More Random Reading

• Warren Buffett at the NYT, discussing our rapidly-increasing national debt.
• A reminder that we still may need more bank regulation. Remember how in the immediate aftermath of Lehman/Bears, everyone was crying out for more regulation? Now some are claiming that the government simply dropped the ball, and that sufficient regulation already existed. I've linked to an article of that opinion before in this post.
• Perhaps free-market health care is the answer (in two parts: part 1, part 2). Part 2 is the more interesting segment. I think the author is not adequately dealing with underprivileged kids and the elderly; otherwise, he makes a pretty good case that a free-market system may be best assuming we as a society take care of 'pre-existing conditions'. Also, as pointed out by a reader with whom I discussed this article earlier, he does not deal with tort reform.
• More on healthcare: an article that talks about why Obama is struggling to convince people to work with him on reform. Note that the article is focused on why he's struggling; there does not seem to be much of an opinion either way on free-market vs universal care. More importantly, it contains 20 links (count it, 20!!) to different articles, ranging from conservative to liberal. I still haven't read through all 20, but it seems like a nice resource. *UPDATE* I was wrong, he does lean to universal care. I missed that in my first read-through.
  
• A representative saying Social Security could default within two years!
• PIMCO on the dollar, both valuation and as global reserve currency. Plenty of re-hash of popular, recent economic commentary, but a nice summary nevertheless.
  

I Love NPR

Yes, they're pretty openly slanted to the left. However, so am I! As such, I don't mind that public money is used to support their operation (I know that rightfully bothers quite a few people).
Two of their regular segments, Fresh Air and All Things Considered, are the only reasons I bother turning the radio on anymore. Yesterday, Fresh Air had an excellent piece on newspapers and democracy in an interview with Alex Jones, a Pulitzer Prize winner. I'm sure this argument has been made before, but I'll repeat here: as we know, newspapers have been under tremendous financial pressure over the last decade or so, as the advent of the internet has replaced newspapers as the primary source of information for many people. Many newspapers across the country have closed down - and newspapers are, according to Jones, by far the largest provider of investigative journalism. This NPR piece discusses Jones' contention that democracy functions best when there is an excellent core of true investigative journalism that covers everything from international to national to local news and issues. He's naturally biased to this viewpoint, but I think there's a strong case to be made for his side. Indeed, evening news is now dominated by personalities rather than reporters, and it's important to remember that these personalities often offer opinions rather than simply facts. I would encourage everyone who reads this to listen to the segment, which is linked above.
I bring this issue up in this blog because of the recent controversy over health care, an economic issue that affects us all. As you might know, costs of health care have been skyrocketing recently, and are projected to continue doing so, which is why reform has become such a huge and necessary issue. Here is one summary of the cost aspect that was emailed to me. The numbers in that article are frightening. What is just as interesting is the final paragraph:
It is a pity that this central issue seems to have been shoved aside by mendacious distortions from Sarah Palin, Betsy McCaughey, Rush Limbaugh and other extremist commentators seeking to frighten Americans with their prattle about "death panels" and "pulling plugs on granny" that no bill before Congress even remotely envisions.
This seems directly related to the Fresh Air piece above: talking heads who aren't necessarily reporting the facts are screwing up the democratic process: the recent outrageous town-hall protests are evidence that dialogue is not taking place; instead, angry and misinformed people are drowning out useful debate on the issue. And it may be that the slow death of newspapers, which naturally kills off investigative journalism, will only exacerbate this problem (along with others) over time. Unless someone steps forward to pay for investigative journalism, the beliefs of the general public may be more easily swayed by TV personalities than their own opinions based on the evening news.

If anyone has articles or their own opinion to share, on either topic, please do send them my way. Health care in particular is an issue that I have very little understanding of, and this is something I need to fix as it seems to now be one of the bigger economic issues in this country.

**UPDATE** I realize that I criticize talking heads for providing opinion-based journalism despite earlier saying I love NPR despite it's leftist slant. I want to make it clear that I do not listen to NPR for news, but rather for special programs like Fresh Air, with the express intent of hearing out opinionated discussions on, often-times, esoteric topics. News for me generally comes from CNN and the NYT (both of whom, usually, openly distinguish news reporting from their op-ed pieces).