Maggie's Farm

I have missed meaningful paper gains in the past year by being out of equities. I must be a lousy gambler. I steer clear of casinos. Zero Hedge explains what I have been seeing this year: The worse the economic numbers are, the higher the markets go. That's because lousy real numbers make the Fed afraid of quitting QE (which they should have done more than a year ago) and want to print money like crazy.

Good economic numbers could cause a crash. 

It's a virtual market, a fantasy market, a bubble, a hot air balloon. Will it end someday? Will somebody be there to buy your stuff when you decide to dump it?  Chart Of The Day: Bernanke Has Officially Created The Bizarro Market.

Buy low, sell high is my gambling rule of thumb. 

Trading is not investing, but people make money doing it. This is a fascinating view of a growing part of Wall St. and world markets, and interesting people too. (H/T Exposing Wall Street's Hidden "Code")

Just imagine federally-managed and controlled legal insurance. After all, legal access and justice is a real right. At Jacobson:

The great Obamacare reform is turning into the great thrust of tens of millions of people onto Medicaid.

The problem is, fewer and fewer doctors are willing to take Medicaid patients because the reimbursements are so low.

I have met numerous doctors who tell me they either refuse Medicaid patients or restrict them because the reimbursements do not cover their costs.  They also double and triple book, because so many Medicaid patients who make appointments don’t show up.  As to Medicare the payments currently are bearable, but only because private insurance payments for other patients make up the shortfall.

Increasingly, doctors are abandoning the government payment train wreck, and going all cash or some hybrid.  This all was foreseeable and was foreseen.

The millions of new Medicaid patients will have insurance, just no doctors to see them.   That is a feature, not a glitch, to those who want single payer.  Obamacare is proceeding accordingly to plan.

Socialism requires government force. A key tactic is to break and disrupt things, and then to jump in with a forced plan to fix it.

It's interesting that, in most of the discussion of medical care, the source of the heavy costs are neglected: expensive procedures and hospital care at the end of life. An office visit to an internist or family practitioner is still inexpensive.

What is the "Tea Party" about? The Prof is not a Conservative, nor a Tea Partier.

No "Tea Party" exists. It's just a lot of people with similar views. Include me in.

That was an American flag, remember. The Prof. says:

We aren’t seeing a right-leaning populist surge today because of Alger Hiss; we are seeing it because many Americans believe that President Obama’s liberal and technocratic agenda represents a threat to a way of life they value. We are seeing it because many Americans blame the establishment of both parties both for the financial crisis and for the vast transfer of resources to the wealthy that came after the crash. We are seeing it because whether you look at foreign or domestic policy, the technocratic suggestions of the Great and the Good have not been helping ordinary Americans much for the last 20 years.

Will a Mayor DeBlasio return NYC to its dystopian past? Sultan Knish sure thinks so: It's DeBlasio Time

If he's right, I'd advise our readers to explore some of the wonderful neighborhoods of the city asap. Right now, it's a lovely, vibrant, youthful, colorful and safe place to visit, thanks (mostly) to Mayor Giuliani. It is drawing all of the ambitious young people of America and the world, and it's packed with tourists too. That's why it's expensive.

Daylight Saving Time Is Terrible: Here's a Simple Plan to Fix It

Via Mead.

Fracking has been done for decades, without any problems. What would be the problem?