While listening to Nancy Pelosi talk during the bipartisan meeting on health reform, I came up with the ultimate solution to health care reform. I won’t take all of the credit for it, it was mostly Nancy’s idea.
Ms. Pelosi wants to pass new legislature so that everybody can have access to health care. Not just healthcare, but better healthcare. The new health reform will lower costs, increase accessibility and increase performance. This is great. I didn’t realize that all of this can happen with the stroke of a pen. Capitalism and the markets are totally unnecessary… And that’s when it hit me.
If she can just legislate the way to better healthcare, she should start at the heart of the problem. Don’t mandate healthcare for everybody. Mandate away the need for healthcare at all. Mandate an end to cancer. That’s right, make it impossible to get cancer, with the stroke of a pen. Not just cancer, mandate away diabetes and obesity and heart disease and asthma and osteoporosis and depression and AIDS. Once we’re legislated our way out of all of these health problems, we’ll be in great shape. Then we can start getting into the more exciting things. Legislate my ability to fly. Legislate my ability to have mind control. Oh, and legislate the end to war and famine.
Thanks.
Tags: Health Care, Politics
According to the Citibank’s client manual (see the last paragraph on page 23),
Withdrawal Notice
We reserve the right to require seven (7) days advance notice before permitting a withdrawal from all checking, savings and money market accounts. We currently do not exercise this right and have not exercised it in the past.
After receiving a lot of attention online, Citibank confirmed the notice with the following comment:
When Citibank moved to unlimited FDIC coverage in 2009, we had to reclassify many checking accounts to allow for immediate withdrawals in order to ensure all customers qualified for the additional coverage. When we moved back to standard FDIC coverage with most major banks in 2010, Citibank decided to reclassify those accounts back to make them eligible again for promotional incentives. To do so, Federal Reserve Reg D requires these accounts, called NOW accounts, to reserve the right to require a 7-day notice of withdrawal. We recently communicated this technical requirement to our customers. However, we have never exercised this right and have no plans to do so in the future.
While Citibank claims to have no plans to enforce this rule, its good to know that it exists.
Tags: Banking
Here’s an update on my previous post on bank failures.
Since the end of October there have been 40 more bank failures (9 in November, 16 in December and 15 in January).
With 15 bank failures in January, it’s still too early to tell if we’ll break 2009’s record of 144 failures, but my money is on yes! We might even break the 181 bank failures of 1992. Going any further back isn’t a fair comparison because multi-branch banking wasn’t nearly as popular.
6 month trend
Although there was a small drop in the 6-month trend in January, the trend is still upward.
Failures by state
Georgia (34), Illinois (26), California (24) and Florida (24) combined now account for a slight majority (51% or 108/212) of bank failures across the country.
Tags: Banking, Recession
Here’s a tag cloud of Obama’s 2010 State of the Union Address. Thanks to the New York times for the text and to Wordle for the tool.
Update: A lot of people are asking why the words “I” and “me” aren’t included. The reason is that Wordle probably thinks that the word is a “stop word” (a frequently-used, but unimportant word, such as “the”, “and” or “but”).
Tags: Politics
On January 22, 2009 Obama issued an Executive Order stating, among other things, that
The detention facilities at Guantánamo for individuals covered by this order shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than 1 year from the date of this order. If any individuals covered by this order remain in detention at Guantánamo at the time of closure of those detention facilities, they shall be returned to their home country, released, transferred to a third country, or transferred to another United States detention facility in a manner consistent with law and the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States.
That’s right. By January 22, 2010, the Guantanamo Detention Facilities will be closed. Except it didn’t happen. It’s one year later, and Guantanamo is still open. Sure some of the detainees have been transferred to other countries, and there’s talk of moving many of the inmates to another prison in Illinois (still without a trial), but bottom line, this hasn’t happened yet. Obama’s Executive Order has come due, and has been ignored. What’s the point of speaking and writing up documents when they’ll just be ignored. Was Obama hoping we’d just forget what he was saying a year ago? Maybe if he messes up the economy enough, he’ll be able to take our minds off of Guantanamo?
In the end, there is no accountability. It doesn’t matter what Obama said last year, because things are different now. We should forget about what he said the same way we’ve forgotten about bi-partisanship (when it comes to health care trying to eke by along party lines).
So Obama – don’t make promises you won’t deliver just to look good. You’ll end up looking like a fool with your pants on the ground … sorry couldn’t resist.
It’s no wonder Obama’s ratings continue to drop. There’s no way he’ll be able to keep his 510 promises, if he ever even intended to. Each broken promise will disappoint a little more.
Tags: General, Politics
