Optum Health-Kelly Benefit Strategies Team Presentation

Charles Aaron, head of Circuit Global Sports Management, presents the 2012 men's and women's Optum Health-Kelly Benefits cycling teams.

Celebrated Minneapolis theater venue and architectural marvel, the Guthrie Theater, was the setting on the evening of January 30, 2012 for the presentation of the Optum Health-Kelly Benefits Strategies cycling teams. Beginning with a food, booze and schmooze including riders and fans from across the globe, the event moved onto the main theater stage itself for an introduction of the veteran riders and new additions to the squad and interviews with the most prominent members, including stars Jesse Anthony, Alex Candelario, Janel Holcomb, and Kristen Sanders. Everyone then adjourned to the open bar in the lobby for some extended chat with America's leading race riders. A great time was had by all.


Second-year team member 20 year-old Colton Barrett from North St. Paul represented the extensive local cycling scene.


Winnipeg, MB native Leah Kirchmann is looking forward to another hugely successful racing campaign with a new sponsor and a podium spot at the Olympic games in London in July.


Dr. Reid Mumford, particle physicist from Johns Hopkins University, now considers larger moving objects while he maneuvers through the pro peloton.


Janel Holcomb is the current National Racing Calendar champion.


Canadian Joelle Numainville is the 27th ranked elite female cyclist in the world.

Sarkozy and the VAT

IMF head LaGarde, German chancellor Merkel and French president Sarkozy examine the sheet of clues for a European scavenger hunt.

French president Nicholas Sarkozy proposes raising that country's Value Added Tax rate to 21.2%. Ostensibly, the increased tax revenues will be used to offset reductions in government-mandated employer expenses related to payroll, ie. French social security programs. The French tax system confiscates between 40% & 45% of national GDP. Sarkozy says that increasing the national sales tax will allow French manufacturers and exporters to more effectively compete with their foreign rivals. He also intends to institute a "financial transactions tax" of .1%, meant to discourage short term speculation as well as raise state revenues. The French president's popularity is rapidly declining and he will soon face an election that will be considered a referendum on his stewardship of an ailing economy with an unemployment rate hovering near 10% and a Standard & Poor reduction in sovereign debt rating from AAA to AA+.

The word now in Europe is "austerity". The most proficient money manager in the Eurozone, Germany, intends to protect the integrity of the Euro and its own economy by reining in the profligate spending of its neighbors like Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy by establishing central control over member states' budgets. Lots of luck with that. France, too, is being pressured, like all social democratic states, by the insoluble situation of increasing demands for state services that must be paid for by bonds that seem less and less likely to be redeemed at face value, plus interest. The austerity lamented by some economists and other observers is a reduction in government spending on social services while taxes are increased to pay off an interlocking web of international bondholders. Politicians have borrowed massive sums to purchase votes in the vain hope that economic growth, hamstrung by growing government regulation and parasitic tax policies, will provide the tax base for repayment. Such is not to be. A wave of financial woes are moving across Europe, Great Britain will feel more discomfort soon. As always, there are really only two ways out of the situation, monetizing the debt (print more money) and enduring inflation that wipes out the savings of ordinary people and requires a new form of fiat currency or repudiation of the debt, which is often a cause of war and eliminates the possibility of future sovereign debt, at least in the short term.

The small (at least for now) financial transactions tax is the nose of the camel under the tent. Other countries will see how it works out for the French and if there isn't outright rebellion it will be adopted across the globe in a more insidious form. Its future configuration will be the registration of all contracts, accompanied by a graduated fee, with the government to guarantee their enforceability. A real property lease, for instance, will have to be registered with a government agency if either party to it wishes to enforce its terms. Independent adjudication, such as with arbitration panels, will be required to abide by the terms as well. There will be no escape.

World Record Holders

On May 12, 2010 three American ladies set a new world record in the women's team pursuit on the Bicentennial Velodrome at Aguascalientes, Mexico, during the PanAmerican Track Championships. Sarah Hammer, Lauren Tamayo and Dotsie Bausch zipped the 3000 meters in 3:19.569, about 2 seconds faster than the previous mark. The 2012 Olympics in London will include the women's team pursuit for the first time and the USA cycling team is preparing for it now.


Go to BNQT.com for more videos.

Today's Cartoon

A Short History of the US Gold Standard from "Liberty", Nov. 1995 Book Review

From Here to Economy: A Shortcut to Economic Literacy (Dutton, 1995, 259 pp., $21.95), by Todd G. Buchholz.

Although I am not a professional economist, I am reasonably well read in the field. As I read this primer, I marveled at how concisely Buchholz explained complex economic concepts and economic history, and the liveliness of his prose. Further, he shows
considerable respect for Austrian economics - a respect not often in evidence among mainline economists or their popularizers - and an admiration for the Chicago School. Surely, I thought, this is a book of great merit, making matters economic understandable to those unwilling to devote the study to the field that I have. I was already planning to buy copies as gifts for the economically underendowed when Iencountered the following two paragraphs:
The U.S. moved to a de facto gold standard in the 1830s and adopted it formally in 1900. Tourists who visited Washington could walk up to the Treasury Department building on Fifteenth Street and swap their bills for gold. Every bill was inscribed with the following promise: The United States of America Will Pay to the Bearer on Demand One Dollar in Gold." (In the 1930s the U.S. dropped this pledge and replaced the inscription with a promise to Pay to the Bearer on Demand One Dollar in Lawful
Money." A puckish man from Cleveland who decided to test the government then mailed a ten-dollar bill to Washington asking to swap it for lawful money." The wits at the Treasury Department mailed him back two fives!)

