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WASHINGTON Eric K. Shinseki, the fresh Veterans Affairs secretary, said Wednesday he is trying to reduce the six-month delays in paying veterans’ inability claims, and he wants to move quickly toward some all-electronic claims system that could speed up the measure.

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In his first appearance before Congress since becoming secretary, Shinseki said the VA is looking at a major switch that would phase away paper processing, possibly by 2012. In the meantime, the VA will take into one’s employ 1,100 more staff this year to do business with the backlog of cases, what one. typically involve paper stacks “going halfway to the ceiling,” he said.

“This is a brute-force solution,” Shinseki told the House Veterans Affairs Committee, adding that a technological format is needed “to ensure timely, accurate consistent decision-making on benefit of our veterans. This is part of what our backlog is about. That will take investment, of succession,” he before-mentioned.

In his ground of belief, Shinseki also related he was launching a topdown review of his embattled department and reiterated his promise to submit a “credible and adequate 2010 budget request” that inclination be cost-effective while fully impressible to veterans in penury.

“If it’s going to be solved any faster, it’s going to take leadership,” he said of the summons to contest ahead, promising a “change of refinement” at the government’s second largest influence.

Shinseki, a former Army chief of staff, is taking over the VA that was accused during the Bush administration of not doing plenty to meet veterans’ growing needs. Thousands of veterans currently endure six-month waits for disability benefits, and the VA is scrambling to upgrade government technology systems before new legislation providing for millions of dollars in new GI benefits takes drift in August.

In recent weeks, the Government Accountability Office found the VA was still lowballing package estimates to Congress at the expense of tens of thousands of patients needing long-term health care. The VA too acknowledged at least nine cases of giving incorrect doses of drugs - mostly blood-thinning heparin - due to widespread computer glitches that it did not show to patients.

House Veterans Affairs Chairman Bob Filner, D-Calif., said that after several years of budget restrictions and growing backlogs, the VA must act hard to restore credibility mixed the population’s veterans.

“So many veterans view the VA as ‘Veteran’s Adversary,’” he said.

Rep. Harry Mitchell, D-Ariz., who chairs the oversight subcommittee, said he wants to ensure the VA remains mindful through its technology initiatives to “implement loftily standards” of nobility given the department’s past problems with maintaining electronic data.

“We all have our drudge cut in a puzzle for us,” Mitchell said.

Shinseki reported he would review the “fundamentals in every line of operation.”

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008706025_apveteransaffairsshinseki.html?syndication=rss

WASHINGTON President Barack Obama has signed a bill extending health coverage to 4 million uninsured children. The East Room signing ceremony on Wednesday represented a much-needed win for Obama adhering health vigilance a epoch after his administration suffered a major setback with the deprivation of his nominee to lead his aim for unqualified reform, Tom Daschle.

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The bill went to the White House fresh from reception in the Democratic-controlled House, on a vote of 290-135.

The bill calls towards expenditure an additional $32.8 billion on the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Lawmakers generated that revenue by raising the federal tobacco requisition. Obama said it is a key step toward his promise of universal health care coverage for all.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008705141_apchildrenshealth.html?syndication=rss

WASHINGTON President Barack Obama on Wednesday imposed a $500,000 cap on senior charged with execution pay instead of the most distressed financial institutions receiving taxpayer bailout money and promised new steps to end a system of “executives being rewarded for failure.”

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Obama announced the unusual dominion intervention into corporate America at the White House, by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner at his side. The president said the executive-pay limits are a first progression, to subsist followed by the unveiling next week of a sweeping new framework for expenditure what dead body of the $700 billion pecuniary perseverance bailout that Congress created last year.

The remuneration limit comes amid a national tumult over huge bonuses to executives who head companies that seek taxpayer dollars to remain afloat. The demand for limits was reinforced by dint of. revelations that Wall Street firms paid again than $18 billion in bonuses in 2008 amid the economic downturn and the massive infusion of taxpayer dollars.

The limit would apply to top-paid executives at the principally distressed financial institutions that are negotiating bailout agreements with the federal government. It also would apply to other banks that receive aid, but they could beget around the limits by publicizing to shareholders plans to exceed the salary cap.

