This is almost starting to feel like Bailout Bingo to me.

Will our hero Buffet save the damsel in time? Tune in next week for the roller coaster, seat of your pants, conclusion!

Soon to be former billionaire, Wilbur Ross.

Where is the future upside for the bond insurers?

Clinton is pushing manditory health insurance for all through existing insurers. Insurance companies love that--people forced to buy their product.

So, Rich, why wouldn't that be good for the health care insurers? All of the insurance companies I know have adopted that as their preferred model--any question why?

She'll be the biggest recipient of health care money of the possible Democrats.

And Rich, Clinton has to prove her gonads, so I wouldn't bet anything on a cut in defense spending.

Here's the interesting part to me:

"you really have your arms around the degree of insolvency"

That information is extremely valuable right now, isn't it? Ross isn't a stupid man. Something's up.

Clinton is in favor of forcing people to buy insurance or the state buying insurance for the indigent--all from existing insurers. More money for them, more money to be pissed away without real reform. How is that bad for the health care industry.

I'm beginning to question whether we are actually going to enter a recession - it seems almost every possible trigger the "powers that be" have to keep the dance going is being pulled on an almost daily basis.

We may get out of this yet. Based on yields everywhere else, equities actually look attractive, and jobless #s have been OK. Retailers seem to be weathering the storm on increased consumer credit. Industrial companies and Ag seem to be doing OK, though Honeywell and CAT will speak to that tomorrow. The fed is keeping Wall Street happy, and the government is raining money down on consumers in cash and more incentives to buy houses.

Will this all come crashing down someday? Absolutely. Will it come crashing down this year? THAT is the question. We may have another credit-fueled bull run in us yet.

Either way, cash is looking attractive to me right now until we go through a major resistance level. For the interim the only position i'm holding is SPY Feb & Mar puts. Call it a bet using some of my ill-gotten gains in Jan.

Bob Dobbs is right.

Wow Rich....getting a little far down the street there?

No offense, but this analysis is terrible:
"Hillary now dominates whites and Obama blacks. Since whites prevail, Hillary wins big on 2/5 and by 2/6 it is apparent the nomination is hers."

As of 2/6 Clinton will have the nomination? thats extremely far from the truth if she takes a bunch of states..delegates are apportioned in many places and there is this person called John Edwards who gets delegates too--and gets to hold and release them as well.

Lets not venture too far from what you know, or too far into assessing the impact of an outcome that is not even likely.

Also we should all remember there is this thing called "Congress"...they like to have a say in "legislation".

--"little by little, incrementalism took over the country".

US Treasury should print a negative $2.5 trillion dollar bill with W's face on it.

Actually, there has been a 10 trillion dollar swing from surplus to deficit during Bush's regime.

Aren't most of Wilbur Ross's deals bankruptcy plays ? Like the steel manufacturers he bought through BK proceedings.... if a deal happens and that's a big question mark , it will be as part of a prepackaged bankruptcy. Otherwise , this is just more conjecture and happy talk. I just can't seehim buying all of SABk and taking on the liabilities and obligations that are present.

Factoid:

FACTBOX-U.S. bond insurers and amount of debt insured
| Reuters

A couple of trillion.

Wilbur Ross will do for asset backed insurance what he has done for steel and coal companies.

Nonsense. Everyone knows that our tort liabilty system has but a trivial impact on the cost of medical services. Ask any lawyer.

But according to the Financial Times, Ross and asset management firms and other private equity companies including TPG, are considering launching new bond insurers.

Ross, who built his multimillion-dollar fortune by investing in distressed sectors, told the FT he was weighing the merits of buying into an existing insurer or setting up a new one. Ross' office would not comment to CNBC.

Private equity executives say it is far more attractive to start up a new enterprise than to invest in existing firms, the FT reported. They note that the credit turmoil has hit existing providers, premiums are high, and regulators are keen to stabilize the market.

Wilbur Ross in Talks to Buy Ambac - CNBC

I could see him doing a deal where he buys the operational parts of the business, leaving the current stuff in runoff with some extra money.

At the rate this whole crisis evolves, aren't we going to run out of the helping billionaires soon?

Now, "everyone knows" that over the long run stocks have a better return.

