john maddente | midwestern clarity

Rick Santelli, CNBC T his morning I watched CNBC's Rick Santelli talking from the Chicago Board Of Trade.  His so-called, "Santelli Rant"   has been watched on YouTube over a million times and his sentiments today, once again, represent the views of many Americans who believe in living within one's means -- it's how we were raised -- but we lack a microphone. Rick Santelli was in fine form this morning while debating Steve Liesman .  The topic was banking reform and Mr. Santelli made a case for an elegantly simple cure -- raise the banks' capital requirements.  Another CNBC commentator astutely chimed in that this is the same risk premium banks require when a homeowner has a marginal credit history -- the bank looks for more cash in the deal -- a bigger down payment to compensate for the risk of default. Why can't we use the same mechanism to minimize chances of another banking meltdown?...

I've heard from friends with ties to Columbia, that conditions have dramatically improved across the country, although impressions of that nation's difficult past still linger around the world.  Tonight during Anthony Bourdain's show  about Columbia, I watch as he visits Medellín and interviews locals - many of whom suffered enormously during the Pablo Escobar period of the 1980s.  The people appear proud, hopeful, even happy.  Mr. Bourdain says something to a local that reminds me of a rueful Richard Nixon speaking to White House staff in the final hours of his presidency: "Only if you have been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain." 

W hen the topic of healthcare reform took center stage this summer, I felt that "healthcare reform" had suddenly become code for " let's change health i nsurance ."   I was certain that I was missing something like the "3.5M jobs saved or created " metric  I wrote about last March .  I thought I was the only one disturbed by how stimulus programs would be "measured" and conveyed by this administration because I wasn't witnessing views similar to my own.  Surgeons, Wikipedia In my opinion, the healthcare reform yardstick that counts, is the one that actually lowers healthcare costs for the greatest number of patients.  But that isn't how we frame the national debate and measure success or failure.  Is an expanded insurance pool run by the government going to achieve this goal?   I don't know, but uniformly lowering the cost of that pill, that surgery, that MRI, whatever it is -- would benefit us all.  I do not see how the...