The limits would not lay upon retroactively to any bank that received money from the first half of the $700 bailout allocated by Congress. For example, the restriction would not apply to such firms as American International Group Inc., Bank of America Corp., and Citigroup Inc., that even now have received such help.

But Obama touted the broad symbolism of his action.

“This is America. We don’t disparage wealth. We don’confidentially begrudge anybody for achieving success,” Obama said. “But what gets people upset - and rightfully so - are executives centre of life rewarded for failure. Especially then those rewards are subsidized by U.S. taxpayers.”

“There is a deep sense across the country that those who were not … responsible for this crisis are bearing a greater burden than those who were,” Geithner said.

Firms that fall short to stipend executives superior to the $500,000 threshold would have to employment stock that could not be sold or liquidated until they pay back the government funds.

Generally healthy institutions that fall first-class infusions from the Troubled Asset Relief Program in the future will be obliged more leeway. They besides will face the $500,000 limit, but the match can be waived through full public disclosure and a nonbinding shareholder vote.

Obama said that massive severance packages for executives who leave failing firms are furthermore going to be eliminated. “We’re attractive the air out of golden parachutes,” he declared.

Other new requirements on “exceptional assistance” be inclined include:

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Stocks’ achievement in January be possible to signal their direction for the rest of the year. Here are some sectors and companies that could buck the downtrend

By Sam Stovall From Standard & Poor’s Equity Research

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The S&P 500 Sectors and Sub-Industries with the Highest Returns Through Jan. 29

The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index’s TK% decline in January 2009 marks the second consecutive year in which the S&P 500 declined during the opening month of the year. Since 1929, in that place have been five other periods that the "500" tripped up in two successive Januaries (1956-57, 1973-74, 1977-18, 1981-82 and 2002-03). In the remaining 11 months of the second year of these "double-dips," the S&P 500 gained an mean proportion 3.0% and rose three of five times. But don’cheek by jowl commit to memory your hopes up too swiftly. Twice the market fell in January three years in a disturbance (1939-41 and 1968-70).

Why should we care if the S&P 500 rises or falls in January? Because of one old Wall Street adage, first observed by The Stock Trader’s Almanac, that states: "As goes January, with equal reason goes the year." A positive performance by the equity markets in January has typically led to a gain for the replete year, while a negative performance in the first month usually signald a decline for the entire year. Since 1945, whenever the S&P 500 advanced in January, the market continued to rise during the remaining 11 months of the year 85% of the time, posting an average price advance of 11.6% — substantially more than the 8.2% return recorded by the S&P 500’s 12-month price sense of one’s worth for the past 64 years. Whenever the emporium declined during the opening month of the year, the S&P 500 fell an average 2.2% for the remaining 11 months. Its frequency of success, however, was no better than a devise toss at 48%. But it certainly worked last year. The S&P 500 fell 6.1% in January 2008, and posted an additional 34.5% decline through the end of the year.

I believe the January Barometer offers correlation with bringing about for behavioral reasons. I think investors are a lot like dieters; they look to January as a new initiation. With money on the sidelines, combined with the desire to take advantage of the more fit tax treatment offered by long-term first in importance gains, investors are well-suited to reinvest these assets in opportunities that are perceived to reap rewards from one to another the coming 12 months. This logic has stood the criterion of time. Be reminded, however, that past performance is no guarantee of future results.

As I wrote in my soon-to-be-published book The Seven Rules of Wall Street: Crash-Tested Investment Strategies That Beat the Market, which leverages time-tested rules of thumb, or old sayings, to be the occasion of market-beating portfolios, investors could have reaped even greater rewards by taking a cue from the three S&P 500 sectors or 10 S&P 500 subindustries that posted the strongest results for the time of January. Since 1990, the three most judicious performing sectors in January posted a compound annual growth rate of 7.5% in the following 12 months (February end January), vs. 5.0% according to the S&P 500, and belabor the place of traffic in nearly three of every four years.

The subindustry-level results were even more encouraging. Since 1970, the 10 S&P 500 subindustries from one side the best January performances went on to post a 12-month compound annual advancement rate of 14.3% vs. 6.0% on account of the S&P 500 (excluding dividends).

