For the past decade, broadband has been classified as an "information service" and thus more lightly regulated than traditional telephone services. This has led to an explosion of new investment and Web innovation
I'm sorry - but, what?! There's been innovation on the web because the telecom industry was deregulated?! All I can see is that the current telcos have no incentive to innovate in any way, and are gouging consumers as much as they can while the US lags behind the rest of the world in broadband speed and availability!
What this is, is a thinly veiled attempt at trying to blame the left-leaning administration for an evil communist plot - while all it's trying to do is force telcos to catch up with the rest of the world...
By inovation do they mean innovative prices? "We are the first company in 2010 to charge so much for low speeds and get away with it".
I spend 24.99 a month for 1mbps charter cable because it is what I can afford. In response Charter sends me "important notices" that they can save me a bundle by charging me over $70 for tv, phone and internet. It's one thing to spam people who aren't your customers, but to spam your customers with phony "important" notices every month is just tacky.
Compare to the extreme of the Tele Phone Company and your only being able to hook up slow modems you've leased from them.
Yes, I agree with you the current situation in the US is bad in many way but I guarantee you the FCC can make it worse. Ignoring regulatory capture, how about the fact that none of their current top people are engineers?!??!!??!!!
> Compare to the extreme of the Tele Phone Company and your only being able to hook up slow modems you've leased from them.
I was under the impression that those phone company rules were done away with by government interference that was rather similar to what they're trying to do to internet connectivity now.
But these phone company rules existed in the first place because the government granted AT&T a legal monopoly to provide service (well, service to the most profitable places; lots of rural areas had to get service from someone else such as GTE or set up their own ILECs).
It's a relative comparison. Compare the gains in internet to the gains in plain old telephone service.
Incidentally, much of the rest of the world has less regulation than us. In Korea, for example, you have competition between multiple internet providers (i.e., more than just Verizon and Cable). In the US, such competition is illegal.
De facto illegal. In theory other companies can run wires or fiber, and most certainly they can and many do it with radio, it's just that the legal monopoly incumbents have too many advantages. Plus backhaul is very expensive in lots of places.
> In theory other companies can run wires or fiber, and most certainly they can and many do it with radio
I thought there tended to be monopolies on wires/fiber granted by local governments (supposedly to limit the number of companies tearing up roads and the like to install new infrastructure, but more likely to create a scarce privilege they can sell)?
Radio tends to be much lower bandwidth, and can be susceptible to bad weather.
In theory I think you can go to Federal court and get these overturned, but I could of course be wrong. We're not likely to find out since the other side (ILECs, cablecos and local and state government) has so much power it's just not worth it. Who has the budget and time to play this game?
Because 10 years from now when there is another administration that you don't agree with and they decide to impose something like fairness rule, impose content decency restrictions, dictate which sites may be accessed from the U.S or any one of a dozen other awful things, you'll know that this week the foundation was laid for that authority.
I am in favor of the result, but this is a Faustian bargain. Broadband providers brought it on themselves by not getting their act together enough to create standards of service and instead were trying to milk the cash cow as much and as quickly as possible.
That claim is thrown out in the article, but as far I can see there's nothing to back it up. If anything it's the opposite. ISPs want to control and meter based on whatever rules they come up with (i.e. whatever increases their profits) while the government argues for neutrality. If we use the telephone industry as blueprint of what may happen, what aspects of the current policies worry you?
I can't be sure of what will happen, but I can tell you that ISPs want to control it now. There's something we can do about government, but very little about corporations (when they have a monopoly).
In cases where a monopoly was given to them is because ISPs demanded it; otherwise they would not have entered the market and lot of folks would've had to go without Internet. So who's the bad guy again?
Wow that's messed up, I guess some people don't want to comprehend the difference between "you can't say/do certain things" and "you can't interfere with people saying/doing certain things".
