Notes and observations. Diversions and digressions. All done far too infrequently.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Thursday, July 30, 2009
The hard reality about health care models
The point is that there is no health care model, whether privately or publicly financed, that can offer unlimited access to medical services while containing costs. Ultimately, such a model arrives at a cross roads where it has to either limit access in an arbitrary way, or face uncontrolled cost increases. France and Germany, which are mostly publicly funded, are increasingly marching down the first road. America, which is half publicly and half privately funded, has so far taken the second path. Should America offer even more people such unlimited access through universal coverage, it too will end up rationing care or facing national bankruptcy.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Quote for the day
wisdom: "Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man, while under socialism it is exactly the reverse."
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Monday, July 20, 2009
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Goldman Sachs and moral hazard; Too big to fail
"The business of political capitalism, that is. Like Enron, Goldman operates primarily in the nebulous world of public-private interaction. It is the US’s most politically powerful financial firm, skilled at navigating the byzantine regulations governing the virtually nationalized US financial sector. Goldman’s eye-popping $3.4 billion second-quarter earnings shouldn’t surprise anyone; as Craig Pirrong notes, these earnings reflect good old-fashioned moral hazard, with Goldman exploiting its too-big-to-fail status by taking on huge amounts of risk:"
Thursday, July 16, 2009
George B. Merry "Dean of the Beacon Hill Press Corps" has died
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
“There is no education in the second kick of a mule.”
Monday, July 06, 2009
Joe Queenan had a hard life but he's an honest man.
The passage that struck me:
Queenan calls any attempts to romanticize this poverty “a mythology concocted by those who were never poor” and tries to set the record straight...Catholic schools have saved many urban souls. The world would be a horrible place without them. Queenan knows this; so do I. Those who claim to fight for the working class -- oddly by keeping it mired in poverty -- have not a clue.Queenan doesn’t exempt himself from this judgment. Though he has made it financially and as a writer, he doesn’t believe poverty made him stronger but rather more uncaring and vicious than he otherwise should have been. That viciousness has made him a very effective critic if sometimes not a very lovable one. He attributes his survival as a youth and his success later in life to the Catholic Church, to a few oddball heroic shopkeepers who decided to hire the lad, and to his love of literature—while conceding rather backhandedly that his mum managed to keep the family out of even worse circumstances. Queenan’s intelligence was obvious from an early age and Philadelphia’s Catholic schools kept him out of the violent hellholes that were the city’s public schools. His faith didn’t last but its impact has.
Sunday, July 05, 2009
He's working to get to heaven. God bless Alice Cooper
There's more to the man than Billion Dollar Babies."You teach Bible classes, don't you?"
"Wednesday mornings."