Friday morning ATiM Rocks update

Posted on March 23, 2012 by msjs0315

Thursday evening’s games were not kind to Madame Commissioner’s extended humanoid family.  Niece2JS is a recent Badger grad and Niece3JS attends Marquette.  DogJS, however, is quite the happy puppy, as he now sits atop the ATiM Rocks leaderboard.  Madame Commish neglected to realize yesterday he had picked Louisville over Michigan State, and that was enough for him to take a slim lead.

The standings are now:

  1. DogJS: 137
  2. USF Baby: 133
  3. Moderately Yello: 120
  4. MIA#4: 116
  5. MIA#2: 109
  6. ashot: 95
  7. Blade Warriors: 89
  8. Michigoose#2: 88
  9. okiegirl: 80

As for today’s games, all of the ATiM Rocks leaders favor some combination of Kentucky, Baylor, North Carolina and Kansas as the winners.  If anyone else has a bracket with Indiana, Xavier, Ohio and/or NC State winning, upsets are a must for you to move up.  On paper only Indiana appears to have a realistic chance, but Cinderella mojo is a curious thing.

Filed under: Basketball | 13 Comments »

Morning Report

Posted on March 23, 2012 by Brent Nyitray

Vital Statistics:

Last Change Percent
S&P Futures 1387.6 -1.3 -0.09%
Eurostoxx Index 2510.8 -19.5 -0.77%
Oil (WTI) 105.76 0.4 0.39%
LIBOR 0.4732 -0.001 -0.11%
US Dollar Index (DXY) 79.483 -0.253 -0.32%
10 Year Govt Bond Yield 2.25% -0.03%
RPX Composite Real Estate Index 169.74 0.0

Markets are flat this morning on a lack of news. Bonds and MBS continue to retrace their large move downward after the FOMC statement. New Home Sales are due at 10:00 am.

Radar Logic released their Monthly Housing Report yesterday, noting that price declines are slowing, but we are not at a bottom. Distressed sales declined 21.8%, although the settlement between the State AGs and the 5 big banks means that foreclosures are going to pick up again. Interestingly, while Radar Logic has the opinion that housing has yet to bottom, the Radar Logic futures indicate that real estate will stay flat in 2012 and 2013 and then start increasing. The RPX futures are very illiquid, so take what they say with a grain of salt, but still…

Bank of America is launching a pilot program for distressed homeowners, where they follow a Deed In Lieu process to turn over the title to the bank and then rent at sub-market rates for up to 3 years. Bank of America would then sell the properties to outside investors. Speaking of which, we should be hearing the results of the FHFA’s REO-to-Rental program soon. In my opinion, the government made it very difficult for investors to take a look, (you have to pay $250,000 just to find out basic information) which I found surprising.

In the “because I said so” category, Ben Bernake said the Fed’s easy monetary policy after the stock market bubble burst wasn’t responsible for the housing bubble.

As I noted yesterday, the homebuilders have quietly put in a huge rally since last fall. (Note to the business press:  there are more stocks in the US than Apple) Is the move over?  Perhaps.  KB Homes reported disappointing Q1 earnings and the stock is down 14% pre-open.

Etch-a-Sketch-gate was actually market-moving, believe it or not. Yesterday, shares of little Ohio Art (NASDAQ – OART) more than doubled on the prospect that Democrats will be buying Etch-a-Sketches en masse as props for upcoming election. The stock trades by appointment and has a miniscule market cap ($8.6 million), but there you go.

Filed under: Morning Report | 5 Comments »

An ACA Reform in the Details

Posted on March 23, 2012 by markinaustin

If we look at the cost of medical care (rather than the cost of insurance, which affects about 1/7 of the bill the patient pays) we can identify several huge problems, and we have done so here many times.

To recap: we have identified non-exigent care for the poor in ERs, fee-for-service rather than for results, end-of-life care, nursing home care, shortage of providers, malpractice (both the huge cost of bad medicine and the lesser but real cost of defensive medicine), the monopoly pricing of “new” pharmaceuticals in the USA and the closing of foreign markets to us,  and the failure to integrate and computerize record keeping, thus requiring the patient to reinvent her history from time-to-time with every provider.  Forgive me if I left out a biggie.

While ACA is primarily an insurance “reform”, it contained some provisions that were pilots aimed at some of these fundamental medical costs.  Here is a report on one aimed at moving to fee-for-results, and also reducing actual malpractices, and what it looks like.  It is a hopeful report.

 Why Health Care Will Not be the Same

Filed under: aca | 7 Comments »