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Buying Health Insurance: A Pig in a Poke

When you buy health insurance, you only think you know what you’re buying. You know parameters such as the deductible, coinsurance, and other nonspecific things. But the devil doesn’t lurk in nonspecific things.

The untimely end of San Francisco’s Tech and Housing Bubbles

“Recently, the billionaire venture capitalist Vinod Khosla went hunting for one-bedroom apartments in San Francisco….” And then he opened his mouth.

Are Oil Traders Missing the Gravity of Mosul’s Fall to Insurgents?

By Nick Cunningham: OPEC’s second largest oil producer, Iraq, is in severe disarray just as the world has come to rely on its oil for greater energy supplies.

Public Pension Plans: Boom and Bubble Forever Or Bust

State and city pension plans have been in a heap of trouble for years. What they need in order to be there in the future is a booming economy year after year and endlessly inflating asset bubbles. Otherwise, forget it. And even then, there’s a $1.1 trillion hole.

The Art of Deception in Advertising

By Alex Hillsberg and David Adelman: The tricks that ads use to fools us would be hilarious, if it weren’t so serious. These photos of ads and reality will make you laugh, squirm, and gnash your teeth all at the same time.

Fed’s Bullard: ‘The Bubble Was Developing Under Our Noses’

Wiping out in one fell swoop six years of carefully orchestrated propaganda, St. Louis Fed President James Bullard admitted the Fed had dropped the ball during the prior bubble that blew up the financial system, and that it’s dropping the ball again during the current bubble.

Last Time this happened, The Financial Crisis Broke Out

There comes a time when risk just disappears, when nothing can go wrong, when there are no dark clouds on the horizon. The Fed has a measure for it: the Financial Stress Index.