Category Archives: Money and risk
The “giant cash suck” of healthcare – part 2
In a prior post I introduced my view that we are not paying enough attention in the healthcare discussion to the top-line “giant cash suck” that causes U.S. healthcare costs to be over twice the per-capita level of many countries that achieve true universal coverage while delivering equal or better outcomes. In this second part, I will explore where much… Read more »
The “giant cash suck” of healthcare – part 1
What do the great cathedrals of Europe, the Las Vegas “Strip” and an impressive new hospital in economically-challenged northern Michigan have in common? They all answer the question, “Who controls the big cashflow here?” I have been struck in awe visiting many Old Europe cathedrals, but I also have been troubled by the “real history” of the stark contrast between… Read more »
Marginal investors and the sport of curling
I have long compared professional investment advising to the sport of curling. The financial market is this heavy stone sliding down what seems like an inexorable path toward some destined end. But instead of the sport’s two sweepers trying as a team to influence the “curl,” or the direction of that stone, the capital markets employ tens of thousands of… Read more »
How credit card debt makes income inequality worse
Debt financing is commonly called leverage for a good reason: The lever is one of the classic “six simple machines” we learned about in school. Using a long stick and a fulcrum, a lever trades distance moved for force, enabling the lifting of a heavy object, or, in a financial example, the purchase of a new car with little money… Read more »
A refresher on Trump real estate finance
With the recent New York Times publication of an investigation into Donald Trump’s early-1990s taxes, a lot of bad information has bounced around social media from both Trump’s supporters and his detractors. I wrote a four-part “primer” about how Trump real estate finance works last April, plus a follow-up in May, but this post is a “TL;DR” for those who… Read more »
More than you wanted to know about e – part 2
Part One of this post looked at the mysterious number called e, also called Euler’s number, a transcendental number (never resolving in our decimal numbering system) with a value of approximately 2.71828. That prior post showed examples of this value occurring repeatedly in nature and in the world of finance. This post gets a bit more technical to present perspectives… Read more »
More than you wanted to know about e – part 1
If you ever owned a scientific calculator or used one on your computer, it is still likely that you have never used the button that reads ex. One of the most interesting secrets of the universe is evoked by pressing that button, but I have never heard it explained well. This post will likely add little to help that situation…. Read more »
Why you don’t want “across-state-lines” health insurance
One of the first recommendations Republicans typically make in their “Replace ObamaCare” proposals is to give the health insurance companies the ability to “sell across state lines,” which they are convinced will drive down premiums. Insurers are already free to do this, but they need to live by the local regulations in each state in which they sell. There’s the… Read more »
Postage stamps and other big numbers
A continuing theme of this blog is that humans have a difficult time grasping some basic math, even if their futures depend on it. A combination of “scare quote” stories I have read recently about the size of the national debt as well as discovering the new price of first-class postage stamps (now 55 cents) set my mind on the… Read more »