Obamacare

The rollout of Obamacare to date has been, as many predicted, the case study of everything that is wrong with a mandatory government-conceived, supervised and enforced program. Ignoring for a minute the daily embarrassment the Obama administration has to face with the well-documented failings of the HealthCare.gov website which on second glance should win Obama the Nobel Price for coding in Fortran (or  Cobol), and which seems set for a full-blown overhaul that would force a delay of the mandate whether Obama wants it or not, the several million "glitchy" lines of code have become the greatest gift the GOP could have asked for. A gift, which as the saying goes, keeps on giving. Because one of Obama's suggested loopholes has been to advise people who can't or won't sign up online, to do so using old-fashioned means: by paper, pen or phone. Unfortunately, that's where the rabbit hole just goes deeper, because as Politico reports, the glitches that started on line have rapidly shifted to the world of phone and mail, as virtually every pathway of enrolling into the enforced healthcare program is now hopelessly bottlenecked, if not entirely shut.

If one (such as everyone at the Federal Reserve) thought that the world's greatest artificial "wealth effect" would also generate the world's happiest people, one would be dead wrong.

Take Venezuela - Hugo Chavez' socialist paradise, which was recently inherited by Nicolas Maduro, when he proceeded to not only completely devalue the local currency but to engineer, through such exquisite central-planning that even the Politburo at the Marriner Eccles building is green with envy, the highest returning stock market on earth in 2013. Alas, either the locals are not quite as impressed with the Caracas' "stock market" YTD return of over 300% (which doesn't quite cover the loss in purchasing power for what things one can actually purchase in Venezuela), or the chronic toilet paper shortages remind them that the phrase socialist utopia is the world's greatest oxymoron. As a result, president Maduro has decided to boldly go where no socialist has gone before and has unveiled a new Vice Ministry of Supreme Social Happiness, whose primary purposes will be to enforce "happiness." In other words,  something along the lines of the beatings will continue until happiness returns...

This artificial prosperity plan for Wall Street has the added benefit of allowing the captured politicians in Washington D.C. to continue their $1 trillion per year deficit spending with no consequences for their squandering of future generations’ wealth. Bernanke and Yellen will never taper, because they can’t. The Fed balance sheet will continue to grow by at least $1 trillion per year until they crash the financial system again. Except this time, there will be no money printing solution. We are all trapped like rats in this monetary experiment being conducted by evil mad scientists. No one will get out alive. Welcome to the new normal. Now eat your cheese.

Is Obama through? That is, have his lies and incompetence finally caught up with him and emasculated what remains of his effectiveness. Has he taken the concept of “lame duck” to new levels? Dan Henninger describes Obama’s credibility problem: "Bluntly, Mr. Obama’s partners are concluding that they cannot do business with him. They don’t trust him." Henninger’s observation does not bode well for US – International relations. Nor is it likely to provide support for new domestic initiatives. The International ramifications are especially dangerous.

Update: As of 6:30 pm Eastern, the NSA's website has been down for 5 hours.

Following our earlier comments on the vulnerabilities of the Obamacare websites, the fact that the United States National Security Agency suddenly went offline Friday is still surprising. As RT reports, NSA.gov has been unavailable globally as of late Friday afternoon, and Twitter accounts belonging to people loosely affiliated with the Anonymous hacktivism movement have suggested they are responsible. It is perhaps not entirely coincidental that there is a major “Stop Watching Us” rally scheduled for Saturday in Washington, DC. We wonder if the 'hackers' had a German or French accent...?

The Obamacare tech team should add another pressing cyber issue to its to-do list. As Mother Jones reports, web secuirty experts warn that that Healthcare.gov (and various state exchanges), the Obamacare websites, has a security flaw that could make sensitive user information, including Social Security numbers, vulnerable to hackers. The website, reportedly, has a coding problem that could allow hackers to deploy a technique called "clickjacking," where invisible links are planted on a legitimate web page. Using this scheme, hackers could trick users into giving up personal data as they enter it into the web site, potentially placing Americans at risk of identity theft or allowing fraudsters to file bogus health care claims.

