Financial topics

[OLD1953]

Market now down for four weeks in a row.

The question on Medicare is how does simply adding a profit driven sector to take 10% off the top equal more care available? Nobody is moving in good faith in the medical field, to increase care and cut expense means more doctors, more beds, more equipment and a return to the 50's style public/county hospital as the first line of care, and private hospitals for the horrible problems. The AMA works diligently to prevent more doctors from being created by limiting medical school admissions (through their puppets in the state medical boards), HCA and the others have incentive to produce shortages not care as shortages mean higher pay for less real expense, drug companies are obviously not bargaining in good faith, else drugs in the USA would sell for the same prices as in Canada, since they come from exactly the same production facilities - and on and on. This isn't getting fixed under current conditions. Medicare isn't the problem, the entire medical system of the USA is the problem, including the parts of the legal system that are used to commit barratry against the medical system. Complete nationalization of the system is not likely to help, the whole mess has to be redone from the ground up with a focus on care, not quarterly profit margins. Even the WalMart system is better than what we currently struggle under.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/In ... inics.aspx

Imagine that, a cheap retailer is doing more than the AMA or Congress for affordable medical practice in the US.

[aedens]

Market now down for four weeks in a row.

The question on Medicare is how does simply adding a profit driven sector to take 10% off the top equal more care available? Nobody is moving in good faith in the medical field, to increase care and cut expense means more doctors, more beds, more equipment and a return to the 50's style public/county hospital as the first line of care, and private hospitals for the horrible problems. The AMA works diligently to prevent more doctors from being created by limiting medical school admissions (through their puppets in the state medical boards), HCA and the others have incentive to produce shortages not care as shortages mean higher pay for less real expense, drug companies are obviously not bargaining in good faith, else drugs in the USA would sell for the same prices as in Canada, since they come from exactly the same production facilities - and on and on. This isn't getting fixed under current conditions. Medicare isn't the problem, the entire medical system of the USA is the problem, including the parts of the legal system that are used to commit barratry against the medical system. Complete nationalization of the system is not likely to help, the whole mess has to be redone from the ground up with a focus on care, not quarterly profit margins. Even the WalMart system is better than what we currently struggle under.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/In ... inics.aspx

Imagine that, a cheap retailer is doing more than the AMA or Congress for affordable medical practice in the US.

http://www.kpl.gov/local-history/health ... enter.aspx
http://www.wmich.edu/wmu/news/2011/03/066.shtml
We are trying. One of mine is working on Gene therapy and another is working on Muscular dystrophy studies last when we talked. Maybe they can make a difference in time. Their names are written in their heart and minds. Attitude is the issue and your correct on the notes above to counterproductive means.
If Walmart can do something good for them. As long as others collude to restrict minds we all suffer. More quality area's the training are character driven and if you press forward they will assist further skills which avert's debt issues and the problems for such vital forward medical needs. New and clear thinking must crush the debt models for young minds who can and will be the difference.

[OLD1953]

When no one bargains in good faith, then there is no solution until sanctions are created and enforced. One of many starting places for fixing Medicare would be patent office reform. Many citizens are trying, but the government has to get involved, and I don't mean by throwing money at it. Money is not the cure for this problem, or not solely, medical care is not a fungible commodity, it's personalized to the individual.

A few more honest analysts heard from.

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ti ... lndG9mYWls

"We have even more 'too big to fail' institutions; more politically interconnected, very deep and wide institutions that could create another systemic event," says Morgenson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist at The New York Times. "It's almost as if the situation that brought us to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac having to be bailed out has now been squared or quadrupled. It's worse, not better."

And Dent is saying to run for the hills by the end of summer, and DOW could drop into the 3000's range. Shades of John!

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ti ... 5-415.html

The good news, for those long, is Dent predicts the Dow will trade as high as 13,200 by mid-summer and the S&P 500 as high as 1430, or more-than 7% above current levels. The bad news is "then we could see another major crash," Dent says, forecasting the Dow could trade as low as 3300 in a worst-case scenario. "Bubbles go back to where they started or a little lower," he says. "The stock market bubble started at (Dow) 3800 in late 1994."

