A Tim Hortons coffee shop in Newfoundland’s largest hospital has no shortage of customers, yet managed to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars last year.
Located in St. John’s Health Sciences Centre, the Tim Hortons outlet lost $260,000. It’s the fourth fiscal year in a row that the franchise has seen red, according to hospital documents. From 2008 to 2009, it bled nearly $300,000.
After the recent loss, Eastern Health, Newfoundland’s largest integrated health organization, decided to turn over the shop’s operations to the private sector. It’s a way to channel funds where they’re needed most, president and CEO Vickie Kaminski said in a news conference Tuesday.
“We’re going to have to shift dollars from inefficient areas into our strategic priorities to begin to meet unmet health-care needs.”
Spokesperson Zelda Burt said the hospital coffee shop was paying its staff higher wages than other Tim Hortons employees would typically receive.
“They charge you $1.94 for a large coffee, but the situation was that staff who were pouring that coffee were Eastern Health staff. They were actually getting paid $28 an hour.”
Burt added that the direct wages are around $20 an hour. Benefits and employer costs account for the difference. “That’s where you’re looking at the loss.”
An industry source told the Star that paying those kinds of wages, instead of minimum wage, would devour what little profit margin there is.
The Tim Hortons outlet was already privately managed, but now a private operator will also take care of its employees.
After opening in 1995, there was an expectation that the shop would earn enough profit to pay for the salaries of several nurses, CBC reported.
The coffee shop’s move to the private sector is part of Eastern Health’s overall plan to return to a balanced budget. The organization will shed 550 “full-time equivalent positions” to save $43 million.
Burt emphasized that there would be no layoffs of permanent employees, and no reduction of Eastern Health services or programs.
Tim Hortons refused to comment when reached by the Star.
Forex: USD/JPY hovers below 79.00 ahead of US data - FXStreet.com
Money has changed – that’s the issue - New Statesman
Peter Selby responds to Nelson Jones's article Money and Morality.
When the St Paul’s Institute, working with JustShare, Penguin Books and the LSE, brought nearly 2000 people into St Paul’s for a public debate on the theme of Michael Sandel’s book, What Money Can’t Buy: the Moral Limits to Markets (see Nelson Jones, NS 25 May) it was because we knew the theme touched a nerve, not because we have an answer to peddle. The Institute has been engaged for some years, as an agency of the Cathedral, in seeking to get into debate with the financial institutions which are its ‘parish’; as such we could hardly think Sandel’s book unimportant, and we were delighted so many others thought the same.
That’s not the same as signing up to his thesis about the moral corrosion brought about by the intrusion of the market into all sorts of spheres to which it is not appropriate. Certainly we are signed up to the desire to get people thinking hard about which are the things that should be for sale and which should not be and, as Rowan Williams says in his review of What Money Can’t Buy, to do so on the basis of rational reflection rather than relying in feelings of revulsion when we see certain things getting a price.
Nelson Jones in his NS piece wonders whether things have deteriorated from some golden age when money didn’t play the part it now does, and points to many areas where things were much more monetised in the past than they are now. Tellingly, if slightly optimistically, he says we no longer sell people, and however bad the euro crisis gets we still won’t be doing that. There are examples he cites in the ancient world that are at least as unpleasant to think about as some of the examples Sandel gives of the intrusion of market thinking.
In my comments in the debate I voiced my own reservations about Sandel’s thinking, so much of which seems to me to address symptoms without digging deeper into causes. When he gives the example of prisoners being able to buy a cell upgrade, and when Nelson Jones points out that that has historical precedent, the deeper issue is not being faced by either of them: the selling off of incarceration as a business is common policy in the USA as it is increasingly in Britain. In the process of creating that market a financial interest is being created in locking people up. That can’t be unconnected with the fact that we in Britain lock up more people than other European countries and that a quarter of the rising number of prisoners in the world – and a third of all incarcerated women in the world, whose number has increased by a sixth in five years – are in the USA.
The figures that became a matter of public scandal during the Jubilee 2000 campaign for the relief of unrepayable third world debt showed all too clearly that the escalating power fo financial debt was depriving children worldwide of education, healthcare and life itself. The situation is infinitely worse than either Sandel or Jones portrays: the issue is not the buying and selling of things that should, or should not, be free, or whether people value things they pay for more than things they receive for nothing; in the end it is not about getting people to think more clearly than they do about whether markets should have moral limits though all these questions are important. What really matters is that in everything from the depletion of the planet’s resources to the requirement on Greek citizens to sell their democratic birthright to have their debts rescheduled money is deciding matters of life and death, and doing so more and more.