How does the change in population growth affect stocks over the long run? Japan's been losing working-age population for a long while, and the US's rate of population growth is much less than the 50's.

I'd think the changes in population growth would be a big deal.

People outside the US are actually paying microsoft for software?

Impressive.

Great, the same goobers who are coming up with the stimulus proposal are going to decide how much health care I will be allowed to consume...

Red Pill, great post. But I'm not sure what you mean by "defensive medicine".

OK, this is good. I can see even the bears are starting to doubt if they should continue to be bearish. Now I know I can remain a bear. It makes all the sense in the world and people still doubt it. That's good!

Maybe Ambac should insure pets?

Not too much risk, but premiums may too much for them?

M-F "Also - if you want to see a single payer disaster, look at US Medicare. That system is systematically bilked by doctors and hospitals. The federal government currently spends more on health care than all of the HMOS and private insurance, and the feds cover, at most, 15% of the population. It is a disaster."

Well, I won't try to defend medicare or how it is run but your statistical claim, 15% of the population, is at the very least misleading. The 15% that medicare covers consume well over 1/2 of our nation's medical resources. When people get old, they have more medical problems. Look and see what the difference is to get private medical insurance @55 vs @25. Then imagine what it would cost @70, without medicare. Not a useful measure to compare by.

The smartest people are destined to lose the greatest amount of money.

THe bears see everything that is wrong with the global economy, led by the U.S.B, however they fail to appreciate how far the authorities will go to support asset prices.

Like I said before, the FED will cut interest rates to ZERO. THe guvmint will bailout all failing monolines, and Congress will approve multiple stimulus packages.

It doesn't matter what it will take, the authorities plan to fight the bears every step along the way.

If the Guvmint has the buy stocks and all distressed mortgage, then by golly it will happen.

Do you think the United States of Bailouts wants the market to "clear" at a lower price?

Of course not. So go ahead and cover your short positions. Hell, you should have done that 3 days ago.

You had to know Big Ben would bailout the stock market. Heck, he wrote papers about how to avoid a deflationary collapse. Yet, you dumbnuts shorted the indices. When are you going to get it through your head, when the stockmarket goes up its okay and when the stockmarkets goes down it must be supported.

The same with real estate. Nobody had an issue with property price doubling within a five year period, especially in coastal market. Yet, we take 5-10% off prices and the Guvmint must arrest the decline.

Like I said, we have a guvmint PUT on any asset out there.

GO ahead shorts and bet against the guvmint and FED, I dare you.

Give up already.

Has anyone noticed how bogus the jobless claims number was today??? The government said that seasonally adjusted the claims dropped from 302,000 last week and 328,000 last year to 301,000 this week. There is only one problem the non-seasonally adjusted jobless claims for last year was 367,583 and this year its 408,333. So the real claims went up by over 40,000 without seasonal adjustment but went down by 27,000 with seasonal adjustment- a 67,000 fudge factor!.... I keep track of all the numbers in a spreadsheet and this adjustment was bogus. Currently claims are running at an average rate 0f 28,000 claims more per week than last year and 50,000 more than 2006. But they are claiming that the 4 week average is running only 2,250 more than last year and not the 28,000 when you look at the real numbers.....

The seasonally adjusted rate should've come in at 328,000 + 40,000 more over last year which would be 368,000. Another manipulation?? I really think if they had announced the 368,000 the market would have nose dived today.

Just look at the continuing claims. They are rising rapidly as is the nonadjusted insured unemployment rate as compared to last year.

Zinc-- Wilbur won't buy it. Trust me, the taxpayer is going to pay for it.

The savers get burned again. The FED will cut rates to ZERO, ramp up the money supply and destroy the value of the U.S.B currency.

Remember, inflation eases the burden on debt holders.

Of course,we will have socialize medicine. We have "socialized" risk in the stock and real estate markets.

Everything in the U.S.B reeks of socialism disguised as Capitalism.

Well, I for one have done very well betting against the gubmint and the Fed. They can throw all they want at the market; these clowns don't have the tools to fix the problem. They're just trying to stave it off until the election.

