My first wife, Renee, died of cancer in 1995. She was 42. I returned to the Winship Cancer Center in Atlanta to see what progress has been made in diagnosis and treatment.

Dr. Carl D’Orsi, head of radiology noted that we have a cure for cancer; early detection. Big advances are being made in imaging and diagnosis.  Dr. D’Orsi demonstrated a topographical mammogram.  This experimental machine can take a remarkably clear image of a tumor too small to be detected by a traditional mammogram . This same machine can also read a section more clearly that may look suspicious in a mammogram and see that there is no tumor, effectively avoiding unnecessary biopsies.

This machine will likely be able to increase the effectiveness of treatments by catching it earlier. But it is expensive, and it is experimental. Few places have them.   I saw other imaging systems that are also experimental and offer great hope.

I also saw huge laboratories involved in new techniques of delivering chemotherapies such as nanotech  targeting systems.

They have developed genetic testing that can  determine your odds of getting certain types of cancer. This aids the patient is selecting treatments that can dramatically reduce the chances of contracting cancer even in a high risk pool.  One of these tests costs $3,000.

Because of the costs of these treatments it is used selectively only for those whose risk profiles merits the extra expense. But the underlying point is that our health care system may be expensive because it is just so damn good. Anyone who has dealt with the fear and trauma of cancer know the value of these new developments; but we also must realize it is not cheap. Otherwise we risk never making these improvements available.

While the large insurance companies are commonly demonized, the reality is that their annual profits would not cover our health care bill for 48 hours.  The far more significant costs drivers are the quality of the technologies that deliver the best treatment systems in the world.

The cancer specialists at the Emory Winship Clinic were  troubled over the new government standards restricting mammograms for younger women. The committee establishing these new standards, which will likely be adapted by the insurance companies, did not have a single radiologist or oncologist on them.  Clearly these standards should rely more on individual case histories than simple age categories.

I would much rather trust my health and the health of my family to the professionals at the Winship Center and other advanced centers than to the government data crunching agencies that know nothing.  They may not be a death squad but such irresponsible regulations accomplish the same goal.

Perhaps it is not the end of the world if our health care system is expensive. Perhaps it is worth it.

Under Bush the House introduced a resolution to bring attention to the Armenian genocide under Turkish rule nearly 100 years ago.  The timing was horrible, since Bush was courting Turkish cooperation for the war in Iraq. The Anti Defamation League got involved and it became a sloppy mess. The resolution was withdrawn, but not without damaging our Turkish relations.

Yesterday the House Foreign Affairs Committee yesterday declared that the mass deportations and massacres of Armenians by the Turks  during World War I ought to be called a genocide.  What is the purpose of this action?

I do not doubt that the Armenians were ruthlessly starved and slaughtered by the Turks. It was a black page in anyone’s history.  But is it the place of the American Congress to rectify every case of mass inhumanity in history? Is it worth straining our relations with the few Arab allies we have in the Middle East.

The Armenian genocide is real and should be taught….. in history classes.

An excellent article on the health care dilemma

‘A Wasted Opportunity‘
Wellpoint’s CEO on ObamaCare’s mistakes and how to pick up the political pieces.
by By JOSEPH RAGO in the Wall Street Journal

excerpts

Mrs. Braly says, when 85 cents out of every premium dollar or more “is paid out in the actual cost of care, doctors, hospitals, suppliers, drugs, devices.” Confiscating the 2009 profits of the entire insurance industry would pay for two days of U.S. health care.

“In Maine, where guaranteed issue went into effect in 1993, there were 11 carriers in the individual market, and now there are two: Us, and another company that would not be called in any circle an equivalent health insurance company.” In Kentucky, 45 insurers fled the state, with WellPoint the last one standing, until the state started in 1998 to repeal most of these regulations.

Depending on the plan, WellPoint’s monthly premium for a 20-year-old in Indianapolis, where the company is based, ranges from $53 to $202. But the same young adult looking for similar coverage in Albany would face costs anywhere between $832 and $1,047. Obviously health costs vary across the country, Mrs. Braly says, but these disparities are almost entirely due to New York’s regulatory mandates. In a state with 19 million people, 88 New Yorkers between the ages of 18 and 24—88!—have bought WellPoint’s best-selling individual insurance product because insurance laws make it perfectly rational not to acquire costly coverage until people need it.

