rate rose weren’t protected, even though the sale occurred before the rate change. We expect that a similar rule will be passed this time, too.

Weigh the impact on succession plans for family firms. Corporate redemptions of shareholders’ stock will be hit. Family firms hoping to redeem stock of senior owners to shift control to the next generation will need to take that into account.

Keep in mind that the relative advantages and disadvantages of components in your portfolio may need reevaluating. Dividend paying stocks will lose their tax-favored status if dividends are taxed at ordinary income rates. And there will be no tax disadvantage for having growth stock in retirement plans. Without a capital gains preference, it won’t matter that appreciation on the stock will be taxed as ordinary income when distributed to the owner of the retirement plan or IRA.

And it’s worth noting one other tax reform proposal that affects investors: Stock sellers could lose the right to direct that the highest-basis stock be sold first. They may be forced to use the average basis of their shares to compute the gain or loss recognized on a sale, rather than use the specific identification method. The tax reform plan drafted in the House includes such a provision, and we think it has a good chance of making it into law.