See, that doesn't make any sense. "The Internet" is not being placed under any form of "political control". The ISPs, the people with the last-mile pipes are becoming regulated in the same manner as the phone companies already are. There's no more danger of the FCC banning bittorrent than there is of them banning phone sex operators; this reclassification DOES NOT give the FCC the power to ban sites/protocols/etc.
Throughout history innovation and technology progressed and then became regulated, once regulated entrenched powers used regulation to stifle competition and cement their positions. This has happened again and again. Look at the history of the ICC for a brief example.
If this was in reaction to a serious problem some might say it's justified, but as of right now we don't have any problems so lets let things progress naturally.
Wait. So Comcast actually has tried to filter and cap torrent traffic, and regulation to prevent that practice is bad because the regulatory agency might try to do the same thing? How does that logic possibly work?
"A free market does a very good job of providing most things other than a free market."
Much (possibly most) regulation is harmful, but some is good or even necessary.
Given that ISPs tend to have local monopolies, they need to be prevented from abusing those monopolies like they've started trying to do.
If the having local monopolies is not taken as a given, and the local governments don't hand out monopoly powers... well you still have to deal with how the high up-front costs of laying new wires makes various anti-competitive tactics more effective, and how the already meager competition seems to be merging into fewer and fewer competitors.
So in this case, you can either regulate to try to preserve a mostly-free market (lots of antitrust investigations and suits) in last-mile connectivity, or assume a monopoly and regulate to minimize the damage it can cause. The first probably minimizes harm to the regulated industry, the second minimizes harm to industries damaged by monopolistic actions in the regulated industry. I expect that the last-mile industry itself is relatively low value compared to the industries it can damage (much like water, electricity, and phone service), so the second option would be preferable.
It is interesting that this article doesn't mention how the United States broadband companies, despite their trillions of investments still can't offer decent speeds at decent prices. When compared to other countries it is clear that the United States needs some sort of regulation on these internet providers for the good of everyone. Hopefully this doesn't come at the expense of openess.
Well, what we really need is a competitive last mile. But the states and municipalities like selling local monopolies and Congress doesn't seem to want to smack them down (the internet is used in interstate/global commerce; it's much less of a stretch than say growing your own weed having an effect on the interstate black market), so limiting what can be done with those monopolies is a decent second choice.
Increased regulation means that would-be network providers need lawyers and lobbyists to compete.
I can't get FIOS on my block in Manhattan even though I can see Verizon HQ from my window. I'd like to give them my money and they'd like to take it, but they haven't gotten over the regulatory hurdles to run a fiber.
I am sure a small guy would love to do the same but there's no way they can get over those hurdles, if even Verizon struggles to do so. So yes, competition is de facto illegal.
Regulation is good for incumbents. Or, more accurately, it prevents them from having to work harder.
In this case in theory Verizon has overcome the regulatory hurdles and will connect you up within a few years. But it did take them many years to get to this point.
Of course dealing with NYC is a special worst case....
My area has very lax telecom regulation and we've had fios available fir years, and two competing cable companies. Prices are some of the lowest, and speeds are some of the fastest in the country.
I'm in the same situation with FIOS in the heart of Seattle, but the mayor has personally told me that it has nothing to do with regulatory hurdles. The city would love to have Verizon compete with Comcast and has tried to work with them on making it happen. They aren't interested though.
"Mr. Genachowski has provided no evidence that the current regulatory approach is failing." Like the fact that ISPs are throttling the traffic of their customers, inspecting packets and giving preferential treatment to some in the name of "reasonable network management"? Like the fact that virtually everyone who has access to broadband at all has at most two provider choices, despite investment of "$576 billion in communications equipment and structures"? Like the fact that we lag behind other industrial nations in both speed and access to broadband, despite the "explosion of investment and Web innovation" this article attributes to light regulation?
Regulation isn't perfect. As others have pointed out, it tends to benefit the big guys, and raise barriers to entry for competition. But given that we have big guys, that's going to happen anyway: oligopolies are very good at pushing out or buying up competition, entrenching the need for their services, and bullying consumers. They do so all the more aggressively if no one is watching them.