That’s why as a Christian and a theologian I am convinced money has acquired all the characteristics of an idol, aggrandising its power and claiming more and more of people’s lives. And that’s why, because of faith’s commitment to raise fundamental questions about anything that has the potential to be an idol, the St Paul’s Institute will go on engaging that debate at an ever more fundamental level. When it recently commissioned a report on the attitudes of those working in the financial sector (see Value and Values) we learned that most did not think the City should listen more to the Church’s guidance. But we now know, since the Sandel debate came to St Paul’s, that many people do want to know whether pressing economic questions have something to say about the meaning of life and whether those who profess faith are prepared to get involved in relating that faith to those questions.
Because, make no mistake, money did not acquire this power by accident. The last four decades, roughly since the massive oil price rises of the early 1970s, have seen vast increases in the amount of money in circulation, and technological advance has multiplied its speed of circulation. In the absence of means of regulating that the dominant policy has been one of deregulation, allowing the power of money to grow with its quantity. The results are not just the life and death issues I have described, but a situation in which all of us, rich or poor, are compelled to worry more and more about money and think more and more about it.
The issues of monetary reform, dismissed even by the independent commission on banking and widely ignored, are ones we need to press: just as ‘home ownership’ is a euphemism for housing debt, so ‘fractional reserve’ is now a synonym for debt multiplication: is one of the questions we need to ask about the post-2008 crisis whether the system on which we have relied for money creation for nearly a century fraught with inherent instability? I ask the question not because the Institute has a recipe or a policy to commend, but because it is our passion as a community of faith to ensure that these questions are honestly faced. The Sandel debate, and the Jones response are just a start.
Peter Selby is one of the interim directors of the St Paul’s Institute, and author of Grace and Mortgage: the Language of Faith and the Debt of the World. He was until retirement Bishop of Worcester, and Bishop to HM Prisons.
FOREX-Euro heads for biggest drop in 8 mths on pains in Spain - Reuters
* Worries growing that Spain needs external help
* Euro/yen edges nears 11-year low hit in January
* Dollar/yen hits 3-1/2 month low, Aussie/yen at 6-mth low
* US bond yield at 60-yr low, undermining dlr/yen
TOKYO, May 31 (Reuters) - The euro was poised for its biggest drop in at least eight months as the increasing likelihood of Spain needing outside assistance to fix its public finance and banking system led to a major escalation in the perennial crisis in the currency bloc.
Spanish government bond yields surged to a six-month high while German bond yields fell to record lows, pushing the spread between the two to a new high and adding stress to markets already frayed by anxiety that Greece may leave the euro zone.
"Things are starting to look ugly. It seems like the market is making Spain its next target after Greece," said Teppei Ino, currency analyst at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ.
The euro fell to as low as $1.2358, a level last seen in mid-2010, when it had bottomed at $1.1876. It last stood at $1.2388, having dropped 6.4 percent this month, the biggest since September.
Against the yen, the common currency fell as low as 97.352 yen, edging near an 11-year low of 97.04 yen hit in January, with many traders now considering a break of that low as highly likely.
The euro's fall was driven by concerns that Spain, with an economy bigger than that of Greece, Portugal and Ireland combined, will probably need assistance as its fragile economy and ailing banking sector make it impossible to cut its deficit.
So far, though, Madrid has ruled out seeking Europe's help for its banks, while EU paymaster Germany has firmly opposed any collective European banking resolution and guarantee system.
"There are a huge amount of flight-to-quality moves right now. Only a policy coordination in Europe can stop this but markets can't find it now," said Ayako Sera, senior market economist at Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank.
"Until we see that, people will do trades that will minimise losses rather than make profits," Sera added.
PREPARE FOR WORST
Spain is by no means the only concern for investors, with markets rattled by Greek polls showing parties for and against a bailout are neck-and-neck ahead of the country's second election on June 17.
Italian debt yield also rose above 6 percent for the first time since May, while traders also warily look at whether the Irish will support Europe's new fiscal treaty as expected in a referendum on Thursday.
With investors trying to escape the euro zone and to hoard liquid assets, the dollar's index against a basket of currencies rose to 20-month high of 83.11. It looks set to end above its 100-month average for the first time in almost ten years.
In the past, a break of the 100-month average has been a good indicator of a long-term trend change, having produced four successful signals in the past 30 years.
"Everyone, from banks to companies, is now trying to prepare themselves to make sure they can get funding when they need money," said Hideki Amikura, forex manager at Nomura Trust Bank.