I am originally from Canada, the care you get in Canada isn't too bad in the big cities (similar to a somewhat crappy HMO). You have long wait times for MRIs that would be considered tortious in the US. You really have to work the system to get first class care. The poor are less likely to work the system so they are more likely to get substandard care. The doctors tend to congregate in the big cities, so care in 1/2 the country is not so good. They do a bang up job on certain things like breast cancer with specialized hospitals - but it's no paradise. Very sick relative of a friend died under treatment there last year which could well have resulted in a lawsuit in the US, no exploration of a lawsuit in Canada.

I think Canada looks great. I have a history of depression, fibromyalgia and a nervous breakdown. I've been unemployed for thirty months. I'm recently divorced, and have sixteen months of COBRA left. I have to find a job with health insurance before then, despite sending out a couple hundred applications and getting one interview so far. The chances of anyone offering me an individual health insurance policy are zero, so a large employer is my only hope.

Yeah, I'm not crazy about the US health care system. Crazy from the US health care system, maybe.

Drat it. I think this is my first ever HTML screw up.

By late Feb, Wall Street wakes up to the high probability of a Hillary Presidency and goes into a tailspin.

Which tanks most? Health care or defense stocks.

I think health care.
rich | 01.24.08 - 5:36 pm | #

Rich, why the heck would that happen, the market always does better under Dems than the GOP. That is simply a historical fact. Since W took office the the S&P is essentially unchanged. That is over 7 years. I defy you to find me seven straight years under the Dems where the S&P was flat. Look at history, Hoover, market sucked, FDR/Truman market good, Ike market ok, JFK/LBJ, market ok, Nixon/Ford, market sucked, Carter market OK, Reagan, market Ok, Bush I market sucked, Clinton market great, Bush II, market sucks. Most likely the market bottoms sometime around April when it is clear that Hillary wins (economy bottoms around Oct/Nov, followed by a slow rebound/jobless recovery etc).

if you want to see a single payer disaster, look at US Medicare. That system is systematically bilked by doctors and hospitals. The federal government currently spends more on health care than all of the HMOS and private insurance, and the feds cover, at most, 15% of the population. It is a disaster.
M-F | Homepage | 01.24.08 - 6:19 pm | #

Yeah, lets look at medicare, it spends $0.98 of every dollar on actual HC, the HMO's spend $0.80 or less, the rest goes to high salaries of execs, marketing, Ads, and trying to figure out who might actually get sick so you can deny them coverage. Also with a Single payer system, there is ONE claim form. No need for every Dr. in the country to hire an assistant who can deal with the claims, thus driving up costs. The total amount of med malpractice awards is minisucle in the context of total health care spaending which is currently running at 16% of GDP, about 2x as much as any other OECD country.

Just wanted to add some notes to the Universal Healthcare debate. I'm a Canadian who has worked in both in public and private delivery side of the system and have obviously been a patient of said system for going on 34 years. The biggest problem with the Canadian system is we don't have enough doctors. This isn't a funding issue, this is a supply-side cartel where doctors are forcing patients to compete for their services as opposed to a situation where doctors compete for us as consumers. Regardless of any other factors, no system can work efficiently in such an environment. Force the Medical Associations to dramatically increase Med School enrollment and many of our problems re: wait times and general service disappear. There's a list of about 5 other things that need to be done too (small user fees to avoid chronic abuse of services, requirements for all doctors to start their careers working Emerg, stop subsidization of vanity doctors who specialize in fake boobs and botox, and lastly enabling nurse practicioners to deal with the boring stuff to lighten the load factor on doctors, etc.) but bottom line is if you gave someone with a clue a mandate, you could fix all the problems with Canadian Healthcare without spending one extra cent. It's bureaucratic stupidity and greed that are the biggest hurdles to efficiency.

"I would have thought that "seasonal adjustment" would do the same kind of thing to unadjusted numbers for a particular month from year to year."

Does it have anything to do with MLK holiday and how many days there are to file a claim?

The 600 lb issue with health costs that nobody want to address is the cost to extend life when someone is dying. The average person will consume more health care in the last 6 months of life than they would have their entire life up until then. As long as aggressive and expensive health care is expected and prescribed to extend life, costs will increase no matter what other changes are made, unless somebody becomes brave enough to put the issue and facts on the table for discussion.

wtf?

It's pathological to believe medicare is the pedestal of healthcare.

These kind of rumours and talks are just more fuel for the bounce. But thats all it will be. A BOUNCE.

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