Stablecoins could eventually grow to 10% of the U.S. money supply. It's all fiat currency, but once enough people trust it, it'll be close to being as good as the dollar.
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Many student loan borrowers are in for a big, bad surprise in 2025. This may help reduce the national debt somewhat, but I suspect so many people will default. But they do need to pay it back. If their degree is not worth it to them to pay back, why should it be worth it to the rest of us?
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USNWR recently ranked the states in terms of livability, and Oregon was tenth from the bottom. The state scored poorly on crime, education, economy and opportunity. WalletHub put Oregon at 9th from the bottom, so it's not just one publication's opinion. And here's a report that overdose deaths grew 33% in 2023, even as national rates decline. Non-profits, which have been sucking up so much government money, are going broke. But Portland is going to spend $300 million on climate change related projects. Oregon is gearing up to provide free health care to illegal immigrants.
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a href="https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/energy/just-a-fraction-of-the-hydrogen-hidden-beneath-earths-surface-could-power-earth-for-200-years-scientists-find" target="_blank">Hydrogen in the ground could be a source of power for 200 years. The problem is to locate the reservoirs of hydrogen and extract it, without expending too much energy in doing so. I can't believe that such a light has would avoid dissipation for this long.
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Gilded age of medicine? Not for most doctors, that's for sure.
Meanwhile, in some places in the U.S., private-equity firms now own more than half of all medical practices within certain specialties. “We are being picked clean by private equity,” a New Jersey-based radiologist said at a recent meeting of the American Medical Association.Obamacare made it harder for independent practices to survive. So physicians have had to sell their clinics to hospitals or private equity.
Private-equity firms have learned that they “don’t have to make things better or make them more efficient. You can just change one small thing and make a ton more money.” They are hardly the only corporations to learn this lesson. Increasingly, health insurers, private hospitals, and even nonprofits are behaving as though they aim first to extract revenue, and only second to care for people. Patients often are viewed less as humans in need of care than consumers who generate profit.
Berwick said that his own physician’s practice had recently been acquired by UnitedHealth. One day, he asked his doctor, “Anything different now?” “Two things,” the doctor replied. “I have to see more patients each day. And my patients have new diagnoses that I didn’t put there.”
Speaking of healthcare, here's an interesting chart:
