@Kevin@OutOfYourRut
I love how the government forgives tax on $38 billion in any profits for citigroup to save them billions. Coincidence gov’t owns 34% of the company? Nope. Everybody is in it together.

Kevin
Kevin@OutOfYourRut´s last blog ..Ten Great Tips to Advance Your Career

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I think it’s safe to say our government was already involved with health care quite a bit. Medicaid, Medicare and pricing. Also with rules and regulations to control health care companies, and not allowing national competition. To say our government will do a better job than the private sector is just plain hogwash. What’s the purpose to have government run health care? To increase quality of care, save costs

There already is rationing with private run health care and it will be no different with government run health care. Nothing is unlimited, costs will have to be controlled.

While for simple things (ie regular check ups) a government run plan might help save costs. The issue is the costly procedures and when you are near end of life is where you have dramatic costs. This is what’s bankrupting Medicare. How is our government going to save us money then?
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@ctreit
The #1 thing I think is for us NOT to rely on big government or the private sector to take care of ourselves. We need to take care of ourselves. We can’t count on anybody else but our selves, and that’s why education is key.

I’m sorry to say that, but I think a lot of business matters are “Catch 22″ anymore.
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2) How much does Bernanke know about economics? Probably more than Jane White does, or anyone of us does, which may still not be enough. After all, economics is a very fluid and imprecise science since it deals with human decision making.

3) We don’t like government involvement in anything, but it looks like the private sector has not worked out for us in many areas. Two examples. Health care: our health care expenses per capita are about twice as high as they are in other advanced countries, but key numbers like infant mortality and life expectancy are lower than the average of these countries. As a country, we get less from the private sector, but we get to pay almost twice as much for it. Retirement: Jane White’s purpose is reforming retirement programs. The private sector certainly has not served the public very well. – I think we should not be so scared of having the government involved in certain areas in which the private sector has obviously not done such a great job. The government’s involvement in other advanced countries seems to work pretty well. Maybe we should copy some of their programs…

I’m pretty impressed with what the UK legislature is doing right now wrt taxing bonuses over 25K pounds by 50%. Ouch.

I really hope we find a plausible way to fix the retirement crisis. What you write about regarding social security, 401k’s etc is quite true and quite scary.

Congrats on writing such a poignant book. Thanks for stopping by!

Best, Sam-urai

I was in the mortgage business in the 90s when subprime was snaking it’s way thru the mortgage world, and it was being driven by activists threatening lawsuits. The banks responded with good old fashioned risk based pricing, then called subprime because it was more expensive.

Then in the late 90s, early 2000s, the same activists threatened and brought lawsuits for discriminatory pricing, and state governments responded by passing fair lending laws that restricted the price and terms of subprime. Shortly after, we had the subprime mess. Now there is no more subprime.
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John DeFlumeri Jr
JOhn DeFlumeri Jr´s last blog ..Podcast* "Insuring the Youngest Older Americans"

Not disagreeing on equality, but seems like people are confusing it as a right (unconditional) versus a privilege (conditional).

To clarify, I don’t place blame solely on banks. I share your collective “sipping the corporate punch” mindset. My point was to highlight their influence on politicians in relationship to the book. On point #2… sub-prime is only a portion of the whole picture. The over-extending occurred across all levels of income. The sub-primes were just first the “party”. Since we hang in a teeter-totter balance, we still could see another wave of “prime” borrowers default (depending on what sources you read). You do address this with the “strategic defaulters”, but think sub-prime catch too much heat.