Night At The Hospital

I recently spent a night as a visitor as a hospital.  This was my first hospital overnight since I was an inpatient at one over 12 years ago.

Outside of selected complimentary beverages, there are very few good things, if any, about spending the night at the hospital.  However, there are a number of bad things, beyond just being around sick people:

1) The random noises that interrupt the quiet.  Forget about a sound night's sleep.  If it isn't the beeping of the various medical devices, it's the nurses coming in every couple of hours to check vital signs or give medication.

2) The light pollution.  No matter how hard you may try to keep the light low, the above-mentioned nurses are going to walk in from the well-lit hallway.  Sometimes, if they have something to do, they're even going to turn the lights on in the room.

3) The antiseptic aroma.  Combine hand sanitizer, alcohol pads, and every other purification or cleaning agent known to man, and you might have a basic idea of what it smells like the entire time.  Not awful, but not potpourri either.

So in summary, a night at the hospital is going to be a benevolent assault on the senses of hearing, seeing, and smelling.  This is the sacrifice made to help get people well.

That's A Peach, Hon!

This weekend's stop on the PGA Tour was The AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. That's the only  tournament where a national TV audience can watch a bunch of amateurs play alongside the pros, at one of golf's most beautiful and famous venues, no less.

Some of the amateurs are decent, but watching them this weekend I could only think of the following scene from Caddyshack:

Tony D'Annunzio: [caddying for the elderly Havercamps... to Mrs. Havercamp] Your ball's right over there, go straight.  You can't miss it. Mrs. Havercamp... Mrs. Haver... Mrs. Havercamp... you'll need this.  [hands her her club]

Mrs. Havercamp: Oh, I might at that!

Tony D'Annunzio: Mr. Havercamp, your ball's right over there, sir.  [Havercamp puts hand out for club, Tony hands it to him as he attempts to shoot away from the green]  No... Mr. Havercamp.  The green's right over there, sir.

Mrs. Havercamp: [knocking ball into the pond]  Whee!

Mr. Havercamp: That's a peach, hon! Oh, by golly... I'm hot today!  [he slices it and it barely misses Tony's head]

You must Google the scene for the full effect!

Be Careful What You Wish For

Assuming I labeled my posts properly, I went the entire calendar year of 2012 without an entry on religion.  Hard to believe, because it isn't as if there weren't religious controversies worth blogging about.

Regardless, that streak is over.  Some news today pushed me over the edge, that being a new proposal from the Obama administration that would allow religious groups to opt-out (sort of) of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) mandatory contraceptive coverage.

Religiously affiliated groups, especially the Catholic Church, have been going nuts over this mandate.  When this topic was at its hottest this past summer, and preachers were crusading against the mandate during church services, an acquaintance of mine had a letter published in the Des Moines Register that complained about those tactics.  After all, she wasn't going to church to hear those white men telling her what she should believe about her reproductive health care.  The next thing you know she was getting letters from strangers, telling her how wrong she was to feel that way.

Here's the problem with all of this.  The outrage of those religious leaders and their followers over the contraceptive coverage mandate, while somewhat understandable, would have a lot more credibility it it weren't for at least two really big things:

1) Religiously affiliated groups, and here again especially the Catholic Church, completely supported the passage of Obamacare.  I'm sure much of that support was at least indirectly financial, via PAC contributions.  Then once the rules were written, and they realized the rules apply to them, snap! they suddenly wanted to be excepted from a major part of Obamacare.

2) It's laughable to see the outrage of so-called religious leaders over this issue, when it is a fact that many of the organizations they oversee have been including contraceptive coverage in their health care plans for many years.  Apparently, they think all of the young female teachers in their schools are using abstinence as their birth control method.  Classic old white men group-think.

Who knows if this new 'opt-out' rule will pacify the mandate-haters.  It probably won't.  But that has more to do with the out-of-touch religious hierarchy, and its culture of thinking they can and should govern themselves.  (Ask any former church pedophile victim how well they think that self-governance thing has worked out.)

Many Happy Returns

The end of the year encourages retrospectives about financial markets.  So let’s match that up with what ‘financial experts’ were saying a year ago.

In December 2011, a Barron’s panel of ten stock market strategists and investment managers predicted the S&P 500 index to end 2012 some 11.5% higher.  There was so much for these forecasters to consider – and to get right.  The euro zone crisis, uncertainties over the growth of earnings, and the U.S. presidential election and ‘fiscal cliff’ were all major concerns.

Twelve months later, markets are still grappling with many of the same issues.  However, that Barron’s panel forecast, which the magazine said was ambitious, now looks conservative – the S&P 500 index was up 16.0% for the year.  International market returns were even stronger, generally speaking.

As usual, there are a few lessons here.  First, while ongoing news headlines can cause people to worry, it’s important to remember that markets are forward-looking and absorb information very quickly.  By the time you read about it in the newspaper, the markets have usually reacted, and gone on to worrying about something else.

