February 2, 2011
Why health care reform is driving up your medical bills
In this episode Patrick Killelea explains how the US health care reform legislation actually provides incentive for insurance providers to charge even more. Restrictions on the amount of profit that can be made make it attractive to pay more for care and treatment to ensure a higher over-all bill. This might explain why Blue Shield has increased Patrick’s insurance premiums by 73% this year alone. It’s things like this that drive a guy to the streets in protest, which is exactly what Patrick did this week.
December 28, 2010
This Week on Bear radio: Bearish predictions for 2011
In this episode Patrick Killelea joins us to do some crystal ball gazing for 2011. Tune in to hear predictions for rising interest rates, a declining Euro, and crashing stock prices in Asia and America. Patrick predicts that affluent areas will see significant price erosion for 2011 and that the National Association of Realtors will declare that it is a great time to buy. The Optimistic Bear posits that America is embarking on a lengthy odyssey with deflation, much the same as Japan has experienced, and that 2011 will be one of the down years taking asset prices to new lows. Europe will experience a bail-out too far, where the political will to arrange yet a bail-out for another distressed state falters.
December 12, 2010
This Week on Bear radio: Posh neighborhoods beware – the housing bust is heading your way
In this episode housing blogger Patrick Killelea explains why real-estate prices still have a long ways to fall in the tonier communities. Prices fell faster in poor areas where people live paycheque to paycheque. The more well heeled home-owner has assets to burn through, and it takes them longer to get desperate enough to take losses. Patrick also talks about how the primary problem is the masses of bad debt, out of relation to incomes, which still hasn’t been written down throughout the economy. In Patrick’s view, the cozy relationships between banks and government have made the financial crisis what it is. The only thing government efforts to subsidize housing (or anything else, like education) accomplish is to drive up prices.