As Mrs. Braly diagnoses the U.S. health-care system, its two main strengths are (a) choice and flexibility and (b) cutting-edge treatments and procedures. But while American medicine has been shaped by specialization, scientific advancements and major technological breakthroughs, it is paradoxically antiquated. The modern managerial and corporate practices for obtaining better productivity and quality that have revolutionized every other sector of the economy have largely passed over medicine.

Wall Street’s financial leaders have been paraded before Congress to explain their efforts to restore stability to our financial system. Obama has turned on the populist spigot to demonize Wall Street to justify bigger taxes and fees and hip shot regulation.

Wall Street deserves the scrutiny and reform is needed.  Yet this fiasco was as much a government failure.  Fannie Mae was exempt from regulation by the SEC, FDIC and the Fed.  When Congress was solidly warned about excessive risks taken by the Fannies,they rejected calls to increase oversight, largely along party lines. Little protest is heard from the halls of Congress over some of the huge bonuses paid to Frank Raines and others at Fannie Mae while the system was imploding.

Some recent regulations such as the mark to market rules made this crisis much worse than it would have otherwise been.  Other regulations such as control  of derivatives  by the Commodities Futures Trading Commissions were removed (under Clinton) at a pivotal time. The Fed ’s monetary policy was also a factor.

A hearing to truly understand what happens and what needs to be done would have our Congressmen on the other side of the microphone.

We clearly need financial reform. Yet Obama’s reckless, populist, anti-business pronouncements only serve to harden the prevailing attitude that business growth and job generation is just too risky.

Financial reform should be thoroughly vetted and discussed in the appropriate House and Senate committees.  Piecemeal pronouncements only add to the uncertainty that is killing this economy. The 550 point drop in the Dow last week following his pronouncement should be of concern, although it is never totally clear what moves the market.

The objective is not just to reduce risk, but to isolate it.  We want to protect critical banking and credit functions from the raw speculation.  Yet it is hard to return to the days before the Glass-Stegall bill, separating banking and investment activities, was overturned under Clinton.

There is no substitute for better regulations.  Higher capital requirements  to reduce leverage and better control of private contracts and derivatives that increase leverage and systemic risk are likely to come.

But let them come after the careful deliberation and consideration of the necessary functions our financial system provides.  Reckless announcements from the president in the critically weak economy we still face is destructive and counterproductive.

The race in Massachusetts is stunning.  If Democrat Coakley is unable to beat Republican Brown in the bluest of blue states, then any Democrat is vulnerable. Just the fact that this race is close  should be a startling wakeup call to the Democratic party.

It appears that Brown is doing and saying all the right things and Coakley is doing just the opposite. If defeated the party will blame the candidate , and refuse to see it as a referendum on the current administration. Brown is running against Coakley on her statements, her policies, and her record. Brown is being attacked by invoking references to Bush and “tea baggers.”

Last Wednesday the odd at the trading site Intrade had the odds of a Coakley win at 85 to Brown 15, this morning it 53/47; a remarkable shift.

The Democrats have grossly misread their mandate and their hubris has dwarfed even that of the Bush administration. This mismanagement of their party’s victory should be laid squarely at the feet of their leaders, especially Pelosi and Reid. Their first constructive step to clawing their way back from the abyss should be to quickly replace both of them.  It is their hubris, partisanship and arrogance that are putting the nails in Kennedy’s coffin.

My first post of 2010 was The End of the China Decade, but it focused more on the rise of India.

The New York Times published Contrarian Investor Sees Economic Crash in China by David Barboza seven days later.

The prospect of a crash in China is real.  The banking system is closed and may be covering up severe flaws.  They may be hiding very high non performing loan rates. Some of our brightest bureaucrats failed to foresee the vulnerability of our own financial system and we have substantial disclosure. Any growth rate as strong as China’s is subject to a bubble scenario.

