India's rapid economic growth to hit a speed bump after cash crunch

mercredi 30 novembre 2016

Once again, India has revealed data that upholds its ranking as the world's fastest-growing economy. But the South Asian giant may not able to retain that title for long as a cash squeeze engineered by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government looks set to hit growth in the coming quarters.

Gross domestic product (GDP) in the July-September period, India's fiscal second quarter, expanded by an annual 7.3 percent, official data revealed on Wednesday. It was an improvement from the previous quarter's 7.1 percent increase, which marked a 15-month low, and eclipsed China's 6.7 percent growth during the same period.

But that may be the last above-7 percent growth reading for some time to come.

"The improved growth is no cause for cheer going forward, since consumption, the main growth driver of the economy, will likely be the biggest casualty in the months ahead as demonetization takes its toll on overall consumption, especially in rural areas," Société Générale economist Kunal Kumar Kundu explained in a Thursday note.

A controversial plan to swap all 500 and 1,000 rupee notes—a combined 86 percent of currency in circulation—with new notes has produced a nation-wide cash crunch amid a limited stock of script.

As a result, consumers are holding off from spending as cash is removed from the system, with a daily limit on the amount of old notes that can be exchanged. Private consumption accounts for a whopping 60 percent of GDP so the frugal mood can have weighty economic consequences.

Launched on Nov. 8, Modi's program is aimed at catching tax evaders holding undeclared cash, or "black money." But so far, the program has mostly hit the lower income population segment, many of whom operate entirely on cash and lack bank accounts to exchange old notes, resulting in nation-wide protests on Monday.

"The sectors most concerning are the ones with a high reliance on cash transactions, which can range from daily foodstuffs to big-ticket items like jewelry and real-estate. So these sectors are likely to feel the crimp in demand over the near term," Shilan Shah, India economist at Capital Economics, told CNBC's "Squawk Box."

The spending hit isn't limited to just consumers, however.

Liquidity shortages in business sectors will also contribute to the looming GDP slowdown, noted Faraz Syed, associate economist at Moody's Analytics. Firms will likely re-calibrate their working capital and delay investment decisions, he told CNBC's "The Rundown."

In anticipation that the demonetization effect will trickle down into the March and June quarters next year, Moody's has now lowered its 2016-2017 growth forecast to 6.6 percent from 7.5 percent previously.

The falling growth combined with an expected drop in inflation, due to a healthy monsoon season and declining food prices, should motivate the central bank to cut interest rates by 25 basis points at its scheduled meeting next week, Syed said.

While Capital Economics' Shah agrees the economy will set to take a beating in the upcoming quarter, he warned that India's growth data needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. "Demonetization aside, the other major caveat when it comes to India GDP is accuracy... The economy is likely growing a few percentage points slower than what official data suggests."

Indeed, many remain skeptical of New Delhi's new GDP calculation method that was introduced in January 2015.

Until the government unveils more clarity on the methodology, analysts and policymakers will look at alternative indicators, such as monthly manufacturing data, to gauge economic health, Shah noted.

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McDonald's Big Mac creator dies at 98, ate one burger a week: Family

You probably haven't heard his name, but you likely have devoured his creation: two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun.

Michael James "Jim" Delligatti, the McDonald's franchisee who created the Big Mac nearly 50 years ago, died Monday at home in Pittsburgh surrounded by his family, family spokeswoman Kerry Ford said Wednesday. Delligatti was 98.

Until his health trailed off the last couple of years, Delligatti ate at least one 540-calorie Big Mac a week, his son Michael said.

Delligatti's franchise was based in Uniontown, not far from Pittsburgh, when he invented the chain's signature burger in 1967 after deciding customers wanted a bigger sandwich.

Michael Delligatti said McDonald's executives told his father he could experiment with a bigger burger but only using products the restaurant already stocked.

"He was often asked why he named it the Big Mac, and he said because Big Mc sounded too funny," Delligatti said.

Jim Delligatti told The Associated Press in 2006 that McDonald's resisted the idea at first because its simple lineup of hamburgers, cheeseburgers, fries and shakes was selling well.

"They figured, why go to something else if (the original menu) was working so well?" Delligatti said then. "But it went over so well in Uniontown that we were allowed to bring it to two stores in Pittsburgh for a couple of weeks."

Demand exploded as Delligatti's sandwich spread to the rest of his 47 stores in Pennsylvania and was added to the chain's national menu in 1968.

McDonald's has sold billions of Big Macs since then, in more than 100 countries. When the burger turned 40, McDonald's estimated it was selling 550 million Big Macs a year, or roughly 17 every second.

"Delligatti was a legendary franchisee within McDonald's system who made a lasting impression on our brand," the Oak Brook, Illinois-based company said Wednesday in a statement. The Big Mac "has become an iconic sandwich enjoyed by many around the world."

Ann Dugan, a former assistant dean of the University of Pittsburgh's Katz School of Business and an expert on business franchises, said Jim Delligatti's genius was simple: He listened to customers who wanted a bigger burger.

"In franchising, there's always this set playbook and you have to follow it. Jim saw an opportunity to go outside the playbook because he knew the customer," Dugan said. "He persevered and (McDonald's) listened, and the rest is history."

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Google, GE reportedly among companies that may soon be able to operate in Cuba

A new batch of companies may soon be able to operate in Cuba if the Obama administration can persuade Havana to finalize agreements, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the discussions.

If the White House succeeds, Google, General Electric, Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, Royal Caribbean and Pearl Seas Cruises could all announce the deals in the upcoming weeks, the newspaper said.

The Journal said the deals aim to more firmly secure President Barack Obama's endeavors to thaw U.S.-Cuba relations. Obama was the first American president to visit the isolated island nation in nearly 90 years and has pushed for normalizing relations with Cuba.

The president forged the effort by exercising his executive power, something President-elect Donald Trump could undo once he takes office. On Monday, Trump threatened to "terminate" the Cuba agreement if the country is "unwilling to make a better deal for the Cuban people."

Longtime Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who preserved communism on the island for decades, died last week. His brother Raul became president in 2008.

Read the full report in The Wall Street Journal.

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McDonald's franchisee who created Big Mac dies

The Pittsburgh-area McDonald's franchisee who created the Big Mac nearly 50 years ago has died. Michael "Jim" Delligatti was 98.

McDonald's spokeswoman Kerry Ford confirmed that Delligatti died at home surrounded by his family on Monday night.

Delligatti's franchise was based in Uniontown when he invented the chain's signature burger with two all-beef patties, "special sauce," lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions on a sesame seed bun.

Delligatti told The Associated Press in 2006 that Oak Brook, Illinois-based McDonald's resisted the idea at first because its simple lineup of hamburgers, cheeseburgers, fries and shakes was selling well.

But Delligatti wanted to offer a bigger burger and it went over so well it spread to the rest of Delligatti's 47 stores, then went national in 1968.

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McDonald's franchisee who created Big Mac dies

Op-Ed: The case for normalizing Trump

Over the weekend, Donald Trump alleged the existence of massive voter fraud in an election he indisputably won. Tuesday morning, seemingly inspired by a Fox News segment, he tweeted that flag burning should be not only illegal (a popular stance widely if sporadically held by Republican politicians) but punishable via loss of citizenship. The previous night, he retweeted a teen Trump fan's attacks on CNN reporter Jeff Zeleny. That was just a warmup for his own bizarre slam on CNN, a cable network that sidelined its regular stable of conservative pundits during the 2016 campaign in favor of a new crop of Trump-boosting specialists that including a former Trump campaign manager who was literally still cashing Trump's checks during most of his tenure as a political commentator.

These antics intersect with two ongoing debates about Trump in politics and media.

One is to what extent we should regard Trump as deliberately using social media controversies to distract attention from other issues. The other is to what extent political actors should be pressured to not "normalize" Trump — remaining focused on what is outlandish, offensive, and bizarre about him rather than doing boring things like writing about his humdrum pick for transportation secretary.

