The big news this week on the financial front was the Independent’s claim that Gulf Arabs and France, Japan, Russia and Japan were planning to move from buying oil in dollars to buying it in a basket of currencies, including gold and a new universal currency shared by the Gulf nations.

Buying oil in dollars is one of the foundations of the dollar’s role as the world’s primary reserve currency. Because the the dollar is the world’s primary reserve currency Americans have been able to borrow money for significantly less than other countries are able to. This has both made America more prosperous, and through the perverse incentives of cheap money, helped lead to the high indebtedness of American citizens and the financial crisis.

In addition, buying oil in dollars is one of the things which allowed strong dollar policies to drive the price of oil down. Making dollars extremely scarce in the 80’s and nineties was one key factor leading to a price per barrel under $20. Oil prices started their rise upwards after Greenspan’s Federal Reserve let loose the money spigot in the Asian crisis and the Long Term Capital fiasco. Greenspan essentially never took his foot off the pedal from that point onwards, and oil prices soared, until last year at one point they were over $150/barrel.

So one consequence of going off the dollar is that a major benefit of the strong dollar play is taken off the table, and the US loses its ability to control the price of oil. Since at this time, contrary to what the Feds are saying, a strong dollar play isn’t in the cards (the US needs to borrow way too much money) that’s not a big deal in the short run—in the long run it is.

But buying oil in dollars isn’t the only thing that underpins the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and to understand what buying oil in something other than dollars would mean we need to understand what else makes, or perhaps more accurately, made, the dollar so important.

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So, apparently an insurance company economist has admitted that private insurance could survive a public option, (h/t Digby):

"I believe the private system is important because it brings innovation, it brings energy, it brings change, it brings ideas that are often used in the public sector system as well," said Richard Collins, senior vice president for underwriting, pricing and health care economics at UnitedHealthcare. "I think we can have both a public and private system."

Predictably, progressive bloggers want to use this to sell the public option. Fair enough.

But why aren't executives scared of a public option any more? Because the public option as written in the two bills which contain it is so weak that it will not have significant, if any, pricing power.

The public option originally proposed by Hacker would have had over 100 million people enrolled in it. The current one would have, according the Congressional Budget Office, just over 10 million. No one with an employer plan would be allowed to join, it has no pre-enrollment, reimbursement is not linked to Medicare, doctors are not required to take it if they also take Medicare, and so on.

It's not a robust public option. It is questionable if it's even a viable public option.

I'd rather not have it if I were an insurance company exec, because once it exists it could always be improved, but in its current state, I certainly wouldn't be scared of it.

The fact that at least one insurance company executive isn't scared of the public option shouldn't be a cause for celebration, it should tell you that the public option has been horribly compromised.

One constant theme which needs dealing with is the idea that the country is more conservative than liberal and that centrists are needed to hold off horrible conservative things from happening.

More than that, this is an argument for oligarchy. What I see is that the majority of people, in poll after poll, want single payer. A huge majority want the public option, yet odds are decent you won't even get that.

When people talk of left-center coalitions the center part include a large number of Senators (like Diane Feinstein) who won't do what the majority of their constituents want them to do. At this point centrist = captured by monied interests.

Odds are if Obama wanted single payer, the House could pass it. It'd be close, but they could get it done. The House is the more representative body of the two bodies, the Senate is deliberately retrograde.

When I look at the US what I see is a banana republic, because it doesn't act like a democracy. I see people who think that the Senate, or even the House, actually does what the American people want. Again and again, Congress does things that the majority disagree with. In 2006 the Dems were elected to end the war in Iraq, for example, and refused to do so (though again, the House at least went through the motion, the Senate didn't even make an effort). Oh, Congress will sometimes do what the majority want—when that's what it was going to do anyway.

The plan to fix this is simple enough and always has been.

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Emptywheel has crunched the numbers on the Baucus plan, and has come up with how much money it will leave families if they actually have to use the insurance for any significant health care problems. Here are her numbers for a family of four earning 300% of the poverty levels or $66,150.

Federal Taxes (estimate from this page): $8,710 (13% of income)

State Taxes (using MI rates on $30,000 of income): $1,305 (2% of income)

Food (using "low-cost USDA plan" for family of four): $9,060 (13.5% of income)

Home (assume a straight 30% of income): $20,100 (30% of income)

Bad Max Tax: $20,610 (31% of income)

Total: $59,785 (89% of income)

Remainder for all other expenses (including education, clothing, existing debt, transportation, etc.): $7,215 (or 11% of income.

