The Kevin Trudeau Show: 2-2-13

Today, Kevin gives you even more proof that inflation is already here and that your standard of living is declining rapidly because of it.

Self Help:
Uncontaminated Meat
Further Your Education
Manifest Your Every Desire
The Only Answer To Cancer
Drop-Dead Gorgeous Hair Without The Side Effects

Health:
Health Risks Behind Drop-Dead Gorgeous Hair
School Lunches Around The World
Bad News For Meat Eaters
Jamie Oliver Shows How Much Sugar Is in Flavored Milk

Wealth:
10 Countries With The Most Billionaires

Everything Kevin:
Become An Insider!
Support Kevin!
Kevin is on YouTube!
Sign Up For Kevin’s FREE Podcast
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The Kevin Trudeau Show: 4-27-11

Today, Kevin explains how your world is the world you create and that no matter how hard you try, you cannot run away from yourself. Plus, get the truth behind satanic rituals within secret societies!

Self Help:
Lose Up To A Pound A Day Of Pure Fat
The Best Solution To Your Economic Woes
Get Your Free Copy Of Your Wish Is Your Command!

Government:
Obama Releases Long-Form Birth Certificate
China To Be Next World Power

Wealth:
Soaring Costs Force Renters To Choose Between Shelter And Food
JP Morgan Chase In Court For Overcharging On Mortgages

Everything Kevin:
Become An Insider!
Support Kevin!
Kevin is on YouTube!
Sign Up For Kevin’s FREE Podcast
Follow Kevin on Twitter
Become A Fan of Kevin on Facebook
Kevin’s Film Club
Kevin’s Book Club

Take Trudeau on the Go! Click here to download this show to your iPod, mp3 player, or PC through iTunes!

Click below to watch the Kevin Trudeau Show!

Soaring Costs Force Some Renters To Choose Between Shelter And Food

April 27th, 2011

The Huffington Post

By: Yepoka Yeebo

Around 10 million American households — or one in every four families that rent their homes — could have to choose between paying rent, buying groceries or keeping current with bills, according to a report released Tuesday.

The number of households spending more than 50 percent of their income on rent and bills jumped by 2.6 million over the last decade, according to a Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies report. Economists generally consider “affordable” rent to cost about 30 percent of a tenant’s income.

When housing costs hit certain levels, many Americans are forced to choose between rent and food. “In real terms, it means more people have less money to spend on household necessities such as food, health care, or savings,” Eric Belsky, director of the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, said in the report. Households which spend 50 percent or more of their income on rent also spend almost 40 percent less on food and over 50 percent less on health care than households with more affordable rent.

“In the last decade, rental housing affordability problems went through the roof,” Belsky said in the report. “And these affordability problems are marching up the income scale,” he added.

Already, rising rents mean the household budgets of working-class and middle-class families are under strain. Growing numbers of middle-income, and lower-middle-income renters are spending between 30 percent and 50 percent of their incomes on rent. And the report found that rents could start to soar as the recovery takes hold.

Belsky said that after a boom, the rental market took a brief hit during the recession. “Rental housing costs went up and up. There was a brief dip in 2009, now they’ve moved up again,” he told The Huffington Post. Affordability could become such a problem, Belsky said, that even financially secure Americans could start to struggle to make rent.

Even before the recession, rent increases and growing bills outpaced many stagnant salaries. Now, with modest improvements in the job market, there is renewed upward pressure on rents. Many former homeowners who faced foreclosure are now looking to rent, and people who ordinarily would have bought homes are struggling with tighter mortgage lending, while others are waiting for home prices to sink even lower.

Click here for the full report from The Huffington Post

The Kevin Trudeau Show: 4-20-11

Today, Kevin gives you even more proof that inflation is already here and that your standard of living is declining rapidly because of it.

Self Help:
Uncontaminated Meat
Further Your Education
Manifest Your Every Desire
The Only Answer To Cancer
Drop-Dead Gorgeous Hair Without The Side Effects

Health:
Health Risks Behind Drop-Dead Gorgeous Hair
School Lunches Around The World
Bad News For Meat Eaters
Jamie Oliver Shows How Much Sugar Is in Flavored Milk

Wealth:
10 Countries With The Most Billionaires

Everything Kevin:
Become An Insider!
Support Kevin!
Kevin is on YouTube!
Sign Up For Kevin’s FREE Podcast
Follow Kevin on Twitter
Become A Fan of Kevin on Facebook
Kevin’s Film Club
Kevin’s Book Club

Take Trudeau on the Go! Click here to download this show to your iPod, mp3 player, or PC through iTunes!