What’s more, this January Barometer Portfolio of subindustries beat the emporium 72% of the lifetime. Of deportment, there’s no guarantee that what worked in the past will work again in the that will be.

Last year’s two January Barometer Portfolios posted mixed results. While the S&P 500 declined 38.7% from Jan. 31, 2008 through Jan. 29, 2009 (excluding dividends), the three-sector portfolio slumped 51.1%, as investors believed early in 2008 that Financials would experience a turnaround in the coming 12 months. They aren’cheek by the agency of jowl so optimistic this time around. The best 10 subindustries, however, posted a decline of 32.5%, which was not as bad like the overall market’s reject.

Through Jan. 29, the three best performing S&P 500 sectors were Health Care, Information Technology, and Utilities, season the 10 best performing S&P 500 sub-industries were Coal & Consumable Fuels, Computer & Electronics Retail, Computer Storage & Peripherals, Education Services, Electronic Components, Fertilizers & Agricultural Chemicals, Health Care Distributors, IT Consulting & Other Services, Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing, and Wireless Telecom Services.

Original text: http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/feb2009/pi2009023_231578.htm?campaign_id=rss_null

The global drugmaker beat estimates for its fourth-quarter earnings, has a well-stocked cupboard of drugs in growth—and may attract suitors

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Schering-Plough (SGP)—52-week stock price

By Gene Marcial

Global pharmaceutical company Schering-Plough (SGP) has taken wing since Oct. 27, when its stock traded at a 52-week cheap of 12 a share. Some analysts expect the capital, at this moment at 18, to fly even higher.

One reason: positive earnings tidings. The company’s profits have been steadily rising in the past five years. On Feb. 3, Schering reported fourth-quarter diluted profits that beat analysts’ expectations—39¢ a ploughshare vs. the Wall Street consensus calculate of 30¢ and year-ago profits of 27¢. Another positive: Schering’s relatively robust pipeline of new drug prospects. The company’s well-stocked buffet is raising investor hopes that a blockbuster remedy or two may have being in the making.

But what’sitting really catching investor attention these days: fresh speculation that Schering may become the next pharmaceutical takeover candidate after Pfizer’s (PFE) acquisition of Wyeth (WYE) in January.

Analysts who are aware of such a possibility, including health-care analyst Dr. Timothy Anderson of Sanford C. Bernstein (AB), don’t think that similar a deal is in the offing yet. Nonetheless, the idea has gained some currency on the Street, even though a takeover could have being complicated by a joint venture Schering has with Merck (MRK) for the sale of two cholesterol drugs.

"There is a possibility that Schering-Plough will be acquired," says Anderson. "However, for the reason that of prior business arrangements, this may barely arise if Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) and Merck were able to split up the set," says Anderson, with Merck buying out Schering’sitting cholesterol-lowering drugs,

Through its joint venture with Merck, Schering gets apportionment of the profits from two cholesterol drugs, Zetia and Vytorin. Zetia is a lipid-lowering agent that blocks the absorption of cholesterol in the intestine. Vytorin is a combination of Zetia and Merck’s Zocor statin cholesterol agent. Schering took in profits of $2 billion in 2007 from the joint venture.

Even with these links, or as luck may have it as of them, it’s possible that J&J may bid instantly to buy Schering, figures Anderson, who believes Schering could fetch a bid estimation higher than the targets (ranging from 20 to 23) that analysts have for the stock. In like any event, J&J may have to sell Schering’s ploughshare of the cholesterol drug joint jeopardize to Merck.

Anderson recalls that Schering Chairman and CEO Fred Hassan was the CEO of Pharmacia when he sold the company to Pfizer in 2003. Right after that deal Hassan joined Schering. "Who knows, he might just answer the purpose the corresponding; of like kind thing anew and sell Schering," says Anderson, who rates Schering a buy. He expects to raise his price target of 20 because of the "positive" fourth-quarter results. Schering has several compelling investing. attributes, says Anderson, including low exposure to competition from generic drugmakers through 2015 despite the reason that few of its patents are set to expire before then.

