Nurse Ratched Goes to the Bank

Nurses’ prescription for healing our economy

By Katrina vanden Heuvel, Tuesday, October 4, 11:55 AM

If you want to know just how bad things are for those hit hardest by the Great Recession, ask a nurse: They see more young men suffering heart attacks,

more anxiety in children,

Often mistaken for pushier Ritalin sales reps.

and more ulcers and stomach illnesses in people of all ages.

I’m too lazy to do any more research. This woman is trying way too hard to tie finance to health.

Financial struggles are forcing more patients to forgo necessary medicines and treatments.

[citation needed]

A Princeton/Georgia State study reports a 39 percent increase in ER admissions for suicide attempts precipitated by home foreclosures, and a direct correlation between foreclosure rates and increases in emergency-room visits and hospitalization for hypertension, diabetes and anxiety.

It’s cute to see someone pointing to statistics and confusing causation with correlation. Plus, there’s no indication of how strong the correlation is. How about an R-squared value, lady? The reason that there are more suicides “precipitated” by home foreclosures is that there are more home foreclosures.

Given this widespread hardship and pain, it makes sense that nurses who are on the frontlines in our communities

Technically, military hospitals are precisely the opposite of front lines.

every day are leading an effort to hold Wall Street accountable for causing these economic troubles while raising hundreds of billions of dollars for vital human needs.

And there’s the jump from incompetent to crazy. No, Katrina. It doesn’t make sense at all that nurses would try to rage against Wall Street.

National Nurses United (NNU), the nation’s largest union and professional association of nurses, representing 170,000 RNs, is out in the streets, in congressional offices and just last week in Liberty Park

Is this sentence still going?

with the Occupy Wall Street protesters

What a bunch of world-beaters those guys are.

pushing a good idea that has been around for decades and whose time has come:

Is this sentence still going?

a financial-transactions tax.

Oh Jesus. Obviously KVH believes that “it makes sense” that nurses have an expertise in tax policy and financial markets. I forgot that they took courses in derivative valuation and Macroeconomic Theory in between Pharmacology and Physiology.

This is a small levy

Tax.

on trades of stocks, derivatives and currencies meant to curb short-term speculation while raising massive revenue

Wait, I thought it was teensy weensy “levy.” How can something so small raise “massive revenue?”

Here’s what will actually happen with this idiotic (and massive) tax: First, volume will shrink on the major exchanges, and plummet on the minor exchanges as investors who would otherwise like to buy American stocks will begin looking to more a more favorable regulatory environment overseas. Whatever countries avoid this new plague of financial lunacy will see a new influx of investment that will propel new growth.

As the cost to reallocating away from perilous ventures increases, what remains of domestic investors will trend away from speculation and flee to safety. Indexing will become the norm. This permanent shift towards safety and stability will suck up the capital ordinarily allocated to the start-ups and growth industries that propel job creation.

The decrease in trading volume coupled with widespread indexing strategies will have the dual effect of showing government revenue estimates to be wildly inflated and undermining market efficiency. Frequent trading curtails the forces suppressing arbitrage opportunities. As a result, there will be more likelihood of arbitrage for large institutional investors that will be inaccessible to smaller investors because of scale.

The increase in transaction costs will drive up the required rate of return for debt and equity securities. Companies will then see their cost of capital increase, and as a result, will pursue fewer new projects. It may cause some to favor debt financing, which is more stable than equity, thereby shifting the capital budget towards higher leverage ratios and increasing default risk.

Finally, “financial transactions” is an inherently murky designation. This will eventually creep into a national sales tax or a VAT tax, as all “transactions” are, by the very nature of being transactions, financial. In addition to this being economic poison, it’s also inherently unconstitutional.

for urgent needs.

Because without the ever-present gluttony of the leviathan, firefighters’ children will go hungry and blah blah blah.

Since June, thousands of nurses have protested on Wall Street, at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, and the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco, as well as participated in actions ranging from working in soup kitchens to staging sit-ins at 60 district congressional offices in 21 states to lead the fight for this common-sense measure.

Clearly they don’t have much going on in their personal lives.

“In my practice as a staff nurse in a downtown Boston teaching hospital, I am seeing the effects of this crisis every day,” said Massachusetts RN Ann Marie McDonagh.

Because what’s a more reliable way to measure a major nationwide trend than the anecdotal evidence of a single nurse in Boston?

“A nurses’ union must do so much more than just negotiate fair pay and decent working conditions.

It must also cultivate delusions of grandeur within its management.

It must use its power to promote the overall well being of its members and the public they care for.”

No. Promoting the well-being of its members and the public at large are two different and contradictory items. Nurses unions don’t promote the well-being of the public; that’s what hospitals are for. Nurses unions bargain against hospitals. Nurses unions use their power to oppose the overall well being of the public.

Last month, at NNU’s convention in San Francisco, filmmaker Michael Moore praised the union for its creativity and initiative.

Wait, Michael Moore was there? And not one of these nurses had the decency to recommend Lap-Band surgery?

“It’s so necessary,” said Moore. “Your movement on [this tax] is genius; it has to happen.”

Moore is onto something.

Technically, it would have been the nurses union that was onto something, but if Moore wants to co-opt this terrible idea, he’s welcome to it.

