svkoho

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    • Thu Nov 27th 22:00 PM
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      The Awfulness of U.S. Healthcare
      One of the comments had health care at 12%. It's over 16% and we may have 50 million uninsured within the next 3 to 6 months. I am a doctor(MD) ready to retire and I can tell you the system is rotten. My colleagues are frozen with fear that their incomes will collapse under a single payer. It will or I should say it should. I have concluded that single payer offers by far the best bang for the buck if our country could take the time to set up a good program. There are many good national health insurance models. Pick one. Canada is decent as is Germany and France, and Switzerland might be a better match for our country. We OR based surgical specialties are vastly overpaid, as are most hospital administrators, insurance executives, big pharma and medical equipment makers. It's a long list. Someone is going to have to tell them that the party is over and they will fight like cornered cougars to preserve high 6 and 7 figure incomes. The older wealthier ones will retire and the younger ones will try to stick it out on one or 200 K a year. With what is happening in the greater economy, not many will feel much sympathy for us...and they shouldn't. It's a corrupt greedy business and I am glad to be leaving it. The comment on malpractice being an important part of the issue is ludicrous.
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    • Fri Nov 21st 10:06 AM
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      Calling a Depression
      excellent commentary as always by David. Looking at just GDP and employment statistics is misleading at best. Unemployment is calculated far differently now than in 1932. Everyone knows what a hash the Feds have made of inflation statistics. One example as regards GDP is the huge increase in energy use, petroleum use in the past 75 years. 20 million barrels a day on oil use is added to GDP as consumption. This is just one example of the problem of using consumption in GDP calculation. If it isn't a depression, it's a Panic or a severe prolonged recession. With the level of debt, what's the difference?
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    • Mon Nov 10th 12:27 PM
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      The Current Economic Crisis: Hell, Meet Handbasket
      Doug: concise and complete and I think accurate summary of how we got here. The commenters are unhappy with you because you offered no solution. It has not occurred to them that some problems may have no solution. What is the solution to your own immanent death?What was the solution to Hiroshima if you lived downtown? If there is such a thing as a solution to this horrid mess, it's that we must somehow return to productive economic activity and not trading abstract tranches, paper, and leveraged digital bets. We will probably not go back to where we were investing and trading abstract garbage. Despite the fact it is not "productive economic activity" as paulson says, we must let the scoundrels be known, let them be hated, and let them be hunted for the rest of their miserable lives.
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    • Sun Nov 9th 13:29 PM
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      The Reagan Counterrevolution
      Peter: you are a relic of Alzheimer Reaganism which benefited the corporate plutocracy at the expense of everyone's children and grandchildren. Trickle down was a cruel hoax to make them rich. It worked. It appears that your throat is being ripped out by the comments above me. I'll skip repeating their opinions. Go away Peter. Find a hole in the Caymans and bother us no more.
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    • Mon Oct 27th 10:59 AM
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      Dollar Strength: An Illusion
      Interesting article but the comments ignore what the author said. There is movement away from foreigners holding US debt. That is the single most important pillar propping up the increasingly fragile US economy given these huge budget and current account deficits. If that crutch is yanked, you will have wished you'd sold your stocks when they had dropped only 50%. I have named this event the Panic of 2008 in my blog. Try as I can, I cannot conjure up a scenario that allows a near term recovery of useful economic activity. Katie, bar the door.
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    • Mon Oct 20th 15:19 PM
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      Petrobras: Dead In The Water
      Fairly stunning article on PBR and just as I was getting interested! Matt Simmons and Colin Campbell constantly remind us that it's not what you have in reserves, it's the net cost to extract those reserves. Only high prices justify the work. It's the same with all the unconventional fields. If the oil sands need 80 to $100 a barrel as break even, what is ultradeep water Brazil break even? There is no reason to stay in business to break even. People counting on Brazil to be the new supplier to the US to replace Mexico and Venezuela may be disappointed.
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    • Thu Oct 16th 10:17 AM
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      Bernanke Edges Closer To the 'Real' Root Cause Of the Crisis
      such baloney....loss of confidence.....this is a debt crisis, not a loss of confidence crisis...
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    • Sun Oct 12th 11:44 AM
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      Greenspan’s Monstrous Love Child: A Grim Bedtime Story
      Tim, What a job you did with this fable. An instant classic. Greenspan has been coming and going here in in the kingdom of cheney for years. I have seen him and his scary goons at the jackson hole airport leaving on his iron bird many times.The good news is that he is banished. The bad news is that I am huddling in my cave like all the rest.
