Reforming federal flood insurance policies

By what measure of fairness should a citizen living in Iowa be forced to subsidize the weekend shorefront home of a wealthy New Jerseyite? Or a resident of Flatbush underwrite beachfront homes in Louisiana?Congress is now grappling with this question, because the National Flood Insurance Program, which many homeowners in flood-prone areas rely on for coverage, is as under water as some of the homes the program is supposed to protect. The NFIP, which is supposed to be self-sustaining, is today $24 billion in debt after being overwhelmed by storms from Katrina to Sandy.Congress has rightly recognized that the program cannot go on as is. The main problem is the perverse incentive that results when the people who take the risk building alligator shear or buying in a flood-prone area do not assume the cost of that risk. The Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act, passed before Sandy, was meant to fix the problem by placing the costs of these risks back where they belong: with the owners.

That's a sound principle, but it's now hit a snag because of Sandy. The people who lost their homes to Sandy bought their properties under the old arrangement with the old assumptions. The change in rules and flood maps may make their properties less valuable, as the real risks becomes factored into the price of insurance.As a result, there is now legislation that would essentially delay these reforms for several years. Mark Calabria, a former alligator shear Senate staffer who is now director of financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute, says there is a better way to take care of people in need without gutting the reform.

"Rather than just kick the can down the road," he says, "any delays in rates should be targeted to those with a hardship. Ultimately, a better solution for the taxpayer would be to allow those who cannot afford federal flood insurance to choose reduced coverage or leave the program altogether."This is a better way forward skin analyzer, because it would give those with special hardships relief while gradually ending the subsidies that make the program unsustainable. If we are to build and rebuild wisely, Congress needs to stop giving people tax dollars to build in high-risk areas.

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The Dark World': Tom Hiddleston loves your hate

Villains, tyrants, and troublemakers have become so critical to big-budget films that they're beginning to upstage the heroes — in some cases seizing the title roles, as in next year's Sleeping Beauty remake Maleficent, and the upcoming Marvel films Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Avengers: Age of Ultron, among others.The Dark World, which opens today, could easily be subtitled Loki Strikes Back.In his third round as the God of Mischief, Tom Hiddleston not only steals Thor sequel, but practically sets it on fire and collects all the insurance money. Hiddleston spoke with alligator shear EW about the state of cinematic villainy — why we love bad guys, why these villains are bigger than ever, and whether he believes himself to be evil at heart…

I think most actors see acting as a kind of 3-D psychology,  the study of people, the study of human nature. We find motivations and people's emotional and psychological makeup to be fascinating, I know I do. Villains are challenging because they provide such fascinating case studies. You're presented with a villain and the first question is – "What do they want? Why are they villainous?" So in Loki's case, that answer is complex. He has a broken heart. He is grief stricken, bitter, lonely, sad, angry, ambitious, jealous and proud —alligator shear and yet, he has a charm and a playfulness and a mischief. It's a combination of factors I think. It's that surface charm, that surface playfulness I think is appealing.The great thing is that they are in total control over the provocation of chaos. There's a delight in that. And it's worth mentioning that Thor has always been the God of Thunder and Loki has been the God of Mischief and in a way in this film, this is my most wholehearted acceptance of mischief as a shape.

He is this great chess master, he has this straight poker face, but occasionally the audience is allowed to see a flicker of truth, emotional truth. I hope that's an access point and again I hope it just deepens his sense of humanity.I remember I looked up mischief in the dictionary and the first entry is "an inclination to playfulness, a desire to tease." And then actually further down the line, like entry No. 5 is "destruction and damage." So you have this one word "mischief" which encompasses skin analyzer all these things and that's the role I'm playing. So it's my job to turn up on set and have a great time and I hope that's something that's appealing, you know Loki's having a good time and so am I.

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Kerry, in Geneva to push nuclear talks with Iran, says important gaps remain

U.S. officials were closed-mouthed Friday night about the status of a possible international deal over Iran's disputed nuclear program, following a five-hour meeting here between Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif."We continued to make progress as we worked to narrow the gaps. There is more work to do," a senior State Department official said of the session, which extended nearly until midnight. The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the diplomatic talks, said "the meetings will resume" Saturday morning.Kerry was joined in Geneva by his counterparts from Britain, France and Germany,alligator shear which are also participating in the negotiations that began Thursday and were variously reported to be near agreement or hung up over what Kerry called "some very important issues .?.?. that are unresolved."

