General Motors Executive Warns of Impending Auto Bubble

General Motors of Canada President Kevin Williams is warning that subprime loans could doom the auto industry just as it did the housing industry in 2007.

Williams told the editorial board of Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper on Monday that record Canadian auto sales could be attributed to cheap credit loans.

“The real question is, are you going to run the business the way you ran it in the past in order to drive market share exclusively. The answer is that’s not our intent because it [led to] a failed company,” Williams said.

Using subprime loans and easy credit to move cars off the lot may not be GM Canada’s goal, but its parent company, bailed-out, Detroit-based General Motors, has been moving in that direction, as the Washington Free Beacon reported in February. Nearly 90 percent of loans issued by GM Financial were subprime.

READ MORE:  http://freebeacon.com/general-motors-executive-warns-of-impending-auto-bubble/

Shutdown halts federal regs (Video)

By Ben Goad and Julian Hattem - 10/06/13 12:07 PM ET

 

The government shutdown has all but turned off the regulatory spigot, reducing the flow of new rules from federal agencies to a trickle. [WATCH VIDEO]

Regulators and proponents of stronger protections warn that rule-making delays would jeopardize public safety and health. But some conservatives say the reprieve from red tape is welcome, even if it doesn’t last long.

“We’re very pleased that the Obama administration’s ongoing efforts to wreck the U.S. economy with more and more heavy-handed and colossally expensive regulations has been put on hold,” said Myron Ebell, director of the right-leaning Competitive Enterprise Institute’s energy and environment center.

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/regwatch/administration/326667-shutdown-halts-federal-regulations#ixzz2hELkbNfk

Obamacare's winners and losers in Bay Area

Cindy Vinson and Tom Waschura are big believers in the Affordable Care Act. They vote independent and are proud to say they helped elect and re-elect President Barack Obama.

Yet, like many other Bay Area residents who pay for their own medical insurance, they were floored last week when they opened their bills: Their policies were being replaced with pricier plans that conform to all the requirements of the new health care law.

Vinson, of San Jose, will pay $1,800 more a year for an individual policy, while Waschura, of Portola Valley, will cough up almost $10,000 more for insurance for his family of four.

READ MORE:  http://www.mercurynews.com/nation-world/ci_24248486/obamacares-winners-and-losers-bay-area

Enrollment In Obamacare's Federal Exchange, So Far, May Only Be In 'Single Digits'

On October 1, Obamacare’s subsidized insurance exchanges went live. Most of the exchange websites crashed on the first day, a development that led some of the law’s supporters to conclude that there was overwhelming demand for Obamacare’s insurance products. But the Obama administration isn’t releasing figures as to the number of Americans who have actually signed up for exchange-based coverage. “Very, very few people that we’re aware of have enrolled in the federal exchange,” said one anonymous insurance industry official to the Washington Post. “We are talking single digits.”

Exchange agencies walk back high-traffic hype

Other exchanges have had to pare down their initial statistics. Covered California, that state’s subsidized insurance exchange, initially claimed that its website had received 5 million hits on October 1. They later had to revise that number down 87 percent, to 645,000. KUSI-TV in San Diego is reporting that not one policy has yet been sold on the California exchange.

READ MORE:  http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/10/03/enrollment-in-obamacares-federal-exchange-so-far-is-in-the-single-digits/

What Undercover Boss and The Jetsons Tell Us About the Future of Jobs

In the early days of artificial intelligence research, it was commonplace for the well-educated academics in the field to (mistakenly) think that being “intelligent” meant being good at things that other well-educated academic researchers struggled at, like playing chess. We now know, however, that it's far harder to get robots to do things that come naturally to us (like identify objects and pick them up) than it is to get them to prove logical theorems or find patterns in huge volumes of data—things we humans struggle at. This and other counter-intuitive trends in AI and research on the nature of human intelligence have discouraged researchers from trying to predict which jobs will be automated, but a provocative new study by Carl Frey and Michael Osborne at Oxford University tries to do just that, and their findings are alarming.

READ MORE:   http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/09/27/researchers_claim_many_jobs_at_risk_for_automation_here_s_what_they_missed.html

Obamacare Will Increase Health Spending By $7,450 For A Typical Family of Four

Update: At the bottom of this post, the author responds to criticism of his argument. Over at National Journal Avik Roy says the critics are missing the point of Conover’s post.

It was one of candidate Obama’s most vivid and concrete campaign promises. Forget about high minded (some might say high sounding) but gauzy promises of hope and change.

This candidate solemnly pledged on June 5, 2008: “In an Obama administration, we’ll lower premiums by up to $2,500 for a typical family per year….. We’ll do it by the end of my first term as President of the United States.”  Unfortunately, the experts working for Medicare’s actuary have (yet again^[1]) reported that in its first 10 years, Obamacare will boost health spending by “roughly $621 billion” above the amounts Americans would have spent without this misguided law.

What this means for a typical family of four: 
READ MORE:  http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/09/23/its-official-obamacare-will-increase-health-spending-by-7450-for-a-typical-family-of-four/

Economic Freedom of the World: An Interactive Map

Click on the below link to see an Interactive Map!


READ MORE:  http://www.cato.org/economic-freedom-world/maphttp://www.cato.org/economic-freedom-world/map