Health Care Could Cut Deficit

The numbers have been crunched for the latest Senate health bill. The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times both call the calculation a positive step forward for the bill’s supporters. It “will cost $829 billion over a decade and slightly reduce the federal budget deficit,” the Journal says. “The Senate Finance Committee legislation to revamp the health care system would provide coverage to 29 million uninsured Americans but would still pare future federal deficits by slowing the growth of spending on medical care,” the Times announces. The bill meets Obama’s requirement of not adding “one dime to the deficit,” and by the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates, thanks to trims in Medicare spending and new taxes, it will reduce deficits by a total of $81 billion over a decade.

The New York Times tops its business section with news that the Justice Department has begun investigating an IBM (IBM) antitrust inquiry, looking into whether it has abused its monopoly position in the market for mainframe computers. Regulators have been questioning various companies that compete with IBM in the large computer hardware and software market to determine the soundness of its business practices. The Computer and Communications Industry Association, “a trade group with a history of involvement in antitrust disputes,” filed a complaint contending that IBM blocked competition in the mainframe market and made it difficult for others to license its software.

The Wall Street Journal reports news of the latest contraction in the global luxury market. Versace has announced it will shut its boutiques in Japan. The fashion house said it closed its last three stores in Japan because they "no longer represented the brand image." In a statement, which didn’t mention any new openings in Japan, the company described the move as strategic, adding that Versace wanted "a clean slate" while seeking out "new locations and more suitable distribution channels" there. For a while, Japan has been a key market for the fashion industry, but the recession has made expensive handbags and jewelry once seen as important symbols of upward mobility less appealing to consumers.

Thirty-three people were arrested yesterday as part of what the Washington Post calls an “international crackdown on ‘phishing,’ e-mail scams that trick people into giving personal and financial data to counterfeit Web sites.” While 20 defendants remain at large in the United States, authorities in Egypt have charged at least 47 unindicted co-conspirators there in connection with the scam. According to the indictment, “the defendants in Egypt used e-mails to lure customers of Wells Fargo (WFC) and Bank of America (BAC) to phony Web bank sites rigged to steal victims' usernames and passwords. The Egyptian defendants then siphoned funds from the victims' accounts into new accounts opened by the U.S.-based defendants at the two institutions.” The FBI has dubbed the operation “Phish Phry.”

Also from the Post, according to figures released by the Federal Reserve yesterday, borrowers reduced their credit card debt for the 11^th consecutive month in August. Revolving credit debt—mostly through credit cards with balances that carry over month to month—dropped by an annual rate of 13.1 percent in August to $899.4 billion. Experts attribute the falling balances to both uncertainty in the job market and climbing interest rates.

And the Google (GOOG) Books saga continues. By Nov. 9, Google and the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers—which has sued the search giant for copyright infringement for its efforts to create a massive digital library—must submit a revised settlement for court approval that meets Justice Department requirements, according to the New York Times. The “aggressive timeline” announced yesterday concerns some critics who think that members of Google’s opposition won’t have enough time to negotiate the modifications to the settlement that they’re seeking.