If we accept that Internet access should be provided by the Verizons, Comcasts, and AT&T's of the world, then we should accept that they should be regulated, as effectively as possible and as heavily as necessary so that this compromise doesn't give the public the short end of the stick. Whether we should accept these companies as Internet gatekeepers at all is another matter.
Frankly, I don't know. But it seems that we have accepted that. Someone has, anyway, if the public debate is about how heavily to regulate ISPs, and not about whether we should have ISPs so big that they need a Federal-level regulator.
'Autos, health care, energy, Wall Street and now telecom. Is there any American industry this Administration doesn't want to run?'
Are they joking? I know they profess to be 'free marketeers', but are you telling me that they really thought the Obama Administration should NOT have bailed out the Auto industry and forced them through pre-packaged bankruptcies? They should NOT fix the broken health care system? They should not tackle the looming energy crisis and allow wall street to run wild doing anything they want?
Sometimes, I would prefer some amount of editorial integrity. The editors at WSJ need to say no Ailes & Murdoch at least some of the time.
"[...] are you telling me that they really thought the Obama Administration should NOT have bailed out the Auto industry and forced them through pre-packaged bankruptcies?"
Yes, that's exactly what the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal thought. Not to mention it being the first example of Obama's style of "gangster government" as Micheal Barone puts it (http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Gangster-Governme...)
Do you seriously think Government Motors will survive without endless bailouts (or suppression of its competitors like Toyota (which has its problems, but the piling on is more than unseemly))?
The editorial board thinks ObamaCare will make the system worse and won't fix much if anything (heck, after all this fuss, it still isn't going to cover every American citizen and legal resident). That's rather different than the straw man of "should NOT fix the broken health care system".
The energy crisis has been "looming" since the early '70s. History pretty convincingly shows that the free market, e.g. Reagan removing oil and gas price controls, beats central planning hands down. I was there; if you weren't, you might want to read up on it.
I will agree that they go too far in the promotion of allowing "wall street to run wild doing anything they want", e.g. essays in support of insider trading (excepting those based on the nasty problem of it having no statutory definition) and the backdating of stock options.
But they also have all sorts of good points that are backed by evidence (we've accumulated a lot by now).
Let's put it this way: given that we're on HN and likely interested in startups: did the government's suppression of IPOs (expensing and SARBOX) help any of us? The game of venture capital that ran from the late '50s to the dot.com bust is over.
I've been reading the editorial page of the Journal since 1970 (sic) and I haven't noticed any significant change due to Murdoch. (Where does Alies fit into this???)
Ok...I will look past the politicking tone of the response and address the content.
Regardless of how GM turns out, the fact remains that the actions taken by the administration so far have been very beneficial to the car maker and have set it on the right course for correction. Not only has GM been able to successfully wind down or spin off ailing brands, renegotiate/get out of ridiculous labor contracts, cut down the size of the dealer network, consolidate their supply chain, but they have done so at unprecedented speed - http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,531022,00.html?FORM=ZZNR...
So much so that it's CFO said it might post a profit this year - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/18/business/18auto.html - Yes, I know there is probably a lot of financial shenanigans going on here...but 24 months ago, this would never have been the case (even with financial shenanigans). I would say that this is the best thing that ever happened to GM. If mgmt can revive the brand and focus on good products, in 5 - 10 years we might not even remember that GM went through this period.
Not to mention the hundreds of millions (if not billions) in highly subsidized loans and VC money the administration has given to 'electric/hybrid' companies in the auto industry - from Tesla to Fisker (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125383160812639013.html) to many others in between, I would be willing to bet that the auto industry in 10 years is going to be radically different than the last 10 years, and I would probably bet that America leads the way in innovation again (after ceding it to Japan and Asia for the last 10 years).
Ok...the health care argument, yes the bill wasn't perfect...but guess what..at least he did something. The reality is the current system couldn't stay, and something had to be done. We will see what the final implementation looks like, but I am pretty sure it won't have any death panels.