As it happens, this passage discusses the one aspect of economic history where my knowledge is systematic and arguably expert. And I immediately recognized several errors:
(1) The United States more or less adopted the gold standard de facto in 1873 and de jure in 1900, more or less abandoned it in 1934, and completely abandoned it in 1971. Prior to 1873, the U.S. was on a bimetallic standard; that is, the U.S. dollar was defined as a fixed quantity of either gold or silver; in
effect, there were two dollars in circulation, one .7734 troy ounces of silver, the other .04837 troy ounces of gold. Needless to say, this bi-metallic standard was an utter failure, as in the marketplace the values of both gold and silver fluctuated. Prior to the Coinage Act of 1834, the laws of the United States decreed that one ounce of gold was worth 15 ounces of silver, the market ratio that prevailed (more or less) at the time of the creation of the U.S. monetary system in the 1790s. Unfortunately, by the early 1800s, this arbitrary valuation was out of whack with the prices of gold and silver in the market. It overvalued silver; that is to say, $100 in silver coin had less value as metal than did $100 in gold coin. At the time, Congress had no authority to repeal Gresham's Law, so the result was predictable: gold coins were driven from circulation. The Coinage Act of 1834 changed the gold-silver ratio to 16-to-l, which was by then, more or less, the market ratio. As before, this new ratio worked for a while, but soon the market ratio changed, this time in favor of gold. (That is to say, the ratio soon overvalued gold.) Silver coins were driven from circulation. Between 1849 and 1873, the coinage system was an utter mess, thanks to this problem and to the paper-money inflation of the Civil War years. In 1873, Congress repealed authorization for striking a silver dollar, in effect, reducing the status of silver coins from standard to subsidiary coinage and demonetizing silver. Finally, the U.S. was on a de facto gold standard.
(2) There was no government issued paper money at all until the Demand Notes of 1862 and the Legal
Tender Notes of 1863. These notes were not legally redeemable in gold or in silver and, in fact, were routinely refused by the federal government when tendered in payment of tariffs. Needless to
say, they never included any language guaranteeing that they could be redeemed upon demand in gold.
(3) Between 1862 and 1933, the U.S. government issued, at one time or another, thirteen different types of paper money: Demand Notes, Legal Tender Notes (also known as United States Notes), Compound Interest Treasury Notes, Interest Bearing Notes, Refunding Certificates, Silver Certificates, Treasury Notes (also known as Coin Notes), National Bank Notes, Federal Reserve Bank Notes, Federal
Reserve Notes, National Gold Bank Notes, Gold Certificates, and Fractional Currency. These pieces of paper money had a wide variety of redemption clauses, some of which were changed from time to time. The only ones the federal government promised to redeem in gold were Gold Certificates and Federal
Reserve Notes (Series 1928 only). None of these were issued in denominations of $1.00. The Treasury Notes (Series lS90 and 1891) promised redemption in "coin," which in fact meant the bearers choice
of gold or silver coin, but this is nowhere stated on the note. The National Gold Bank Notes (co-issued
by the federal government and certain federally-chartered National Gold Banks during the 1870s) promised redemption in gold, but by the National Gold Bank, not the federal government.

So I don't know how much I ought to recommend From Here to Economy. Its discussion of the one area where I might be considered an expert is fraught with errors. The frustrations of a book-reviewer!
-R.W. Bradford

Candid Camera

A January 18 article posted on the Minneapolis Star-Tribune website:

A Florida man has been charged with surreptitiously videotaping men in an airport restroom by using a camera rigged into a book.

Joshua Fletcher, 34, of Valrico, Fla., appeared in court Wednesday to answer to two gross misdemeanor counts of interference with privacy. He was charged after a Monday incident at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in which someone complained to police that Fletcher was holding what appeared to be a book with a hole in it, with a camera or cellphone behind the book.

Charges say airport police approached Fletcher outside the restroom and recovered his cellphone, which contained multiple videos of men urinating in public restrooms. A search of a trash bin nearby revealed an address book with a hole in it and a digital camera.

The incident occurred in the same restroom where former U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, was arrested in June 2007 for allegedly soliciting sex from an undercover police officer.

Fletcher's attorney, Marsh Halberg, called the arrest "an unfortunate situation."

"We will await what is discovered on the camera," Halberg said. "Obviously there's the question of privacy and limitations regarding private versus public sexual activity."

ABBY SIMONS
____________________________________________

Don't get the idea that I'm an advocate of this kind of behavior but questions about it are part and parcel of the simmering debate about things like police arresting individuals for recording their activity or confiscating their phones and cameras, the use of surveillance cameras on private and public property and the difference between a human observing something personally and looking at a recording of the same event. There seems to be a general agreement, or at least acceptance, that businesses have the right to record the images of people entering their premises, apparently to both discourage crime and aid in the apprehension of perpetrators. The same seems to be the case with public spaces like business districts and college campuses.

The case could be made that there's a difference between an observer taking notice of the size of a man's penis at an airport rest room urinal and the same observer taking a digital photo of the member. But is there really? How do we even know that there aren't hidden surveillance cameras in public restrooms? Singer Chuck Berry was arrested for taping the occupants of a lady's rest room in a business he owned. What comparison would be made between a photo of a person and a sketch or very well done portrait? Would a quick pencil caricature of someone be an invasion of their privacy? Primitives around the world are often reluctant to have their photo taken because they feel the process steals part of their soul. Are we wrong to dismiss their concerns and if we're not, why do we care if someone is recording us? Recently there have been news stories of people convicted of child pornography for downloading computer images of imaginary children, children that couldn't have been harmed, because they don't exist. Disgusting as such behavior is, there's a philosophical issue there that really hasn't been explored to the point of resolution.

An Example of Professionalism