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Alan Blinder, Princeton University professor and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, says the biggest reason for the growing deficit in the years out to 2040 is because of increases in health care spending. Its not that there is runaway spending in other areas. He cites CBO projections that show other costs stable relative to GDP from 2015 to 2035 and declining. This is why healthcare spending is at the heart of the problem. And why tackling the deficit has a lot to do with reducing healthcare cost increases.

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Moody's Investors Service raised Indonesia's credit rating to investment grade in January 2012. Indonesia's credit rating was raise to Baa3 with stable outlook. Indonesia's 30 year bond yields declined to 5.375% in January 2012. Indonesia faces major infrastructure problems. The lower cost of borrowing is expected to help Indonesia meet its borrowing needs to invest in infrastructure improvements.

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The Obama administration denied approval for the TransCanada Keystone pipeline. President Obama made it clear that the decision was made because of the "arbitrary" February approval deadline imposed by Republicans in Congress, and said this "is not a judgement on the merits of the pipeline." The administration suggested that TransCanada reapply. TransCanada CEO Russ Girling says the company is "fully committed to the construction of Keystone XL, and that it "will reapply for a presidential permit and expect a new application would be processed in an expedited manner to allow for an in-service date of late 2014." Experts say the U.S. could reuse some of the studies and analyses and that the process would take 18-24 months. Alberta's premier, Alison Redford, says she believes the project will get approved.

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Spain has become a highly decentralized country in the response to decades under the military dictatorship of General Franco. Regional autonomy was suppressed in Galicia, Catalonia, Valencia and other regions during that period, and the trend after the country became a democracy was a high degree of decentralization and regional autonomy. This trend is being corrected in the area of spending discipline for all areas of administration in regional and state governments through a new agreement reached between the Mariano Rajoy government and the regions, including Valencia and Catalonia. In exchange for funding and liquidity from Madrid the regional governments have agreed to accept spending controls, penalties for exceeding deficit targets, and automatic spending cuts. The new legislation is being worked out between the Rajoy administration and regional governments. Rajoy says the failure of Spain to reach its 6% deficit target- it came out at 8%- was the result of overspending of 17 regions. The 17 regions together had a deficit of 2.7% of GDP, which was twice their 2011 deficit target. The new Budget Minister Cristobal Montero says the new agreement "has great political significance," as action can now be taken with new legislation for spending discipline at all levels of public administration in Spain. ...

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Bill Veghte, who has 20 years of experience with Microsoft and helped launch Windows 7, is the new chief strategy officer under CEO Meg Whitman. Veghte will also head the cloud computing and webOS mobile operating system initiatives at H-P in the new position.