Oh, gag me. But not surprised.

http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budget ... -budgeting

"We find strong evidence that Members of the House have some type of non-public information which they use for personal gain," the authors concluded.

But, they add, House members' excess equity returns trail those of Senators during the same time period, according to their previous study of investment return of the upper house — some 85 basis points a month. Annualized, that figures to 10.7% per year after compounding.

[vincecate]

But, they add, House members' excess equity returns trail those of Senators during the same time period, according to their previous study of investment return of the upper house — some 85 basis points a month. Annualized, that figures to 10.7% per year after compounding.

So how long till we get a "US Senator's tracking ETF" that makes it easy for the average investor to have the same portfolio allocation as the average Senator?

[OLD1953]

Should medical school be free?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/opinion/29bach.html

Don't see how that gets around the problem of limited admissions though.

[aeden]

Should medical school be free?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/opinion/29bach.html

Don't see how that gets around the problem of limited admissions though.

Well the daughter called about one book being $400.00 dollars. The College is offering advise which wrong on programs. This means you
take a career counseling from there system which will not suffice the actual posting in the real world. The system is broken and needs reform. There are decent kids getting the absolutely the wrong advise. They are being farmed. We had to laugh about how broken some things are. She works at the Hospital and is a Student. She has years to go being three years in.

On the other hand other than the pipeline
http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2011/ ... ghan-gold/
I see the google bot is here also, lol, mining...

[OLD1953]

One of my daughters is studying to be a nurse practicioner herself. Another is working on her degree in jurisprudence. I'm fully aware of the situation as regards education and debt. And you aren't kidding about bad advice. College, like most other aspects of American life, has become a racket. The ideal of service is utterly lost.

did you know that law school rankings are determined by professors voting on the schools? When my daughter told me that, I LOL'd and told her "so the schools that pay the profs the most are always on top, right?". She got upset at that, then admitted it was correct. I LOL'd again and told her I'd be shocked if it was otherwise, as any other metric would mean the profs would be voting for pay cuts. She found out that one of her professors, at a minor law school in the south mind you, made over 300K last year.

You tell me how professor pay translates directly into quality of education and we'll both know something new.

[aedens]

You tell me how professor pay translates directly into quality of education and we'll both know something new.

Same thought for another topic about all Locust's.

”Thus, the limiting factor is not man-made capital, but nature’s capital. Daly stresses that by leaving ecological and social costs out of the computation of GDP, economists do not have a reliable measure of the effect of economic activity on human welfare.
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts05312011.html <--------- Carefull here on the bent of mind.
All of economics is predicated on the notion that resources are inexhaustible, and that the only challenge is to use them most efficiently. But if resources are not inexhaustible and cannot be replicated by human capital, the world economy is being ruthlessly exploited to its detriment and to the detriment of life on earth.

I do not share all of economics is predicated on the notion that resources are inexhaustible. Price as "Utility" is the funtion of the market. I do have regard as we ruthlessly must pursue GD as a means to and end to settle these misnomers of agenda, or to be polite the abilty to see dimly through percieved policy followed to its design such return's for Government List Investors.

Here we are as Hayek warned: Experience suggests that, once this phase has been reached, it is merely a question of time until the views now held by the intellectuals become the governing force of politics. Going into Hayek as we know, It is the intellectuals in this sense who decide what views and opinions are to reach us, which facts are important enough to be told to us, and in what form and from what angle they are to be presented. Whether we shall ever learn of the results of the work of the expert and the original thinker depends mainly on their decision. Even though their knowledge may often be superficial and their intelligence limited, this does not alter the fact that it is their judgement which mainly determines the views on which society will act in the not too distant future.
It is no exaggeration to say that, once the more active part of the intellectuals has been converted to a set of beliefs, the process by which these become generally accepted is almost automatic and irresistible. These intellectuals are the organs which modern society has developed for spreading knowledge and ideas, and it is their convictions and opinions which operate as the sieve through which all new conceptions must pass before they can reach the masses. [Reprinted from The University of Chicago Law Review (Spring 1949)

With that in mind Policy must quickly enable tangible facts on a landmined filled thought map of hubris over sustainable facts.