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Normalization, in this context, is typically cast as a form of complicity with Trump in which the highest possible premium is placed on maintaining a rigid state of alert and warning people that he is not just another politician whom you may or may not agree with on the issues.

But several students of authoritarian populist movements abroad have a different message. To beat Trump, what his opponents need to do is practice ordinary humdrum politics. Populists in office thrive on a circus-like atmosphere that casts the populist leader as persecuted by media and political elites who are obsessed with his uncouth behavior while he is busy doing the people's work. To beat Trump, progressives will need to do as much as they can to get American politics out of reality show mode.

Trump genuinely does pose threats to the integrity of American institutions and political norms. But he does so largely because his nascent administration is sustained by support from the institutional Republican Party and its standard business and interest group supporters. Alongside the wacky tweets and personal feuds, Trump is pursuing a policy agenda whose implications are overwhelmingly favorable to rich people and business owners. His opponents need to talk about this policy agenda, and they need to develop their own alternative agenda and make the case that it will better serve the needs of average people. And to do that, they need to get out of the habit of being reflexively baited into tweet-based arguments that happen on the terrain of Trump's choosing and serve to endlessly reinscribe the narrative of a champion of the working class surrounded by media vipers.

Donald Trump paid out millions of dollars to former students he allegedly defrauded at a fake university. He never apologized for having said that the judge in the case couldn't preside over it objectively because his parents emigrated from Mexico. Trump then went on to explain that there's no need to worry about his massive financial conflicts of interest because they're not technically illegal as a matter of existing law.

To critics, this kind of corrupt behavior seems to self-evidently invalidate Trump's promises to drain the swamp in Washington and serve as the people's champion. But Jan-Werner Müller, a Princeton political scientist who recently published an excellent little book about authoritarian populist movements, finds that Trump supporters' indifference to Trump's corrupt leanings is actually rather typical. Even when clear evidence of corruption emerges once an authoritarian populist regime is in place, the regime's key supporters are generally unimpressed.

"The perception among supporters of populists is that corruption and cronyism are not genuine problems as long as they look like measures pursued for the sake of a moral, hardworking 'us' and not for the immoral or even foreign 'them,'" he writes, "hence it is a pious hope for liberals to think that all they have to do is expose corruption to discredit populists."

George Mason University's Justin Gest is the author of a recent study of white working-class politics in the United States and United Kingdom, and one of his major themes is that there is a pervasive cynicism about politics and government among the people he interviews.

"Today's working class, Rust Belt voters are disenchanted by what they perceive to be a political and economic culture of exploitative greed and gridlock," he writes, "and are waiting for someone to adopt their cause."

Per Müller, their enthusiasm for Trump doesn't necessarily reflect a misperception that he is honest or that he will eschew greed and corruption. Rather, their view is that he is on their side and that the protestations of his opponents merely reflect the self-interested defensiveness of the establishment. Highlighting themes of racial and ethnic conflict as central to American politics further feeds this dynamic. Trump may be a sonofabitch, the thinking goes, but at least he's our sonofabitch.

Luigi Zingales is an idiosyncratic economics professor at the University of Chicago who's been deeply interested for years in issues related to how corruption and crony capitalism can undermine free markets. His interests in this field derive in part from his understanding of the course of events in his native Italy, where back in the early 1990s an uncouth businessman named Silvio Berlusconi managed to kick aside the leadership of the country's traditional center right and then install himself as prime minister.

Back in 2011, Zingales presciently wrote that the country should be glad that Trump decided not to run for president because he had enormous potential as a Berlusconi-like figure who would mix business connections, media savvy, and discontent with existing political parties into a potent cocktail.

He explained that Berlusconi governed successfully as a "pro-business" figure who helped incumbent businesses entrench their positions, without pursuing reforms that would encourage competition and growth:

How, then, did Berlusconi get elected and reelected? He created an unlikely coalition between the business elite, which supports him for fear of the alternative, and the poor, who identify with him because he appeals to their aspirations. In a country where corruption and lack of meritocracy has all but killed the hope of intra-generational mobility, citizens chose to escape from reality and find consolation in dreams. Berlusconi adeptly fosters the illusion that he can turn everyone else into billionaires. His political career is something like Trump's Apprentice program, only on a national scale.

In a post-election op-ed, Zingales revisited these themes and observed that the two politicians who beat Berlusconi in elections — former Prime Minister Romano Prodi and current Prime Minister Matteo Renzi — had two important things in common: "Both of them treated Mr. Berlusconi as an ordinary opponent. They focused on the issues, not on his character. In different ways, both of them are seen as outsiders, not as members of what in Italy is defined as the political caste."

The strategy Zingales recommends is, of course, roughly the opposite of what Democrats wound up doing in 2016. They nominated one of the most experienced major party nominees of all time, a consummate insider, and then she ran a campaign that was very heavily focused on the notion that Trump was simply unfit to serve as president.

This strategy has been the subject of a million pixels' worth of recriminations, but as Tara Golshan has written, it's no mystery why Clinton stuck with it: Her data was telling her it was working.

And, indeed, both exit polls and post-election polls confirm that in one sense it really did work — Trump is the least popular president-elect on record, with underwater favorable ratings and about 2 million fewer votes than his main opponent.

But he has, in fact, won the election and has already embarked on beginning the business of governing the nation. To the extent that he actually goes out and does something shocking and terrible, he should, of course, be criticized. But the tendency of his critics — and much of the mainstream press — to go into hyperventilating mode over things like his Twitter war with the cast of Hamilton or the New York Times can be counterproductive.

As Zingales writes, opposition that's grounded in Trump's norm-violating personal behavior risks "crown[ing] Mr. Trump as the people's leader of the fight against the Washington caste."

The Trump era has featured frequent plaintive cries from liberals who just can't understand how honorable, decent Republicans could support a man who openly courts Vladimir Putin, tweets attacks on individual journalists, poses with taco bowls as Hispanic outreach, and engages in massive financial conflicts of interest.

But Republican Party elected officials, whether you agree or disagree with them, have some pretty clear reasoning. They were obviously uncomfortable with making Trump their party's standard-bearer, but having won both the nomination and the general election, he is now pursuing a very recognizable version of the GOP's partisan agenda. Trump has indicated his desire to implement:

Repeal of the Affordable Care Act, stripping health insurance away from millions while reducing taxes on the wealthy

  • Large additional tax cuts geared primarily to the wealthy
  • A massive rollback of social safety net programs aimed at low-income households
  • A massive rollback of air pollution and climate change regulations
  • A sharp reduction in Wall Street regulation
  • Overturning Roe v. Wade

These are all big things that are politically difficult to accomplish. But the results of the 2016 election give the Republican Party a chance to implement most of them. That's a rare and valuable political opportunity that the GOP's elected officials have decided they would like to seize, even if it means ignoring or downplaying some of Trump's other problems or eccentricities.

Of course, if Republicans decide they want to change course on this and start reeling Trump in, Democrats should happily join them and cooperate in a bipartisan drive against lawlessness, corruption, and subversion of American foreign policy by the government of Russia. But as long as Republicans are backing Trump, ignoring his partisan agenda in order to avoid normalizing Trump is an enormous danger because it ignores the main reason Trump is able to get away with abnormal behavior.

A November 22 Quinnipiac poll revealed both the risks and the opportunities currently facing Democrats. It showed that attacks on Trump's character have set in, and most people agree that Trump is not honest and not levelheaded. But it also showed that a majority believe he will create jobs, that he cares about average Americans, and that he will bring change in the right direction. Yet at the same time, Quinnipiac also finds that most voters favor legal abortion, oppose tax cuts for the wealthy, oppose deregulation of business, and oppose weakening gun control regulation.