I am not advocating oil & gas price controls, but the fact remains that America (and the West in general) is highly dependent on oil from relatively volatile areas of the world. Yes, people have cried wolf many times and it hasn't always borne out in 'rations', but as a result of the market doing it's thing, we have seen massive price run ups in those commodities (to almost unprecedented levels) right before major economic downturns. From the 70s, to 2000, to last year. One thing that was consistent with all recessions in those times are sky-high energy prices - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_Unite...
The most recent recession was coupled with financial mayhem, so that eclipsed the high energy prices...but it doesn't take away from the fact that the US economy is highly dependent on foreign oil.
As far as I know, regulators and the government (both this one and previous ones) never tolerate/promote insider trading or the backdating of stock options. There are some economists that argue that both shouldn't matter in an 'efficient market', because it would only make the market more efficient by pricing in more information more quickly. I am not sure I agree with that, due to misaligned incentives of executives and shareholders, but that's another argument for another thread.
Re: the gov't suppressing IPOs...there are so many things wrong with this statement I don't even know where to start. For starters, a startup shouldn't be a 'vehicle' to an IPO. So the mere fact that you think the gov't 'didn't help us any' because they made the road to IPOs a bit more bumpy, I would suggest that perhaps you need to rethink why you are doing a startup in the first place. Even in 'rosier boom boom' times, driving towards an IPO without solid fundamentals is like gamb...
WRT Government Motors, well, of course it's beneficial in the short term at least to those two companies, but Obama is the President of the US, he's supposed to take a wider view of things. Massive global overcapacity does not suggest that propping up the worse losers is an ideal solution and the thuggish cram-downs of senior debt holders in favor of the unions sends a terrible signal.
But the bottom line is how this is going to play out the in long term. It's way too early to declare success, let's see if Government Motors really recovers or instead will need more cash bailouts. If Obama's actions were a bad bet he's only delayed and worsened the pain.
On health care "at least he did something" just doesn't cut it as an argument, not with the dog's breakfast the Congress passed. And death panels are inherent in government takeovers of health care. Somebody, some mechanism is going to determine who gets treatments and who doesn't. The U.K. has it's NICE plus the various units of the NHS make their own resource allocations.
My bottom line is that we're rich enough that the obsession with decreasing our health care outlays ("bending the cost curve") to European levels is not an imperative. We pay a lot more and we get a lot more (like clean hospital wards).
And then there's all the knock on effects, like the inevitable suppression of new drugs and therapies. But at least here there's some justice in the world, for a whole bunch of ObamaCare supporters will some day needlessly die because the program they support will abort something that would have saved them.
Anyway, again we'll see; assuming it isn't repealed wholesale in 2013 or defunded before then by a Republican Congress we'll find out if it makes things better soon enough.
As for oil and gas, when left along (i.e. not in the '70s) the market does it's thing by signaling the relative current scarcity of oil, which prompts all the players concerned to automatically adjust. And I'm much less concerned about the recent gyrations, for you can't expect to add 2.5 billion or so people to free market (PRC and India) without short and medium term discontinuities. Also don't forget about how many of those price shocks were prompted by devaluations of the US dollar, in which oil is denominated. Nixon's closing of the gold window in 1971 was after all what started the mess.
I.e. it's an issue, even a problem, but not a crisis.
And I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on "startups as a vehicle for IPOs". If you think the VC game is legitimate, if you think there are ventures that can't organically grow from an angel start (e.g. serious hardware ones), then IPO exits are necessary for healthy VC investing.
Just think of all the companies we probably wouldn't have with out VCs: Apple, Sun, any number of chip and hard disk vendors. Some worthwhile things require a lot of upfront money.
Pointing out the one post SARBOX blockbuster high tech successful IPO isn't germane; I'm more concerned that there will be no future Googles because the money to build such capital expensive ventures is gone due to the termination with extreme prejudice of the potential of a high payoff at the end of private financing. VCs aren't charities.