Today H/T ZH: http://www.cfr.org/industrial-policy/ev ... nge/p24366

http://i.cfr.org/content/publications/a ... conomy.pdf <------- uncooked data, also remember keynes had no effective comment on sticky wages

Meanwhile it appears: http://www.frbsf.org/publications/econo ... 1-08bk.pdf
The U.S. SWF appears to be priced in to meet competion from other governments around the real world. Grandma's were tossed under the statistical bus to live on a yeild but the greatest generational is fading into history's pages. As for my Wifes mother born in 1926 she says FDR was the best even today with all age afflicitions.

Current asset prices caveat emptor: page 25 "Although we have not attempted to estimate the costs of Operation Twist or QE2 here, those costs are as important as the benefits for policy analysis, and thus future work on the nature and size of such costs would be welcome."

Welcome to HFT market trade reciprocity's
Notes: Monday, Oct. 07, 1985
In 1932, with international trade in collapse, Franklin Roosevelt denounced Smoot-Hawley as ruinous. Hoover responded that Roosevelt would have Americans compete with "peasant and sweated labor" abroad. Then, as now, protectionism had a strong if superficial political appeal: by election eve, F.D.R. had backed down, assuring voters that he understood the need for tariffs. Protectionist politicking, however, could not save the Republicans in 1932. Smoot and Hawley joined Hoover in defeat. The Democrats dismantled the G.O.P.'s legislative handiwork with caution, using reciprocal trade agreements rather than across-the-board tariff reductions. The Smoot-Hawley approach was discredited. Sam Rayburn, House Democratic Speaker from 1940 until 1961, insisted that any party member who wanted to serve on the Ways and Means Committee had to support reciprocity, not protectionism.We shall see. Amos warned us. Nov 15, 2009

[OLD1953]

To far too many, any ecological change equals disaster. Change does not mean disaster, it simply means change. The freezing of southern Greenland 600 years ago gave the polar bears room to frolic on glaciers, but their long distance swimming habit could not have been sustainable outside the arctic ocean prior to that time. Jaguarundi now roam KY and TN south to AL, I've seen them and so have plenty of others who actually walk the back woods away from the roads. Certainly, they must affect the coyotes, also late immigrants. And the woodchucks, who were unknown in the western parts of the state prior to 1970. All this is change, and some things thrive and others move on or die out. The development of large strip mines during the 40's was considered disaster, but that land is so rough to be nearly inacessible to hunters and poachers, so is now left to the wilds. I've watched seagulls dive on the lakes back there, and wondered what ever brought them so far inland. I've handled coots and loons, and had the opportunity to band baby wild geese (turned that flat down, those things are BIG and momma objects to the banding of the babies). Change is not disaster.

The flow of jobs back into the USA will be sudden and astonishing, and John should do a reversion to the mean chart on it. We've been losing jobs for decades to the outside world, so we are the vacuum now, the reversal will take a great many by surprise.

Are the "smartest guys in the room" smart enough to realize they can't possibly get another round of giveaways, or will they continue to believe the cards always have to fall in their favor? The people of the US will hit the street like they did in Egypt if grandma going under the bus is coupled with more tax breaks and more giveaways to the haves.

PS: just had to quote this: "The jaguarundi is small cat that is a little bit larger than a house cat. It is 3 to 4½ feet in length ". Ahem. Dude knows some damn big house cats, all I can say.

[John]

> The flow of jobs back into the USA will be sudden and astonishing,
> and John should do a reversion to the mean chart on it. We've been
> losing jobs for decades to the outside world, so we are the vacuum
> now, the reversal will take a great many by surprise.

This morning's ADP employment report, just announced on CNBC, was
disastrously bad. Such jobs as were created were "service," as
opposed to manufacturing.

You may be right about a sudden reversal at some time, but I
believe that will only come with some very significant geopolitical
change - e.g., civil war or economic collapse in China, or
war somewhere else.

Practically everyone in the world is in "kick the can down the
road" mode, meaning that nobody will do anything to make major
changes, because any change anywhere harms some constituency.
Once a major "event" of some kind forces changes that would not
otherwise be made, then a dramatic change like the one you suggest
would be possible.

John