Which is to say that the most normal, blandly partisan parts of Trump's agenda are also among the least popular. And yet Trump's support for them is what immunizes him from Republican criticism and oversight over the abnormal stuff. Defending the basic norms of American constitutional government is important, but doing it as a partisan agenda won't work — it turns off Trump's core supporters and signals to wavering ones that his opponents are focused on abstractions rather than daily life. As long as Trump is enjoying the lockstep support of congressional Republicans, his opponents need to find ways to turn attention away from the Trump Show and focus it on his basic policy agenda and the ways in which it touches millions of people.

Commentary by Matthew Yglesias, a writer at Vox. Follow him on Twitter @mattyglesias.

For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion on Twitter.

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Op-Ed: The case for normalizing Trump

Why vegetarians aren’t happy with the UK’s new £5 note

When the Bank of England launched its new polymer five pound banknote a few months back, it was highlighted as being strong, resistant to moisture and dirt, and better for the environment. But no mention was made of it containing fat… animal fat that is.

This week, the BoE confirmed on Twitter that its new £5 banknote contained a "trace of tallow", a substance which comes from animal fats, including rendered forms of beef or mutton.

"We can confirm that the polymer pellet from which the base substrate is made contains a trace of a substance known as tallow," the Bank of England, said in a statement emailed to CNBC.

"Tallow is derived from animal fats (suet) and is a substance that is also widely used in the manufacture of candles and soap."

The news caused upset amongst British vegans, vegetarians and religious groups, and even triggered an online petition asking the central bank to remove the tallow. The Change.org petition has received more 97,500 signatures.

"The new £5 notes contain animal fat in the form of tallow. This is unacceptable to millions of vegans, vegetarians, Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and others in the U.K.," the petition reads, asking the institution to cease the use of "animal products in the production of currency that we have to use."

The new five pound note — which features Sir Winston Churchill — marked a new stage for the U.K. currency, due to its polymer material. Prior to the introduction of the £5 note in September, all other notes in current circulation have been made out of paper.

Following the tallow update, several individuals took to Twitter to express their fury, while leading organizations and religious groups also weighed in on the debate.

"(Tallow) doesn't need be used in the notes at all as there are many plant-based alternatives," Ali Ryland, a spokesperson from The Vegan Society, said in a statement emailed to CNBC.

"Using animals in this way is outdated and unnecessary, not to mention the fact that it is obviously cruel. While vegans will be unable to opt out of using these notes, we hope that the Bank of England and their supplier take this seriously and use alternative, vegan-friendly sources for all future notes," Ryland added.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson from the Board of Deputies of British Jews said that while Jews are not allowed to consume tallow, they are allowed to handle it, adding in a statement emailed to CNBC that "the new £5 note won't be problem for Jews unless they attempt to eat them."

When it comes to the issue of using tallow, Lynne Elliot, the CEO of The Vegetarian Society, said it wasn't necessarily an issue for those who follow a vegan/vegetarian diet for their own personal health; however it may be "a massive issue" for those who choose this diet because they are concerned about animal welfare.

"I think that's really just because people take a lot of care and effort to try and avoid using products that are from animal slaughter in their life," Lynne Elliot, The Vegetarian Society's CEO, told CNBC over the phone.

"So they're very careful about what cosmetics, cleanings products, clothing they use and they've got choices about all those things."

"But this is going to be very difficult for people to avoid using the currency of the land."

Elliot added that the Bank of England had been very supportive of the situation, after the society spoke with the central bank on Tuesday night.

"(The Bank of England) are taking this issue really seriously. They are listening. They are understanding that it's really concerning some people. They've set off to do a full investigation now," Elliot said.

The next two banknotes set to enter circulation soon are both—at present—expected to be made out of polymer: the polymer Jane Austen £10 banknote due in 2017, and the J.M.W. Turner £20 banknote, due out by 2020.

"I'm really, really hoping we might be able to find an alternative going forward," Elliot added.

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Ackman's fund asks SEC for exemption after campaign donation

Pershing Square Capital Management, the hedge fund firm run by billionaire William Ackman, wants to be exempted from possibly having to return millions of dollars in fees after a former employee donated $500 to a family friend's political campaign.

In an application made public on Tuesday, Pershing Square detailed the 2013 contribution by a former analyst and asked the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) not to force it to return fees it earned from managing money for the Massachusetts state pension fund, should it be determined that the fund violated campaign finance rules.

The matter represents another possible problem for one of the world's most closely watched hedge funds, at a time when it is suffering double-digit losses for the second straight year and investors may be looking for reasons to exit.

At issue is a contribution Paul Hilal made when he was a Pershing Square analyst to the campaign of Juliette Kayyem, a Harvard lecturer and security expert, who was trying to mount a run for governor in Massachusetts. Hilal was asked by Kayyem's sister to contribute $500. That is in excess of the $150 people are allowed to give to candidates they cannot vote for. Hilal declined to comment.

Kayyem did not gain enough votes to make it onto the ballot in 2014. The state's governor is able to appoint members of the state pension fund's board who could vote on which firms should manage the fund's money.

Regulators have recently paid more attention to deals that investment firms have made with pension funds in order to try and steer business their way.

Pershing Square sent its application to the SEC in September, months after the regulator in May asked for information about campaign donations. It is unclear precisely how much in fees is at stake, but based on how much the New York-based firm manages for the state, it could be in the millions. If the firm were forced to pay back any fees, they would go to the SEC, not the pension fund.

"Causing (Pershing Square Capital Management) to forfeit compensation for the two-year period subsequent to the contribution could result in a financial loss that is thousands of times the amount of the contribution," the firm wrote to the SEC in asking for the exemption.

In a statement on Tuesday, Pershing Square called the improper donation "an unintended violation," and said it takes compliance very seriously.

The SEC declined to comment.

"A former employee made a $500 campaign contribution to his friend's sister's unsuccessful primary campaign in an unintended violation of our compliance policies," Pershing said in its statement. "The donation was $350 in excess of the allowable contribution. The donation has since been returned."

The firm said that it does not appear that Hilal ever communicated with the state pension fund or its representatives. It also wrote that the former analyst was not a "'covered associate' within the meaning of the Rule, as his activities did not rise to the level of soliciting investments." The fund also said he never met or spoke with the potential candidate.

The firm is now prohibiting all donations to local and state races and requiring employees to certify contributions four times a year instead of once a year.

Pershing Square is one of 28 hedge funds that manage money for Massachusetts' $63.2 billion state pension fund and started investing on the state's behalf in 2011.

Neither the fund nor the state would say exactly how much Pershing Square invests for Massachusetts, having been approved for an initial investment of $25 million five years ago.

Hedge funds typically charge their clients a 2 percent management fee and then take 20 percent of the profits they earn for the client. While Pershing Square's flagship fund is nursing a 12 percent loss this year, it remains one of the industry's most profitable hedge funds, having scored a 37 percent gain in 2014.

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Ackman's fund asks SEC for exemption after campaign donation

Philip Morris CEO looks towards phasing out cigarettes

Philip Morris International, the world's largest international tobacco company, could eventually stop selling cigarettes, its chief executive told the BBC on Wednesday, as it launched its alternative product IQOS in Britain.

The company's IQOS smokeless cigarette, which is already on sale in over a dozen markets including Japan, Switzerland and Italy, heats tobacco enough to produce a vapor without burning it. The company believes that makes it much less harmful than cigarettes.

Japan Tobacco International also has a tobacco-based cigarette alternative called Ploom Tech, and British American Tobacco said this month that it was also testing one.

"I believe there will come a moment in time where I would say we have sufficient adoption of these alternative products ... to start envisaging, together with governments, a phase-out period for cigarettes," Andre Calantzopoulos said in an interview on BBC Radio 4.

"I hope this time will come soon," he added.

Philip Morris, the maker of Marlboro cigarettes everywhere except the United States, gets the vast majority of its sales and profits from traditional cigarettes, which kill an estimated 6 million people a year worldwide.

