nathaniel

Bingo. So-called "earmarks" on money are entirely illusory. Plus, a nitpick with lawrocket: when you buy a house with a mortgage, you do own the house. The bank gets a lien--they can't move in, or tell you how to dress the place. You get the ups and downs on the property if it appreciates or depreciates. For the bank to come in and take ownership is but one of several possible outcomes of a foreclosure process -- other times a sale is forced and the bank takes just the proceeds up to the outstanding balance without ever owning the house. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Who said anything about class envy? I just want to know if I should restructure my retirement plans

Let me get this straight: CEOs can now avoid income tax if they take mortgages from their companies and the company renegotiates the terms down to a pittance? It seems too obvious...what abuse protections are built in? My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I don't think that anybody does, or would in their right mind. 70+ years for $5000 is a bargain. There should be dozens of financial facilities, both private and public to make such transactions feasible. +70 years for $50,000,000, on the other hand, or +15 years in a persistent vegetative state for $300,000 are entirely different questions tho. Part of the challenge is designing the programs so that those people (and their guardians) who could afford the $5000 themselves don't get needless public assistance. Fairness, graft, market abuse, moral hazards etc. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Then it would seem you are in favor of the free market after all. Every man for himself. Quite bold of you to say it outright. ehh...I wouldn't go that far. There are benefits to others (externalities) for getting certain treatments, eg stopping the spread of communicable diseases with vaccines &c. There's not much controversy that these types of treatments should be subsidized. It's nobody's fault. It's everybody's fault. It's a macro problem, individual fault is not much at issue. It's what the overall health care system forces vs allows us to do in aggregate, and how in aggregate we behave under the constraints imposed. The current socialized health care benefit system we have is already projected to be too expensive, in aggregate, per the GAO. There's not enough GDP to expand it or extend benefits to all. There are efficiencies to be made here and there but none of them really addresses the core demographic and treatment / cost trends. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

If I could promise you an additional 5 minutes of life at the end of your life, at the cost of $1000 per, would you buy it? Would you ask me to pay for it for you? Would it be right for the federal government to force me to pay for it for you? There is a limit somewhere, that is all. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

If there only were some sort of charitable, non-profit institution you could give your money to, in lieu of taxes till the tax code suits your desired level of giving. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

If you wish to overspend, by all means try to take out a loan to do so. Try a HELOC or a 2nd mortgage, they are popular these days. It is not moral to screw over the living in vain pursuit of weeks / hours / minutes of additional suffering for the nearly dead. Oddly enough, it's not even an option to voluntarily opt-out, except in Oregon. Washington may pass a law like Oregon's soon. Really, you should look up QALYs. If you don't like it, try criticizing it instead of flaming about morals. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Not without ham and jalapenos. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Well that's a cute way to put it but it ignores the meat of the issue. Nearly everyone, even the rich, dies from lack of services. There's almost always some additional procedure, new trial drug, or intervention that could give someone near death a shot at additional time alive. Some services are too expensive to be worthwhile, and for people to die instead of overconsume is better than the alternative on the whole, because overconsumption by the moribund threatens the living. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Socialized meds (or health care rather) will either break the bank or will be at sharply reduced benefit levels compared to what's promised today. And/or result in drastically higher taxes. It is not really up for debate--the GAO Comptroller General has spoken. Either he's wrong or you're wrong. He's not a rightie or a leftie. He's an accountant and he has the books and the projected population growth. What proportion of GDP do you think the economy could bear to spend on health care, whether gov't or privately administered? Politely but firmly, you in are way over your head if you think the contemporary currency market has anything to do with it. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

The XFL also capped player salaries at $4000 per game, $5000 for the QB, either way a poor bargain for a player to risk early death or injury from drug use / abuse. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

In economic terms the relative performance of one currency to another has approximately zero relationship to health care -- at least until you get to Zimbabwe-like scenarios where the printing presses start rolling to "fund" universal coverage. There's a leading theory that currency fluctuations mean very little beyond fuel for pissing contests between nationalists. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics#Criticism The stock market historically has been a pretty good leading indicator of the economy. Individual stocks, not so much. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Not so. They explain it better than I can. From what I understand, the terms under which the loans were securitized get in the way. Also, re: the "it's only subprime sentiment", another great post that spells out looming problems with 2nd mortgages. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Bush didn't announce a bail out or a buy out. The gov't is clearing the path for the market to function naturally. What the gov't is doing is removing regulatory barriers that were preventing lenders and borrowers from voluntarily modifying their existing contracts. Both sides still have to opt in. Since you seem to disagree with this, why should lenders not be allowed to renegotiate with about-to-be-delinquent borrowers? Perhaps you would motivate for total deregulation...since that's pretty much out of the question, it still makes sense that from time to time it is necessary to rejigger arcane regulations when they get in the way of the market healing itself. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

lawrocket: kelpdiver: Correct me if I'm wrong but it doesn't appear that gov't or taxpayer dollars are (yet) involved to any significant degree. Afaik all that's been announced is that the gov't is acting as a regulator and an intermediary to facilitate a detente between borrowers and lenders (purportedly) for the market's own best interest. From what I can tell the lenders are getting a bit of a raw deal but aren't freaking out because they fear the effects of uncontrolled forclosures & interest rates more than the downside to pinning these mortgages where they are. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

It's not just subprime loans that are at issue -- SIVs based off of ostensibly prime or average credit histories are being downgraded (read, jeopardized) as well. Foreclosure rates for all categories of borrowers are going up under the adverse market conditions, including prime. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I think you're misreading the purpose and the scale of the freeze. Although it involves a temporary stay on interest rates, which translates into a windfall for the borrowers, the purpose of the action is to address a feedback loop. Foreclosure, although desirable in isolation as a contractual element when a borrower defaults, is not desirable in large amounts. Foreclosed properties lose a lot of value due to banks not caring about the property and wanting liquidity and former homeowners having hard feelings and typically not caring for the property either. Too many foreclosures also increases the strain on financial instruments based on the loans that were (perhaps negligently or even fraudulently, we will see in time) packaged and sold off in large quantities on the market. There's a decent chance you hold some indirectly if you have retirement accounts based on pensions or mutual funds. The strain on these financial instruments contributes to higher interest rates, which could lead to higher foreclosures, etc. So, while I'd hesitate to say that I'm in favor of this action, I don't think it's entirely without merit. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Roffle. OK I'll pay for the health care after you pay for the border fence, sensors, watchmen, and the billions lost to economic inefficiencies thus created. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Of course not, the data speaks the opposite: illegals consume healthcare services such as emergency hospitals at much lower rates than citizens. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-immigrants27nov27,0,3788600.story?coll=la-tot-callocal&track=ntothtml Those illegal sympathizers at the Archives of Internal Medicine... My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

In other news, republicans report themselves as more heterosexual than others. Definitely not gay. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I get your point: immigration should be illegal because it is illegal. Way to distinguish premise from conclusion there, Socrates. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Due to the nearly arbitrary ways--people call it a lottery for good reason--in which we've tightened immigration, the distinction is not nearly as clear as it seems. If we could magically enforce all the immigration laws on our books today it would decimate the economy. There are clearly undesirables among the mix of illegal immigrants, as there are criminals among our "legal" citizenry. Criminals among illegal immigrants do not justify wholesale deportations of the people whose illegal migration supports our economy, any more than the criminals among us citizens justify locking up the rest of us. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Do go on. edit: or is this another euphemism...iow the difference is that proportionately more illegal immigrants are Mexican... My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?