Click below to watch the Kevin Trudeau Show!

Fed Mulls Raising Inflation Expectations to Boost Economy

October 13, 2010
Bloomberg
Scott Lanman & Craig Torres

Federal Reserve policy makers may want Americans to expect inflation to accelerate in the future so they spend more of their money now.

Central bankers, seeking ways to boost flagging growth after lowering interest rates almost to zero and buying $1.7 trillion of securities, are weighing strategies for raising inflation expectations as well as expanding the balance sheet by purchasing Treasuries, according to minutes of the Fed’s Sept. 21 meeting released yesterday.

Some Fed officials are concerned that expectations of lower inflation will become self-fulfilling, damping demand by increasing borrowing costs in real terms, the minutes said. By encouraging Americans to believe prices will start rising at a faster pace, the Fed would reduce inflation-adjusted interest rates and stimulate the economy. Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said in 2003 that Japan could beat deflation by using a “publicly announced, gradually rising price-level target.”

“The Fed is on the verge of actively targeting a higher inflation rate,” said Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak & Co. in New York. U.S. stocks advanced, sending benchmark indexes to five-month highs, the dollar fell and gold declined for the first time in three days after the minutes were released.

Trying to raise inflation expectations is untested in the U.S. The policy may backfire if actual inflation drifts higher than the Fed would like, potentially eroding gains won in the early 1980s by former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, who raised interest rates as high as 20 percent to subdue prices.

‘Elegant’ Theory

“The theory is elegant, but it’s unclear in practice whether short-term moves in inflation expectations really drive real growth,” said Dean Maki, chief U.S. economist at Barclays Capital Inc. in New York and a former Fed researcher.

Jim O’Sullivan, global chief economist at MF Global Ltd. in New York, said in a Bloomberg Television interview that the biggest risk is “boosting long-term inflation expectations more than they lower real interest rates.”

Bernanke on Oct. 15 will deliver a speech on “Monetary Policy Objectives and Tools in a Low-Inflation Environment” at a conference at the Fed Bank of Boston. Some of the panels at the conference will deal with Japan’s experience of deflation.

The Sept. 21 statement saying the Fed “is prepared to provide additional accommodation if needed” was meant to accord “with the members’ sense that such accommodation may be appropriate before long,” the minutes said. The Standard and Poor’s 500 index is up 2.6 percent since Sept. 21 and rose 0.4 percent yesterday to 1,169.77.

Consumer Confidence

The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan consumer confidence survey showed consumers expect an inflation rate of 2.2 percent over the next 12 months in September, the lowest in a year and down from 2.7 percent in August.

The Fed gave several options for raising short-term price expectations, including providing more information on the inflation rate policy makers consider consistent with their long-term goals and targeting a path for the price level. For the first time, the Fed said it could also target a path for nominal gross domestic product, which isn’t adjusted for inflation.

“The minutes are one of their key communication tools, but it’s not clear what that approach will be,” Maki said.

The report provides more detail on the timing and components of potential easing actions without giving the amount of any additional asset purchases by the Fed. Since the meeting, weaker-than-forecast job growth in September and comments by policy makers, including New York Fed President William Dudley, have fueled speculation that the central bank will soon start a second wave of unconventional easing.

Projection for Purchases

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. economists are projecting that the Fed will announce $500 billion of purchases at the next meeting Nov. 2-3.

“They’re still ironing out the details,” said Chris Low, chief economist at FTN Financial in New York. At the same time, “if we don’t get an announcement in the next meeting I think we’d see quite a bit of disappointment in the bond market and the stock market,” Low said.

Bond traders expect the Fed’s actions to generate higher prices. Their inflation expectations for the next five years, measured by the breakeven rate between nominal and inflation- indexed bonds, rose to 1.47 percent from 1.2 percent on Sept. 20, the day before the Fed’s meeting. Gold prices hit a record $1,366 an ounce on Oct. 7.

Removing Punch Bowl

“The bottom line is, they are trying to reflate, and the market is concerned that historically they have always been late in removing the punch bowl,” said Richard Schlanger, a vice president at Pioneer Investments Inc. in Boston who helps oversee $18 billion. “We are going to be very judicious in our asset allocations here.”

