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DeficitSpending posts

Health Care's costs & the misguided debate

Posted Jul 22nd 2009 5:00PM by Sheldon Liber (RSS feed)
Filed under: Other Issues, Rants and Raves, Competitive Strategy, Johnson and Johnson (JNJ), Abbott Laboratories (ABT), Novartis AG ADS (NVS), Politics

In recent stories I have highlighted several health care stocks that I think would be strong candidates for small portfolios (Part 1 and Part 2) that would be safe and pay high yields. These include: Johnson and Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), Abott Laboratories (NYSE: ABT) and Novartis AG ADS (NYSE: NVS). I have been thinking about these companies and how others will fare in the health care debate.

While Washington debates the merits of various health care bills, the health care companies lobby to influence the outcome. Businesses and employees are resistant to taxing current health care benefits but very few people are opposed to taxing those that get big paychecks.

I think we are heading down the wrong path regarding health care "reform" once again. There is no question that most people want to improve health care in many respects, including but not limited to, the quality, cost, and delivery, but the devil is in the details and we may end up no better off than we started except of course with more complexity and greater cost.

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'Don't fight the Fed' market regaining lost ground

Posted Mar 25th 2009 4:40PM by Sheldon Liber (RSS feed)
Filed under: Politics, Headline News, Federal Reserve, Financial Crisis

Two weeks have passed since I posted Is the stock market spring loaded? Could it move 3,000 points higher now? and the Dow Jones Industrial Average has climbed about 750 points finishing yesterday at 7660. That is after a day in which it went down 116 points giving up some of Mondays gains.

There is an old adage on Wall Street that simply states, "Don't fight the Fed". It is has been referred to and commented on for years and we are seeing it in action again. We saw it last week when Ben Bernanke the Federal Reserve Chairman was going to speak and some wondered what he might be able to do to help the ailing economy, since the adage, in general, refers to interest rate movement.

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