My morning reads:

• S&P 500 Rally Shows Analysts Slow or Investors Sanguine (Bloomberg)
• Does Blame Predict Performance? (research associates) see also Only 24% of Active Mutual Fund Managers Outperform the Market Index (nerd wallet)
• How to Save More For Retirement Without Really Trying (WSJ)
• Business Outsider Can a disgraced Wall Street analyst earn trust as a journalist? (New Yorker)
• Zombie foreclosures: 300,000 ‘undead’ properties stalk ex-owners (Christian Science Monitor)
• Meet the Man Who Sold His Fate to Investors at $1 a Share (Wired)
• 21 graphs that show America’s health-care prices are ludicrous (Wonkblog) see also U.S. Health Care Prices Are the Elephant in the Room (Economix)
• When Google lost its cool (Salon)
• Buzzkill? How Climate Change Could Eventually End Coffee (U.S. News) see also Climate Change Rewrites World Wine List (Discovery)
• Great new weather app: Forecast (Forecast)

What are you reading?


Mom and Pop Run With the Bulls

Source: WSJ

Category: Financial Press


20 Responses to “10 Monday AM Reads”

  1. MikeNY says:

    Re healthcare costs. We have to demolish the medical-industrial complex. These is no alternative. That means single-payer healthcare. Our system is FUBAR.

  2. Mike in Nola says:

    Re: Google

    As someone noted on twitter this morning, if Google had put 1/10 the resources into Google Reader that it had into it’s various April Fool jokes, Google Reader would still be around. Avoided it myself so Google couldn’t track what I read, but it was still a useful app for many.

    And, as someone else noted, it’s a safe bet that Google’s joke launch of Google Nose gets more use than Google+.

  3. hue says:

    star crossed? a study of voting behavior shows about half of Reddit’s most popular links died quiet deaths on first submission

    taibbi: the sham(e) of three strike laws while Wall Street crooks walk, thousands sit in California prisons for life over crimes as trivial as stealing socks

  4. willid3 says:

    3 days that shook the world?

    used to be that the drug cartels only really impacted border states. no more seems they want to ‘invade’ all of the states.

    guess they will not stop till they have also invaded Canada too

  5. rd says:

    I live in Western NY. Vinifera grapes were first planted around the Finger Lakes in 1958 by Dr. Konstantin Frank. Since then more than 100 wineries based on vinifera grapes have popped up up. Initially, they were just doing the cold climate chardonnay and riesling grapes but now we are seeing a lot of Bordeaux style wines. A warming climate should be beneficial to much of the agriculture in our area although it will reduce the maple sugar production.

  6. rd says:

    The solution to the medical cost conundrum is a very simple. One. The other countries simply are doing it wrong. They need to privatize their health care systems so that the population will be free to spend more money. This should equalize the healthcare spending across the developed world so that the US doesn’t have this competitive disadvantage.

    But seriously, healthcare is a classic example of the susceptibility ofAamericans to propaganda. You wrap outrageous healthcare costs in the American flag, burble on about freedom and the American way of live, and how government just screws everything up, and you end up with 50% more costs that people pay willingly to the 1%.

    I have family in Canada. I can assure you that they have no idea what Americans are talking about when they talk about how bad the Canadian healthcare system is. If Canadians wanted to shorten wait times etc, they could easily ask for their premiums to go up 10% to 12%-13% of GDP as they have a 6.5% competive cushion on healthcare costs compared to the US. Canadians view the US healthcare system as immoral as it leaves large swathes of the population uninsured or under-insured. Bankruptcy due to healthcare costs is rare in Canada while it is one of the most common causes in the US. Healthcare coverage is barely a conversation topic with respect to changing jobs in Canada.

    • rj chicago says:

      Population in Canda – much smaller than US.

      • formerlawyer says:

        I am puzzled by this thinking “USA more populous than X country”, “USA more diverse than X country”, “USA has ____ problems” to deny any role in country comparisons to the United States. A self-blinders problem?

        In this particular comparison would not a smaller population raise costs per capita for expensive treatments, hospital care, diagnostic testing etc.?

      • rd says:


        Usually larger market drives prices and costs down, not up.

        There are also more MRI machines per capita in the US than in Canada so one whould think that the greater supply for equal demand would drive MRI costs down in the US compared to Canada. That hasn’t happened.

        We also keep hearing about how the cost of doing business is higher in “socialist” countries like Canada and Europe, yet somehow they manage to deliver their health care at a substantial discount ot the US.

        Supply and demand theory doesn’t appear to work in reducing prices in the private health care sector in the US.

      • Biffah Bacon says:

        Frequently (but certainly not always and not to impugn that poster) that argument line is code for “they don’t have blah people.” Usually used when discussing the Scandinavian countries’ success despite socialism, why health care is only for certain people, why unemployment and social security should be limited to certain kinds of people or eliminated.
        I think the underlying issue is that health care isn’t a market, following Ken Arrow’s 1963 paper.
        Health insurance has become racketeering in my mind, almost like the old protection racket. Shame if something happened to that circulatory system, pal.

      • formerlawyer says:

        I thought rjchicago’s point was that Canada’s smaller population allowed for a single-payer system whereas the bigger American population did not. Why?

        I have seen this in numerous comment threads regarding education, health care, bank regulation, gun control etc. That is what I am curious about, how does one connect differences between countries to the argument at hand? I see this more a matter of “why” the enumerated difference makes a “US to country X” invalid or at least weak that was notably lacking in rchicago’s post.

        I believe your point was the flip side of my point that a smaller population, all things being equal (another economic idiocy), would require more money to provide the same level of service. However as you note, the law of supply and demand seems to be divorced in the health care industry in the United States for a number of reasons.

      • Irwin Fletcher says:

        I was recently in Addis, Ethiopia and visited a CT scan and MRI clinic. At CT scan costs $60 and an MRI costs $120. Same machines.

  7. techy says:

    Seems like china can promote its local companies and bully foreign competion out of China.

    I dont think USA can do the same we basically give paper to the chinese for real stuff.

  8. willid3 says:

    if you really want to be able to commit crimes and not pay for it. be a big bank

    even those who are ‘tough’ on crime won’t slam then. even if they do it for Iran.

    • rd says:

      There are people on Death Row in this ocuntry who had far less hard evidence against them than executives for the big banks doing money laundering and other illegal activities. yet somehow, they can’t even be made to lose their jobs, never mind go to jail.

  9. Conan says:

    This is definitely a very difficult economic recovery:

    Wages Stink at America’s Most Common Jobs

    Wall Street, Baseball Salaries See Post-Steroid Austerity–baseball-salaries-see-post-steroid-austerity-162103564.html

    Hiring Spreads, but Only 14 Cities Top Prerecession Level

  10. theexpertisin says:

    When one sees the fabulous temples passed off as medical campuses built on the backs of health care bills (stoked by insurance premiums) and fabulous temples passed off as public university campuses built on the backs of taxpayers, Big Medicine and Big Education are in need of a haircut. Better yet, a scalping.

    Both are systemically unsustainable entities in their present and ongoing form.

    Was is it they say?…. technological prowess should be cheaper over time, not more expensive.