Econintersect: Lender Processing Services (LPS) reported that the preliminary month-over-month home loan deliquency rate for August 2012 declined 2.3% to a total loan deliquency rate of  6.87%.

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Econintersect:  Juergen Stark, who resigned at the end of last year from his post as chief economist for the ECB (European Central Bank), has issued a strong indictment of the actions of the Eurozone's central bank.  The comments came in an interview published by Die Presse, a daily newspaper in Vienna, Austria. Stark said that the ECB was acting "outside its mandate," engaged in "misguided" actions and increasing inflation potential "enormously."

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Econintersect:  The expectation was that increasing electronic medical records and billing processes would lower costs and reduce incidence of errors.  The New York Times reports that the result has been just the opposite.  The use of electronic systems for billing has apparently enabled hospitals and doctors to alter the way they bill for services that is costing Medicare billions more per year.

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Econintersect:  An editorial in The New York Times today (22 September 2012) brought to our attention new legislation in California that awaits Governor Jerry Brown's signature.  The new law would establish the California Secure Choice Retirement Savings Program.  This would offer a retirement savings plan to an estimated 6.3 million Californians working in the private sector who have no access to or coverage by a pension plan today.  Under the act California workers would automatically be enrolled in the plan and would contribute 3% of earnings through automatic payroll deduction, unless they opt out.

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