BLOG.NEVERODDOREVEN.US: Recent Comments

Comment on where the health insurance debate nearly gets personal

Humana health insurance — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 18:49:40 GMT

Yes, things don't look too bright on health insurance. You are a very realistic person and I appreciate you didn't complain much, you just told the story. Aren't private health insurance option better in these kind of situations? I have a private health insurance and it wasn't my choice, I can't get another one because I work abroad and I can't justify in papers my income. So is private health insurance supposed to work better? If yes, then this might be the answer to my problems.

Comment on Big Pharma's sweetheart deal

vino biodinamico — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:32:04 GMT

That’s great, I never thought about Big Pharma's sweetheart deal like that before.

Comment on where the health insurance debate nearly gets personal

vino biodinamico — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:21:35 GMT

Wow, I never knew that health insurance debate. That’s pretty interesting...

Comment on Immigration, Health Care, and Education

Lorna — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 23:12:47 GMT

To quote Jason Chaffetz, Utah legislator, "I do want to be compassionate toward those who come here seeking a better life. But I will not reward people for breaking the law. If we reward those who follow the rules, more people will do so. We currently reward people for coming here illegally – by providing free health care, education and other benefits. That sends the wrong message and gives people an incentive to come illegally."

I heard someone saying how funny it was that his parents used his birth certificate to bring in all of his cousins. I made a comment about illegal immigration and was immediately shut up. Illegal immigrants are criminals and should be sent home and kept out until they can prove a case to be here (just like anyone else applying for a Visa). Wouldn't we rather have a diverse immigrant population from many different countries with a variety of skills instead of rejecting Visas to be here because of the illegal population?

I know I lost an employment opportunity because the business owner preferred paying illegals to do it. (Not that I wanted an employer like that.)

My friend's children live in a low-income neighborhood where English is hardly spoken in school due to the high Hispanic population, thus the English-speaking children are struggling. I believe Spanish should never be spoken in schools except in English-as-a-second-language classes. Immerse the children in English (if we must go broke teaching the children of these criminals at all).

Comment on Too big to fail is too big

NOOn — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 08:51:14 GMT

Rachel, that's a reasonable question. First, I am not a lone crackpot in the wilderness asking for the President to break up or in some other way restrict the size of the large banks. Many people, including many of his top advisors, have suggested the same thing.

In my vision, the way it works is this. The reason that some banks are “too big to fail” is that they have two characteristics. First, of course, is size, but the second is interconnectedness; in other words, the institution is so tied up with other banks, insurance companies, or other financial companies that its collapse would trigger a domino effect.

Now, we live in an interconnected world. The financial technology that creates that interconnectedness is not going away, and in fact I think it is a strength of our markets that they do mesh. But we need to have a mesh of roughly equal participants, not one where a single bank is so big that it's failure could not be absorbed by the mesh of institutions, but rather would simply take many of those that did business with it down, too.

There is plenty of discussion on the web of why no bank should be TBTF, so I won't rehash that here in depth. I want to focus more on the solution. Back in the 1980's, the government decided that Bell Telephone had too much power, and insisted it break up. Now, that break-up wasn't handled particularly well, but it does show us a recent example of a company that was TBTF, that was broken up, and its components were then able to fail if they couldn't compete. What regulators need to do is set it up so that there is a limit on bank size of, say, $500 bn in assets and deposits (roughly the size of Washington Mutual, which failed last year). Most banks count their assets in the hundreds of millions, so this limit effectively only exists for the really large banks.

What would this mean for you and me? Well, it would probably mean that USBank, with assets of just over $250 billion, would be fine, but BofA, with assets of $1.5 trillion, would be forced to break up into at least three separate institutions. And I just picked the $500 bn figure practically out of thin air. I would hope that someone with a better head for money than I have, or better yet a few someones, would sit down and figure out what a good maximum amount that could be absorbed, in a situation like we have now where high default and foreclosure rates are knocking banks off at a high, though hardly record, clip.

Comment on Too big to fail is too big

Rachel — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:18:58 GMT

I wonder if you wouldn't mind expounding on your idea a little...why tear down the big banks? I understand the general idea, but what specifically about the breakdown of large banks is going to be the result?

Comment on What I predict the extreme right will say about Obama's speech to the schoolchildren

Rachel — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:48:56 GMT

I always enjoy reading what you have to say, however I would like to mention one thing. When you say that it did bother you a little that the President would vary his speech to say that "you WILL have to do a few drafts of a paper," keep in mind that unless you were able to hand in ALL of your papers using your first draft, you still fall into this category. I've always considered myself to be an adept writer who usually only needs minor revisions, but there have been the occassional assignments that I've had to scrap and start all over again.
Still, as always, I enjoyed your insights.

Comment on a couple of thoughts on improving health care

NOOn — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 01:19:38 GMT

Less social engineering is a good thing. But if we are going to take that tack, we should remove restraints on the sugar industry also. After all, they are only there either to prop up the American sugar producers or at the secret behest of the HFCS manufacturers, depending on who you ask. Certainly, both groups profit from the restrictions. If we drop both price controls, there is as much likelihood that the price of junk food would go down as it would go up(well, not this year, with the price of sugar spiraling out of control and corn being diverted to ethanol, but who can say what will happen next year?).

Comment on a couple of thoughts on improving health care

Cathy Fiorello — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 19:42:09 GMT

Rather than that fairly intensive intervention, how about this: Stop subsidizing the hell out of corn, and high fructose corn syrup. Basically, we are paying to make junk food calories cheaper than healthy food calories. We should stop. If Twinkies were more expensive than veggies, people would buy the veggies. Less social engineering.

Comment on Who will win the gun battle in Arizona?

Anonymous — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 23:33:31 GMT

I heartily agree!