youngolf

Uninterrupted Declines

We have a leadership crisis of enormous magnitude...over the last 20 years. Healthcare affordability/access is in the crapper, credit, housing, energy, jobs are now being flushed, IRS regs are beyond ridiculous, national spending/debt. Can't think of anything going really well right now, except SH and SDS.

Short Week Was Plenty Painful

Thanks for the charts also, but please, not so much verbage on what 'we already know'. Don't like spending time reading experts telling me just what happened like I have been on another planet. E.g., the sun did rise today as expected.

The Politics of Hurricane Insurance

you appear to be swilling for the dirtpoor insurers...i attended one of those 'town hall' meetings in FL where the insurers were explaining their dire circumstances. 'due to the hurricanes of 2004-5, they'd had to use up their reserves all the way back to 1992', they whined.
i asked one of their swills in the back of the room, what had happened to the profits they'd made from the 70's to present? weren't they buried in investments, bonds, real estate.....all those assets where profits are hidden through the years, which is why you never hear of an insurer going bankrupt? he walked away.
just like the health insurers, they hide the profits from good years in investments and 'reserves'....and use current year underwriting loss ratios to attempt to justify huge rate increases. i don't think you know insurance.

Losing All Respect for the System

Competition is a good thing - when the resource isn't extremely scarce or controlled by a few (try oil), or there is great Risk involved (try healthcare financing)...Free market competition is not the do all, end all (otherwise put our drinking water for sale on the open market!)......and neither is socialism. Greed has to be regulated in some way.

Losing All Respect for the System

Absolutely, well said Bill.....Bravo for men still left like you.
I quit the health insurance industry in 2001, after 20 years...because of the deterioration in ethics and the total insanity of the current healthcare system. Since our WWII business leaders have all retired and are in their 80's...we are being run by a manipulating, cheating, self-enriching at any costs generation who cares nothing about the future......hopefully, we can get another generation up with some values that will turn things around.
Which is why I am making the sacrifice to teach business in the high schools.....I have to do something to leave a legacy - and stay sane while I watch 'Rome burn' (Credit Crisis, Tax Code, Gas Prices, Iraq, Katrina, Immigration, Healthcare Costs.....).

I even called my senators - told them I wanted to enroll in the same high level health insurance plan they had...that I am buying for them with my taxes...that I cannot find or afford for myself - they sent me a Senate letter 'thanking me for writing'.