In Case You Quit Following the News...

As I wrote earlier this year, I’m removing myself from as much ‘news’ as possible.  Most of it does not impact my life and I find much of it to be quite depressing.  Recently, I peaked my head out of the sand and thought I would take a moment to share what you may have missed from the recent past.

It seems to me the media is always promoting a new crisis.  Crises seem to draw viewers. They come and go and a new one seems to be created daily, sometimes from thin air if necessary. “This too shall pass” is definitely applicable to most of them.

This is a very brief summary of international, domestic, and state issues.

Internationally:

• Greece is about to default on its debt and leave the European currency – as of today, consumers can only withdraw a very limited amount of money from ATM machines.
• In China, the stock market is cratering, dropping 7.4% in one day last Friday.  Their central bank is cutting interest rates and loosening bank reserve rates which is a rare, desperate move by them.  It hasn’t helped yet as the Chinese stock market dropped another 3% this week and has fallen about 22% since June 12th.  That would equate to an almost 4,000 point decline in the Dow.  Fortunately, the Dow is down only 2.3% during that same time.
• ISIS is growing and the U.S. seems not to have a plan to slow it down.

At Home:

• Puerto Rico cannot pay its debt and the U.S. Gov’t is not going to bail them out.  They owe $72 billion which is more per capita than any U.S. State.
• The U.S. Supreme court has taken power from the states allowing anyone to have a formal marriage.
• The court also chose not to take words as they were written in a law, but rather to interpret what the writer’s of law intention may have been. In this case, mandating that people get insurance premium subsidies for all states, not just those with federal exchanges as was in the actual text of the law.
• Insurance premiums are sky rocketing while deductibles increase and doctors excepting Medicaid and Medicare are on the decline.
• Bond prices are down and the 10-year interest rate hit an 11 month high this week.
• The S&P 500 is at about the same level as it started the year.
• There are more republicans running for President than you can count on two hands.
• Hilliary Clinton continues to slowly turnover filtered emails from her server.  She still claims the Benghazi murders of all Ambassadors was due to a pedestrian video.

In Illinois:

• Governor Rauner vetoed a Madigan led Senate bill that would have left the state budget $4 billion in debt.
• A partial statewide service shut down may be next if a temporary spending bill is not passed.
• Someone has to start to get things under control in IL , maybe Rauner will have the back bone to cut spending. Time will tell.

Some of this news is pretty unsettling. Most of it is meaningless to our futures.  If you feel that way, consider watching the news less often and doing more meaningful (as defined by you) things with the limited amount of time you have on this planet.

Related Posts:

Is Ignorance Bliss?

Live Like You Were Dying

Illinois and Greece, Two of a Kind?