Obama's healthcare plan no cure for faltering US

• Source: Global Times
• [21:55 January 26 2010]
• Comments

Remember that the US pays for itself by taking profits, and packaging them as financial instruments: stocks, bonds, Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) and other financial derivatives. The flow of payments from health insurance represents one stream of income that is packaged and sold to the rest of the world to pay for the US's trade deficit.

The pressure on Obama from the major global investors is to keep the present profits from healthcare in place, but reduce healthcare cost. They want Americans to be both sicker and poorer.

Americans want to fix healthcare costs, but do not yet want to pay the price in reducing their consumption. They want to be neither sicker nor poorer. However, poorer has already happened, and sicker is already the reality.

Obama cannot keep the major investors, who are addicted to high returns from health insurance profits, happy while still appeasing Americans who are addicted to the suburban life and easy cheap consumption.

The reality is that neither the stream of paper profits nor the overconsumption can go on, because even if Obama can keep the profits fl owing, that will mean less for large numbers of people, in the US, and around the world.

As the large developing nations Brazil, India, and China grow, their people will want the better life that they make and export every day. The present paper economy cannot go on.

The author is an American macroeconomist specializing in the study of currency basis and financial volatility. stirling.newberry@gmail.com