There are people in the world that go to work every day to end up stating the damn obvious. 

During this morning's Congressional hearing on the failure of Obamacare, one of the developer's let slip a little too much truth:

CGI exec says she is not allowed to publicly say how many people have enrolled via http://t.co/25y1SOfdCF

— Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree) October 24, 2013

While the self-proclaimed 'most transparent' administration fights off the French and the German over spying 'lies', and gags insurers from publicizing how many people have signed up for Obamacare, it seems the cover-up goes even further with everyone involved silenced (for now).

Imagine for a moment what might happen if the government were to get out of healthcare altogether and there would be free competition between all health care service providers. What would happen to prices in that case? It is probably fair to assume that they would come down precipitously even from the low prices free market doctors are already able to obtain for their patients nowadays. It is actually a good bet that the onerous red tape and the likely explosion in costs due to Obamacare will accelerate the move toward a free market in health care – unless the government explicitly forbids it, that is (unfortunately we cannot rule out completely that such tyrannical steps will eventually be taken – the government generally doesn't like it when its 'help' is refused). If so, the Obamacare Act could turn out to become a win-win by mistake so to speak, as more and more people decide to opt out of the system.

"Inherent in the nature of government itself is the fact that it is incapable of effectively providing services," Biderman blasts, noting that "by 'effective', he means dollars and hours." The TrimTabs CEO is breathless in his beration of "the biggest of the big lies," that continues to be believed by most of America ("given their re-election of Barack Obama" he adds), that government can effectively provide services. The reality is "governments are not capable of getting anything done cost-effectively," and Biderman, focused on Obamacare as a recent example, concludes "its all FUBAR."

As the Congressional hearing, to apportion blame for the farce that Obamacare has already become, gathers steam the overwhelming theme from the four witnesses is "it's not our fault," and as much as the Congressmen dive deeply into the process, the more it is clear that the left hand had no idea what the right hand was doing in yet another government-funded SNAFU. The entire discussion can be summed up by CGI's comments that "our portion of the application worked as designed." Indeed, all of the contractors point the finger back at the government's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid as responsible for "end to end testing," and ultimately the #fail.

• Central Banks Drop Tightening Talk as Easy Money Goes On (BBG)
• More Democrats voice Obamacare concerns as website blame goes around (Reuters)
• Contractors Point Fingers Over Health-Law Website (WSJ)
• Jury Decides Against BofA on 'Hustle' Program (WSJ)
• Credit Suisse to overhaul interest rates trading business (FT)
• Home Builders Target Higher End (WSJ)
• The Many Lives of Iron Mountain (NYer)
• Busy tourist season nudges Spanish unemployment lower (Reuters)
• Morgan Stanley Joins BofA in Broker Recruiting Truce (BBG)
• Ending World’s Longest Nonstop Flight Adds Five Hours (BBG)

The rest of the world has had enough of the monopoly of the credit-rating agencies that are largely biased towards the US economy and it’s about time that it all came to an end. 

Washington, DC, Wall Street, and central bankers around the world rejoiced this week as Congress came to an agreement to end the government shutdown and lift the debt ceiling. The latest spending-and-debt deal was negotiated by Congressional leaders behind closed doors, and was rushed through Congress before most members had time to read it. Now that the bill is passed, we can see that it is a victory for the political class and special interests, but a defeat for the American people.

In a “Sponsorship Agreement” between the Maryland Health Connection and the Ravens, Judicial Watch reports that the state (read taxpayers) will pay the Super Bowl champs $130,000 to push Obamacare on television, radio, the team’s official website, its newsletter and in social media. If Obamacare is the great thing that we are constantly reassured it to be, why are we seeing the administration feeling the need to constantly market, pitch, and sell the idea by any means possible (from keg standing college students to Superbowl shuffles)?