You take your medicine, and will take your money. It is good for you

Like so many good con-men, bankers make themselves believed by persuading each and every investor individually that, although someone might lose if stuff happens, it will be someone else. You’re in on the con. If something goes wrong, each and every investor is assured, there will be a bagholder, but it won’t be you. Bankers assure us of this in a bunch of different ways. First and foremost, they offer an ironclad, moneyback guarantee. You can have your money back any time you want, on demand. At the first hint of a problem, you’ll be able to get out. They tell that to everyone, without blushing at all. Second, they point to all the other people standing in front of you to take the hit if anything goes wrong. It will be the bank shareholders, or it will be the government, or bondholders, the “bank holding company”, the “stabilization fund”, whatever. There are so many deep pockets guaranteeing our bank! There will always be someone out there to take the loss. We’re not sure exactly who, but it will not be you! They tell this to everyone as well. Without blushing.

If the trail of tears were truly clear, if it were as obvious as it is in textbooks who takes what losses, banking systems would simply fail in their core task of attracting risk-averse investment to deploy in risky projects. Almost everyone who invests in a major bank believes themselves to be investing in a safe enterprise. Even the shareholders who are formally first-in-line for a loss view themselves as considerably protected. The government would never let it happen, right? Banks innovate and interconnect, swap and reinsure, guarantee and hedge, precisely so that it is not clear where losses will fall, so that each and every stakeholder of each and every entity can hold an image in their minds of some guarantor or affiliate or patsy who will take a hit before they do.

Opacity and interconnectedness among major banks is nothing new. Banks and sovereigns have always mixed it up. When there has not been public deposit insurance there have been private deposit insurers as solid and reliable as our own recent “monolines”. “Shadow banks” are nothing new under the sun, just another way of rearranging the entities and guarantees so that almost nobody believes themselves to be on the hook.

This is the business of banking. Opacity is not something that can be reformed away, because it is essential to banks’ economic function of mobilizing the risk-bearing capacity of people who, if fully informed, wouldn’t bear the risk. Societies that lack opaque, faintly fraudulent, financial systems fail to develop and prosper. Insufficient economic risks are taken to sustain growth and development. You can have opacity and an industrial economy, or you can have transparency and herd goats.

via www.interfluidity.com

Comments

[Selena]

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[Paxil]

I'm in no way an expert on this, and I do not imagine for a moment that C-E analysis is a sufficient moral guide for medical decision making. My concern is that these days we are thinking ONLY about cost, and not about the tremendous value that medicine also delivers.

A premise of Healthy Survivorship is that each individual adopts and develops the language that works well for him or her.

For me, "normal" in this context has connotations of regular, usual, natural. For years I dealt with big and little crises and discomforts (pain) that made "normal" an elusive goal.

For me, the notion of developing a "new normal" that integrated the changes and losses that accompanied my illness enabled me to regain that comforting sense of normalcy that would otherwise have been impossible. For me, the notion of a "new normal" helped me get good care and live as fully as possible.

Since the phrase doesn't work for you, I hope you can find other language that does. I'd also appreciate your sharing, if you don't mind, because it could help me understand you and others who don't find comfort in the notion of a new normal.

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Yeah that does suck. I was reading about those Ontario changes in my normal sleep deprived internet searches but it is nice to have an insider's perspective. Things aren't any better for pharamcies south of the border in the U.S. if that makes you feel better.
So if I read your post correctly you are opening an independent pharmacy of your own? I hope that such a venture has better chances of success there that it does here in the U.S. Unfortunately for both of us factors that are out of our control have lowered the feasability of the retail pharmacy business model.
Thanks for the post though. It explained the situation there better than the information I found. Good luck with your store!

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