Well, the so-called “crisis” is over vis-a-vis the shenanigans in D.C. relative to budgets, fault lines and the incomparable ability of political operatives to be myopic. So Planet Susan is back, with thoughts on a variety of topics. Let’s start with:
The Affordable Care Act website. The girl’s pic is gone (oh, my – what does that mean??!!) … carrumba…after all, she did sort of look Hispanic – … – ?? Now let’s get serious. The problem with the ACA’s website isn’t the initial issues with the GUI (the front end that wouldn’t let more than 3 people on at a time), it’s with the back end. What’s the back end? When you get to the point in the program where the verification of income stuff starts, the program has to connect to other servers in other parts of the gumment – namely the 
IRS and 
HHS. That’s when the really big crash occurs. Apples are trying to get it on with oranges, which is likely never going to really work out, is it? Two completely different programs that are incompatible are unlikely to match up, so at some point the Obamites are going to have to kill that connection. Can you hear the Republican howling now? Rich scofflaws (i.e. people making more than $10 an hour) are getting gumment subsidized health care for free! Yup…but you agreed … yup, but you can’t get there from here without completely starting over. Well, OK, let’s start completely over and delay this thing for another, oh say decade or so. You heard it here first.
Next topic: things economic. Ambrose E-P says the debtor countries in 
western Europe are doing even worse than they were before. Germany is killing them, and the ECB (European Central Bank) is sitting on its hands and not doing anything to help. Now the death by deflation virus has spread to eastern Europe. Estonia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Latvia are all experiencing flat to negative growth. Close on their heels is Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and the Czech Republic. So it would appear that all the trading partners within the European Union are gridlocked into a nascent recession. Only little Poland is hanging in there, having not succumbed to the siren song of excess debt from hot money in the early part of the 21st century. Ambrose accuses the ECB of having a ‘chronic German bias’, although the irony is that Germany’s GDP is flat now as well. Makes sense – none of their normal trading partners have any money to spend, so they were left with China and the BRICs. Bad news there – China is putatively tightening to try to have a soft landing from their real estate bubble, and the BRICs are broke too. Who’s next? Aw, gee, Ma, even Forrest Gump could figure that out. Expect to see the 
US economy slow down this quarter and next. That will ensure the FED will not ‘taper’, putting more hot money into the system, making the Chinese real estate bubble even bigger. Andy Xie continually writes on that topic, claiming within a few months you’ll hear a giant scratching sound emanating from China as the needle comes off the LP and the musical chairs tune ends. No slowdown in tapering will render Andy’s prognostication premature. But the beat goes on. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, watch the market for opportunities to invest – your Christmas present might be a 10% or so correction. Coming soon!
Last topic: travel to D.C. We went over a week ago, and I haven’t even taken the camera out of the travel bag to download the 600-odd pictures Emily took. Guess I need to get my act together and provide a report on the doin’s, eh? Yeah, yeah…later!