There has been a great deal of talk and debate about health care in the country recently as the Democrats push Heath Care Reform. A lot of animosity has been directed at the Health Insurance Industry as a whole. As it turns out, some is justified, but some is not. I was [...]

You know, the night the Yankees clinch the American League Championship? They lead the series 3 – 1 over the Angels, and HOPEFULLY, will win again tonight to meet the Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series. The Phillies, in case you missed it, closed out the National League Championship over the LA Dodgers [...]

One just has to wonder what prompted the child in the video below to ask Obama the question he did. Maybe people in his household were decrying the lack of it, or maybe this child was picking up on the animosity in the air, or maybe he just wanted to share the good news [...]

Can you guess which health care costs are rising the fastest? I’ll even help you out by listing the top five (and portraying them in my toon).
Cancer
Asthma
Trauma (externally inflicted injuries)
Heart Conditions
Mental illness
Got your answer in mind?

By now, surely you have heard about the White House threatening a Gag Order on insurance companies, Humana in particular out of KY. Why? Because they dare to tell their members what will happen to Medicare Advantage if the current Health Care Bill goes through. Damn their eyes – what are they [...]

(Updated at end of post with excellent video of Dylan Ratigan’s Morning Meeting talking about the administrations “un-American” deals.)
We must have misunderstood. We actually thought the whole point of reforming health care was to help the american people have better, more affordable health care. We thought the promise was:
BARACK OBAMA’S PLAN FOR A [...]

No doubt, you know there are plans afoot by Obama and Congress to extend health care benefits to all. It raises that sticky question of just how these costs will be covered. And when I say costs, I mean at least one TRILLION dollars, though I have seen estimates that are higher. [...]

Who can ever forget the Seinfeld episode featuring the Soup Nazi? Well, in that same vein, the insurance company Genworth Financial was just summarily thrown out of the Treasury “line” to receive TARP funds. The WSJ reports, Genworth Financial Shares Slump on TARP Ineligibility:
Shares of Genworth Financial Inc. fell as much as 31% Monday [...]

I have written at length about the problems within the banking, insurance, hedge fund, and consumer finance industries over the last 6 months. While the bulk of the media focus has been on the banking industry – and primarily the large money center banks – the erosion in asset values at these other financial companies [...]

The movie Jaws struck fear into the souls of beachgoers in the mid-70s. If our current economy were only a scary movie. A classic scene in Jaws occurred when the salty mariner Quint eyed the shark and informed his sidekicks, “we need a bigger boat.”
In similar fashion, the size of the losses embedded in [...]

The kangaroo court on Capitol Hill just passed a bill to tax bonus payments at a 90% rate for employees (with family incomes in excess of $250,000) of AIG and other firms that received $5 billion or more in government bailouts. In my opinion, this piece of legislation is a poorly constructed means of [...]

CNN.com and C-Span3. (We’ll also post a live thread for Obama’s town hall meeting later.) Via C-Span:

Edward Liddy, AIG Chairman & CEO, appearing before congress, stated that he has asked AIG employees who received bonus money to return some of the money. He also said that “in reviewing how AIG had been run in [...]

***Cross-posted from my blog, Sense on Cents. Come by and visit!
Given the public outrage over the millions in bonus payments at AIG, is there any doubt that there has been a massive failure to perform by all involved?
When AIG was on the verge of bankruptcy last September, I am willing to bet the topic of [...]

When an entity has an 80% equity stake in a company, one may think that nothing of substance could happen there without that majority shareholder’s consent. Well, how is it that the black hole known as AIG to Pay $450 Million in Bonuses.
We may see some arm waving and loud pronouncements from Congress about [...]

In very short order, the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) has seen its reserves plummet from $50 billion to $18.9 billion at the end of 2008. At that pace and with the expectation of more bank failures, could this bedrock of our national banking system go broke? Well, FDIC’s Bair Says Insurance Fund Could Be [...]