Even though the tobacco market is shrinking as more people quit, Calantzopoulos said that by 2025 there will still be more than a billion smokers worldwide.

Still, the company has invested over $2 billion into potentially "reduced risk" products that deliver the addictive nicotine without the deadly smoke.

Calantzopoulos said the economics of these products was similar to cigarettes.

The IQOS is an electronic device that is used with mini cigarettes. It is different from e-cigarettes, which use a nicotine-laced liquid.

"If smokers switch to electronic cigarettes or other products that can be shown to cut the risks to their health, this could lead to a big improvement in public health," said Deborah Arnott, chief executive of UK health charity Action on Smoking and Health. "But we need independent evidence to support any claims made by the tobacco industry."

ASH said that until independent evidence shows that IQOS and similar products are substantially less harmful than smoking, they should be regulated in the same way as cigarettes.

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Here are the 10 most important stories for investors Wednesday morning

A daily morning look at the financial stories you need to know to start the day.

STOCKS/ECONOMY

-Stock futures are higher, mostly on a surge in oil prices. Economic data out today includes the ADP private sector jobs report for November, personal income, and spending.

OIL/ENERGY

-U.S. crude prices have been up as much as 8 percent today to the $49 a barrel level on comments by the Saudi oil minister that OPEC is close to a production cut deal.

TRUMP TRANSITION

-President-elect Donald Trump has just tweeted that he will hold a news conference on December 15 to detail how he is going to entirely leave his businesses in order to focus on the presidency.

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Kellogg to join others in removing advertising on Breitbart

Kellogg, the food manufacturer that owns Pringles and Pop-Tarts, confirmed Tuesday that it will discontinue advertising on Breitbart.com, the far-right news and commentary site that was formerly run by a top aide of President-elect Donald Trump, Steve Bannon.

The site has come under fire on social media in recent days as consumers, angered at what they say is its racist, sexist and anti-Semitic content, publicly name its advertisers.

Bannon worked as executive chairman of Breitbart News until he left to run Trump's campaign. He was scheduled to return to Breitbart, but earlier this month, Trump named Bannon his chief strategist, stirring more of the site's critics to call out its content and appeal to its advertisers.

"We regularly work with our media buying partners to ensure our ads do not appear on sites that aren't aligned with our values as a company," Kellogg spokesperson Kris Charles in a statement.

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"This involves reviewing websites where ads could potentially be placed using filtering technology to assess site content. As you can imagine, there is a very large volume of websites, so occasionally something is inadvertently missed. In this case, we learned from consumers that ads were placed on Breitbart.com and decided to discontinue advertising there."

Breitbart News couldn't be reached for comment. But in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Bannon has claimed that he was not a White nationalist, as many liberals assert. "I'm not a white nationalist, I'm a nationalist. I'm an economic nationalist," Bannon said.

Other companies have already said on Twitter that they will stop advertising on Breitbart. They include pharmaceutical manufacturer Novo Nordisk, eyeglasses maker Warby Parker and the San Diego Zoo.

AppNexus, one of the largest online advertising networks, also blocked Breitbart News.

Contributing: The Associated Press

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Trump to reveal deal to keep nearly 1,000 Carrier jobs in Indiana

mardi 29 novembre 2016

The incoming Trump Administration and United Technologies (UTX) have reached an agreement that will keep close to 1,000 jobs at Carrier Corp., which is owned by UTX, in Indiana.

Carrier had planned to move production from a key factory in that state to Mexico, taking with it the roughly 1,400 jobs of those who work at the Indiana plant.

But shortly after CNBC revealed that Donald Trump was expected to travel to Indiana on Thursday to announce that a deal had been reached, Carrier itself confirmed the agreement.

Under a deal negotiated by Vice President-elect Mike Pence and UTX CEO Greg Hayes, the company will now keep most of those jobs in Indiana, sources close to the matter told CNBC.

While terms of the deal are not yet clear, the sources indicated there were new incentives on offer from the state of Indiana, where Pence is governor, that helped clear a path for the agreement.

While UTX was seeking the savings that would come from moving some production to Mexico, people familiar with the situation indicated that the savings were not worth incurring the wrath of the incoming administration, including the potential threat to the significant business that UTX currently conducts with the U.S. government, largely in the form of orders for jet engines and other defense-related equipment.

Trump had made the expected departure of the Carrier jobs a key theme in his campaign to capture the White House, using it as an example of the type of trade relationship that hurt U.S. workers.

On Thanksgiving Day, Trump tweeted that he was making progress on negotiating a deal with UTX.

CNBC broke the story of the agreement first on Twitter.




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Trump will violate DC hotel lease by taking office, say experts

Among Donald Trump's many potential conflicts of interest, one stands out: His organization's lease with the federal government to redevelop and run a luxury hotel in the iconic Old Post Office building on Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the Capitol.

How, critics wondered, could President Trump become his own landlord?

Now comes a new twist: Two federal procurement experts are arguing that not only will Trump have an ethics challenge — he will be in violation of the terms of the lease as soon as he takes the oath of office.

Steven L. Schooner, a professor of government procurement law at the George Washington University Law School, and Daniel I. Gordon, a senior advisor to GW's Government Procurement Law Program (and President Obama's first administrator for federal procurement policy) pointed out this week in Government Executive magazine that a provision in Trump's lease with the General Services Administration states that "No ... elected official of the Government of the United States ... shall be admitted to any share or part of this Lease, or to any benefit that may arise therefrom..."

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"To protect the integrity of the federal government's procurement process, GSA must end its lease arrangement with President-elect Trump now," the experts argue.

The GSA, which runs federal government real estate, declined to discuss the specifics when contacted by NBC News.

"GSA plans to coordinate with the President-elect's team to address any issues that may be related to the Old Post Office building," spokeswoman Renee Kelly said in a statement.

"GSA ran a fair and open competition, subject to careful and rigorous review, which resulted in the selection of the Trump Organization as the preferred private sector entity to redevelop the Old Post Office. GSA negotiated a lease with the Trump Organization and submitted the details to Congress prior to signing the lease in August 2013," Kelly added.

The federal conflicts of interest law prohibits government officials from using their governmental authority in ways that will help their financial interests, but that law does not apply to the president.

Trump has dismissed concerns about his business ties, telling the New York Times, "The president can't have a conflict of interest."

But whatever the law says, the lease is clear, Schooner and Gordon say.

"The language could not be any more specific or clear," they write, having first raised the issue in a November 15 op-ed in the Washington Post. "Donald Trump will breach the contract on Jan. 20, when, while continuing to benefit from the lease, he will become an `elected official of the Government of the United States.'"

"The situation is a casebook example of both the appearance of a significant conflict of interest and an intolerable intermingling of an elected official's governmental duties and his family's personal financial interests."

The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The hotel has drawn attention for another reason. The Washington Post reported Nov. 18 that foreign diplomats were booking rooms there in an effort to "build ties with the new administration."

"The faster GSA ends its business relationship with the Trump Organization, the better," Schooner and Gordon write.


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Trump’s latest Cabinet picks signal he has no intention of governing as a populist outsider

During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump seemed to demonstrate little interest in the tenets of movement conservatism. He vowed that he wouldn't cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid and said little about shrinking the size of government. He positioned himself as a champion of the American working man against powerful bankers and corporations. He rarely discussed social issues, except to repeat assurances that he was pro-life and pro-gun.

Yet several of the president-elect's most recent Cabinet picks are in no way, shape, or form outsider populists. And they aren't from the squishy Northeastern moderate wing of the GOP either — they're all staunch conservatives. Indeed, they have such sterling conservative credentials that they would have been just as plausible Cabinet choices for a President Ted Cruz or Mike Pence — which in turn may suggest that Trump has little intention of governing as an outsider populist.