There is indeed a sense that this idea needs to become a reality.

This may be the worse sentence I’ve read in the last month. I’ve missed it. I might have to check out some My Immortal.

This is no marginal idea: The “Tobin Tax” to discourage short-term currency speculation was originally suggested by Nobel laureate economist James Tobin in 1972. Just last week, Bill Gates endorsed a small tax on financial transactions as a way to raise substantial resources for development spending.

And yet, no one can explain how a small tax raises “substantial resources.”

In Europe, centrists and even some conservatives now embrace such an idea.

Does anyone really think that we should be following the European financial model in the midst of Greek default and the pending dissolution of the European currency? Anyone?

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have both signaled their support, and the new head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, was a strong proponent of a financial-transaction tax as finance minister of France.

And they all have one thing in common: no one over here gives a damn what they think.

Last week, the European Commission released proposed legislation for an EU-wide financial-transactions tax.

So if this is all about Europe’s new and exciting way to slide towards socialism, why the hell did we have to do all that crap with the nurses?

Also last week, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, a conservative, made his strongest statement yet on the matter. “Before the end of the autumn we are going to create a tax on financial transactions. If necessary, I’m sure, just in the eurozone,” said Schaeuble.

Cool. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when the equity markets suddenly shrivel across Europe as savings pour into the East Asian markets.

But in the United States, top members of President Obamaħ

Holy crap, she misspelled Obama. Hilarity ensued.

economic team have torpedoed this idea. According to Ron Suskind’s new book, “Confidence Men,” President Obama supported the tax before then-chief economic adviser Larry Summers nixed it.

Of course he did. Obama supports just about any tax you can levy.

It comes as no surprise that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who Suskind reports was referred to as “our man in Washington” by one top banker ” has been no smarter on this front.

No one likes poor Timmy.

He recently attended a meeting of eurozone finance ministers, urging them to get a grip on their debt crisis,then

Another typo. This just feels shoddy. (The article, I mean, but I suppose one could say the same about Geithner’s economic joust with Angela Merkel.)

immediately said that the United States would not impose a tax on financial transactions as a way of dealing with the crisis.

Somehow, I don’t trust Geithner enough to think he actually said that. I allocated all of my research time on the graph, though, so I’m not going to look it up.

Geithner drew a strong rebuke from Austrian Finance Minister Maria Fekter, a conservative.

Transatlantic conservatism is kind of like football. Sure, there are 11 guys on the field, but when you show up in Germany trying to play fullback, they make you wear shin guards and no one’s heard of the iso play.

“I would have expected that, if he explains the world to us, that he would also listen to what we want to explain to the Americans,” she said.

That’s not really much of a rebuke.

“The Europeans are way ahead of us on this, with the real possibility of implementing financial transactions taxes in the next year,”

Somehow, I’m okay with falling behind to Europe in this shit sandwich of an idea.

said Sarah Anderson, director of the Global Economy Project of the Institute for Policy Studies, who zealously follows this issue. “The nurses union is doing a tremendous job of pushing the United States in the right direction.”

And yet, no one can explain what the fuck any of this has to do with nursing.

It’s no surprise that the corporate-owned mainstream media isn’t paying much attention

She writes, without a trace of irony, published in the Washington Post.

to the activism around this issue by NNU and organizations such as the National Peoples Action, Jobs with Justice, the American Dream Movement and Americans for Financial Reform.

To be fair to the “corporate-owned mainstream media,” those guys tend to do a pretty good job marginalizing themselves.

Thousands of nurses insisting that they be heard on an issue that would help their patients

HOW?!? HOW WOULD A TAX INCREASE ON FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS HELP PATIENTS IN ANY CONCEIVABLE WAY? I NORMALLY DON’T LIKE TYPING IN ALL CAPS BUT MY INCREDULOUS BEFUDDLEMENT DEMANDS MORE THAN A SIMPLE SNARKY COMMENT. WHAT THE HELL IS SHE TALKING ABOUT. I FEEL…I FEEL LIKE…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DVAsmrwdtQ

seems to be of little interest to most in the national press, while three tea partyers

Is this the proper pluralization? The tea party has been part of the popular vernacular for two and a half years, and people still haven’t figured out a generally accepted pluralization for individuals sympathizing with the tea party movement. Odd.

on a corner are treated as a major media event.

Wah wah wah.

But a financial-transactions tax now has support at the highest levels of economic power

I think you’re overestimating Bill Gates.

and out on the streets,

I think you’re overestimating the Nurse’s Union.

where tens of thousands of nurses and their allies are helping to lead the fight to heal Main Street. What we are now seeing is an unprecedented opportunity for a transnational alliance to generate revenue

Why on earth is she so excited about this new revenue source? It’s not like government spending is constrained by revenues. Indeed, federal expenditures are mostly fixed, whereas tax receipts and revenues can fluctuate 2-3 percentage points from the mean based on the business cycle.

There is simply no reason for anyone to get this excited about a new avenue of taxation unless she is championing the use of the government to assault those with whom she disagrees. It’s no surprise; it’s what socialists do.

from those who created the economic debacle,

This meme can’t be repeated enough times to make it true. Government caused the financial meltdown.

and to restore Wall Street and global finance to its proper role of serving the real economy.