"Wherever you look, you can't find reason to expect a reversal in this. I cannot help thinking that the euro will fall below $1.20."
The dollar fell to as low as 78.71 yen, the lowest in 3-1/2 months, as investors favoured the yen, the currency of the world's largest creditor nation despite its mountain of public debt.
A fall in U.S. bond yields also helped to push down the dollar against the yen, as the currency pair is known to have a strong correlation with the yield gap between the two countries.
The 10-year U.S. bond yield fell below 1.6 percent , not seen at least for six decades and cutting the yield advantage over JGBs to near the lowest level in recent decades.
The dollar has crucial support for now from its 200-day moving average at 78.63 yen.
The Australian dollar fell 0.3 percent to a six-month low of $0.9673, after having fallen 1.3 percent on sharp decline in oil and commodities prices on Wednesday.
Selling by Japanese accounts against the yen was also a driver in its fall, with the Aussie/yen falling to a six-month low of 76.26 yen.
Highlighting the impact of the gloomy global economic outlook on commodities exporters and emerging markets, Brazil cut interest rates to a record low of 8.50 percent.
Money challenge to tribes' sentencing authority - Consumer Electronics Net
GAO report shows funding remains challenge to tribes considering more jail time for criminals
By The Associated Press
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) ' American Indian tribes authorized to triple the amount of time tribal members can spend in jail say they're challenged by a lack of funding.
The increase in tribal courts' sentencing authority from one year to three years for a single crime came two years ago under the federal Tribal Law and Order Act. But a U.S. Government Accountability Office report released Wednesday showed that none of the 109 tribes who responded to a survey about the sentencing increase were taking advantage of it.
Nearly all of those tribes said they need more money and technical help from the federal government to provide public defenders, establish or update criminal codes, and have sufficiently trained judges as the law requires.
The report shows 36 of the tribes surveyed are working toward the new authority. Another 34 tribes were unsure whether they would go in that direction, while 31 said they had no plans to do so, the report said. The enhanced sentencing isn't mandatory for tribes.
Troy Eid, chairman of the Indian Law and Order Commission born out of the Tribal Law and Order Act, said tribes across the country are exploring the authority but it will take time to get all the elements in place if that's the path they choose.
"My impression is that within the next year, you'll start to see some tribes actually implementing the system," he said. "Tribes are being super careful. No tribe wants to get this issue wrong; it has to be legally correct."
The GAO cautioned the report isn't representative of all tribes. Congressional investigators identified 171 of the 566 federally recognized tribes that received federal funding for tribal courts to include in the survey, but not all of them responded.
Tribal leaders have said a year in jail for any crime under tribal law, including homicide, hasn't served as much of a deterrent on reservations. Members of the Navajo Nation Council have been debating whether the enhanced sentencing provision would help send a message that tribal officials are serious about combatting crime.
"The bad guys are saying they could get away with anything on the rez, which now pretty much is true," said Edmund Yazzie, chairman of the Navajo Nation Council's Law and Order Committee, and a former sheriff's deputy. "But now the committee is trying to take another look at it."
Seventy of the tribes surveyed said they had at least half the requirements in place to hand down lengthier sentences, but some are choosing not to because of associated costs, like probation. One unnamed tribe said it has had an effective criminal and civil justice system for 40 years without the requirement of a law-trained judge, and that hiring one from outside the community would be unreasonable.
Tribes receive funding, training and other assistance through the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs and the U.S. Department of Justice, but it's not always enough.
The BIA said it has provided more than 60 recording devices to tribes to help them meet another requirement that they maintain a record of criminal proceedings. The agency said it has plans to give 15 more to tribes that request them and also has asked for $1 million more in funding for tribal courts in its 2013 budget justification.
The GAO recommended that the federal government clarify to tribes the funding sources available to help them pursue the enhanced sentencing.
Mato Standing High, attorney general of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, said the tribe is fortunate in that it has the financial resources to meet many of the requirements under the Tribal Law and Order Act. The only thing missing is an updated tribal code that would reflect a new class of crimes, like rape, arson or homicide, with lengthier sentences, he said.
The tribe hasn't decided officially whether to move forward with the enhanced sentencing authority, he said, but is considering how to classify crimes after comparing them to state and federal crimes and penalties.
"Tribes really need to see it as an opportunity to exercise sovereignty and have more local control," Standing High said. "That's the goal of it, and I understand also that it takes a lot of resources that a lot of tribes don't have."
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