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Education Secretary-designate Betsy DeVos has been a charter member of the moneyed conservative movement for decades. Her father-in-law is billionaire Amway co-founder Richard DeVos, who's donated millions to conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation. Betsy herself is closely tied to religious right groups like the Christian Coalition and has campaigned for school vouchers in Michigan — a cause beloved by free market, anti-union, and religious conservatives — for more than a decade. The New Yorker's Jane Mayer has more background on her here.

Trump's reported transportation secretary pick, Elaine Chao, served eight full years as George W. Bush's labor secretary, and her tenure there was marked by lax enforcement of labor standards, a lack of interest in new rules to protect worker safety, and a strong defense of business's interests rather than those of unions. The department killed Clinton-era rules meant to protect workers from repetitive-stress injuries and replaced them with mere "voluntary guidelines," blocked a wage increase set to go into effect for legal immigrant farmworkers in the H-2A program, and demanded stricter expense disclosures from unions, as the Lexington Herald-Leader rounded up. A 2008 Government Accountability Office report rebuked Chao's Labor Department for failing to adequately investigate complaints of worker abuses. And of course, she is no outsider — her husband, Mitch McConnell, is Senate Majority Leader.

Health and Human Services Secretary-designate Tom Price has some particularly notable apparent policy differences with the president-elect: Price, a member of Congress from Georgia, is a big supporter of enormous changes to entitlement programs, including turning Medicare into a voucher program and Medicaid into a fully block-granted program, as David Dayen writes. And Price said in 2015 that he wants to make big changes to Social Security too. His appointment can certainly be interpreted as signaling that Trump will in fact cooperate with House Speaker Paul Ryan's agenda of overhauling entitlements.

Together with other picks, like Attorney General-designate Jeff Sessions — an extremely conservative Alabama senator (though he does happen to share Trump's free trade skepticism) — the Trump Cabinet is shaping up to be a very conservative group indeed so far.

Now, it remains unclear how much authority these Cabinet secretaries will have to actually determine policy in the new administration — President Obama's Cabinet famously became a sort of backwater, with major policy initiatives largely being run out of the White House. But from a policy perspective, movement conservatives should be over the moon about all these choices. The Trump administration is delivering them just the people they'd want.

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US banks see higher net income, fewer unprofitable lenders: FDIC

U.S. banks' net income increased by $5.2 billion, or 12.9 percent, compared to the third quarter of last year as the number of struggling lenders fell, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said.

Total credits increased 6.8 percent, or $591 billion, in the third quarter driven in part by new home loans credits and commercial real estate, the regulator said on Tuesday.

The FDIC noted that the share of unprofitable banks, 4.6 percent, was the lowest since the third quarter of 1997.

The Federal Reserve has kept interest rates low since the 2008 financial crisis but banks must prepare for those rates to climb, said the head of the FDIC, which shields bank deposits if a lender fails.

"Low interest rates for an extended period have led some institutions to reach for yield," FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg said in a statement.

"Banks must position themselves for rising interest rates going forward."

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This company will donate all $10M of its Black Friday sales to saving the planet

After achieving a "record-breaking" Black Friday in sales, outdoor apparel maker Patagonia is giving the environment an early Christmas present in the form of $10 million.

Prior to Black Friday, Patagonia announced that it would donate 100 percent of its global retail and online sales from the shopping event straight to grassroots organizations that work in local communities to "protect our air, water and soil for future generations".

On Monday, the California-based retailer revealed that it had reached a "record-breaking" $10 million in sales during its Black Friday event, a figure five times greater than what it had initially expected ($2 million).

Following the news, Patagonia stuck to its promise, saying on Twitter that it would give "every penny to hundreds of local environmental organizations working around the world," while thanking its customers for showing up to "#LoveOurPlanet".

According to an interview with The Huffington Post, Corley Kenna, a company spokesperson said inspiration for the Black Friday idea emerged during an internal brainstorming meeting, shortly after the U.S. presidential election. Patagonia wasn't immediately available for comment, when contacted by CNBC International.

The U.S.' relationship with the environment has been of key importance in recent weeks, as organizations worldwide wait with bated breath over whether President-Elect Donald Trump will stick to his claims made earlier this year, that he would reverse the actions activated by current U.S. incumbent, Barack Obama designed to combat climate change.

However, in a recent interview with the New York Times, Trump said he was keeping an "open mind" on the topic of confronting climate change. While the world has yet to learn what policies Trump will actually implement when in office, Patagonia said it was key to make sure the U.S. remains "fully committed to the vital goals set forth in the Paris Agreement".

"The science is telling us loud and clear: We have a problem," the company said in a statement on Monday.

"By getting active in communities, we can raise our voices to defend policies and regulations that will protect wild places and wildlife, reduce carbon emissions, build a modern energy economy based on investment in renewables, and, most crucially, ensure the United States remains fully committed to the vital goals set forth in the Paris Agreement on climate change."


As part of its overall mission, Patagonia donates 1 percent of its total annual sales to grassroots environmental groups — as part of its membership of the "1% for the Planet" initiative.

In a tweet published by the retailer, Patagonia revealed that on Black Friday alone, it beat the amount it gives in an entire year through its everyday "1% for the Planet" scheme. To date, Patagonia has donated around $74 million to thousands of community-based environmental groups.

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India pulled 86% of its cash out of circulation. It’s not going well.

Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets of cities throughout India to protest an economic policy you probably haven't heard of before: demonetization.

Three weeks ago, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi surprised his country with an announcement banning 500- and 1,000-rupee notes — worth about $7 and $15 respectively — in a bid to tackle corruption and terrorism.

He estimated that forcing people to exchange the country's largest currency bills for new banknotes would allow the government to crack down on "black money" — unaccounted-for cash holdings that haven't been taxed but, under the law, should be. He also argued that it would strike at domestic terrorist financing operations by capturing counterfeit money and rendering the legitimate cash they kept in the shadows worthless.

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Banning widely used banknotes would have a huge impact on any economy, but in India the policy is transformative. Modi's sudden ban instantly meant that 86 percent of all the cash in circulation in India was no longer considered legal tender, which means that businesses could refuse to accept those bills as a form of payment. And the Indian economy simply runs on cash: It's estimated that between 90 and 98 percent of all transactions in India, measured in terms of volume, involve it.

Unsurprisingly, Modi's demonetization initiative has caused chaos across the country. People want new banknotes, but the current supply of them isn't close to meeting demand. That's created headaches for people as they wait in long lines outside ATMs and banks, which routinely run out of cash. For people who rely on daily cash earnings to survive, it can mean not being able to obtain food.

The temporary shortage of banknotes is having other far-reaching effects. Farmers looking to sow their next set of crops can't buy the full quantity of seeds they need. Property sales, which typically require huge cash investments, are slowing. It's even reshaping cultural life: Weddings, which can cost millions of rupees, are taking a serious hit.

"A lot of marriages are being postponed, and those that are managing are doing so by borrowing from relatives and friends," says Niranjan Sahoo, a senior fellow with the Observer Research Foundation, a think tank in New Delhi.

Modi's agenda to crack down on black money makes sense in theory but it isn't working smoothly in practice. It's hitting individual Indians hard, and the country itself may pay a heavy price: Many economists expect the growth of India's booming economy to slow substantially in the final quarter of 2016.

As of November 8, old 500- and 1,000-rupee notes are no longer legal tender. That means if you try to buy lunch with them, a restaurant owner can refuse to accept them.

People in India have until the end of the year to go to banks and replace those notes with other bills, including the new 500- and 2,000-rupee notes.

If someone wants to convert more than 250,000 rupees — roughly $3,650 — they're required by law to provide an explanation for why they have so much cash and prove that they've paid tax on it. If they don't, they're expected to pay a fine of 200 percent of the tax they owe.

The primary reason Modi initiated the ban is to force people with illegal cash holdings to deposit the money into bank accounts and pay taxes on them.