Now, the House bill stops subsidies at EXACTLY the same level, 400% of poverty level. We can use Emptywheel's numbers for all of this. The difference is that the House plan limits premiums to 10% of gross income at 300% (pg 137, pdf), and out of pocket expenses to $10,000 per family.

So that makes the House Tax: $10,000 + 6,615 = 16,615 or 25% of income (as opposed to 31%).

The difference between the House plan and the Baucus plan is $4,025. Total expenses are $55,7607, or The remainder for all other expenses is $11,240 or 17% of income.

It's not a meaningless difference, $4,025 a year is $335 a month. But it's not huge, either. (Note: see update at bottom of post.)

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The manufacturing sector lost 63K, the financial sector 28K and Construction lost 65. Health care added 47.4 thousand jobs.

One of the more interesting findings is that up till April government jobs were increasing, since April they have declined. The decline isn’t huge, but it exists at all levels of government. For some reason the postal service in particular seems to be shedding jobs.

Though the job loss is less than we’ve seen in the past it’s surprisingly uniform: except for health care and social assistance everything else is either down, or just barely increasing. Fundamentally, every industry without pricing power is taking it on the chin, but if you’re sick, you’re sick, so the medical industry retains the ability to hire. I suspect that the manufacturing numbers would be much worse if defense related manufacturing was removed.

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This is just pathetic:

• Lower the medicaid coverage rate from 150% to 100% of the fFderal poverty line, 133% for kids and pregnant women (once you have the baby, too bad for you)
• Subsidies stop at 300% of the poverty line (was 400%)
• No Public Option mentioned
• Insurance exchanges at the State level
• Must buy insurance unless it costs more than 15% of your income
• A fine if you don't buy insurance unless you're below the Federal poverty line

For the most part, as Walker discusses, this is about the same as or worse than the plan put forward by America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP). Yes, worse than the insurance industry's plan. Remarkable. Baucus is really earning his campaign donations these days.

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The Tiller family has announced that it is closing Dr. Tiller's clinic. The terrorists have won, and that assassination has succeeded in doing what it was meant to do. I'm sure the murderer is very happy tonight.

The bottom line on right wing terrorism against abortion rights is that it's succeeding and has been for some time. Take a good hard look at the chart at the top and try and tell me otherwise. And when it comes to late term abortions, well, Tiller was one of the very few who still provided the service. According to Tiller, speaking in March before his assassination, he was one of only three doctors left in the US doing such abortions. Now there are two. If those numbers are right, one third of all abortion doctors doing these abortions were just killed.

In the aftermath of Tiller's death, I heard a lot of progressives talking about how the anti-abortion folks were losing. The bottom line is that they're winning. It is harder to get abortions than it was 5 years ago, or 10 years ago, or 25 years ago. Abortion access peaked in 1982 and has been declining ever since. Consider that the US population has increased by approximately 30% since 1982. At the same time the number of providers has dropped by over a third.

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[Ed. note: Please welcome to the C&L team our old friend Ian Welsh, whose work from the Agonist and FDL many of you many know. Ian will be writing whatever he chooses, but that usually means economics and international politics.]

It's Memorial Day. I gather for many it's just another long weekend, but I know that for many it's what Remembrance Day is for Canadians like myself: a day to remember those who have died in war. I won't say "died to protect our freedom" or any such trite BS, because with few exceptions, most wars had nothing to do with protecting anyone's freedom, but they did die, nonetheless, for us.

Their blood is on our hands, sticky and wet, and it will never dry. Why?

Because we live in democracies. Because we elected the leaders who sent them to war. Whether you think those wars are justified, or not, at the end of the day, we bear the collective guilt of their deaths. They died due to the decisions we made, the society we live in.

Oh, we can say "I did everything I could to oppose the war", whether that's Iraq or Vietnam, or some other war. But even if that's true, well, you failed, didn't you? (Didn't I?) And so off went the young men and women, and they died, or they were maimed, or their brain case got knocked around and they came back shaking, and they wake up screaming at night, and they can't control their emotions and they'll never be the same again.

It's one of the ironies of democracy that we're all responsible, collectively, and yet each of us, individually, can say "but not me, I voted against him" or "I protested against that policy". And because it's true, each of us can feel, in the end, that the deaths and suffering caused by our society, whether in war, or through a horrific medical system, or through abuses in the penal system, aren't our fault.

But is it true? Or is it true instead, that we failed, that we support the system with both our consent and our tax dollars, and that we are therefor complicit in what it does?

I don't know. But I do know this, on this Memorial day, even if it's not a Canadian holiday, I'm thinking of those who died, both soldiers and civilian.

And at the very least, I know I failed.