WRT to Ailes, if you can point out how Murdoch is warping the Journal's editorial board then maybe he's relevant, alhtough I gather he has bigger fish to fry, like the massive growth of Fox News. I just don't see Murdoch doing that, in practice (I read the editorial page every day) or in theory, since his objective is to have the Journal muscle in on the NYT, which is much more of a front page thing.
47 comments
[ 5.3 ms ] story [ 113 ms ] threadI'm sorry - but, what?! There's been innovation on the web because the telecom industry was deregulated?! All I can see is that the current telcos have no incentive to innovate in any way, and are gouging consumers as much as they can while the US lags behind the rest of the world in broadband speed and availability!
What this is, is a thinly veiled attempt at trying to blame the left-leaning administration for an evil communist plot - while all it's trying to do is force telcos to catch up with the rest of the world...
I spend 24.99 a month for 1mbps charter cable because it is what I can afford. In response Charter sends me "important notices" that they can save me a bundle by charging me over $70 for tv, phone and internet. It's one thing to spam people who aren't your customers, but to spam your customers with phony "important" notices every month is just tacky.
Compare to the extreme of the Tele Phone Company and your only being able to hook up slow modems you've leased from them.
Yes, I agree with you the current situation in the US is bad in many way but I guarantee you the FCC can make it worse. Ignoring regulatory capture, how about the fact that none of their current top people are engineers?!??!!??!!!
I was under the impression that those phone company rules were done away with by government interference that was rather similar to what they're trying to do to internet connectivity now.
Incidentally, much of the rest of the world has less regulation than us. In Korea, for example, you have competition between multiple internet providers (i.e., more than just Verizon and Cable). In the US, such competition is illegal.
I thought there tended to be monopolies on wires/fiber granted by local governments (supposedly to limit the number of companies tearing up roads and the like to install new infrastructure, but more likely to create a scarce privilege they can sell)?
Radio tends to be much lower bandwidth, and can be susceptible to bad weather.
Good article too.
I am in favor of the result, but this is a Faustian bargain. Broadband providers brought it on themselves by not getting their act together enough to create standards of service and instead were trying to milk the cash cow as much and as quickly as possible.
You're saying the answer to bad government is more government....
Sweet, we can just demand things from the gov't? Who knew? BRB, need to stock up on unicorns...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Joe_Bide...
Let's be serious about what the FCC could do when regulating the internet. Anything they try to do will have to pass 1st amendment muster.
If this was in reaction to a serious problem some might say it's justified, but as of right now we don't have any problems so lets let things progress naturally.
Your pointing to a regulated market, saying its bad, and using that as you argument for regulation. I'm sorry but I don't follow...
Much (possibly most) regulation is harmful, but some is good or even necessary.
Given that ISPs tend to have local monopolies, they need to be prevented from abusing those monopolies like they've started trying to do.
If the having local monopolies is not taken as a given, and the local governments don't hand out monopoly powers... well you still have to deal with how the high up-front costs of laying new wires makes various anti-competitive tactics more effective, and how the already meager competition seems to be merging into fewer and fewer competitors.
So in this case, you can either regulate to try to preserve a mostly-free market (lots of antitrust investigations and suits) in last-mile connectivity, or assume a monopoly and regulate to minimize the damage it can cause. The first probably minimizes harm to the regulated industry, the second minimizes harm to industries damaged by monopolistic actions in the regulated industry. I expect that the last-mile industry itself is relatively low value compared to the industries it can damage (much like water, electricity, and phone service), so the second option would be preferable.
I can't get FIOS on my block in Manhattan even though I can see Verizon HQ from my window. I'd like to give them my money and they'd like to take it, but they haven't gotten over the regulatory hurdles to run a fiber.
I am sure a small guy would love to do the same but there's no way they can get over those hurdles, if even Verizon struggles to do so. So yes, competition is de facto illegal.
Regulation is good for incumbents. Or, more accurately, it prevents them from having to work harder.
http://clipperhouse.com/blog/post/Net-neutrality-and-preserv...
