Free Republic

China’s $3 trillion dilemma: What to do with all that cash? By Howard Schneider, Tuesday, April 19, 1:35 PM BEIJING — What to do with $3 trillion? Bail out the euro so Europeans can keep buying stuff? Lock up mineral rights around the world? Spend it on imports? Sock it away under a mattress — or in U.S. Treasury notes — and let the pile keep growing? In what amounted to an acknowledgment that some of the nation’s core economic policies are causing trouble, Chinese central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan said this week that the country was, in effect, suffering...

President Barack Obama says insurance companies make you pay too much for health care. He wants the government to "limit how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses." Sounds great -- just make the insurance companies pay more, and then health care will become affordable. After all, that's what insurance is for, right? No. When insurance companies pay the tab for everything -- down to flu shots and sprained ankles -- it makes health care more expensive for everyone. Why? Because when someone else pays for your health care, you aren't likely to ask, or even care, how much...

The CBO has just released its initial cost estimates on the Democratic health care proposal coming out of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee chaired by Ted Kennedy, and found that it would increase deficits by at least $1 trillion. In addition, the CBO report undercuts President Obama's insistence that those who like the coverage they have can keep it, as it projects millions of Americans would lose their current coverage