Moderate growth and 9.6 percent unemployment are curbing price gains, prompting U.S. central bankers to warn for the second time in a decade that inflation is too low.

Inflation, measured by the personal consumption expenditures price index, minus food and energy, has been below the Fed’s goal for five consecutive months. The price measure rose 1.4 percent for the 12 months ending August. Prices excluding food and energy have gained at a 1 percent annual pace in the three months through August.

The European Central Bank and Bank of England are among central banks that target an inflation rate through monetary policy. The Fed, by contrast, has no formal inflation objective; instead, Fed officials state a long-run inflation rate they see as consistent with achieving the legislative mandates of stable prices and maximum employment.

Inflation Target

The FOMC could adopt a combination of inflation targeting and price-level targeting to get inflation expectations up, said Mark Gertler, a New York University economist and research co- author with Bernanke.

The Fed could restate its commitment to keep inflation rising annually at around 1.7 percent to 2 percent. At the same time, the FOMC could announce some tolerance for inflation above that goal to make up for recent undershooting of those rates, Gertler said.

That would help convince the public that the Fed wasn’t going to raise rates rapidly if inflation moved above 2 percent, he said. Such a strategy “tells the market that the farther we undershoot, the more aggressive we are going to be,” he said.

A nominal GDP target is “a pretty unlikely outcome,” Gertler said. “I don’t think it is on the table as a serious proposal.”

Attends Meeting

The Fed’s consideration of price-level targeting may draw on research co-written by Gauti Eggertsson, a New York Fed researcher, and Michael Woodford of Columbia University. Eggertsson attended the FOMC meeting last month, his second since joining the Fed in 2004.

Eggertsson and Woodford said in a 2003 paper that a publicly announced price-level target is better than targeting the rate of inflation as a way to increase expectations. Bernanke cited their work in a 2003 speech about monetary policy in Japan.

Woodford said in an interview it would be “desirable” for the Fed to commit to keep rates low to ensure prices rise along a path identified by the central bank.

If people expect higher inflation, “that’s a reason to spend more,” said Woodford, who as a professor worked with Bernanke in the Princeton University economics department.

Japan Policy

Japan, by contrast, tied its low-rate policy last decade to an inflation rate instead of the price level. Woodford declined to discuss his talks with Fed officials.

Dudley, who serves as FOMC vice chairman and is the only regional Fed president to vote at every meeting, said in an Oct. 1 speech that, for example, “if inflation in 2011 were 0.5 percentage point below the Fed’s inflation objective, the Fed might aim to offset this miss by an additional 0.5 percentage- point rise in the price level in future years.”

“There’s some evidence that inflation expectations are playing a role both in limiting demand and keeping prices low,” FTN’s Low said.

“You look at housing now and one of the reasons people aren’t buying is they expect they can get a better price if they wait,” he said. “If that behavior spreads into other markets, it could be a real problem.”

Click here for the full report from Bloomberg.

Britain Plans To Decentralize Health Care

July 26, 2010

The New York Times

By: Sarah Lyall

Perhaps the only consistent thing about Britain’s socialized health care system is that it is in a perpetual state of flux, its structure constantly changing as governments search for the elusive formula that will deliver the best care for the cheapest price while costs and demand escalate.

Even as the new coalition government said it would make enormous cuts in the public sector, it initially promised to leave health care alone. But in one of its most surprising moves so far, it has done the opposite, proposing what would be the most radical reorganization of the National Health Service, as the system is called, since its inception in 1948.

Practical details of the plan are still sketchy. But its aim is clear: to shift control of England’s $160 billion annual health budget from a centralized bureaucracy to doctors at the local level. Under the plan, $100 billion to $125 billion a year would be meted out to general practitioners, who would use the money to buy services from hospitals and other health care providers.

The plan would also shrink the bureaucratic apparatus, in keeping with the government’s goal to effect $30 billion in “efficiency savings” in the health budget by 2014 and to reduce administrative costs by 45 percent. Tens of thousands of jobs would be lost because layers of bureaucracy would be abolished.

In a document, or white paper, outlining the plan, the government admitted that the changes would “cause significant disruption and loss of jobs.” But it said: “The current architecture of the health system has developed piecemeal, involves duplication and is unwieldy. Liberating the N.H.S., and putting power in the hands of patients and clinicians, means we will be able to effect a radical simplification, and remove layers of management.”