India's government collects a tiny fraction of the taxes that advanced democracies do. The government recently released data that showed that in 2013, merely 1 percent of Indians paid taxes. As Kaushik Basu, former chief economic adviser to the Indian government, recently noted at the New York Times, the most reliable estimate of India's "shadow economy," or the untaxed part of it, puts it at one-fifth of the country's GDP.

The demonetization scheme is also a way to crack down on criminal activity. It will be hard for people with large cash holdings from purely criminal enterprises to explain how they paid their taxes, and so they won't be able deposit their money. And the government expects to be able to use the ban as an opportunity to round up counterfeit currency minted by terrorist operations.

In addition to all this, the ban also serves as a natural prompt for India to transition to a cashless society, dovetailing nicely with Modi's bid to digitize services in the economy.

The currency ban has been a huge headache for millions of Indians. Since the old 500- and 1,000-rupee notes are the bread and butter of most financial transactions in India, everybody has been rushing to exchange them. But because the supply of new banknotes is far smaller than the supply of old ones, there are currently strict regulations on the quantity of new banknotes that people can withdraw at any given moment. And even with these regulations, reports of banks running out of cash abound.

"Every day — and today is the 20th day — you can see there are long queues for ATM machines and banks," Sahoo says.

The cash shortage has been particularly hard on destitute Indians, many of whom don't have bank accounts. Some of them have to choose between waiting in line for a day to exchange their defunct currency or working for a day's wages. And Basu estimates that many poor people may simply end up losing their savings because of their mistrust of financial institutions and concern about being harassed about where their cash came from.

"The policy is poorly implemented and has a high cost for those who are least able to bear it," Rohini Pande, an economist at Harvard's Kennedy School, said. "Even if [the government is] able to reduce corruption somewhat, you have to balance that against costs or other ways of reducing black money."

Many experts don't even have faith that this is an effective way to counteract tax evasion. Basu says that most black money doesn't take the form of cash held in india but is instead held in gold, silver, real estate, and overseas bank accounts.

Modi is using a very crude tool to crack down on black money. For many, the costs are likely to end up more tangible than the benefits.

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India pulled 86% of its cash out of circulation. It’s not going well.

O'Hare workers to strike on nationwide 'Day of Disruption'

A strike by hourly workers at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago will add another dimension to a nationwide day of protests by fast-food employees who have been pushing for a $15 hourly wage and union rights, organizers said Monday.

Thousands of workers plan to walk off the job at McDonald's restaurants and other fast-food spots in more than 340 cities on Nov. 29, organizers said in a news release. The planned "Day of Disruption" will mark the fourth anniversary of the first protests at McDonald's restaurants in New York.

The attention-grabbing airport strike is "going to cause complete disruption in travel plans for the day and maybe days to come," said Kendall Fells, national organizing director of the Fight for $15 campaign. "Four decades ago, airport jobs were jobs you could live off of. Now airport jobs are just like fast-food jobs. We're all standing together."

The Service Employees International Union announced Monday that hundreds of workers will strike that day at O'Hare, one of the nation's busiest airports. The union has helped fund and staff the Fight for $15 campaign.

O'Hare is the only airport where workers plan to strike, though organizers are planning protests at airports in 18 other cities, including Boston, Washington, D.C., Denver, Atlanta, Seattle and Los Angeles.

About 500 O'Hare workers committed to a strike after a vote last week. They are trying to organize with SEIU Local 1's help. They work for private contractors at the airport and include baggage handlers, cabin cleaners, janitors and wheelchair attendants. Organizers said it will be up to workers to decide whether the strike will last longer than one day.

The Chicago Department of Aviation said it doesn't anticipate any disruption in service.

Some holiday travelers are nervous, however. Kim Maguire, 40, of Crystal Lake, was at O'Hare on Monday with her 3-year-old daughter and husband as they headed out for a holiday trip to see relatives in Seattle, with a return flight scheduled on the strike date.

"I don't want it to impact our travel plans," Maguire said. "Especially traveling with a 3-year-old, delays would be difficult."

Maguire said she supports the workers and is grateful to those who clean planes, especially reaching into seat-back pockets. "I wouldn't want to reach my hand in there," she said.

Julio Godoy, 54, an O'Hare airplane cabin cleaner who makes $10.50 an hour, said he plans to take part in the strike. He said he knows co-workers who have been stuck by the needles of syringes left in seat-back pockets and who then needed to be tested for HIV and hepatitis. He said he's also concerned about being asked to check planes for weapons and explosives without training.

There had been concern that the strike would fall during the busiest travel days. In announcing the Nov. 29 strike, the union and workers on Monday portrayed the date as a concession to families.

"O'Hare airport workers often can't afford a proper Thanksgiving dinner and know what it's like to miss Thanksgiving with our families," said baggage handler Raquel Brito, who announced the strike date. "However we respect families traveling to be together and that is why we're holding off our strike until after the Thanksgiving holiday."

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Here are the 10 most important stories for investors Tuesday morning

A daily morning look at the financial stories you need to know to start the day.

STOCKS/ECONOMY

-Stock futures are up a bit after the markets' recent winning streak took a pause Monday. We get the revised GDP report this morning along with the Case Shiller home prices data.

OIL/ENERGY

-U.S. crude prices are down more than 2 percent back to the $45 a barrel level on fresh doubts that the OPEC production cut will actually happen.

TRUMP TRANSITION

-President-elect Donald Trump will name fierce Obamacare critic Rep. Tom Price as his pick for Secretary of Health and Human Services. Price is also an orthopedic surgeon.

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Here are the 10 most important stories for investors Tuesday morning

Populism is downside risk to global growth: Research

The election of Donald Trump as U.S. president has been a positive for stock markets and may increase economic growth, but the surge in populism in the West is a big problem, warn experts.

Fitch Ratings, in a report published today, revised its global growth forecasts upwards to 2.9 percent in 2017, partly as a result of fiscal easing under President-elect Trump and a recovery in U.S. investment.

But the credit rating agency also warned that there were large downside risks to the world economy as a result of the growth of populism and the possibility of the U.S. and China starting a trade or currency war.

"We're going to have less open economies; we're going to have trade barriers going up; I think Donald Trump is going to be looking at NAFTA, he's going to be looking at China very hard, and those were very clear parts of his campaign," Brian Coulton, head of global economics at Fitch Ratings, told CNBC's Squawk Box.

"The U.K., when it leaves the EU, is going to be a less open economy. Both those things are going to be negative for growth in the medium term," he said.

Coulton also discussed the impact of fiscal expansion under Donald Trump. U.S. stock markets rallied following Trump's election partly on hopes of inflation and Keynesian-like spending on infrastructure projects.

"The scale of his campaign proposals was enormous. According to one estimate, you're talking nearly 2 percent of GDP easing in 2017 alone. I don't think he can get that through. There are still quite a lot of fiscal conservatives within the Republicans."

Coulton believes many of the infrastructure projects proposed are not "shovel-ready" and will take some time to materialize.

On the other hand, Guillaume Touze, managing partner and CEO of Quadra Capital Partners, had a more optimistic view for 2017.

"Everybody speaks about Trump and populism and the Italian referendum coming up. We very much feel that these themes are already playing in the market and may be slightly overstated," Touze told CNBC.

"We would tend to believe that next year will bring some positive news. We feel that world growth probably could be around 3.5 percent versus 3 this year."

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Has Donald Trump just picked the perfect person to dismantle Obamacare?

Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), President-elect Donald Trump's pick for Health and Human Services Secretary, already has a plan for how to abolish Obamacare.

The Washington Post reported late Monday that Trump intends to announce Price, who currently serves as House Budget Chair, to lead the federal agency overseeing Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act.

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Price will arrive with at HHS with a clear blueprint for what comes next: he is the author of the Empowering Patients First Act, one of the most thorough and detailed proposals to repeal and replace Obamacare. He's the HHS Secretary you'd pick if you were dead serious about dismantling the law.

