Foreign direct investment in China fell for the second straight month in December as global financial turmoil dimmed companies
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Three Federal Reserve policy makers called on the U.S. government to try new programs to revive the housing market while differing over whether the central bank should take more steps to cut borrowing costs.
New York Fed President William C. Dudley said in New Jersey today that
Eleventh-hour contract talks have started between two Saint Louis area hospitals and a leading insurer who had been locked in an impasse, according to officials on both sides.
Representatives of St. Louis University Hospital and Des Peres Hospital as well as Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Missouri and HealthLink Inc., confirmed Tuesday that limited talks occurred last week.
So far, negotiators have failed to reach an agreement that may avert an end-of-the-year contract deadline. And the impasse may result in thousands of patients fleeing to other medical providers.
Both sides offered widely different accounts Tuesday of their recent talks, which were apparently held via phone calls, conference calls and emails, but not in person. They accused each other of undermining or walking away from the negotiations. And they could not agree on which offer or counter-offer is currently on or off the table - or even if talks will likely move forward.
A spokeswoman for Tenet Healthcare Corp. of Dallas, which owns the two hospitals, said that WellPoint Inc. of Indianapolis, which owns the two health insurance plans, had delivered an ultimatum in the form of a new, only slightly better contract proposal that the hospitals rejected last Friday.
“They’ve said, ‘Take it or leave it,’” said Laura Keller, a spokeswoman for SLU Hospital. “They offered an increase that is so low it doesn’t keep up with the increase in cost of taking care of patients.”
But a spokesman for Anthem insisted that the negotiations were still ongoing - and that the insurer is in fact examining an earlier offer from the hospitals.
“We are incredulous,” said Deb Wiethop, an Anthem spokeswoman. “We’re not aware that the negotiations are over. … We received a proposal from Tenet on Dec. 19. We’re going to look at it and get back to Tenet in January.”
Wiethop acknowledged that the hospitals had rejected an offer last Friday from the insurer. “It’s not a ‘take it or leave it’ proposal,” she said.
The two hospitals announced in early December that - because of a breakdown in talks - they would cancel their managed care contracts with Anthem as well as HealthLink as of Jan. 1. This termination does not apply to SLUCare physicians.
Without the contracts, Anthem and HealthLink customers would pay significantly higher rates next year for out-of-network care at both of the hospitals. And if that occurs, it would no doubt drive away many patients who would ordinarily visit Des Peres Hospital or SLU Hospital to other competing St. Louis-area hospitals that accept WellPoint’s health plans.
Under the existing contracts, the two hospitals’ agreements with HealthLink patients will end on Dec. 31. However, patients covered by the Anthem contract will continue to receive care at ‘in-network’ rates until Feb. 22.
The bottom line is that Germany is likely to be the last man standing. The Euro is important to them and the responsibility for saving it will be decided in Berlin - not Paris, Brussels, or Frankfurt. It will be messy and will involve revamping the main treaty - the Treaty of Lisbon cashadvance.
Cam Harvey provides an overview of some of the finer points. Click here for blog.
London officials attached eviction notices to protest tents outside St. Paul’s Cathedral on Wednesday, asking the demonstrators to remove them within a day or face legal action.
The notices posted by the City of London Corporation said the protest camp was “an unlawful obstruction” of a sidewalk, and asked protesters to take down “all tents and other structures” by 6 p.m. (1800 GMT, 1 p.m. EST) Thursday.
The cathedral and the corporation had suspended legal action to remove the camp two weeks ago, and offered the protesters a deal to allow them to stay until the new year if they then agreed to leave. But the corporation said Tuesday that talks had failed and it was resuming legal action.
If the tents are not removed, the corporation says it will go to court seeking an eviction notice _ a process that could take weeks.
More than 200 tents have been pitched outside the iconic church since Oct. 15 in a protest against capitalist excess inspired by New York’s Occupy Wall Street, and the protesters said they would resist attempts to move them.
“We will contest it,” spokeswoman Naomi Colvin said. “We will be speaking to our legal team and we will be fighting it.”
The governing Chapter of St. Paul’s Cathedral said in a statement that it recognized “the local authority’s statutory right to proceed with the action it has today,” but would continue to meet with protesters in a bid to find a peaceful solution.
Police in the U.S. have been moving in to clear away similar protests, breaking up camps in Portland, Oregon, on Sunday, Oakland, California, on Monday and on Tuesday in New York, where about 200 people were arrested.
Dow Chemical Co. and the Saudi Arabian Oil Co. say they’ve signed an agreement that advances their plan to build one of the world’s biggest chemical plants in Saudi Arabia. The $20 billion complex is expected to begin production in 2015.
The companies announced Saturday that they signed a joint venture agreement for Sadara Chemical Co., which will own the plant being built in the desert kingdom. It will generate an estimated $10 billion in revenue annually.