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    • Sun Oct 12th 10:56 AM
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      The Bottom's Within Sight - Barron's
      articles that comment on "is this the bottom now ?"are a waste of everyone's time and good bandwidth. No one knows. no one. bobbleheads all. Of course there are safety nets such as FDIC but if the currency is destroyed, they are irrelevant to a large extent. This disaster has features not present during the great D. With the kind of politicians and business goons we have, who knows what will happen. At any rate,hings look to be worse in Reykjavik. That should cheer you up.
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    • Sat Oct 11th 17:18 PM
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      Why I Doubled My Position in Husky Energy
      they wont bill.
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    • Fri Oct 10th 10:32 AM
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      Friday Outlook: Commodities, Emerging Markets
      Thanks David for being there with wit and irony.
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    • Thu Oct 9th 11:15 AM
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      The Beginning of the Endgame for Monetary Policy, Redux
      Nice job Paul. Well written ,concise, logical...and of course scaaaaary!
      I have come to similar conclusions writing my own blog but I have been reading people like John Hussman and Nouriel Roubini for quite a while. The only thing that has surprised me has been the suddenness and rapidity of it all and we can thank the computer and the internet for speeding things up. Lawr's comment amplifies your comments on debt to GDP ratios which I think holds the real key to where we go from here. I have no idea what the real debt to GDP ratio is here but it's 12:1 in Iceland, it was 2.5:1 in 1932 and 3.6:1 right now here in the good ole US of A. If those nice folks in KSA, Japan and China stop buying our debt, the depression will no longer just be a theoretical issue.
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    • Tue Oct 7th 11:37 AM
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      John Hussman: Depression Fear Mongering 'Ridiculous'
      John, talk of a depression is not ridiculous. Before last weeks plunge the S&P had a PE of 25. If we accept a historical norm of say 12 to 15, what is the fair market value? Yup 8 hundred perhaps, at best. During the last depression it was 5 or 6 if memory serves. The national debt is soaring over $4 trillion since bush darkened the scene, debt to GDP numbers are HIGHER than the great depression, the dollar has been tanking for a decade and the government has no way to meet its obligations with the debt which it has incurred without massive tax increases. The debt will never be repaid, John and the world has lost faith in the US financial system. If they don't buy our debt and our treasury securities, how exactly are we to restore our economy? The US economic boom of the past 30 to 50 years was made possible by almost free energy costs which were almost entirely domestically produced until 1970 and are now over 70% imported and which provide a trade deficit in petroleum alone of between 400 and 500 billion dollars a year. Our manufacturing base has been decimated, job loss is accelerating, domestic consumption is plunging and we have no domestic savings whatever.Tax revenues to local,state and federal coffers will soon be dropping, $3 trillion or more has been drained from housing...... Am I missing something or are you missing something. The banking industry with the collusion and encouragement of primarily but not exclusively the republican party establishment has allowed a debt and credit hurricane to form which is threatening to engulf the US and perhaps even the world economy. I would say that there is a plausible risk of a depression given this convergence of negative factors.
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    • Tue Oct 7th 10:10 AM
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      Our Coming Depression
      The debt to GDP figures you posted were what led me to reach the same conclusions on my economic blog but your efforts to lay out scenarios and give historical perspective was far superior to my meager efforts and I thank you. There have been warnings going back several years by Jim Grant and Bill Fleckenstein using money supply and debt to GDP numbers as well. Nouriel Roubini has also been leading the charge on his somewhat apocalyptic rgemonitor.com site as well as John Hussman. Did I forget Jim Rogers? I think this downturn(ie Depression) will be deflationary which is the cruelest type of recession/depression and I would appreciate some comment on that. There was little in the way of helpful suggestions on what a poor and getting poorer investor should do to deal with this debacle but interested readers should have no trouble searching the blogosphere for ideas if they lack them on their own. The negative attacks on this excellent summary by the clueless who are circling the drain will diminish as they are flushed into the ABS pipe of what will be left of this economy. Calling you a socialist and democrat....that was really choice and it is a shame such people were allowed to grow up without learning a modicum of civility and manners. The only response they know is ad hominem repartee. The good news is they will be flushed. The bad news is they will be sharing the sewers with the clueless
      uneducated consuming innocents who contributed in their own way to this fiasco but never saw it coming. These are indeed interesting times here at the end of empire.
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    • Mon Oct 6th 10:40 AM
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      Bailout Backfire and the Ticking Debt Time Bomb
      It is not safe to allow anyone to read this unless they are sitting down. Make that lying down.A recession is unavoidable. A deep recession looks likely. A Depression looks very possible.
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