In Inmates Are About to Take Charge

Over the past decade, a lot of unscrupulous people in the financial world took more and more chances -- and riskier and riskier chances -- with depositors’ money. That led us into a near melt-down of the entire economy. And while they were doing that, the people at the top of the pile added multi-million dollar bonuses to their multi-million dollar salaries.

We can and should condemn them. But the harsh reality is that people running businesses in this country will push the envelope as far as they can in the name of profit … for themselves and, if it’s a public company, for their stockholders. That’s just the way it is. It’s our system.

And if they discover they can get away with six inches, they’ll see if they can stretch it to a foot. If they get away with a foot, they’ll keep it up … until someone in authority makes them stop. That, too, is our system. Or at least it has been.

Now we have Ron Paul about to take over an important House committee that has jurisdiction over the Federal Reserve. And he says we don’t need to regulate the banks.

Ron Paul is a libertarian ideologue and an arrogant fool.

The people who believe him are just fools.
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Yep ... That's Us, All Right!

Global Warming ... or Health Care Reform ... or the Economy ... Doesn't matter.

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Lack of Health Insurance Impacts the Economy

I recently wrote how hospitals treaing patients with no health insurance are forced to pass along those costs to the rest of us, thus artificially (and, some would say, unfairly) driving up the cost of our health insurance.

On that same general subject, I came across an enlightening column in The New Yorker magazine which contained the following interesting and sobering paragraph:

The accumulating failures in the country’s health-care system are a cause of profound weakness in the American economy; unaddressed, this weakness will exacerbate the coming recession and crimp its aftermath. A large number of the country’s housing foreclosures in recent years appear to be related to medical problems and health-care expenses. American businesses often can’t afford to hire as many employees as they like because of rising health-insurance costs; employees often can’t afford to quit to chase their better-mousetrap dreams because they can’t risk going without coverage. Add to this the system’s moral failings: about twenty-two thousand people die in this country annually because they lack health insurance. That is more than the number of Americans who are murdered in a year.

Steve Coll
The New Yorker
Nov. 10, 2008

Forty-seven million Americans without health insurance is a national disgrace. But it is also stupid because, clearly, the most expensive choice we can make on this issue is to do nothing.
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