Re: a single payer initiative, could they toss around the socialist/communist epithet any more than they have anyway? Doubt it.

you may be right. i just think that the dems including obama saw the political price too high with single payer. the lunatic fringe on the right would just tarred and feathered him as a marxist without mercy. i’m in complete agreement that conceding anything to the gop should have been a nonstarter. i’m convinced that these fuckers would rather have another 9/11 than give obama a chance to claim credit for anything.

“90% of new money into mutual funds in 2009 is avoiding equities.”

Interesting. I believe the baby boomers have been burned one too many times, and all too many are looking at a very sparse retirement fund.

I don’t agree for one second that Taibbi was too hard on the Dems or on Obama. One of his best points was how, in a misguided attempt to reach out to the GOP (which they of course took as a sign of weakness) he took single payer off the table at the very beginning. Had he used it more effectively as a bargaining chip instead of caving long before he needed to, there is no doubt in my mind, given the public’s level of disgust with the status quo, that a public option of some sort would have made it into the final bill.

As for Taibbi’s expletives which seem to have offended some (one?) on the board, they pale in comparison to the obscenity which poses as our federal government.

and if little frankie has a problem with my colorful choice of language he can shove it up his “intelligent” you know what.

the whole world is a bubble at this point- a world wide collapse in the offing-

when? don’t know- but the higher they force up markets- the bigger the drop-

next leg down could be vomit inducing

I thought that you especially would be interested in this:

CHINA WILL BE A BIGGER BUBBLE THAN JAPAN

He’s still bearish, very bearish.

“I’m worried that investors are getting overly enthusiastic. They see a couple of month-to-month sequential home price increases, (and they get excited). We saw the exact same thing a year ago. Don’t get faked out by the seasonality.”

“We think home prices have another year to go before they bottom and that’s going to impact any stock that has exposure to the housing sector.”

His outlook comes in stark contrast to what we’ve been hearing from countless market mavens and even Fed Chief Ben Bernanke who all seem to agree the recession is over…”
http://www.cnbc.com/id/32877931

for what’s it Worth, I’d go a’wagerin’ With yon’ Tilson..
~~
and, this clip w/ Bob Diamond, from Barclay’s, needs to be understood..
http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1259093546&play=1

He lays out, in so many words, what the Future will look like, if these current Trends are allowed to metastisize.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/metastasize
no ‘c’ in metastasize..but, with these two pieces, at least, less BS in CNBC..

Best viewed with something to catch the vomit nearby. The numbers ARE representative of today’s per-family health insurance costs.