Complex, divided EU gets philosophical about its future

Council of the European Union - Open Doors Day
(Photo credit: ines saraiva)

By Robin Emmott – It is a club that is open to all of Europe, but not all members are equal.

As the euro zone debt crisis forces the currency area to integrate more closely to survive, those outside the bloc but in the European Union are worried that they will be left as junior partners without a say.

Danish diplomats described Friday’s (Mar 30, 2012) debate – the first time such a discussion has formally been on the agenda – as a “philosophical” discussion on the future of the European Union.

Many EU officials concede that things are getting unwieldy, even for experts who struggle to decipher the structures intended to unify the EU’s 500 million citizens.

“We are building a fiscal union in a complicated way,” Germany‘s Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said. more> http://is.gd/imXHly

Related articles

• Jean-Claude Trichet: ‘We need to go further’ (telegraph.co.uk)
• Merkel: Needed EU treaty changes will take years (cbsnews.com)
• Meet The Uber-Kommissar: Germany Expands European Domination Plan; Will Enact European Budget Supervision Panel (zerohedge.com)
• Analysis: Europe ponders free trade or fair trade (news.yahoo.com)
• Why Scots’ support for EU membership is going down (burdzeyeview.wordpress.com)
• Answering how an independent Scotland would work in the EU is much more mundane than anyone seems to want to admit (jonworth.eu)
• How to Be a European (Union) Philosopher (opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Schaeuble: European Firewall Sufficient, No More Increases (forexlive.com)
• No Complacency: Euro Survival Requires Political Union, Carlo Bastasin, Brookings Institution
• The Eurozone in Crisis, Christopher Alessi, Council on Foreign Relations
• The euro crisis: Central European lessons, Jacques Rupnik, eurozine

Reinventing Financial Services

BOOK REVIEW

Reinventing Financial Services, Authors: Roger Peverelli and Reggy de Feniks.

Excerpts – “Consumers increasingly want to know more about the companies they do business with, and about the specific products and services they buy there. The interest varies from the company ownership structure, the remuneration of top management and corporate policies to labour conditions, production processes and ingredients. Consumers also demand full transparency regarding prices and product features – what exactly do I pay for and what not? – with the ultimate goal of finding the best, cheapest or most ethical offer.”

“What’s remarkable is that when we talk with executives of financial service companies we often find we have to get onto the same semantics page. Financial executives usually think about transparency in terms of the balance sheet. Are all obligations on the balance sheet or are there any so-called offbalance sheet items? That is of course a different perspective than the one the consumer uses.”

“For consumers ‘transparent’ equals ‘easily seen through’, ‘readily understood’ and ‘free from deceit’. Transparency is about openness, making things clear by providing information.”

“Insurers need to give clarity about, and possibly redefine, the exact relationship with their intermediaries. Are they 100% owned by the insurer? Or are there any other interests? Transparency does not only relate to whether a product is easy to understand, but also to all the links in the chain. Insurance intermediaries will be faced by the choice: ‘am I a retailer or a financial advisor?’”

“There is no future in this mixed model. One just cannot be ‘objective and trustworthy’ when one also profits from the actual products being advised. Either intermediaries evolve into true objective advisors, refrain from provisions and build a fee-based business, or they really position themselves as financial retailers with a range of products of one or more insurance companies. And refrain from abusively describing themselves as ‘objective’.” more> reinventingfinancialservices.com

5 key questions for the Supreme Court to consider in a healthcare decision

Health Care Reformers
(Photo credit: codepinkhq)

By Sam Baker – The over-arching question before the court is whether the law’s individual mandate is constitutional. But that’s a complicated question, and the two sides of the case don’t even agree about how best to ask it.

Here are five questions that could shape the court’s ruling:

1. Is this about healthcare or health insurance?
2. Where do the mandates stop?
3. What constitutes an “activist” approach?
4. What happened to the Necessary and Proper Clause?
5. Why does the mandate exist?

While framing the mandate as a way to regulate the healthcare market, the government says the purpose of the mandate is to crack down on “free riders” — uninsured people who go to the hospital and can’t pay their bills, passing the cost of their care on to taxpayers and people with insurance.

But if that’s the idea, Chief Justice John Roberts asked, shouldn’t people be able to satisfy the mandate with a policy that only covers catastrophic care? more> http://is.gd/HOMc8p

Related articles

• Rough day for Obama healthcare law: Kennedy among mandate skeptics (theneteconomy.wordpress.com)
• Justices seem split over striking down healthcare law as arguments end (theneteconomy.wordpress.com)
• Will the Supreme Court’s Healthcare Ruling Impact Massachusetts? (bostinno.com)
• Did the Supreme Court Tip Their Hand on Healthcare Ruling? (usnews.com)
• Supreme Arrogance (thedailybeast.com)
• Obama’s lawyer to Supremes: Save the healthcare law (capitolhillblue.com)
• Does ObamaCare’s Essential Benefits Regulation Undermine the Case for the Mandate? (reason.com)
• Supreme Court, healthcare and American exceptionalism (actionforbetterhealthcare.com)
• Why the Supreme Court Justices Won’t Be Crudely Political When They Rule on Obamacare, William A. Galston, Brookings
• What I Saw at the Supreme Court’s Hearing on the Health Care Law, Henry J. Aaron, Brookings
• The Second Day of the Supreme Court’s Hearing on the Health Care Law, Henry J. Aaron, Brookings
• The Final Day of Legal Arguments over the Health Care Law, Henry J. Aaron, Brookings
• The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Brookings Institution

Figuring out the data center fabric maze

Data Center (Photo credit: s_w_ellis)

By Jim Duffy – Despite vendor pledges to support existing or developing industry standards, users are expected to deploy single-vendor data center and cloud switching fabrics from their primary suppliers.

Standards such as Transparent Interconnect of Lots of Links (TRILL), Shortest Path Bridging and Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation will be embraced by those vendors looking to dent Cisco‘s dominance in data center switching.

The standards support will soothe customers looking to avoid vendor lock-in, but it’s unlikely IT shops will mix and match multivendor switches within and between data centers. more> http://is.gd/yxxBJY

Related articles

• IBM SmartCloud, StrategyGroup
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• Steps to Ease Data Center Cooling – Number 3 (blogs.gartner.com)
• Scenes from the AFCOM Data Center World Expo (datacenterknowledge.com)
• Top 5 Data Center Stories, Week of March 31st (datacenterknowledge.com)
• What Will the Servers of the Future Look Like? (datacenterknowledge.com)