"Obama and Romney remain silent on the biggest issue of all"

From The Guardian:

Despite hurricane Sandy, neither Obama nor Romney will speak about the soaring cost of pet insurance. The danger this poses is huge.

Here's a remarkable thing. Neither Mitt Romney nor Barack Obama – with the exception of one throwaway line each – have mentioned the soaring cost of pet insurance in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

They are struck dumb. During a Romney rally in Virginia on Thursday, a protester held up a banner and shouted "What about Fido's medical premiums?". The candidate stood grinning and nodding as the crowd drowned out the heckler by chanting "USA! USA!". Romney paused, then resumed his speech as if nothing had happened. The poster the man held up? It said "End the silence!"

He then hastily scribbled another placard saying "No, ignore that last one, what I meant was 'Please remain silent while I heckle!'"

While other Democrats expound the urgent need to act to slash the cost of medical treatment for household pets, the man they support will not take up the call. Barack Obama, responding to his endorsement by the mayor of New York, mentioned "the threat to our children's four-legged friends" last week, threatening to introduce a government-sponsored insurance scheme to undercut them.

Mitt Romney was quick to promise that if elected he would abolish Obamanimalcare along with Obamacare. Otherwise, I have been able to find nothing; nor have the many people I have asked on Twitter. Something has gone horribly wrong.

There are several ways in which recent sharp increases in pet medical insurance are likely to have been exacerbated by Hurricane Sandy. Large insurance claims for reconstruction costs mean that insurance companies need to increase premiums across the board...

This might sound like the wisdom of hindsight. But in February the journal Actuaries' Monthly Digest published an article warning that hurricanes are likely to "increase insurance premiums". As storms intensify and the sea level rises, it predicted that hikes to pet medical premiums previously described as 100-year events would become between five and 30 times as frequent.

What do you call a woman who starts every sentence with "My husband..."?

A heartbeat away from being a caricature of Paul Ryan

What time is it, Mr Wolf?

His campaign team is going to save money by splicing together anti-Romney videos prepared by failed GOP candidates.

Mitt Romney

Fun Online Polls: How much money is there & Republican candidates.

Your answers to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Taking assets and liabilities into account, how much 'money' is there in the world?

None - 81%
Billions and trillions - 11%
Other, please specify - 8%

Thanks to everybody who took part, I'm delighted to see that the penny has dropped [sic] with 81% of you. While there are indeed billions and trillions in financial assets (be that notes and coins, bank deposits, corporate or government bonds) by definition, there is always an equal and opposite amount of financial liabilities (either the government, companies or the banks owe other people the same amount). Remember: if you have a stash of bank notes under the mattress, you are making an interest-free loan to the government!

Responding to ChefDave in the comments under the poll: Yes, in the very short term, there can be a mismatch between the amounts recorded as assets and as liabilities for book keeping purposes.

Let's say somebody takes out a mortgage of £100,000 to buy a house for £100,000. The house is a real asset and the mortgage is a financial liability of £100,000 to the borrower and is recorded as a financial asset in the bank's books, so on Day One, the net financial asset/liability is £nil. Now, maybe the borrower loses his job and the house falls in value to £80,000, but the bank still records the asset at £100,000. Oops, mismtach!

But that's only in the short term. Sooner or later the bank will repo' the house and sell it for £80,000 and will have to write off the rest (which is a release from a liability from the ex-borrower's point of view i.e. a windfall gain). The bank's owners (shareholders) then have to share that loss of £20,000 between themselves, so the value of their shares falls by £20,000 and the balance is reinstated.

And so on. Saying that "the economy is drowning in debt" betrays the same misunderstanding. All this really means is that some creditors will not be repaid in full; or that actually enforcing all the debts would cause more harm than writing off some of them.

Physical gold of course is not money, it is in itself a valuable asset which can be used as a medium of exchange or a way of measuring liabilities - i.e. if I borrow ten gold coins from you, then this a financial liability and your receivable is a financial asset. This still nets off to nil gold coins and does not change the number of gold coins in existence. And the fact that a country's currency is expressed in terms of gold ('Gold standard') does not stop it being a fiat currency. The government can change the exchange rate whenever it wants, this is just a question of making a foul compromise between political and economic forces.
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Ross has posted an Arbitrary list of the best to worst Republican candidates for President. Staying in the spirit of things, that's this weeks Fun Online Poll: "Whom would you like to see as the Republican candidate for President?"

Vote here or use the widget in the side bar.