most companies don't prefund retiree health benefits. not only is the postal service required to prefund, we're required by law to fully fund an entire 40-year obligation in 10 years. the practical result is the postal service has had to borrow money from the treasury, $5.5 billion a year, to give it back to the treasury an annual $5.5 billion installments, and that's effectively bankrupted us. the postal service has also been obliged to overpay into the federal employee retirement system, not civil service, federal employee retirement system, by $11.4 billion over the course of the last 20 years. not only are we obliged to over -- [ inaudible shouting ] >> it's a public service! >> not a public center for fedex and u.p.s.! to rip off the people! return overpaid pension funds. and the extreme 75% payments. that means the post office makes a profit. stop draining postal resources. stop closing post offices. stop breaking the postal unions. [ inaudible ] destroys the community. stop laying off the postal workers. post office should be base

without the prefunding. without the prefunding. so, if we're able to strike a deal with a health care providers to take a 10% cost reduction, that's $720 million forever. that gives you big opportunities to cut costs going forward. and the same thing -- you know, one of the other pushes we've had with the health care has been working with our retirees to move them on to medicare. the way it's set up now, we are paying -- we're overpaying for retiree health benefits for our retirees since they're not required to go on medicare. we think we can get a better deal for them, better cost coverage and better health care with the proposals we're going for. >> here's a question that came over the electronic transom, said to be from a postal employee near lansing, michigan. this is the question, "how do you plan to ratify two contracts currently in negotiations, when" in this person's view," you haven't honored the apwu contract you just signed?" >> we've done a lot of work with the apwu from the standpoint of impleme

epic l t r o long term refinancing operation in precisely one month whose sole purpose will be to prefund european banks ahead of the greek default with enough cash to withstand europe's bear stearns right and it keeps them in the defensive mode in terms of deflation because greece is imploding this is going to be perceived as deflationary and therefore they need. to keep interest rates near that zero percent meanwhile the fact that they are essentially siphoning off the income from greece and these other countries through the backdoor through the off balance sheet to pay continually to pay the huge banker bonuses that's not really talked about because they go with that headline crisis greek collapse is deflationary oh by the way we ended up with all the s.s. and interest rates have to remain at zero percent if in fact the market was allowed to function without this interference you'd find interest rates starting to rise and you'd see some losers in the banking sector and you'd start to see capitalism return to the fore but right now you don't have capitalism you have what's called some s

there could be a bit more, particularly in spain, think, where there's room for finishing off the prefunding of the spanish government debt roll jofr throllover this year. >> we've got to squeeze in a quick break. we're only four midgets away from the results of the operations. we'll be straight back. exchange." let's take a quick look at where the u.s. markets are expected to oh. the dow jones if we were to open, poised to open by 28 points to the upside. the s&p 500 up 3.5 and the nasdaq up 3.5 as well. we'll see if the stealth rally can continue after hitting big milestones yesterday in the u.s. ross. >> we're waiting for the upside. the european stocks, about the best levels of the day ahead of these results imminent from the ecb. bank stocks today are the best performers which is of note itself. as farr as the bund market is concerned, it's been fairly steady. just want to remind you before the last round of ltro the spanish yield once about 10%. so we've seen a 200-basis point fall in the fields. euro/dollar pretty steady, 0.01%. the euro/yen on its worst month against the dollar for s

they're saying they will look to improve the flexibility and capacity for prefunding. keep our eyes on that. still to come, ben bernanke has stuck to the script saying last week's strong u.s. jobs report doesn't change the central banks overall in the economy and it still stands ready to provide more easing. so will the olive branch continue? >>> good morning and welcome to the show. disney's profits rise and revenues are flat. >>> markets rise on hopes there is a greek agreement. the loan deal draft has finally got to the table. >>> and in the u.s., cisco will be high on the agenda. the tech giant is expected to despite se in earnings uncertainties in the i.t. market. nice to have you here on the program this morning. let's take a look at the u.s. future. you see how we're setting up for trade on wall street. we've pulled back just a little bit, but it is a modestly higher open with the dow up by 11 points, the nasdaq up 2 points and the s&p just over the flat line. yesterday, we had relatively low volumes, but we did finish up. the dow hit a new 5 -week high closing