The Sunshine Report

Veritas Financial Partners
Information about finance, the economy and business. Entertaining and informative. Seeking Alpha Certified Mark Sunshine Chairman & CEO

Category Archive: Fiscal Policy

  1. Congressman Ryan, Should Predatory Pricing Cartels Really Run Health Care?

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    The med­ical insur­ance game is rigged. Med­ical insur­ance com­pa­nies have spe­cial legal pro­tec­tions that pro­mote anti-competitive behav­ior. Since 1944 they have been exempt from vir­tu­ally all the anti-trust laws that apply to other indus­tries and under­pin the foun­da­tion of our national economy.

    Under the terms of the insur­ance exemp­tion, health insur­ance com­pa­nies can col­lude with one another, fix prices, rig bids and form car­tels. Preda­tory pric­ing by health insur­ance com­pa­nies is OK. These prac­tices — nor­mally ille­gal under fed­eral anti-trust reg­u­la­tion— are pro­tected by law.

    Even worse, health insur­ance com­pa­nies don’t have to worry about being sued if they hurt some­one — they aren’t sub­ject to tort lia­bil­ity and as a prac­ti­cal mat­ter can’t be sued for mess­ing up a claim or deny­ing cov­er­age. [read full story]

    Posted in: economy, Finance, Fiscal Policy, Forbes, Medicare, Paul Ryan, Public Policy, REGULATION

  2. Headline From 2036: Banks Say ‘Drop Dead’ To White House

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    At sep­a­rate news con­fer­ences Demo­c­ra­tic and Repub­li­can lead­ers accused each other of polit­i­cal oppor­tunism after Con­gress again failed to raise the debt ceil­ing and banks refused the President’s request to fund a gov­ern­ment bailout.

    As a result, the fed­eral gov­ern­ment shut­down that began in 2011 will con­tinue for another year. [read full story]

    Posted in: economy, Finance, Fiscal Policy, Forbes, Headlines From The Future, Monetary Policy, Paul Krugman, Public Policy

  3. Congressman Ryan, I Don’t Want To Be A Lab Rat

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    Dear Con­gress­man Ryan,

    Please explain your Medicare plan to me and my wife. We are in our early fifties and are con­cerned about how your changes to Medicare will affect us. We know that Wash­ing­ton can seem dis­con­nected from the real world but, for peo­ple of our age, your plan to do away with Medicare is very real.

    Get­ting rid of Medicare feels like a free mar­kets exper­i­ment to us and nei­ther of us wants to be a “lab rat” for a social and eco­nomic exper­i­ment gone awry. Lab rats are usu­ally expend­able and we don’t want to be part of a dis­carded gen­er­a­tion. [read full story]

    Posted in: Finance, Fiscal Policy, Forbes, Medicare, Politics, Public Policy, REGULATION

  4. II" rel="bookmark">Don’t Worry About The Debt Tsunami Part II

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    Last week I wrote that the for­ward cal­en­dar of to-be-issued gov­ern­ment and mort­gage related debt isn’t going to swamp the econ­omy. Since I wrote my arti­cle Paul Krug­man wrote an arti­cle cit­ing research done by Brad Setser that sup­ports my the­sis. Setser’s analy­sis pre­dates my arti­cle and is really high qual­ity work. I am cer­tain that […] [read full story]

    Posted in: Brad Setser, economy, Finance, Fiscal Policy, Paul Krugman, Public Policy, Savings Rate

  5. Supply-Side Economics Isn’t The Answer For Today’s Problems

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    There is a time and a place for supply-side eco­nom­ics but this is nei­ther. Supply-side advo­cates seem to be fol­low­ing the eco­nomic “chicken soup the­ory”; tax cuts and less reg­u­la­tion are like chicken soup, talk­ing about chicken soup makes every­one feel bet­ter and if actu­ally pre­scribed prob­a­bly won’t make things worse either. But, the prob­lem […] [read full story]

    Posted in: Bush Administration, Business Environment, economy, Finance, Fiscal Policy, Politics, Public Policy, REGULATION

  6. 7 Faint Signs That The Economy’s Bottom Is In Sight

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    There are opaque and early signs that the U.S. econ­omy has started the begin­ning of a bot­tom­ing process. Just like a div­ing sub­ma­rine needs to stop its down­ward motion and reach its low­est depth before it can resur­face, the econ­omy needs to go through the steps of slow­ing its decline and sta­bi­liz­ing before it can […] [read full story]

    Posted in: BANKS, Bernanke, CPI, Credit Crisis, Deflation, Economic Statistics, economy, Federal Reserve, Finance, Fiscal Policy, Inflation, M1, M2, monetary policy, Money Supply, Obama, Politics, Public Policy, TARP

  7. TARP Isn’t Working For Small Business; Two Simple Solutions To Get Small Business Lending Going Again" rel="bookmark">TARP Isn’t Working For Small Business; Two Simple Solutions To Get Small Business Lending Going Again

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    A Joint Arti­cle By Mark Sun­shine and Robert Blum   Unfor­tu­nately, the Obama Admin­is­tra­tion isn’t propos­ing much to help restart lend­ing to small and medium sized enter­prises (“SMEs”). While SME’s make up the back­bone of the U.S. econ­omy and pro­vide most of its job cre­ation, the credit cri­sis is mak­ing them eco­nomic road kill. SME’s […] [read full story]

    Posted in: BANKS, Credit Crisis, economy, Finance, Fiscal Policy, Obama, Politics, Public Policy, Robert Blum, Small Business Lending, TARP

  8. TARP 1.0 Didn’t Get Lending Going and TARP 2.0 Won’t Be Much Better" rel="bookmark">TARP 1.0 Didn’t Get Lending Going and TARP 2.0 Won’t Be Much Better

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    TARP 1.0 didn’t get lend­ing going and TARP 2.0 won’t be much bet­ter. The prob­lem is that TARP 2.0 con­tin­ues to focus on banks as the pri­mary lend­ing insti­tu­tions despite the fact that banks aren’t the pri­mary source of non-real estate credit for con­sumers or busi­nesses. Most non-real estate lend­ing takes place through the “shadow […] [read full story]

    Posted in: BANKS, Bond Insurance, Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, Credit Crisis, economy, Finance, Fiscal Policy, Mutual Funds, Obama, Paulson, Politics, Public Policy, SBA, Timothy Geithner

  9. Why Can’t Economists Get It Right? Because They Don’t Go To Las Vegas

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    If econ­o­mists are going to add value, they need to change how they do their jobs. Instead of stay­ing in their “Ivory Tow­ers”, econ­o­mists need to mix it up with the “reg­u­lar peo­ple” and do orig­i­nal, fun­da­men­tal, on-the-ground research. And, Las Vegas is where they should be going to gather data. Few econ­o­mists view Las […] [read full story]

    Posted in: Economic Statistics, economy, Finance, Fiscal Policy, Politics

  10. 9 Predictions for 2009

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    Set forth below are my pre­dic­tions for 2009. Let’s hope that at least some of them come true. Early in 2009, the banks start lend­ing again In Jan­u­ary, the banks will real­ize that they can­not avoid lend­ing for­ever. The Fed­eral Reserve will finan­cially pun­ish any bank that refuses to lend by manip­u­lat­ing inter­est rates so that banks […] [read full story]

    Posted in: 2009 Predictions, BANKS, Credit Crisis, Deflation, Economic Statistics, Finance, Fiscal Policy, Inflation, Madoff, monetary policy, Obama, Politics, Public Policy, Regulatory Reform
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