The health secretary, Andrew Lansley, also promised to put more power in the hands of patients. Currently, how and where patients are treated, and by whom, is largely determined by decisions made by 150 entities known as primary care trusts — all of which would be abolished under the plan, with some of those choices going to patients. It would also abolish many current government-set targets, like limits on how long patients have to wait for treatment.

The plan, with many elements that need legislative approval to be enacted, applies only to England; other parts of Britain have separate systems.

The government announced the proposals this month. Reactions to them range from pleased to highly skeptical.

Many critics say that the plans are far too ambitious, particularly in the short period of time allotted, and they doubt that general practitioners are the right people to decide how the health care budget should be spent. Currently, the 150 primary care trusts make most of those decisions. Under the proposals, general practitioners would band together in regional consortia to buy services from hospitals and other providers.

It is likely that many such groups would have to spend money to hire outside managers to manage their budgets and negotiate with the providers, thus canceling out some of the savings.

David Furness, head of strategic development at the Social Market Foundation, a study group, said that under the plan, every general practitioner in London would, in effect, be responsible for a $3.4 million budget.

“It’s like getting your waiter to manage a restaurant,” Mr. Furness said. “The government is saying that G.P.’s know what the patient wants, just the way a waiter knows what you want to eat. But a waiter isn’t necessarily any good at ordering stock, managing the premises, talking to the chef — why would they be? They’re waiters.”

But advocacy groups for general practitioners welcomed the proposals.

“One of the great attractions of this is that it will be able to focus on what local people need,” said Prof. Steve Field, chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners, which represents about 40,000 of the 50,000 general practitioners in the country. “This is about clinicians taking responsibility for making these decisions.”

Dr. Richard Vautrey, deputy chairman of the general practitioner committee at the British Medical Association, said general practitioners had long felt there were “far too many bureaucratic hurdles to leap” in the system, impeding communication. “In many places, the communication between G.P.’s and consultants in hospitals has become fragmented and distant,” he said.

The plan would also require all National Health Service hospitals to become “foundation trusts,” enterprises that are independent of health service control and accountable to an independent regulator (some hospitals currently operate in this fashion). This would result in a further loss of jobs, health care unions say, and also open the door to further privatization of the service.

Click Here For The Full Article

Employers Will See Medical Costs Jump In 2011

June 14, 2010

My Way News

By Tom Murphy

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – Companies that offer employee health insurance expect another steep jump in medical costs next year, and more will ask workers to share a bigger chunk of the expense, according to a new PricewaterhouseCoopers report.

For the first time, most of the American workforce is expected to have health insurance deductibles of $400 or more, the consulting firm said in a report released to The Associated Press.

Deductibles are the annual amount a patient pays out of pocket for care before insurance coverage starts. They are generally separate from co-payments and coinsurance.

Two years ago, only 25 percent of companies participating in the annual survey said they asked employees to pay deductibles of $400 or more. That grew to 43 percent in 2010 and is expected to pass 50 percent next year.

Employees who are asked to pay more through things like higher deductibles help keep cost growth in check because they use less health care.

The health care reform law passed by Congress and then signed by President Obama in March has just started to unfold and will have little impact on costs next year, said Michael Thompson, a principal with PricewaterhouseCoopers.

“In general, it’s a continuation of a fairly high rate of medical inflation,” he said.

Click Here for The Full Report.

Norman Human Problems Spiking Healthcare Costs

May 28, 2010

Natural News

By Sherry Baker

(NaturalNews) Mainstream medicine has a huge new growth industry underway — the “medicalization” of the human condition. That’s the conclusion of a study headed by Brandeis University sociologist Peter Conrad that was just published in the journal Social Science and Medicine. The report, the first study of its kind, documents that over the last several decades, numerous common problems — many of which are simply due to being human — have been newly defined as medical disorders that supposedly need prescription drugs and other costly treatments.

For example, menopause is a perfectly natural part of womanhood but it is now considered a “condition” complete with symptoms that physicians often believe need treatment with hormones and anti-depressants. Likewise, normal pregnancies, taking longer-than-average time to get pregnant and impotence (now known by the medical term “erectile dysfunction”) are all now seen as medical conditions that may need intense medical monitoring and treatment. And if a child fidgets in class — bingo! He or she is frequently classified as having Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and quickly placed on stimulant drugs like Ritalin

Click here for the full report.