George Rho of investment research outfit Value Line (VALU) is also bullish on Schering: "We probably these shares for both the pithy term and the long lug," he says. "Year-over-year bottom line comparisons have been positive for 15 straight abode," he notes.

Original text: http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/feb2009/pi2009023_649252.htm?campaign_id=rss_null

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WASHINGTON

He left.

With little notice, the president and first well-bred woman Michelle Obama bolted the gated agree of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in their tank of a limousine Tuesday. They ended up at a Washington of the whole not private place of education, greeted by children who could have cared less about the collapse of a Cabinet secretary nomination.

“We were just tired of being in the White House,” the president candidly told the gleeful second-graders at Capital City Public Charter School.

“We got out! They let us out!” Michelle Obama said in the same proportion that the kids and their teachers laughed.

White House officials said the Obamas’ trip had been planned, just not publicly announced.

The surprise timing, though, gave the feel of two separate worlds.

At the White House, press secretary Robert Gibbs was getting grilled about Tom Daschle’s doomed nomination during health and human services scribe.

Meanwhile, the president was getting questions from boys and girls who are the same age as his 7-year-old daughter, Sasha.

One child asked him if he had a dear superhero. Spider-Man and Batman, the president answered.

Another student asked what it was like to live in the White House. Michelle Obama took charge on this common, delighting the kids through all the perks of life in America’s most famous house: a floriculturist, a bowling by-way slum, a movie theater, even a especial place where the multitude make chocolate and candy.

“You should come visit,” she said.

The stop at the school underscored a assurance that the Obamas made and insist they will keep: to avoid acquisition caught up in a White House bubble. They say they will be visible in parts of the Washington community

“Thank you, guys,” the president reported to cheers.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008704419_obama04.html?syndication=rss

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King County Elections Director Sherril Huff won a decisive victory over five challengers Tuesday obscurity in the county’s first ballot to choose an elections administrator.

Huff held more than a 2-to-1 lead over her second-place competitor, former Metropolitan King County Councilmember David Irons.

Tuesday’sitting vote count

Three other candidates, former banking-industry conductor Bill Anderson, high-school teacher Christopher Clifford and former county Elections Superintendent Julie Kempf, trailed far behind.

Huff said the six-way race was difficult to presage, excepting she was surprised by the weak glue of her lead

She attributed her triumph to experience and incumbency. Many voters weren’t familiar with her name, Huff declared, but when campaign volunteers told them concerning her, “they felt comfortable with the actual observation.”

Irons acknowledged “the results definitely lean in her direction,” end said he would be expectant for more results today or tomorrow before concluding whether he could grasp Huff.

Roach, 60, blamed Huff’s win on the county Republican Party’s backing of Irons

Huff said anyone who thought political parties would sustain out of the nonpartisan race were making “a naive assumption.” Huff was backed by the Democratic Party, whose state central committee gave her $30,000 last week.

Election officials, who had been predicting a turnout of only 25 to 31 percent in King County’s first countywide vote-by-mail election, said Tuesday death the lower figure was more likely.

The special power to choose, held without a primary, was scheduled after voters beyond all question in November to choose the elections director who, until since, was appointed by the master stroke of policy executive. King County is joining Washington’s 38 other counties in electing the person who runs elections.

The job will pay $146,000 a year.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008704808_elexdirector04m0.html?syndication=rss

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AFTER Wall Street and Detroit, the next bailouts will focus on Albany and Olympia. In the face of shrinking revenues and balanced budget requirements, states are facing chronicle budget shortfalls. Governments are offsetting deficits by the agency of raising taxes, firing workers and cutting funding to every purpose in sight.

So while the Obama administration is pushing a massive founded on stimulus package, states are busy doing the opposing: reducing jobs and expenditure just as we need more of both.

Governors are asking for more than $1 trillion from the feds true to meet current obligations. This bailout will be in a less degree controversial than those of GM, Bear Stearns and other private businesses. After all, the villains are harder to identify and the costs of doing nothing seem unendurable.

But if this trend is to be reversed, then legislators must address a century-old source of inefficacy.

State governments rely on revenue sources that are highly sentient to the ups and downs of the economy, yet their constitutions prevent them from borrowing to fund deficits during recessions. Various factors, including legalized restrictions upon the body revenue growth, undermine saving during good times.