The expected arrival here Saturday of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and China's foreign minister or his deputy fueled optimism that the presence of a full complement of top diplomats from the six countries negotiating with Iran was the prelude to the announcement of a deal."Tomorrow we expect to attain a long-standing result that the whole world hopes for," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the Ria Novosti news agency.A senior member of Iran's negotiating team, Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht Ravanchi, told reporters that "the text of the draft agreement has been prepared and initial negotiations" would take place in the Kerry-Zarif meeting,alligator shear which was also attended by European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

But Kerry, at least before his meeting with Zarif, seemed far less certain. "There is not an agreement," he said on arrival in Geneva. Kerry said he and his colleagues were here to help "narrow some differences" rather than to finalize a deal.An agreement was described by U.S. officials as a "first step" in a comprehensive pact restricting Tehran's ability to seek atomic weapons.Differences remained over the key issues of how much the United States and its negotiating partners were prepared to ease sanctions to provide Iran's failing economy with cash,skin analyzer and the extent to which Iran was willing to freeze its reactor and uranium-enrichment programs.

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October jobs report far better than expected

Both consumer spending and business investment growth slowed in the third quarter.Measures of retail activity in October have largely exceeded expectations, and holiday sales and hiring are projected to rise above last year's levels.Yet Main Street isn't enjoying the party on Wall Street, where the Dow Jones industrial average soared to a new high Friday. Consumer confidence, as tracked by the University of Michigan and Thomson Reuters,alligator shear fell this month to its lowest level in nearly two years, the survey group said Friday.And while housing prices are recovering, many workers have yet to see substantial wage gains. The Labor Department report Friday said average hourly earnings rose just 2 cents last month, to $24.10, after increasing by 3 cents in September.

Analysts pointed out that the economy, after nearly 4 1/2 years of recovery, still needs to create 1.5 million jobs to make up the 8.7 million that were lost between late 2007 and early 2010.The number of unemployed last month stood at more than 11 million,alligator shear and that doesn't include many who had dropped out of the job market because they could not find adequate work or were too discouraged. Nearly 4 out of 10 of the officially unemployed have been without work for more than six months — double the percentage before the recession.At the October pace of job creation, "it will still take five years to get back to the pre-recession unemployment rate of 5%," said labor economist Heidi Shierholz at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.

Still, Shierholz was pleasantly surprised by the strength of Friday's report, saying the underlying trend of job growth now looks more like 200,000 a month than 150,000 a month."It's not gangbusters, but it's better," she said.Whether the job numbers are good enough for the Fed remains to be seen. Policymakers at the central bank are scheduled to meet Dec. 17-18, so they will have one more monthly jobs report to review before skin analyzer considering a reduction in their $85-billion-a-month purchases of Treasury and mortgage securities — a stimulus program aimed at holding down long-term interest rates.

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RBS will create internal ￡38bn 'Bad Bank'

However, he insisted the creation of a ￡38bn bad bank unit within RBS would help to accelerate the disposal of toxic assets.The chancellor also suggested that the previous strategy for RBS pursued by Stephen Hester, the former chief executive, was out of line with the government's aim of turning the bank into a straightforward retail and business bank.He said that under Ross McEwan, the new chief executive, the interests of the bank, Treasury and Bank of England were aligned "for the first time". George Osborne said today that ￡38bn of bad assets,alligator shear such as loans it does not expect to be repaid, will be ring-fenced an internal "bad bank."Mr Osborne also said that it was his "absolute determination" that the UK taxpayer would "hopefully and eventually" get the ￡46bn spent on the bank's bailout in 2008.

RBS remains 81% owned by the government following a ￡46bn bailout at the height of the financial crisis. This morning the bank announced a third-quarter pre-tax loss of ￡634m.The former governor Bank of England Mervyn King had recommend moving RBS's bad assets to a wholly separate bank that would be owned alligator shear 100 percent by the state.But Mr Osborne said the current head of the Bank of England Mark Carney supported the idea of ring fencing the assets within the bank in an area re-named RBS Capital Resolution Group.Speaking on BBC Radio Four's Today programme Mr Osborne said: "We are removing those mistakes of the past, if you like, putting them into a separate bad bank in RBS. They are being forced to sell of those assets much more quickly than they had to.

The chancellor added that the bank should never have become the "complex global mess that it eventually became."He said: "We've got to make RBS a much simpler bank that is supporting the British economy.""My absolute determination is to get back the money that the British taxpayer put in... Hopefully and eventually we will get our money back."RBS was criticised this morning for it's lending to small and medium businesses in a damning report commissioned by the bank from former skin analyzer deputy governor of the Bank of England Sir Andrew Large.Sir Andrew's report confirms that the bank was turning away too many businesses wanting finance and providing far less credit to small companies than it should be.RBS's new chief Ross McEwan told Radio Four's Today programme that the bank was currently "just too complicated for our customers to deal with" and must become "the most customer focused bank in the UK.
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