Cancer Treatment Costs Nearly Double

May 11, 2010

ABC News

By Michael Smith
Over a period of nearly two decades, the medical costs of cancer care almost doubled in constant dollars, but remained proportional to other medical costs, researchers said. Over the same time — from 1987 to 2005 — cancer costs shifted away from inpatient care, according to Florence Tangka of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and colleagues.

Meanwhile, the share of cancer costs picked up by private insurers and Medicaid increased while private, out-of-pocket expenditures declined slightly, they reported online in the journal Cancer.

Much of the increase in cancer care costs has been driven by a growing caseload — fueled in turn by an aging population, rather than a rise in per-case costs — Tangka and colleagues said.

However, the cost of cancer care is a complex calculation, they noted, involving changes in population, incidence rates, prevalence rates, effectiveness of care, and mortality rates.

Click here for the full report.

Does Republican Win In Massachusetts Doom ObamaCare?

January 20, 2010

Google

By Erica Werner

It’s gut-check time for President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats on their health care overhaul.

A stinging loss Tuesday in Massachusetts cost Obama the 60-vote Senate supermajority he was counting on to overcome Republican procedural obstacles and pass the far-reaching legislation. The outcome splintered the rank and file on how to salvage the bill, energized congressional Republicans and left Obama and the Democrats with fallback options that range from bad to worse.

Senate Democrats were scheduled to meet at midday Wednesday, and a sign of their intentions could emerge then. Obama will have to exert a mighty influence to keep jittery moderates from giving up on the effort.

Democrats don’t appear to have enough time to resolve differences between the two bills passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate – and get cost and coverage estimates back from the Congressional Budget Office – before Brown is sworn in.

A leading idea involves persuading House Democrats to pass the Senate version of a health care bill that many of them have serious problems with. Another alternative calls for Senate Democrats to promise to make changes to the bill later on. Some Democrats said their big hopes would have to be scaled back.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to acknowledge that as a possibility as she left the Capitol near midnight Tuesday after meeting with her top lieutenants to discuss the way forward. Pelosi and others contend that because Massachusetts already has near-universal health coverage under a state law, the upset victory by Republican state Sen. Scott Brown to take the late Edward M. Kennedy’s former seat could not be seen as a referendum on the issue.

“Massachusetts has health care. … The rest of the country would like to have that too,” Pelosi said. “So we don’t say a state that already has health care should determine whether the rest of the country should.”

“We will get the job done. I’m very confident. I’ve always been confident,” she added.

Others saw miles of bad road in any direction and suggested that regrouping was in order.

“We shouldn’t show the arrogance of not getting the message here,” said liberal Rep. Anthony Weiner, contending independents had turned against the bill and the Democratic base had lost its enthusiasm. “I don’t think it would be the worst thing to take a step back” and turn the focus to jobs, in conjunction with scaled-back health care goals.

Republicans said don’t even bother: The election of Brown over the once-favoured Democrat Martha Coakley in the Democratic stronghold sent a message that the health legislation should be scrapped altogether.

Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele said Americans were breathing “a sigh of relief” over the potential derailing of the health care bill.

“People across the country are saying, ‘Slow it down,” Steele said Wednesday on ABC television.

But David Plouffe, who led Obama’s presidential campaign, rejected calls to scrap the bill. “We have a good health care plan,” he said on ABC. “We need to pass that. We have to lead.”

Moderate Sen. Jim Webb, a Democrat, said the Senate should not hold any further votes on health care until Brown is seated.

Other Democrats said they feel the need to act even more urgently.

“There is only one guarantee – that if we don’t pass something the notion of trying to put Humpty Dumpty together again is a real long shot,” said Rep. Patrick Kennedy, the son of the late senator. “It’s a lot easier to pass something and fix it later.”

The legislation would expand coverage to more than 30 million Americans now uninsured, while attempting to rein in the growth of health care costs. Democratic lawmakers will have to move in virtual lockstep to enact the bill now, even as Republican opposition intensifies.

That could be too much to ask from rank-and-file Democrats demoralized by losing a seat held in an almost unbroken line by a Kennedy since 1953. Efforts to woo Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe as a convert could increase. But with polls showing voters souring on health care legislation the president could be abandoned by lawmakers of his own party.

Click here for full report

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