Of course dealing with NYC is a special worst case....
Regulation isn't perfect. As others have pointed out, it tends to benefit the big guys, and raise barriers to entry for competition. But given that we have big guys, that's going to happen anyway: oligopolies are very good at pushing out or buying up competition, entrenching the need for their services, and bullying consumers. They do so all the more aggressively if no one is watching them.
If we accept that Internet access should be provided by the Verizons, Comcasts, and AT&T's of the world, then we should accept that they should be regulated, as effectively as possible and as heavily as necessary so that this compromise doesn't give the public the short end of the stick. Whether we should accept these companies as Internet gatekeepers at all is another matter.
Why on Earth would we ever "accept" that?
'Autos, health care, energy, Wall Street and now telecom. Is there any American industry this Administration doesn't want to run?'
Are they joking? I know they profess to be 'free marketeers', but are you telling me that they really thought the Obama Administration should NOT have bailed out the Auto industry and forced them through pre-packaged bankruptcies? They should NOT fix the broken health care system? They should not tackle the looming energy crisis and allow wall street to run wild doing anything they want?
Sometimes, I would prefer some amount of editorial integrity. The editors at WSJ need to say no Ailes & Murdoch at least some of the time.
Yes, that's exactly what the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal thought. Not to mention it being the first example of Obama's style of "gangster government" as Micheal Barone puts it (http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Gangster-Governme...)
Do you seriously think Government Motors will survive without endless bailouts (or suppression of its competitors like Toyota (which has its problems, but the piling on is more than unseemly))?
The editorial board thinks ObamaCare will make the system worse and won't fix much if anything (heck, after all this fuss, it still isn't going to cover every American citizen and legal resident). That's rather different than the straw man of "should NOT fix the broken health care system".
The energy crisis has been "looming" since the early '70s. History pretty convincingly shows that the free market, e.g. Reagan removing oil and gas price controls, beats central planning hands down. I was there; if you weren't, you might want to read up on it.
I will agree that they go too far in the promotion of allowing "wall street to run wild doing anything they want", e.g. essays in support of insider trading (excepting those based on the nasty problem of it having no statutory definition) and the backdating of stock options.
But they also have all sorts of good points that are backed by evidence (we've accumulated a lot by now).
Let's put it this way: given that we're on HN and likely interested in startups: did the government's suppression of IPOs (expensing and SARBOX) help any of us? The game of venture capital that ran from the late '50s to the dot.com bust is over.
I've been reading the editorial page of the Journal since 1970 (sic) and I haven't noticed any significant change due to Murdoch. (Where does Alies fit into this???)
Regardless of how GM turns out, the fact remains that the actions taken by the administration so far have been very beneficial to the car maker and have set it on the right course for correction. Not only has GM been able to successfully wind down or spin off ailing brands, renegotiate/get out of ridiculous labor contracts, cut down the size of the dealer network, consolidate their supply chain, but they have done so at unprecedented speed - http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,531022,00.html?FORM=ZZNR...
So much so that it's CFO said it might post a profit this year - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/18/business/18auto.html - Yes, I know there is probably a lot of financial shenanigans going on here...but 24 months ago, this would never have been the case (even with financial shenanigans). I would say that this is the best thing that ever happened to GM. If mgmt can revive the brand and focus on good products, in 5 - 10 years we might not even remember that GM went through this period.
Not to mention the hundreds of millions (if not billions) in highly subsidized loans and VC money the administration has given to 'electric/hybrid' companies in the auto industry - from Tesla to Fisker (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125383160812639013.html) to many others in between, I would be willing to bet that the auto industry in 10 years is going to be radically different than the last 10 years, and I would probably bet that America leads the way in innovation again (after ceding it to Japan and Asia for the last 10 years).
Ok...the health care argument, yes the bill wasn't perfect...but guess what..at least he did something. The reality is the current system couldn't stay, and something had to be done. We will see what the final implementation looks like, but I am pretty sure it won't have any death panels.
