Joyful Alternative

Business Trends: Banks, Cars, Healthcare and Safe Vermont Mortgages

I wonder who Mr. Collier would like to fall through the cracks. I pay $350 a month for individual health insurance, my knee replacement cost me $9,000 out of pocket, and friends tell me I'm lucky that the insurer didn't drop me for costing them money. Friends in other states tell me I'm lucky to be able to buy health insurance at all. Am I supposed to fall through the cracks?

Mr. Collier obviously doesn't want his wife to fall through the cracks, and how nice for him that they received charity rather than a bill he'd be paying off for the rest of his working life. Should I fall through the cracks if my osteoarthritis makes another joint replacement necessary and I can't come up with the out-of-pocket expense (plus self-employed people don't get sick leave or sick pay!)? Keep in mind that the surgeon wants cash up front; he's had too many patients unable to pay him after he's done his part. Should somebody who makes $15,000/year and can't possibly pay insurance premiums of $350/month, not to mention all those out-of-pocket amounts, fall through the cracks? Is this guy a freeloader if he gets charity, too, when he gets cancer? And keep in mind that his and Mrs. Collier's charity are paid for by higher bills for you and me.

As a long-time self-employed person (and health insurance buyer), I wish I had access to "Medicare for All." I suspect never before in history have so many people looked forward to their 65th birthdays.

Wall Street, 1792 - 2008?

No problems getting mortgages in Pennsylvania. There are even some no money down mortgages around.

Fitch Increasingly Downgrades Non-Subprime [Housing Tracker]

I didn't know AmEx and Costco had a relationship.

The New York Times Attack on Freddie Mac's Richard Syron

Ivy undergraduate degree in history, Ivy MBA---just like George W. Bush, who apparently learned little history or statistics.

Was That a Bottom? Let's Get Real

"turmoil over one candidate's speech in Berlin"---huh?

Debt Ceiling Upped to $10.615tn, Just in Case

And the administration is saying, well, it'll take us about a year to figure out how to put this housing rescue package into effect. By then, it's apt to take another trillion to make it work. I hope Congress flicks the whip at the Arabian Horse Association executives now running the bureaucracy.

Historic Financial Collapse Underway?

The government should cut taxes so its revenues increase? Didn't GW already do that more than once? And where has that taken us?

It's still voodoo economics, almost three decades later.