http://www.redstate.com/blackhedd Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:13:57 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I think of the RedState community as my extended family, and I’m grateful to all of you for reading my past missives on markets and finance. I’ve been all but absent from the front page for months now, and I owe you an explanation. First, my businesses have been performing very ... http://www.redstate.com/blackhedd/2009/11/02/introducing-angelo-maragos-republican-for-new-york-city-council/ There are many good reasons to have a deep conversation about how health insurance works in this country, because there is a lot of things wrong with it. What we're getting from Obama and Congress, however, is a PR campaign designed to distract us from the fact that they would ... http://www.redstate.com/blackhedd/2009/08/16/introducing-competition-to-the-health-insurance-market/ Here's Lanny Davis, the former Clinton team member and all-around Democratic good guy, on the subject of the "public option" crowding out private competition, and becoming a stalking horse for a single-payer system: "I favor a public option - but the White House needs to explain better why, if public option ... http://www.redstate.com/blackhedd/2009/08/12/lanny-davis-on-the-public-option/ This morning, the Commerce Department published the much-awaited first look at US second-quarter GDP. You're going to hear in the news that the recession is officially over, because the economy is reported to have shrunk in Q2 at a 1.0 percent annual rate. This compares with 6.4% in the first ... http://www.redstate.com/blackhedd/2009/07/31/a-preliminary-reading-of-the-gdp-report/ The largest publicly-owned health insurers in America are United Healthgroup, WellPoint, Cigna International, and Aetna. (Blue Cross and Blue Shield are also dominant players in this industry, but it's harder to get financial data on them.) A couple of important points: Health insurance isn't the inordinately profitable industry that Obama and ... http://www.redstate.com/blackhedd/2009/06/18/the-health-insurance-industry-is-on-fire/ How much would you pay for "New GM"? About a year ago, all of GM's common stock put together was worth maybe $2 billion, give or take, depending on the day. Go back three years, when things were merely bad instead of catastrophic for them, and people laughed at me whenever ... http://www.redstate.com/blackhedd/2009/06/03/barack-obama-worse-than-bernie-madoff/ I've been telling people privately to watch the bond market for about a week now. Since last Thursday, we've seen a very sharp, fast drop in prices for medium and long-term US Treasury securities, which (in consequence) increases yields. The yield of the 10-year note, which is a critical indicator ... http://www.redstate.com/blackhedd/2009/05/28/bond-market-distress/ Ok, so the essence of Obama's fiscal policy is to increase taxes and fees on business and on the top-earning 5% of the population. Everyone else gets tax cuts and vast increases in services, like national health insurance and enforced production of electric cars. And of course, the government has ... http://www.redstate.com/blackhedd/2009/05/27/well-this-happened-about-18-months-before-i-expected-it/ This one is odd, and it has a few moving parts I haven't figured out yet, but you still need to know about it. In case you hear the Administration start bragging about a sudden reduction in this year's deficit by about $175 billion, here's what they're talking about: they're going ... http://www.redstate.com/blackhedd/2009/05/13/obama-brings-transparency-to-federal-budget-accounting/ Somewhat peevishly, the President went to some lengths to portray his current budget as fiscally disciplined. One supposes that he gave his people the mandate to find some impressive number of programs to cut, amounting to some impressive dollar amount. In the event, he got 121 cut programs (most of ... http://www.redstate.com/blackhedd/2009/05/08/obama-grades-his-budget-on-a-curve-get-ready-for-a-vat/ Tim Geithner went to market today to sell 30-year bonds, and he got plastered. The interest rate shot up past 4.28%, and it pulled up the rest of the right side of the yield curve. The auction went unexpectedly bad as there were relatively fewer bids than in the past. Before ... http://www.redstate.com/blackhedd/2009/05/07/bond-market-epic-fail/ This is a very quick initial response to the extraordinary announcement of the Chrysler LLC bankruptcy filing. We don't have all the answers, but that's partly because we don't even have all the questions. Something very new and different is happening here. It's very far from clear to me that this ... http://www.redstate.com/blackhedd/2009/04/30/chrysler/ This isn't going to be a major story, but I'm awfully sore about it, and I'm not the only one. Shortly before 10am this morning, a low-flying airliner buzzed New York Harbor just south of Manhattan, tailed by a pair of fighter jets. In case you weren't here one dazzling September ... http://www.redstate.com/blackhedd/2009/04/27/new-york-city-is-barack-obamas-town-we-just-live-in-it/ Your RedState front-page contributors have a lively back-channel communications system, in which we plot and plan strategy and discuss the critical issues of the day. (And yes, we talk about you too, Dear Readers.) One of my colleagues just expressed the meaning of his life thusly: "I absolutely LIVE to drive fast.  ... http://www.redstate.com/blackhedd/2009/04/24/frakking-fast-cars/ You've seen the reports that Freddie Mac's CFO was found dead at home this morning, an apparent suicide. One unstable newbie CFO doesn't bother me too much, and the event isn't causing much of a ripple in the bond markets this morning. The interesting thing about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ... http://www.redstate.com/blackhedd/2009/04/22/about-freddie-mac/ “We cannot continue to excuse poor decisions” and “cannot make the survival of our auto industry dependent on an unending flow of taxpayer dollars." Thus Barack Obama, on the subject of General Motors. This was in the course of a speech given yesterday, which indeed rewarded poor decisions by giving ... http://www.redstate.com/blackhedd/2009/03/31/obama-channelling-orwell-comes-clean-on-his-intentions-for-gm/ The President of the United States is a man who has succeeded largely by substituting charisma for substance. It's critically important for him to look like a heavyweight. Understanding this well, the New York Times is obliging Mr. Obama with the headline "Obama Issues Ultimatum to Carmakers," accompanied by a ... http://www.redstate.com/blackhedd/2009/03/30/lipstick-on-a-pig/ The big headline yesterday was that GM CEO Rick Wagoner is being dismissed in favor of Fritz Henderson. This isn’t remarkable in itself, because no one expected him to last, despite having the oft-expressed (in public, anyway) full confidence of GM’s board . Today, the President of the United States is ... http://www.redstate.com/blackhedd/2009/03/30/general-motors-hurtles-toward-bankruptcy/ In the late 1960s, there was a well-publicized furor over corporations and individuals with very high incomes who, through combinations of legal tax-avoidance activities, wound up not  paying income taxes. So Congress responded with the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), which now hits millions of individuals and can't easily be adjusted ... http://www.redstate.com/blackhedd/2009/03/23/congress-prepares-to-create-some-new-unintended-consequences/ We've been watching the President of the United States hyperventilate in shock over the fact that publicly-owned financial companies pay bonuses even when they lose money. It's really hard not to get the impression that Obama is playing to the galleries here. He and David Axelrod were probably blindsided by ... http://www.redstate.com/blackhedd/2009/03/17/a-few-important-clarifications-about-aig/