Second, the economy and the market are different things.  Good or bad economic news is important to stock prices only if it is different from the information that the market has already priced in.

Third, forecasting the investment market is a challenge for the best of us.  If you are going to invest via forecasts, realize that not only must you correctly predict what will happen around the globe, but also correctly predict how markets will react to those events.

Everyone should take an interest in what is happening in the world, but care needs to be taken in extrapolating the headlines into investment decisions.  It’s far better to let the market do the worrying for you, and diversify around risks you are willing to take.

In the meantime, many happy returns! 

Lancing Lance

Like everyone else who cheered for Lance Armstrong, I'm disappointed.  Not that he doped, not even that he lied about it - only naive people would have thought differently.  That was the cycling culture, just like it was the pro baseball culture years ago.  But it is very disappointing to hear about the lengths he went to cover up the lies, the way he tried to destroy people.

However, while everybody is piling on their disgust, I still find myself asking why people want to pile on.  He's going to be ruined financially, and considered a cheat and a coward the rest of his life, but he can still inspire people with this story about beating cancer and rising to the top of his profession.

Consider how society looks at Tiger Woods now.  Nobody lost more than he did with his extra-marital shenanigans.  Lost wealth, lost family, even lost his professional edge, and still has not regained his form as the best golfer in the world.  Plus, and he lied to friends and angered fans in the process.

Yet, there are lots of people cheering for Tiger Woods in golf tournaments.  Just did a new TV commercial that has people talking.  Maybe people just want to like Tiger Woods.  And after a long while, people will start to want to like Lance Armstrong again, especially if he keeps up his anti-cancer work.

Both of those guys lied and hurt people.  They should suffer and be accountable for that.  Ultimately, though, isn't it likely Lance Armstrong will win fans back as Tiger Woods has?

People forgive and forget - especially forget.  We see it time after time after time.  There's no reason to think this won't be another American story of redemption.

Iowa Fund of Dummies

Over the past month, another taxpayer boondoggle in has been made public in Iowa.  It involves a state-created source of seed capital for companies interested in doing business in Iowa.

Called the Iowa Fund of Funds, it really just invests in other venture capital funds, using state tax credits to back its commitments.  However, there is no requirement for those funds to actually invest in companies doing business in Iowa.  (Huh?!)

Regardless, it's done a horrible job of getting any return on investment.  So horrible, in fact, the state had to negotiate a settlement that resulted in the loss of $26 million in tax credits.

I happen to personally know the chair of the board that manages the Iowa Fund of Funds.  He's a blowhard who has never worked in the private sector, and who loves to spend other people's money.  That board had a lengthy piece published in the Des Moines Register the other day, defending their actions.   I couldn't let it go, so I sent a letter to the editor about it.  Sadly, it wasn't published, but here it is:

In defending the Iowa Fund of Funds' current $26 million loss of tax credits (Read: taxpayer money) in his December 28th Iowa View article, administrative board member Tim Urban notes, "Since we began, our board of directors has never received one dime of compensation, taken no junkets at Fund of Funds expense and volunteered thousands of hours directing the Iowa Fund of Funds." So you see, fellow Iowa taxpayers, we're simply getting what we paid for - minus another $26 million.

2013

Around this time last year, a blog entry about a few things I'd like to see in 2012. Let's review what happened, with my new notes in ALL CAPS:

I said I'd like to see:

-Me take more time off.  (DIDN'T HAPPEN.  WENT THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION.)

-The insurance industry get into trouble for the individual products they sell to people as 'investments.'  (DITTO.)

-A warmer and earlier Spring.  (THIS WORKED OUT WELL.)

-The Minnesota Twins and Vikings not being among the worst teams in their respective sports.  Talk about low expectations!  (TWINS NO, VIKES YES.)

-The rejection of social conservatism.   (QUALIFIED YES TO THIS.  AT LEAST IOWA AND THE COUNTRY SEEMED TO VOTE THAT WAY.)

-The rejection of any further extensions to to unemployment benefits.  In other words, that my tax money stops being used to pay people to not work.  (THIS JUST IN - NO.)

-Jersey Shore get canceled when one or more of the cast is arrested and/or goes to rehab.  (OK, that is actually a prediction, not exactly something I want to see happen.)  (YUP, SAW IT.  I'D LIKE TO THINK SOMEHOW I MADE IT HAPPEN!)

-The Mayans exposed as just goofing around with their calendar.  (YES, SORT OF.)

So let's try the same exercise.  For 2013 I'd like to see:

-Me take more time off.  A repeat.  Hoping it happens this time.

-Compromise in the U.S. Congress.  After all, it's not an election year.

-A reduction in U.S. government spending and subsidies

-Fewer reality TV shows starring hillbillys.

-Successful planning and execution of all family weddings.

-An end to the central U.S. drought.

-The siding on my house to be repaired.