This leads to a familiar pattern: Every time the arrangement suffers, states intense heat social workers, teachers and police officers. They cut familiar services to the poor. They come to a stand building highways. This boom-bust pattern of public finance leads to inefficient resource allocations, which hurts the greatest number vulnerable in our society and deepens recessions.

The style also leads to periodic calls for treaty bailouts of state governments.

But as with any bailout, the cost goes well beyond the price join. The hazard is that a massive federal transfer to the states sends the conspicuous the federal government provides a guarantee for national obligations. When the smoke clears from the current crisis, creditors would be encouraged to lend, and states to overspend, all at the ultimate expense of the federal taxpayer. State borrowing under such conditions in Brazil and Argentina led to massive bailouts and economic crises in the 1980s and ’90s.

To make matters worse, our emerging system of ad hoc bailouts is subject to congressional horse-trading, with the money arriving in addition late to provide much stimulus. Moreover, states have incentives to game the system and position themselves to maximize their bailout, as far in the manner that concerns example by pleading poverty and halting all highway construction, to the degree that California has freshly granted. Our current predicament has its roots in the 1840s, when a severe recession hit a group of states that had borrowed aggressively. Then, as a little while ago, governors and bondholders demanded federal bailouts. The treaty government resisted, and a numeral of states defaulted, clarifying for everyone the lack of federal guarantees for state obligations. The states ultimately returned to solvency, in part, by introducing the innate balanced-budget requirements that still bind them today.

The resulting scheme of autonomous but credit-constrained state governments produced admirable fiscal control for more than 150 years. But the increased role of states in the provision of common services for the period of that period has made the unavoidable boom-bust fiscal cycles increasingly unpalatable during recessions.

Even if the bailout cannot be avoided, now is a good particular period to exorcise thoroughly the architecture for a better system that places states on firmer fiscal footing. At a minimum, let us replace ad hoc, politicized and delayed bailouts with a predictable and transparent a whole of federal grants that combat recessions. The founded on government already distributes grants to the states for programs like Medicaid and infrastructure investment. Why not build a simple system of automatic stabilization into those grants? During good ages, some share of federal grants would have existence held hinder part, and when recessions hit, grants would automatically increase according to a irreproachable system of rules.

The states most severely hit by recessions would allow larger shares of the grants, but the duration of the transfers could be explicitly limited to prevent them from serving as permanent subsidies to states in long-term decline.

Such a reform should appeal to liberals concerned with the impression of recessions on public services and the poor, and to fiscal conservatives who recognize that ad hoc bailouts protract bad incentives. And transfers could be smoothed in excess the business cycle in a depoliticized, transparent way so bailouts lose their appeal.

It artlessly makes no signification to fire admonish teachers during recessions. But rather than quickly handing billions in ad hoc bailouts to the states and creating the expectation of more in the time to come, the commencing administration should push because of a comprehensive, rule-based system to manage future recessions.

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The Washington Association of Realtors paid us a visit the other twenty-four hours with a plan of relating to housekeeping stimulation. A state agency would borrow coin steady Wall Street. It would pick up the down payments for first-time abiding-place buyers. The terms: influence rate of zero, no monthly payments. Pay it back only when you refinance or sell.

You perceive the attraction of it. More families could become homeowners. They would buy curtains, appliances, sofas, lawn mowers, hoses, ladders, fire insurance and (I added silently) journal subscriptions. Also the services of Realtors.

Would it stimulate business? Yes.

And the kind of is the least part from a thin to a dense state payment to bribe a house? For an FHA loan, 3.5 percent. And, when houses are falling in value at an 11 percent occurring every year price, how trustworthy is a buyer who can’t pay 3.5 percent along the course of?

More debt

Consider the “incentive” being salivated on by Congress. It is also more debt. Public debt. Most of it is for straight public spending

Will the stimulus stimulate? Paul Krugman of The New York Times intones with Keynesian certainty that it will if it is enough.

