It’s nice to know while our society seems to be falling to pieces all around us, our elected representative are making every effort to come to grips with the problems:
In Senate Vote on Health Care Overhaul, New Partisan Vitriol
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
Published: December 23, 2009WASHINGTON — The vote on Monday, in the dead of night, was 60 to 40. The vote on Tuesday, just after daybreak, was 60 to 39. And the vote on Wednesday afternoon, at a civil hour but after less-than-civil debate, was 60 to 39 again — an immutable tally that showed Democrats unwavering in the march to adopt a far-reaching overhaul of the health care system over united Republican opposition.
The votes also marked something else: the culmination of more than a generation of partisan polarization of the American political system, and a precipitous decline in collegiality and collaboration in governing that seemed to move in inverse proportion to a rising influence of lobbying, money, the 24-hour news cycle and hostilities on talk shows and in the blogosphere.
Congress and the Senate waste time on a bailout of the health insurance industry, spend trillions – or is it gazillions? – they don’t have and make promises they can’t possibly keep.
What are these people thinking? The proposed legislation is DOA because the economic ‘growth’ the plan is contingent upon is melting away. Creating medical care that is affordable and thereby universal would require as a first step the removal of the insurance industry or reducing it to a not- for- profit administrative stub.
This cannot take place because the legislature is a collection of insurance industry hirelings and lackeys.
Our rapacious industrial machinery proceeds to gobble up more and more of the only planet we have. Copenhagen turns out to have been a sham. Auto consumption ramps up in China. Ice on the poles and in water dependencies is melting. There are two US wars in the Middle East and a nascent energy war brewing in South America. The world looks to a US- brokered Israeli attack on Iran.
Doesn’t anyone here know how to play this game? The world is falling apart, let’s give a gazillion dollar handout to Aetna!
I’m watching the oil markets and predicting effects on equities, bonds and sovereign claims. Oil is currently increasing in price from the short term low of $68.64 a barrel to current $75.58. Another run toward $85 is likely. Just as likely is a stall short of that price level with bond and equity markets finding reasons to decline.
CX Portal.com ‘WTI daily crude price’
Saudia and offshore swing producers will use some ‘off balance sheet’ oil to support inventories and keep the dollar/oil ratio below $85/bbl.
Oil prices above $35 kills the economy. $75 oil kills it faster. Our gluttony is destroying us … handicapping our ability to destroy others and the rest of the world. Even as our demand for derivative destruction increases, the means to exercise our demand evaporates. For those who love what is left of our Earth, this is the best if sad tidings for the new year.
At some point the dollar/oil relationship will be noted by persons other than myself and the perception of the hard dollar will announce the fact of it. At that point all the remaining market participants will attempt to race through the keyhole simultaneously.
Some fun, eh?