America

The writing was on the wall long before the largest US insurer, UnitedHealth, decided to pull the plug on Obamacare in mid April.  Then, just a week later, Aetna’s CEO said Thursday that his company expects to break even, but legislative fixes are needed to make the marketplace sustainable.

"I think a lot of insurance carriers expected red ink, but they didn’t expect this much red ink,” said Greg Scott, who oversees Deloitte’s health plans practice. "... A number of carriers need double-digit increases."

It gets better.

The US became an unsustainable service sector based economy from the 1970s onward when service sector employment diverged from manufacturing without a corresponding boost in productivity. Even Alan Greenspan has warned that America is "in trouble basically because productivity is dead in the water..." There are numerous reasons for this plunge in worker-productivity, from perverted inventives not to work to unintended consequences of monetary policy enabling zombies, but perhaps the most critical driver is exposed in the following dismal chart...

The biggest financial and geopolitical story from mid-April was Saudi Arabia's threat that should the US pass a bipartisan law which would take away immunity from foreign governments in cases arising from a "terrorist attack that kills an American on American soil" and specifically could hold the Saudi kingdom responsible for its role in the Sept 11, 2001 attacks, then the Saudis would retaliate by selling up to $750 billion in American assets. 

Last week I was on the phone with an academic who studies family policy, and he mentioned that this new phase of the Sexual Revolution is moving much faster than he anticipated. I thought about that last night when I read the note from the NYC reader who said that her teenage daughter and the girls on her swim team were confronted with a middle-aged man walking out of the shower in the public gym the other day.

Authored by David Hay, via EvergreenGavekal.com,

"Low interest rates cause secular stagnation: they do not cure it.” -CHARLES GAVE

 

“Negative interest rates are the dumbest idea ever.” -JEFF GUNDLACH, the new “King of Bonds”

 

“Laugh but listen.” -WINSTON CHURCHILL, addressing the British House of Commons, warning it once again of the rising threat posed by Nazi Germany, to derisive laughter.