Friday, a Russian SU-27 did a barrel roll over a U.S. RC-135 over the Baltic, the second time in two weeks. Also in April, the U.S. destroyer Donald Cook, off Russia’s Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, was twice buzzed by Russian planes.
Vladimir Putin’s message: Keep your spy planes and ships a respectable distance away from us. Apparently, we have not received it.
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.
by David Haggith
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...
Now that there have been at least four documented close encounters between Russian fight jets and US ships and/or spy planes (including two barrel rolls) in the past two weeks, each of which has taken place in the immediate vicinity of Russia's borders (or above Russian naval bases), there have been two recurring questions: i) why does the US continue provoking Russia with its "fly-by" attempts, well aware what the Russian response would be and ii) if one simply ignores who was the instigator, why has Obama not contacted Putin to at least express indignation at these interceptions.