On Bruce Von Cannon

"Bruce Von Cannon

Chief Representative, Asia
Banque Privee Edmond de Rothschild
Type of Institution: Private Bank (International)
Country: Hong Kong

Bruce Von Cannon is Chief Representative of Banque Privée Edmond de Rothschild in Hong Kong. During his 24 years of banking experience he has held management and marketing positions in New York, Taipei, Kaohsiung, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Geneva. He has covered Greater China and Asia-Pacific basin markets during most of his career.

Bruce holds a B.A. Degree in Politics from Princeton University, an M.S. Degree in Agricultural Economics from Purdue University, and an M.B.A. Degree from Kelley School of Business at Indiana University-Bloomington. He was also a Princeton-in-Asia Foundation Fellow at the Mandarin Training Center at Nanyang University in Singapore.

Bruce has published articles on wealth management and is a frequent speaker at conferences and academic settings."

http://www.hubbis.com/profiles.php?pid=38

Medicare Accounting Ripoff?

"Senate Democrats and Republicans agreed on -- and passed by a vote of 99-0 -- a one-year extension of the so-called "doctor fix" for Medicare.

The result is almost certainly going to mean higher deficits and more debt piled on the backs of our children.

the Obama administration and congressional Democrats made matters worse by including the "savings" from that 23 percent cut in the cost estimates for the ObamaCare law. This allowed them to pretend that the reform cost less than $1 trillion over its first 10 years...

...Now, faced with having the cuts kick in on Jan. 1, Congress, unsurprisingly, has once again voted to postpone them for a year, at a cost of $15 billion.

But wait. Congress found a way to pay for it: It voted to reduce subsidies under the president's health reforms -- in 2014.

That's right. Congress will spend the money next year, but you needn't worry because it will reduce subsidies four years from now.

...So, four years from now...Congress will use that repayment to repay the money it borrowed to spend this year to avoid making cuts in a program that is trillions of dollars in debt.

Feeling better now?

If November's election meant anything, it was that the American people were fed up with business as usual in Washington.

If this latest Senate deal tells us anything, it's that business as usual is alive and well."

Michael Tanner

Mortimer B. Zuckerman on the Presidency, Congress, the Economy, Stimulus, Debt, Jobs, Healthcare and Disillusionment

Obama Is Barely Treading Water

The hope that fired up the election of Barack Obama has flickered out, leaving a national mood of despair and disappointment. Americans are dispirited over how wrong things are and uncertain they can be made right again.
Hope may have been a quick breakfast, but it has proved a poor supper. A year and a half ago Obama was walking on water. Today he is barely treading water. Then, his soaring rhetoric enraptured the nation. Today, his speeches cannot lift him past a 45 percent approval rating.
 
There is a widespread feeling that the government doesn't work, that it is incapable of solving America's problems. Americans are fed up with Washington, fed up with Wall Street, fed up with the necessary but ill-conceived stimulus program, fed up with the misdirected healthcare program, and with pretty much everything else. They are outraged and feel that the system is not a level playing field, but is tilted against them. The millions of unemployed feel abandoned by the president, by the Democratic Congress, and by the Republicans.

The American people wanted change, and who could blame them? But now there is no change they can believe in.

...All the polls indicate that anti-Washington, anti-incumbent sentiment is greater than it has been in many years.

...In all polls, voters who call themselves independents have swung against the administration and against incumbents.

...Disapproval of Congress is so widespread, a recent Gallup poll suggests, that by a margin of almost two to one, Americans would rather vote for a candidate with no experience than for an incumbent. Throw the bums out is the mood. How could this have happened so quickly?

The fundamental problem is starkly simple: jobs and the deepening fear among the public that the American dream is vanishing before their eyes. The economy's erratic improvement has helped Wall Street but has brought little support to Main Street. Some 6.8 million people have been unemployed in the last year for six months or longer. Their valuable skills are at risk, affecting their economic productivity for years to come. Add to this despairing army the large number of those only partially employed and those who have given up their search for work, and we have cumulative totals in the tens of millions.

...Millions cannot make minimum payments on their credit cards, or are in default or foreclosure on their mortgages, or are on food stamps. Well over 100,000 people file for bankruptcy every month. Some 3 million homeowners are estimated to face foreclosure this year, on top of 2.8 million last year. Millions of homes are located next to or near a foreclosed home, and it is the latter that may determine the price of all the homes on the street. There have been dramatically sharp declines in home equity, representing cumulative losses in the trillions of dollars in what has long been the largest asset on the average American family's balance sheet. Most of those who lost their homes are hard-working, middle-class Americans who had lost their jobs. Now many have to use credit cards to pay for essentials and make ends meet, and they are running out of credit. Another $5 trillion has been lost from pensions and savings.

But it is jobs that have long represented the stairway to upward mobility in America. For a long time, it was feared they were vulnerable to offshore competition (and indeed still are), but now the erosion is from economic decline at home. What happens as those domestic opportunities recede? Middle-class families fear they have become downwardly mobile and have not hit the bottom yet. The financial security that was once based on home equity and a pension has been swept away.

...Fully 60 percent of those ages 50 to 61 say they may delay retirement. What does that mean for the young would-be employees entering the labor force over the next few years?

The administration's stimulus program, because of the way Congress put it together, has created far fewer jobs than anyone expected given the huge price tag of almost $800 billion. It was supposed to constrain unemployment at 8 percent, but the recession took the rate way above that and in the process humbled the Obama presidency.

Some 25 million jobless or underemployed people now wish to work full time, but few companies are ready to hire.
No speech is going to change that.

...Little wonder people have come alive to the issue of excess spending with entitlements out of control as far as the eye can see. The hope was that Obama would focus on the economy and jobs. That was the number one issue for the public—not healthcare. Yet the president spent almost a year on a healthcare bill. Eighty-five percent in one poll thought the great healthcare crisis was about cost. It was and is, but the president's bill was about extending coverage. It did nothing about the first concern and focused mostly on the second. Even worse, to win its approval he accepted the kind of scratch-my-back deal-making that suggests corruption in the political process. And as a result, Obama's promise to change "politics as usual" disappeared.

The president failed to communicate the value of what he wants to communicate. To a significant number of Americans, what came across was a new president trying to do too much in a hurry and, at the same time, radically change the equation of American life in favor of too much government.

...Americans today strongly support a pro-growth economic agenda that includes fiscal discipline, limited government, and deficit reduction. They fear the country is coming apart...

The promise of economic health that might salvage industries and jobs, and provide a safety net, has proved illusory. The support for cutting spending and cutting the deficit reflects in part the fact that the American public feels the Obama-Congress spending program has not worked.

It is clear that the magical moment of Obama's campaign conveyed a spell that is now broken in the context of the growing public disillusionment. Obama's rise has been spectacular, but so too has been his fall.

Mortimer B. Zuckerman
Editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report
Owner of the New York Daily News
Boston Properties Chairman of the Board and Director.
147th wealthiest American in 2008