It would replace the law with a plan that does more to benefit the young, healthy, and rich — and disadvantages the sick, old, and poor. Price's plan provides significantly less help to those with pre-existing conditions than other Republican proposals, particularly the replacement plan offered by House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI).

The biggest cut to the poor in Price's plan is the full repeal of the Medicaid expansion, a program that currently covers millions of low-income Americans, which Price replaces with, well, nothing.

Most Republican replacement plans are still white papers rather than actual legislative language. This means they leave out a lot of key details — who, for example, would qualify for a high-risk pool or how big tax credits would be. But Price's plan is detailed. It is 242-pages long and lays bare exactly how he would repeal Obamacare — a program Trump is now putting him in charge of.

Prices' Empowering Patients plan, like Obamacare, requires insurance plans to offer coverage to any patient regardless of how sick they are. But the Empowering Patients plan, unlike Obamacare, would let insurers charge sick people more if they did not maintain "continuous coverage."

This continuous coverage policy shows up in a lot of the Republican replacement plans, and is likely something we'll hear lots of debate about in the coming months. It's part of House Speaker Paul Ryan's Obamacare replacement plan, as well as Sen. Finance Chair Orrin Hatch's proposal.

Here's how it works: If a cancer patient goes straight from insurance at work to her own policy, her insurer has to charge her a standard rate — it can't take the cost of her condition into account.

But if she had a lapse in coverage — perhaps she couldn't afford a new plan between jobs — and went to the individual market under Empowering Patients, insurers could charge her up to 150 percent of the standard premium for her first two years of coverage (you can read this section on page 151 of the bill).

A patient can once again qualify for the standard rate if she maintains 18 months of continuous coverage — although that would likely be with premiums set at the higher rate.

Empowering Patients does have a safety net for people like this: It would invest $3 billion over three years in a high-risk pool to cover those with preexisting conditions who are unable to afford coverage on the marketplace. This is significantly less generous than other Republican proposals for high risk pools. Ryan's Better Way plan, for example, would put $25 billion towards the high-risk pools over a decade ($2.5 billion per year) and keep them running indefinitely. In that way, Price's bill has a much weaker safety net than his House colleagues envision.

One constant Obamacare gripe from Republicans is that the health care law mandates too big of a benefit package. This drives up premiums, they argue, and scares off some healthy and young enrollees who want to buy a skimpier plan.

There is some truth to this argument. Obamacare's marketplaces have struggled to attract young adults at the level the White House had initially hoped (the Obama administration originally said it wanted one-third of the marketplace to be people between 18 and 34 but, right now it's only about a quarter).

Empowering Patients makes the individual market more advantageous for healthier people. It eliminates the essential health benefits package, which mandated that all insurers cover a set of 10 different types of care including maternity services and pediatric care. Empowering Patients would allow insurers to cut whatever benefits they no longer want to cover — they could stop covering maternity benefits, for example, to make their plans less attractive to women who plan to become pregnant. This would likely benefit healthy people, who generally want less robust coverage at a cheaper price. But it'll send the cost of more comprehensive plans — the plans sicker people need — skyrocketing. And it could leave someone who, say, wants health insurance to cover her maternity costs completely out of luck.

There are other ways Empowering Patients makes insurance better for young people too: by letting insurance plans charge them lower rates.

It does this by allowing insurers to charge their oldest enrollees as much as they want. Right now, insurers can only charge the oldest enrollees three times as much as the youngest — that constrains prices for patients in their 50s and 60s.

Eliminating this regulation would increase "increases the overall number of people with coverage, but older people end up falling out of the market as premiums rise," says Christine Eibner, an economist with RAND Corporation who has modeled similar changes to Obamacare's age-rating provisions.

And while young people might have cheaper premiums and an easier ability to enroll, older Americans could struggle to purchase coverage in this market, where their costs would rise. These are people who tend to have more urgent health care needs and could be in a worse position without health care than a young adult might be.

This worries some Obamacare supporters, who say the goal of insurance reform isn't just expanding coverage — it's expanding coverage for people who really need health care.

"If you replace a 60-year-old with a 20-year-old, that doesn't change the number of people covered, but it changes the value of the coverage and of the program," says Jonathan Gruber, the MIT economist who helped the White House model the economic effects of Obamacare.

Price would provide tax credits, but they would help the older (and likely richer) more

Empowering Patients, like Obamacare, envisions that Americans will use tax credits to purchase individual health insurance, but the structure of the tax credits is very different.

Obamacare's tax credits are based on income, with those who earn less getting more help. Empowering Patient's tax credits would only be based on age, giving more help to those who are older (and who will presumably be charged higher premiums). The tax credits outlined in the bill are as follows:

  • $900 for children under 18
  • $1,200 for those between 18 and 35
  • $2,100 for those between 36 and 50
  • $3,000 for those 51 and older

This means that that Bill Gates would qualify for the largest tax credit simply because he is 61-years-old. Under the Empowering Patients bill, Gates' net worth of $83 billion — presumably enough to purchase health coverage — would do nothing to disqualify him. Under Obamacare, he gets no help.

Conversely, a 23-year-old with little income and health problems gets minimal help under Price's plan — despite the fact that they need support much more than Gates does.

And these credits wouldn't go especially far towards purchasing comprehensive coverage. I looked at how much a plan for a 55-year-old would cost where I live, in Washington, D.C. The cheapest option was $8,316, and that works out to $443 per month after the Price tax credit — a hefty fee for a poor, older enrollee.

The plans under Price's proposal would near certainly be cheaper because they wouldn't have to cover so many benefits. A 55-year-old under Empowering Patients might find lower premiums for plans that cover fewer benefits. But its also true that the plans that do offer comprehensive benefits would likely prove financially out of reach for many.

Some Republican replacement plans have begun to look at ways to preserve parts of Obamacare's Medicaid expansion, which now covers millions of low-income Americans.

Ryan's Better Way plan, for example, allows states that have already expanded Medicaid to continue running the expansion program, although the federal government would provide significantly less funding for it. Sen. Ted Cruz's Health Care Choice Act goes even further, leaving Medicaid expansion totally untouched.

It's easy to see why: Medicaid is one of the big reasons that Obamacare has pushed the uninsured rate to an all-time low. More than 15 million Americans have enrolled on Medicaid since the expansion began in 2014. Ending Medicaid expansion would mean disrupting and possibly ending coverage for most of those people.

But Price's proposal mentions nothing about replacing the Medicaid program. Those people would become eligible for the tax credits discussed earlier, and have the opportunity to purchase coverage on the private market. But given that these are people who are right around or just above the poverty line — those eligible for Medicaid expansion earn less than $16,394 — they could easily find that the premiums in the private market are prohibitively expensive.

This change will likely make Price's proposal significantly cheaper than those that do continue the Medicaid expansion, but it will come at the cost of throwing millions of Americans off of their health insurance.

Most of the changes in Empowering Patients have to do with people who get insurance through Medicaid or on the marketplaces. But there is one important change the plan would make to employer-sponsored insurance: It would cap the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored coverage.

The health insurance tax break is the biggest in the federal budget; the government loses out on $260 billion annually by not taxing health benefits. And economists across the political spectrum agree that we should eliminate or at least reduce this tax break, which currently gives those with jobs a huge discount on their coverage — and an incentive to buy more coverage than they actually need.

Price's bill proposes limiting the employer-tax exclusion for insurance to $8,000 for individual policies and $20,000 for individuals.

As popular as this provision will be with economists, you can bet that the public will hate it, as it would make some health plans significantly more expensive — and face similar pushback to Obamacare's Cadillac tax.

Even if Price is confirmed as HHS Secretary, he won't have the authority to replace Obamacare himself. But he'll be a key player in negotiations with Congress over how to replace Obamacare, and he'll have vast power over the replacement's implementation.

There is distance between Price's plan and those of his Republican colleagues on the Hill (you can read in-depth about the other Republican replacement plans here). The decisions legislators make about which direction to go in will be hugely important for the people who rely on Obamacare for coverage.