I prefer the humility of

They did that in the 1930s. Some of the Depression projects, such as the Aurora Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge

Recessions period when entrepreneurs notice that land, labor, essential and brains are on market, and begin to move. When they move is up to them. “The economy” is not a mechanism. It is people. It is biological. It moves when it decides to

Will a trillion dollars more of federal programs make humbler classes confident to risk their own wealth? Maybe, excepting don’t be too agile to believe it. Given that this recession was caused by too abundant offence, from home buyers to Wall Street investing. houses, there is a case for sweating it not at home and paying down part of what we owe.

Some economists are against the added spending. Some signed a recent ad in The New York Times that said, “We the undersigned do not believe that more government spending is a way to improve economic literary work.” One was professor Charles Nelson of the University of Washington.

I asked him what he would have the government do. “Distribute money to households,” he said. “I think they should sudden motion mailing out checks and solemnize it up until this stops.”

Wouldn’t that inducement inflation? “Yes,” he said. “Some.”

I prefer sweating it uncovered, but if we’ve got to blow a trillion, here’s a way that might work better as medicine: Use it to stipend Social Security benefits. Suspend the payroll tax. That way, each employee in America would get a 6.2 percent raise on the first $106,800 of occurring every year pay. That’s a maximum of $6,621.60, to spend, save or pay downward debt. All are good things. Every employer would get an equal break. The cost of labor would fall, and more people would be hired.

Instead, we’ll regard a dog’session breakfast.

; during the term of a podcast Q&A through the author, go to www.seattletimes.com/edcetera

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2008703783_opina04ramsey.html?syndication=rss

WASHINGTON Nancy Killefer withdrew her candidacy to be the first chief completion officer despite the federal government on Tuesday, aphorism she didn’t want her bungling of payroll taxes on her household help to become a distraction for the Obama administration.

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Killefer was the second major nominee to draw off. Within hours, former Sen. Tom Daschle also withdrew his nomination to be secretary of health and human services.

In a brief letter to President Barack Obama, Killefer, the 55-year-old executive by the agency of consulting giant McKinsey & Co., wrote that she had “come to realize in the current environment that my personal tax issue of D.C. unemployment tax could have existence used to constitute exactly the kind of distraction and delay” that must be avoided in responding to urgent economic problems.

She offered no further particulars of her demand difficulties.

In announcing his choice of Sen. Judd Gregg to be commerce secretary, Obama took none questions Tuesday and left the White House lectern ignoring a shouted inquiry about why so many of his nominees have load problems.

But White House press secretary Robert Gibbs later insisted Killefer and Daschle beyond a doubt on their own to withdraw. “I think they both recognized that you can’t set any instance of responsibility but accept a different standard in who serves,” Gibbs told a White House briefing.

When Killefer’s selection was announced by Obama on Jan. 7, The Associated Press disclosed that in 2005 the District of Columbia government had filed a $946.69 accuse legal claim on her home for failure to pay unemployment compensation tax on household help. Since then, administration officials have refused to reply questions about the tax blunder, what one. she resolved five months after the lien was filed.

It wasn’t clear whether the administration was aware of Killefer’s tax errors before Obama named her. Gibbs refused to speak that which administration vetters knew with reference to the problem or when. Gibbs maintained that Obama has confidence in the vetting system. But late without interruption the lifetime Killefer was capital named, an administration official asked an AP reporter for what reason the AP had found the tax lien against her.

A Senate Democratic aide said the executive department had advised the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that Killefer had tax problems involving her home staff. The administration did not view her problems of the same kind with insurmountable in themselves only believed that in connection through Geithner and Daschle they made her nomination untenable, according to this aide, who was not authorized to speak on the record and demanded anonymity.

Obama’s first and foremost uncommon for commerce secretary, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, withdrew when his confirmation appeared headed toward complications because of a grand jury investigation over how state contracts were issued to civic donors.

More recently, Tim Geithner was confirmed as Treasury secretary despite belatedly paying $34,000 in income taxes, and Daschle acknowledged his late payment of more than $128,000 in income taxes.

On paper, Killefer brought impressive credentials to the sum of two units jobs Obama selected her because: deputy director conducive to management at the Office of Management and Budget, which requires Senate confirmation, and a unused White House post, chief performance officer for the entire federal government, which does not require confirmation.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008701891_apobamakillefer.html?syndication=rss