I am not advocating oil & gas price controls, but the fact remains that America (and the West in general) is highly dependent on oil from relatively volatile areas of the world. Yes, people have cried wolf many times and it hasn't always borne out in 'rations', but as a result of the market doing it's thing, we have seen massive price run ups in those commodities (to almost unprecedented levels) right before major economic downturns. From the 70s, to 2000, to last year. One thing that was consistent with all recessions in those times are sky-high energy prices - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_Unite... The most recent recession was coupled with financial mayhem, so that eclipsed the high energy prices...but it doesn't take away from the fact that the US economy is highly dependent on foreign oil.
As far as I know, regulators and the government (both this one and previous ones) never tolerate/promote insider trading or the backdating of stock options. There are some economists that argue that both shouldn't matter in an 'efficient market', because it would only make the market more efficient by pricing in more information more quickly. I am not sure I agree with that, due to misaligned incentives of executives and shareholders, but that's another argument for another thread.
Re: the gov't suppressing IPOs...there are so many things wrong with this statement I don't even know where to start. For starters, a startup shouldn't be a 'vehicle' to an IPO. So the mere fact that you think the gov't 'didn't help us any' because they made the road to IPOs a bit more bumpy, I would suggest that perhaps you need to rethink why you are doing a startup in the first place. Even in 'rosier boom boom' times, driving towards an IPO without solid fundamentals is like gamb...
But the bottom line is how this is going to play out the in long term. It's way too early to declare success, let's see if Government Motors really recovers or instead will need more cash bailouts. If Obama's actions were a bad bet he's only delayed and worsened the pain.
On health care "at least he did something" just doesn't cut it as an argument, not with the dog's breakfast the Congress passed. And death panels are inherent in government takeovers of health care. Somebody, some mechanism is going to determine who gets treatments and who doesn't. The U.K. has it's NICE plus the various units of the NHS make their own resource allocations.
My bottom line is that we're rich enough that the obsession with decreasing our health care outlays ("bending the cost curve") to European levels is not an imperative. We pay a lot more and we get a lot more (like clean hospital wards).
And then there's all the knock on effects, like the inevitable suppression of new drugs and therapies. But at least here there's some justice in the world, for a whole bunch of ObamaCare supporters will some day needlessly die because the program they support will abort something that would have saved them.
Anyway, again we'll see; assuming it isn't repealed wholesale in 2013 or defunded before then by a Republican Congress we'll find out if it makes things better soon enough.
As for oil and gas, when left along (i.e. not in the '70s) the market does it's thing by signaling the relative current scarcity of oil, which prompts all the players concerned to automatically adjust. And I'm much less concerned about the recent gyrations, for you can't expect to add 2.5 billion or so people to free market (PRC and India) without short and medium term discontinuities. Also don't forget about how many of those price shocks were prompted by devaluations of the US dollar, in which oil is denominated. Nixon's closing of the gold window in 1971 was after all what started the mess.
I.e. it's an issue, even a problem, but not a crisis.
And I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on "startups as a vehicle for IPOs". If you think the VC game is legitimate, if you think there are ventures that can't organically grow from an angel start (e.g. serious hardware ones), then IPO exits are necessary for healthy VC investing.
Just think of all the companies we probably wouldn't have with out VCs: Apple, Sun, any number of chip and hard disk vendors. Some worthwhile things require a lot of upfront money.
Pointing out the one post SARBOX blockbuster high tech successful IPO isn't germane; I'm more concerned that there will be no future Googles because the money to build such capital expensive ventures is gone due to the termination with extreme prejudice of the potential of a high payoff at the end of private financing. VCs aren't charities.
WRT to Ailes, if you can point out how Murdoch is warping the Journal's editorial board then maybe he's relevant, alhtough I gather he has bigger fish to fry, like the massive growth of Fox News. I just don't see Murdoch doing that, in practice (I read the editorial page every day) or in theory, since his objective is to have the Journal muscle in on the NYT, which is much more of a front page thing.