There are likely to be specific flashpoints in the coming debate, such as:

  • Should Republicans save Medicaid expansion in some way? As mentioned earlier, some Republican replacement plans do see a future for Medicaid expansion. And there might be support for this from within the Trump administration: Vice President-Elect Mike Pence is among the 10 Republican governors who have expanded Medicaid in their own states. So Price's plan could face some pushback in this space, particularly from legislators and governors worried about their constituents losing coverage.
  • How generous should those high-risk pools be? Price envisions spending much less on the insurance plans for Americans with pre-existing conditions than Speaker Ryan does.
  • Will Republicans weather the political backlash to raising the costs of employer-sponsored insurance? The proposal to limit the tax exclusion for health insurance would amount to a significant price increase for those with the most generous health insurance plans. Employers will view it as a massive tax increase. Like Obamacare's Cadillac tax, it would almost certainly face significant political backlash.

The question right now isn't whether Republicans have plans to repeal Obamacare. It's which parts of which plans they'll pick — and how quickly they'll coalesce around one option.

But in choosing Price, Trump is signaling that he is serious about dismantling Obamacare. He has found one of the law's most ardent, knowledgeable, and prepared opponents, and put him in charge of the effort.


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Has Donald Trump just picked the perfect person to dismantle Obamacare?

Insurer Allstate to buy SquareTrade for $1.4 billion

Property and casualty insurer Allstate said on Monday it would buy SquareTrade for about $1.4 billion from a group of shareholders that include Bain Capital.

SquareTrade, founded in 1999 by Ahmed Khaishgi and Steve Abernethy, offers extended warranty plans for electronic gadgets.

San Francisco-headquartered SquareTrade's customers include major retailers such as Amazon.com, Costco Wholesale, Sam's Club, Target, Staples, Office Depot and Toys 'R' Us.

The deal, which will help AllState expand into new markets and products, is expected to close in January.

Allstate, which expects the acquisition to dilute its earnings per share for three years, intends to fund the deal with cash and debt.

Ardea Partners, Lazard and Willkie Farr & Gallagher advised Allstate, while Financial Technology Partners and Ropes & Gray advised SquareTrade.

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How Trump could ease his conflict-of-interest problem in one easy move

lundi 28 novembre 2016

Dear President-elect Trump:

The potential conflicts of interest between your huge business empire and your future job have been well documented. The possibility that corporate interests or foreign countries could try to bribe you, as president, in both large and small ways is substantial.

Consider this small example: Over the weekend, the chief executive of one of the largest companies in the nation — who was a Hillary Clinton supporter — told me he planned to have his staff stay at your new Trump International Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue as an "easy way" to ingratiate himself with your new administration.

As far as I have seen, so far you appear unfazed by the headlines about kleptocracy. "Prior to the election, it was well known that I have interests in properties all over the world," you wrote on Twitter. "Only the crooked media makes this a big deal!"

You have said that you have no plans to sell your companies or put them into a blind trust — which wouldn't be effective anyway, since it's impossible to blindly hold real estate assets that have your name affixed to them. In the meantime, there are reports that you may lease multiple floors of Trump Tower to the Secret Service for millions of dollars, which you would pocket.

The entire situation is — how else to put it? — untenable.

You understand the conundrum. "In theory, I don't have to do anything" to distance yourself from your business holdings, you told journalists at The New York Times last week, "but I would like to do something — I would like to try and formalize something."

So, in the spirit of offering a constructive solution rather than demagogy, let me offer you an idea: Voluntarily agree to hire what is known as a "corporate monitor," an independent overseer with unfettered access to your organizations who will provide regular reports to the public about any possible instances of conflicts.

Many well-known companies have done this under regulatory and legal duress, but you could do it voluntarily and pay for it yourself, offering a jolt of trust to those who fear you could engage in self-dealing.

I even have a suggestion for someone to take this role — someone who told me on the phone Monday that he would be happy to do so. (More on that later.)

More from the NYT:

Combative, Populist Steve Bannon Found His Man in Donald Trump
A Guide to White House North
Potential Conflicts Around the Globe for Trump, the Businessman President

There is a clear benefit to you, Mr. Trump. You'll be able to accomplish a lot more. If voters and the members of Congress perceive that your legislative proposals are meant to enrich you, your family or your business partners — even if that is not the case — you run the risk of undermining whatever progress you hope to make.

Let me flesh out the idea. First, it would be preferable for you to sell your empire — which, by the way, you could do without having to pay taxes on any profits. Rules designed to entice the wealthy into public service, which allow executive branch employees to dispose of their assets in certain defined ways to avoid conflicts of interest, would be a good option for you. Henry Paulson used this option in 2006 when he left Goldman Sachs to become Treasury secretary.

The next-best option would be the arm's-length one, which was advocated in a recent article in The Economist. Mr. Trump, the magazine said, "must ring-fence his private interests and put them under independent supervision. It is the only fix that is both principled and practical."

But whatever you do, the most critical piece is the corporate monitor, someone with an impeccable reputation.

The name of someone who could be that person: Kenneth R. Feinberg. As you'll recall, he is the lawyer who oversaw the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, worked as the special master for TARP Executive Compensation, and served as a government-appointed administrator of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster victim compensation fund. He also supervised General Motors and Volkswagen in their recall struggles.

Mr. Feinberg's reputation is considered beyond reproach. He is known as a straight shooter who cannot be bought or sold.

Admittedly, this is not a perfect solution, but assuming that the person selected for the role of corporate monitor is trusted, it would go a long way toward assuring the public that your political and business interests won't overlap or compromise America's interests.

Yes, some of your critics will deride the corporate monitor as mere window dressing. And the fact that this would be a novel application of the corporate monitor role — such people are typically appointed as part of a settlement in a legal case, as a move by a company to ease the punishment — might give you pause.

But appointing one would also suggest that you take the conflict issue seriously, not only to the American public but also to the rest of the world, which has long looked to the United States as a model of democracy. If your administration even raises the specter of corruption in the White House, that would undermine the entire country, as well as our economy.

Companies like Apple, BP, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase, Siemens and Zimmer have been subject to corporate monitors. Typically, such a person is installed at the behest of the government after a business has been involved in breaking antitrust laws or foreign corrupt practices laws. For example, the hedge fund manager Steven A. Cohen was required to hire a corporate monitor to oversee Point72, his family office, as part of an insider trading settlement.

A corporate monitor traditionally provides reports to the Justice Department or the Securities and Exchange Commission to make sure the company he or she oversees is in compliance with the law.

A New York Times contributor, Steven Davidoff Solomon, has critically called the idea of corporate monitors in the business context "a full employment act for former federal prosecutors that may have little effect on the way any company that is forced to hire a monitor conducts its business."

That's true when companies hire cronies or others friends. That's why it is important to hire someone truly independent.

"The mere presence of a corporate monitor can help to change the culture of a company and how it approaches its internal controls and compliance and ethics programs," Ryan C. Pisarik and Jason T. Wright, of the corporate advisory service Stout Risius Ross, said in a note to clients.

When I called Mr. Feinberg to run my idea by him, he paused to consider it. We went over the positives and the negatives.

He seemed to warm to it quickly. "The perfect is the enemy of the good," he said. He told me, "You'll get pushback" from critics who will say the monitor is "in bed with the guy paying him."

Still, he said the idea brought to mind a famous quote from Justice Louis D. Brandeis: "Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants."

Assuming the monitor has no operational authority and no bonus associated with performance, Mr. Feinberg said, "At least we know from an unimpeachable source, here is the way it is."

So, would Mr. Feinberg accept the position? "I'll take the job," he said with both a laugh and a genuine sense of sincerity.

In that same spirit, I want you to know, Mr. Trump: I'll happily waive my finder's fee if you take up this idea.

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How Trump could ease his conflict-of-interest problem in one easy move