Dow and Saudi Aramco together are investing about $12 billion, and a portion of Sadara will be sold to shareholders in a public offering in 2013 or 2014. The complex, with 26 manufacturing units, will be the largest integrated chemical facility ever built in one go, the companies say.
Drive by, and Lighthouse for the Blind looks like pretty much any other light factory in its industrial park in Overland just south of Page Avenue free 3-in-1 credit report. What they make here is pretty typical, too
When the market falls as rapidly as it has lately, you’ll inevitably hear analysts proclaiming that stocks are now bargains.
At one level, they’re stating the obvious: Like shirts on the department store’s bargain rack, companies are suddenly 5, 10 or 20 percent cheaper than they were a few months ago. The current crop of bargain-hunters, though, think they’ve found something more significant than a quick markdown.
By some traditional measures, stocks are as cheap as they have been in decades. The stocks in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, for example, sell for about 12 times the profit they earned in the past year. That’s called the price-earnings ratio, and its long-term average is around 16.
The S&P 500 companies also are trading at less than twice their book value, which is the accounting measure of their worth. Historically, a typical number would be more like 3 times book. The last time the price-to-book measure got this low was in March 2009, which in hindsight turned out to be a terrific buying opportunity.
Some money managers see a similar opportunity today. “We really think the market is pretty darned cheap,” says David Rolfe, chief investment officer at Wedgewood Partners in Ladue. “There’s this fear of what may happen in Europe, but if you get just a whiff of relief, a whiff that maybe we’ve priced in the worst of Greece, the U.S. stock market is like a coiled spring.”
In other words, he’s buying and waiting for a bounce. With short-term interest rates at near zero, Rolfe adds, stocks have never been more attractive in comparison to Treasury bills and other cashlike investments.
When someone talks about ratios, though, it’s important to look at both numerator and denominator. A plunging stock price might make the price-earnings ratio look attractive, but how reliable are the earnings?
After all, stocks didn’t look overpriced in 2007, but then a severe recession turned profits into losses and the market lost half its value.
Perhaps, then, we should put a little less faith in analysts’ estimates of what a company might earn next year. If earnings are volatile, maybe the classic P/E ratio can’t tell us whether stocks are cheap or expensive.
Robert Shiller, a finance professor at Yale University, tackled this problem by constructing a cyclically adjusted price-earnings ratio. It compares today’s stock price to a 10-year average of company profits. By his measure, today’s stock market isn’t cheap. In fact, the so-called Shiller P/E stands at almost precisely its 50-year average.
The Shiller concept is a good tool for assessing today’s market, says Mark Keller, chief investment officer at Confluence Investment Management in Webster Groves.
“Earnings are so volatile in recent years,” he explained. “You could argue that today’s profit margins are not sustainable.”
As a percentage of the U.S. gross domestic product, corporate profits are already at a record level. “Maybe we’ll go to a new all-time high, but we find it hard to believe things could get much better,” Keller said.
Perhaps, then, we’ve hit the profit peak for this cycle. If profits can only grow as fast as GDP
A Shanghai subway train crashed into another that was stopped underground Tuesday afternoon, injuring more than 210 people in the latest trouble for the rapidly expanded transportation system in China’s commercial center.
The crash occurred after Shanghai Shentong Metro Group blogged that line 10 was having delays due to equipment problems. Line 10 opened just last year as one of the city’s newest subways.
At least 212 people were hurt, three seriously, the metro operator said. It said none had life-threatening injuries, though some of the injured were carried away on stretchers.
One train rammed into the back of another that was stopped. Reports said problems with signaling equipment had prompted the line to switch to manual operations.
The trains were relatively crowded when they crashed between stations downtown in midafternoon. Photos posted online by passengers showed some of the injured covered in blood and lying on the floor of the train.
Firemen helped evacuate the approximately 500 passengers on the trains, taking them out through emergency exits and walking them through the subway tunnel.
The crash snarled downtown traffic as police blocked roads to clear the way for ambulances, and hundreds of gawkers gathered to watch as passengers were escorted from the subway.
Shanghai, a city of 23 million, has rapidly expanded its subways in recent years and some lines have seen problems with faulty signaling, windows shattering, doors not opening properly and poorly trained train operators.
Shanghai’s No. 10 line was among several opened last year that were built hastily ahead of the 2010 World Expo, which brought more than 72 million visitors to the eastern city.
As a health official evaluating a $5.5 million state Medicaid contract, Christine Larsen in January signed off on the hiring of SynCare, a fledgling Indianapolis-based company.
Six months later, Larsen ended up on the company’s payroll, helping to preside over a debacle of a contract that lasted just three months amid outrage from patients, health providers and SynCare’s own employees.
In the wake of the company’s termination, politicians and other critics have questioned the wisdom of the Missouri health department officials who designed and approved the deal, wondering how SynCare got hired in the first place. Larsen surely played a key role, but she wasn’t the company’s only well-connected backer.
Corporate filings reveal that Clayton-based Centene Corp.