$2K is cheap for health insurance

The TV newsies have finally caught on.  Under Obamacare, a company is better off paying the $2000 per worker penalty to Uncle rather than paying $12000  to buy that same worker a family health care policy.   This has been obvious to everyone but newsies since they passed Obamacare 2 years ago.   Companies would be able to offer the workers $10000 extra in pay, give Uncle $2000 and come out even.  Workers could arrange to put the extra money into a tax free Health Savings Account and use it to pay for private health care
   I heard one TV newsie speculating that companies would keep offering health care in order to retain valuable employees.  Right.  With 8 to 10 percent unemployment, any company can fill any amount of openings in a couple of days. 

Blowing and raining pretty hard

We have a storm moving thru the Notch.  Lot of rain, and the wind is really howling around the house.

WSJ Op-Ed gets it right

"How Big Banks Threaten our Economy" title of an op-ed by Warren A. Stephans in the Monday WSJ.   Stephans says that a mere FIVE banks hold half of all the bank deposits in the entire country.  Wow.  Should one of those babies fail, an humungous amount of tax payer money would be required to make the depositors whole again.
   There is no reason to have banks that big.  Big banks get into trouble and go broke just as often as ordinary sized banks.  In fact, big banks are more bureaucratic, move slower and are more apt to have empty suits running them.  Smaller banks are leaner, faster, and more careful.  Problem is, when a really big bank goes down, a lot more people get hurt.
   And when you get to something as big as AIG, it's just too big to manage.  AIG was put together by a very capable banker named Hank Greenberg.  Hank was a financial genius and managed to keep AIG running pretty much single handed.  AIG did well until New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer targeted Greenberg in 2005.  Spitzer made a lot of wild accusations in the press, finally filed some charges, which he later dropped.  But Spitzer  panicked the board of AIG into firing Greenberg.  After Greenberg left, AIG spiraled down into catastrophe.  Just before the end, AIG was playing the credit default swap market (pure gambling) hoping for a big win to bail them out.

Newsies love the Veepstakes

Endless TV time talking about who will be Romney's VP.   It's a simple topic, easily understood by journalism school grads.  It doesn't mean much, this election is a showdown on Obama and Obamacare, doesn't much matter who Romney picks for VP.  Romney won't say anything until the right time, because there is no gain in announcing his pick early.  This story doesn't need any research, all you have to do is get one or more talking heads on camera to pontificate. 
   But the newsies think people will watch stories on the Veepstakes, the stories are easy and cheap to do, and so we get a lot of them.

If Obama had balls, he woulda taken Bin Ladin alive

They could have done it.  Jumped Bin Ladin and loaded him into a chopper.  Alive, he surely had intelligence that we needed. Nobody would whine about waterboarding Bin Ladin.   A patriotic judiciary (any of those left around?) would have put Bin Ladin on trial, on TV, in an orange jumpsuit and shiny handcuffs.  We could have done some good work convincing the rest of the world that Bin Ladin is a no-good-nick who deserved what we were gonna give him. 
  But Obama didn't want to take a chance on bat brained US judges turning Bin Ladin loose on a technicality, so he told the SEALS to whack him.  Courageous that is.

Coulda Woulda Shoulda

Watched Meet the Press this morning.  New Democratic line.  " Romney would not have OK'ed the Bin Ladin raid."   Really.  And how do you all know that? 
   Then there as a lot of stuff about how fearless and brave Obama was for OK'ing the raid.  I don't buy much of that either.  What really happened is some operational types (shooters) decided that  they knew where OBL was and they thought they could hit him.  They went up thru the chain of command to get approval.  They obviously made a good enough case to convince  the chain of command to let them go ahead. 

How Europe is dealing?

The weak Euro countries found that no one would buy their bonds, not at an affordable rate anyhow.  All these countries had to sell bonds 'cause they were spending more money than tax revenues were bringing in.  They all started wailing and crying, 'cause not paying wages and pensions really upsets people.  Some of the small ones got bailed out (Iceland, Ireland, Greece)  The bigger ones are so big that nobody, not even Germany, has that kind of money.  
   So the European Common Bank gave everyone a Christmas present last Christmas.  The ECB is like the US Fed, in that it can print Euro's.  As many Euro's as it likes.  So ECB offered European banks the opportunity to borrow (at low rates) some trillion or more Euros.  The Euro banks lapped it up, and borrowed all the Euro's offered.  This made the banks happy, they had cash in the till.  It made ECB sorta happy in that every bank in Europe owed them money, and less happy 'cause putting a trillion Euros into the economy makes prices of everything go up. 
    So, with freshly printed Euros clogging their cash drawers what do the European banks do with the money?  Well, they didn't make loans to industry to expand production.  No, they bought up Euro government bonds, 'cause the governments were offering really fat returns, AND under Euro accounting rules, government bonds, (sovereign debt) are "risk free" (governments always pay their debts 'cause they can always raise taxes to get the money).   Banks don't have to hold cash in reserve for risk free deals.  They can loan it all out, and get higher returns.
    Apparently a trillion Euros doesn't go far these days.  In the 90 days since the great Euro loan, all of it was spent.  And now it's gone, and the weak Euro governments are still in a jam.  They are still spending more than they take in, so they HAVE to sell bonds lest their checks bounce.  Other than Euro banks, nobody else wants to buy shaky looking Euro bonds.  The Euro banks are out of money again, and the Euro economy is not growing at all.
   Good luck, you're gonna need it over there.