A blog called "The Market Ticker," reported that on August 25, 2007, 37% of the volume of trade was among four worthless companies, Fanny Mae, Freddie Mac, CitiBank and BoA.

The blogger called it "hot potato trading." See:

http://market-ticker.org/archives/2009/08/25.html

SV is a bastion of electrical engineers and software engineers. There are few chemical companies and very few chemical engineers in SV. The SV expertise can advance new technologies, including greentech, but it is in the area of developing new and improved control systems for the new technology. SV technology is also very important to new electrical grid embodiments.

The chemE's are in Minmeapolis, working at 3M and for medical device companies. They are also in Texas, working for the petrochemical industry. There is no "greentech" equivalent to the advances in software that occurred in SV because there is no concentration of talent.

I am a chemE and a patent attorney. I do not know of any significant source of work in Silicon Valley. There used to be some work in the semiconductor area, related mainly to materials, but much of that has left the country.

The health care reform act has been written by the big insurance lobby. This is evidenced by a complete absence of cost containment and unlimited power to set premiums and coverage. The public option has been crafted to fail because it requires the federal government to accept the folks requiring the most expensive but underfunds its ability to provide that care.

If this thing passes in anything like its present form, I will be forced to pay the $3000 fine because I will not be able to afford the premiums. One of the provisions allows the insurance companies to increase premiums by a factor of 8-fold, based upon the age of the policy holder. That would put my annual premium costs at $60,000/year! It will make a lot more sense for me to escrow the money, pay the fine, and tell the insurance cos. and the federal gov't. to go to hell. For that $60K, the insurance cos. are required to provide an exam for breast cancer, and colon cancer. Big f__ing deal.

Our law firm has provided all its employees with a very good health insurance program over the past 15 years. Under the proposed bill, we will have to pay a 35% surcharge or find the cheapest goddam policy that we can. Our firm is small. A 35% surcharge on the existing policy will require us to lay-off people to stay in business. Layoff or provide a crappy policy. This is not change I can believe in.

I voted for Obama because I thought that he was in touch with the problems of the average American. Obama is clearly bright and thoughtful. I gave him the benefit of the doubt when he bailed out the banks. However, I am still waiting to see the perp walks. Now that he seems quite willing to give big insurance the power to rape what is left in my pocketbook and provide nothing in return, I have the wonder. Whose side is this guy on?

Of course I know how a bill becomes law and I was referring to the Baucus bill. I hope you are right and any final bill has some sort of rationality in it. I am skeptical at this point, however, that it will be anything other than a BJ for big insurance. The dems have shown that they are just as corrupt and self serving as the repubs.

Isn't that a conflict of interest? Although, since GS owns the United States Treasury, I guess it makes sense.

The aging of the baby boomers has tipped the demographics so that health insurance is a failing business model. That is why the insurance companies are trying to force everyone to buy whatever it is that they actually are selling, but even those extra premiums won't be enough. So, as far as I can tell, insurance companies have no obligation under the proposed legislation to provide much of anything for their outrageous premiums.

If this "reform" initiative becomes law, I will pay the fine, the lesser of two evils, and save money that would have been spent on premiums for out of pocket stuff, like shots and blood pressure medication. If I get a catastrophic illness, I'll either file for bankrupcy, which I would have to do even with insurance, or die.

The blog Financial Armageddon has a posting on this subject today and makes this observation:

"Welcome to another aspect of banana-republicdom. In a banana republic, the members of the national legislature will be (a) largely for sale and (b) consulted only for ceremonial and rubber-stamp purposes some time after all the truly important decisions have already been made elsewhere."

I hoped that when Obama came into office, he would have made financial services reform and perpetrator arrest his first orders of business. That obviously did not happen. Instead, he appears to be receiving counsel only from Wall Street; i.e. Summers and Geithner.

Then, I hoped that citizens would, perhaps, take their own vigilante action against the Wall Street gang, like the workers in China, who beat to death, the tenth richest man. That seems increasingly unlikely. Americans are sheep.

My friends and coworkers are now thinking the unthinkable. We are going to take what is left of our wealth, energy and ideas and get the hell out. This is not our country anymore.

Set them on fire.

I was recently on a NWA flight, in first class, suffering through a kid screaming at the top of its lungs for the last 45 minutes of the flight. We surmised that the kid was sick with an earache and was basically being tortured for the latter part of the flight. The parents should have been charged with child abuse.

I applaud SWA. I wish them and other airlines would apply a very stiff surcharge to anyone under 12, in order to discourage flying with kids.

that the Holy Water didn't start to boil.