Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana has promoted Kim Halphen to Manager of Life and Disability Underwriting/Operations.
Halphen joined Blue Cross in 2003 and previously served as Southern National Life (SNL) Operations Specialist. In her new role, Halphen will oversee the operations and underwriting activities of the company’s group life and disability products.
Halphen received her accounting degree from WesternInternationalUniversity in 2007 and obtained her license in health and life insurance in 1994. She has 14 years of experience in life insurance.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana is Louisiana-owned and –operated. Marking its 74th anniversary this year, the company is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. It is a tax-paying mutual company, owned by its policyholders.
Headquartered in Baton Rouge, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana also has district offices in Alexandria, Houma, Lafayette, Lake Charles, Monroe, New Orleans and Shreveport. The company’s subsidiaries include HMO Louisiana, Inc. and Southern National Life Insurance Company, Inc. For more information, visit the company’s website at www.bcbsla.com.
International Trade
On Thursday, June 5 George J. Fowler III, who serves on the Executive Committee of the Fowler Rodriguez Valdes-Fauli law firm, will receive the WorldTradeCenter’s Thomas F. Cunningham award at a subscription luncheon in the Plimsoll Club. The award is presented in recognition of outstanding service toward better social, educational, economic, cultural and political relationships between the United States and the countries of Latin America and the promotion of better understanding and friendly relations between them.
Mr. Fowler was born in Havana, Cuba, and obtained a business degree from LouisianaStateUniversity and a law degree from TulaneUniversity. In 1988 Mr. Fowler founded Fowler Rodriguez Valdes-Fauli, an international law firm with offices in New Orleans, Houston, Miami, Mobile, and Bogota, and associated offices in Caracas, Guatemala City, Mexico City, Montreal, San Jose, San Pedro Sula, San Salvador, Santo Domingo, and Sao Paulo. The firm is prominent in the fields of international law, energy, admiralty, and commercial law.
Mr. Fowler is the founder and Chairman of the Tulane Law School Latin American Law Institute. He also served as Chairman of the International Section of the Louisiana State Bar Association. He is General Counsel, Vice President and on the Board of Directors of the Cuban American National Foundation, where he has been active in the field of human rights. Mr. Fowler was one of the founders and serves on the Board of the New Orleans Hispanic Heritage Foundation and is a Board Member of the WorldTradeCenter. In 2005 he received the “Sanchez to Sanchez to Smith Award” from the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Louisiana.
The Cunningham award dates back to 1945. Recent past recipients include Dr. John Ochsner, Capt. J.W. Clark, and Charles and Samuel Robinson.
To register for the June 5 luncheon, call the WTC at (504) 529-1601, ext. 222 or register online at www.wtcno.org/programs.
Crude Prices
On Friday, U.S. crude futures hit a new high of $127.82 a barrel.The previous record was Tuesday’s $126.98.
Yahoo
Yahoo’s Chief Executive is responding to Carl Icahn’s intention to nominate 10 directors to control the Internet company by sending out an email citing "solid results" for the first quarter and asking employees to ignore "the rumors and speculation" of a possible takeover.
Nucor
SMF Energy Corporation, a provider of specialized transportation and distribution services for petroleum products and chemicals, today announced that it has entered into an agreement with Enviro Tech International, Inc., the manufacturer of DrySolv™, to be the exclusive distributor and sales agent of its patented environmentally friendly “Green” dry cleaning solvent, soap, and spotting chemicals in the states of Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.
The “buzz” has been over Nucor steel plant and whether it will locate between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.Instead of being in competition with any other states such as Alabama which beat out Louisiana last year, it will be Louisiana versus other countries.This means that to compete, our Congressional delegation needs to dot their I’s and cross their T’s to make sure that the proper incentive programs are in place, as does the State of Louisiana. .
Socialists and other anti-capitalists often assert that crony capitalism is the inevitable result of any capitalist system. Jane Jacobs calls it a natural consequence of collusion between those managing power and trade. Since businesses make money and money leads to political power, business will inevitably use their power to influence governments. Much of the impetus behind campaign finance reform in the United States and other countries is an attempt to prevent the leveraging of economic power into political power. Capitalists generally oppose crony capitalism as well, but consider it an aberration brought on by governmental favors incompatible with true capitalism. In this view, crony capitalism is the result of an excess of socialist-style interference in the market, which requires active corporate lobbying to reduce red tape. They point to the relatively higher levels of interaction between corporations and governments that are considered more socialist, taken to its maximum in the form of nationalization of industries. Even if the initial regulation was well-intentioned (to curb actual abuses), and even if the initial lobbying by corporations was well-intentioned (to reduce illogical regulations), the mixture of business and government eventually proves poisonous. Burton W. Folsom, Jr., in his book The Myth of the Robber Barons, distinguished those that engage in crony capitalism – designated by him "political entrepreneurs" – from those who compete in the marketplace without special aid from government, whom he calls "market entrepreneurs". Economists of the Austrian School are severe in attacking crony capitalism, although in more formal contexts the term "state corporatism" is usually used. Radical economists have described the term as an ideologically motivated attempt to avoid the more fundamental problems of market capitalist economic arrangements. The term "crony capitalism" made its first significant impact in the public arena as an explanation of the Asian financial crisis. However radical economists have frequently dismissed this explanation of the Asian financial crisis as apologetics for failures of neoliberal policy and more fundamental weaknesses of market allocation. According to radical economist Robin Hahnel, IMF officials Michel Camdessus and Stanley Fischer were quick to explain that the afflicted economies had only themselves to blame. Crony capitalism, lack of transparency, accounting procedures not up to international standards, and weak-kneed politicians too quick to spend and too afraid to tax were the problems according to IMF and US Treasury Department officials. The fact that the afflicted economies had been held up as paragons of virtue and IMF/World Bank success stories only a year before, the fact that neoliberalism’s only success story had been the Newly Industrialized Countries (NIC's) who were now in the tank, and the fact that the IMF and Treasury department story just didn’t fit the facts since the afflicted economies were no more rife with crony capitalism, lack of transparency, and weak-willed politicians than dozens of other economies untouched by the Asian financial crisis, simply did not matter.[5] Finally, some critics question whether the concept is meaningful at all, pointing out that personal factors influence business decisions in all economic systems that involve a government and that the existence of these factors is an insufficient explanation for why certain economic systems work better than others.
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on 5/16/2008
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