Obamacare - Precious Metals - China

Here are the miners about forty-five minutes into trading. All are up reacting to the small upward move in precious metal prices (Gold 935.30 and Silver down a bit to 13.93)





From TownHall.com:

Whose Medical Decisions?

by Thomas Sowell

There was a time when rushing a thousand-page bill through Congress so fast that no one has time to read it would have provoked public outrage. But now, this has been attempted twice in the first 6 months of a new administration.

The fact that they got away with it before, with the "stimulus" bill, may have led them to believe that they could get away with it again.

But the first bill simply spent hundreds of billions of dollars. The current "health care" bill threatens to take life-and-death decisions out of the hands of individuals and their doctors, transferring those decisions to Washington bureaucrats. Read it HERE.

From TownHall.com:

NHS vs. USA

by Cal Thomas

PORTADOWN, NORTHERN IRELAND -- For the past month I have watched British media report and comment on the American health care uproar. American cable networks are also available here. The back-and-forth reporting and commentary resembles a replay of the War of 1812, this time with verbal salvos. Conservative American politicians and commentators fire at the British NHS system and the British fire back, sometimes on the same program, repeating the Democrats' mantra of how 47 million Americans are "uninsured" and how medical treatment in the United States depends on how much patients, or their insurance companies, will pay. Here, they say, health care is "free," thanks to taxpayers, a minority of which (i.e. the successful) bears ever-greater amounts of the burden. Read it HERE.

General comments on Obamacare from Casey's Daily Dispatch: "In all sincerity, I wish the president and his allies would propose a program that actually made sense. Starting with massive cuts in taxes and regulations – in the size of government itself. That would allow the country’s businesses to become hyper-competitive in global markets, and individuals to be able to keep much more of what they earn and therefore to be able to afford proper insurance. At that point, if some of the remaining tax revenues were used to provide baseline insurance made available to the truly indigent – who could argue?

But reading the president’s op-ed, written no doubt by the best political writers (your) money can buy, I’m reminded of a good old-fashioned “chicken in every pot” stump speech.

It all sounds so wonderful. But the devil, of course, is in the details. It makes no sense to usher in universal healthcare if it is poorly conceived, or conceived in such as way as to satisfy various political back-scratching without regard to the efficiency or sustainability of the thing. Medicare might be a great idea, but that it has run amok and is headed for insolvency makes it hard to hold up as a guiding light.

This all gets back to the notion of positive rights. Yes, I would like every American to have a roof over their head and three square meals a day. Actually, I would like that to be true for everyone in the entire world. But there are certain immutable laws of economics that can’t be ignored. Starting with “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

The only way you can give away free health care, or free chickens, for that matter, is if you either own it in the first place, or you take it away from someone else.

Or, to quote Margaret Thatcher, “The only problem with socialism is that, sooner or later, you run out of other’s people money.”"

From MineWeb.com:

GOLD UPDATE

YESTERDAY'S TOP STORY: Gold needs good news if it is to break through the $960 barrier

Even though the yellow metal has struggled to break through the psychological resistance level, the long-term trend remains very positive especially in light of the new Central Bank Gold Agreement.

Author: David Levenstein
Posted: Monday , 17 Aug 2009

JOHANNESBURG -

The last week for gold was pretty much uneventful which is not surprising as there was an absence of any fresh news that could have had an impact on the precious metal. The German economy unexpectedly grew by 0.3% as stimulus and rate cuts helped the region's largest economy end its worst recession since WWII. An equal improvement in France nearly pulled the entire economic region out if recession as it only contracted by 0.1% versus expectations of 0.5%. Negative growth from Italy, Austria and the Netherlands helped drag the broader reading lower and slowed Euro gains. US CPI remained unchanged. Read it HERE.

From MondayMorning.com:

What Companies Are Profiting From China’s Commodities Crusade?

By Jason Simpkins
Managing Editor
Money Morning

While the rest of the world is grappling with the global slowdown, China is figuring out ways to exploit it.

Over the past few months, China has capitalized on the financial turmoil that has paralyzed the world’s “developed” economies by stocking up on cheap commodities, weeding out competition to its largest state-run companies, and acquiring even more foreign assets.

Indeed, with China’s economic growth projected at an enviable 8% for this year, that country’s government has been able to spend less time promoting immediate growth and liquidity, and more time preparing for the economic renaissance that almost certainly seems to be the Asian giant’s destiny. Read it HERE.

From MondayMorning.com:

Three Reasons China is Positioned to be the Oil Sector’s Next Big Profit Play

By Keith Fitz-Gerald
Investment Director
Money Morning/The Money Map Report

If you’re looking for the next “Big Oil” play, bet on Beijing.

As we’ve been reporting for the past several years. China has been on a global commodities shopping spree, which includes locking up every source of oil that it can. The Red Dragon has cut deals in Africa, South America Russia and the Middle East - and won’t stop there. Even the mainstream news media is finally becoming aware of this crucial trend.

But here’s the thing. It’s not enough just to know that this is happening. In order to profit, an investor really needs to understand why it’s happening - and to invest accordingly. Investors who lack this insight may make the strategic misstep of betting heavily (or exclusively) on the Western heavyweights - Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM, BP … Read it HERE.

From Bis.org:

For a discussion of the five stages download the pdf article HERE. This is an interesting article.

Best to each, Doug