While it is difficult to predict how such a crash would impact us it could have severe consequences. China is way too big for any group of nations to bring financial support to it. Our currency could strengthen relatively as theirs weakens, but we could also be in big trouble if they need to liquidate their holdings of US bonds.

One possible benefit is the final proper alignment of their currency; an objective that has frustrated trade politics for decades. This could make American manufactured goods more competitive and jump start re-employment.

The biggest potential problem is the difference in political culture. High unemployment in America causes big deficits because of our social support networks. High unemployment in China may cause starvation on a large scale and much more dangerous political instability.

The biggest worry the current state of global financial instability renders is that such situations foster belingerencies.

At National Review Conrad Black writes “An Awful First Year”.

A Comprehensive rant about Team Obama’s first year,  this passage focuses on an historical perspective of presidential foreign policies:

Dwight D. Eisenhower came into office determined to end the Korean War and begin de-escalating the Cold War. He did both, the latter with a revival of summit meetings and his Open Skies proposal. Richard Nixon entered office with a plan to open relations with China, extract the U.S. from Indochina without bringing down the non-Communist government in Saigon, and pursue better relations with the USSR, arms control, and a peace process in the Middle East. All this happened. Ronald Reagan entered office with a plan to end the Cold War by outspending the USSR on defense, reducing Soviet income by inducing the Saudis to cut the world oil price, stopping Soviet industrial espionage, and working with the Vatican to destabilize the satellite countries, while reinvigorating the U.S. economy with tax cuts. It happened and it worked. George W. Bush protected the nation from terrorists.

The foreign-policy pattern of post-Truman Democratic presidents has been less encouraging. John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson abandoned the Eisenhower doctrine of “more defense bang for the buck” and massive retaliation, for the policy to “pay any price, bear any burden” while acquiescing in Mutual Assured Destruction. The Bay of Pigs, Vietnam War, and Soviet nuclear parity resulted. Jimmy Carter renounced “the irrational fear of Communism” until the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. Bill Clinton under-reacted to successive terrorist outrages, and 9/11 was the consequence.

Obama’s pursuit of instant gratification in the most complicated areas - arms control, the environment, the Middle East - and his feckless apologies for great statesmen of the recent past, including Roosevelt, Truman, Churchill, and Eisenhower, have dismayed America’s allies and delighted its rivals. It has been a year of naive amateurism, but it has ended well.

During the 1970’s the sudden and enormous wealth of the Arab World as a result of the oil cartel OPEC, made everyone think they would rule the world. Raising oil prices as a result of the US aid to Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War (disproving the myth that we only fight for oil), the oil shieks were reported on lavish shopping sprees at Harrods’s in Great Britain handing out 100 dollar bills as tips.

In the 1980’s the Japanese were in the ascent. They bought the Pebble Beach Golf Club, and management consultants tried to copy the Japanese miracle as Japanese cars spelled disaster to the Detroit auto industry.

In the 1990’s the Japanese bubble burst and they have yet to recover.  We refer to their lame policies to reignite their economy as the lost decade. The 1990’s was the American decade. The dot.com boom, the internet industry, billion dollar hotels in Las Vegas, stunning victory in Desert Storm, and a budget surplus showcased American economic strength.

The first decade of the millennia was the Chinese decade. They discovered capitalism, hosted the Olympics, began to develop a middle class, and began an industrial growth that fueled a boom in commodity prices. But the Chinese economic growth was fed from the top down, not from the bottom up the way an enduring capitalist economy develops. While we saw our banks crash as a result of revaluing inflated assets, such market adjustments are prevented in China and their banking system in more vulnerable than their government allows to show.

Who will dominate the new decade?  India.

India’s capitalism is more bottom up.  British rule has left in place institutions of property rights and law that are essential to developing capitalism.  Like China, India has cultural shackles to grow out of, but they may be more ready for capitalistic growth than the northern neighbor.

My best performing stock of 2009 was Tata Motors, the GM of India (the old non government owned GM); up over 230%. (Suntrust was the second best.)

We are entering India’s decade.

From Randall Hoven at American Thinker

Graph of the Day December 24,2009