Welcome to the 46th Cavalcade of Risk--The "Mostly Finance" Edition

Risk abounds in every field of life—right now, we’re pretty much all swimming in political risk, financial risk, health risk, and food/drug safety risk. I myself am sitting here watching a crew of guys dig out my apartment complex’s sidewalks (with a backhoe and bulldozer) to lay new concrete, and only one hard-hatted head is seen: the concrete truck operator, who stays inside the cab smoking cigarettes. Does he think the hard hat will save him from lung cancer?

Both Concrete Guy and I know it isn’t safe out there—especially with this crew working. If my Navy OSHA-employed husband could see this, blood would shoot out of his eyes! Thank God they’re all gone before he gets home.

Let's don our hard hats and safety goggles and do some digging of our own, shall we?

FINANCIAL:
To start us off, Lily at The Honest Dollar sends us this primer on risk--it deals with monetary risks faced by investors daily.

Jacob at Early Retirement Extreme sends us this post about retirement model precision. Accuracy is important when forecasting and planning a retirement—early or no.

John at Truthful Lending alerts us to the scam banks pull on us every day in the name of check processing. I wrote him back and told him how to avoid this—don’t use a bank. Credit unions are so much kinder to us folks!

Raymond at Money Blue Book asks “what happens to my money if my broker goes bankrupt?” Isn’t that what account insurance is for, like FDIC, FSLIC, and such? He also sends us this article on how to avoid bankruptcy by buying basic health insurance.

Charles Greene at Trusted Advisor shows us how risky behavior from one field can spread to other fields—cheating to get a loan sets a wonderful precedent for children to learn from their parents, for example, through decaying social trust and moral indignation. Just like baseball players set competition examples through the use of steroids, people are setting borrowing examples through the use of extremely risky loans they know they can’t afford payments for.

Dorian at Personal Financier shows how ETFs and mutual funds will teach us a lesson in the slowdown--Dorian, they teach us one NOW about inefficiencies and cost-averaging into ETFs. ETFs don’t care how much the stock costs at the time of purchase, they just buy indiscriminately--usually at the top when they should be buying at or near the bottom. Talk about a case of always buying high and selling low—ETFs have it BAD!!

The folks at Personal Finance Claims warn us about something called PPI in car financing--this is coming from Britain, but it may be headed here (or is already here and I don’t know it yet). I haven’t financed a car in decades, so I wouldn’t know.

KClau’s Money Tips sends us this timely information on how recession happens and 8 tips to prepare for it.

Fire Finance sends us this tome on how to protect our portfolios from inflation risk.

MEDICAL:
David Williams of Health Business Blog warns us of medication risks with this article --can too low of a cholesterol level lead to suicides? I’ll bet the makers of Lipitor and Zetia don’t want us to know! Personally, I’m betting on thyroid malfunctions, because my cholesterol’s 160 and I certainly don’t feel suicidal.

Bob Vineyard at Insure Blog sends us this article about transparency—no, it isn’t about tape, but about transparency in health care, and how you can look up performance scores for doctors, hospitals, and such.

Jason Shafrin at the Healthcare Economist shows us what’s happening over in the Netherlands with patient channeling and preferred providers.

My Wealth Builder writes about seniors, the Nintendo Wii, and the risks to physical injury they face from active participation. It’s good that seniors are getting some sort of exercise, but maybe this is too much for them—or maybe they need to warm up first. Who knows?

John Cogan of Regulating Health Insurance sends us this informative article about extending coverage to minors all the way to 30 on their parent’s plan—but beware! Tax consequences abound! States are so desperate to get people covered without having to resort to the dreaded iron fist of universal health care, it would seem. Just eat right and exercise, and you’ll find you don’t need much in the way of health care, except for tests. But then you have accidents, broken bones, a jealous lover stabbing you in the chest, etc.—all things that food won’t cure. Well, maybe chocolate would’ve helped with that jealous lover…

Jay Norris of Colorado Health Insurance Insider looks at the difference in care levels between Medicare/Medicaid patients and those with private insurance. He notes that Medicare patients are more likely to be diagnosed with advanced cancer than other insured people—I’m thinking it’s probably because Medicare/Medicaid only covers the bare minimums, and reimbursement rates for certain diagnostics are very low to zero. There’s also a culture problem in some communities with trusting doctors and modern medicine, and it’s not like cancer has only one set of blatantly-obvious symptoms. By the time some people finally break down and go see a doctor, it’s too late for the Medicare/Medicaid system to help them effectively.

An ounce of prevention (and plenty of annual or semi-annual testing) is worth a pound of cure.

Lastly, there’s one from me about universal health care and patient-stacking--the latest on how Britain is handling its universal health care populace, and how we could be seeing it too if a Democrat gets into office and Congress enables him/her to keep this promise.

LEGAL:
Mark Mayerson at Insurance Scrawl alerts us to the insurability of punitive damages—Texas style. Now we all know that everything is bigger in Texas, right?

Shaheen Lakhan of GNIF Brainblogger writes about medical malpractice, and tells us with this article how it’s sometimes easier to pay than go to court—this is called “out-of-court settlements.” Yes, it IS cheaper, because getting a jury’s sympathy involved can jack up the bill enormously—sometimes by a factor of 12 (or however many jurors are seated for the trial).

Dr. Jose DeJesus of Medical Entrepreneur (I see his articles everywhere in the blog carnivals) sends us this link about medical justice and the discouragement of frivolous malpractice lawsuits.

RISK-RELATED ARTICLES ON THE WEB:
In the Land of IT
IEEE Spectrum Online holds this article about how freezing memory chips allows access to encrypted information.

From the British Front
ReRisk Online has this article about just how many British workers aren’t aware of asbestos risks and asbestosis in general.

From the Misconstrued Medical Files
Bev Sklar of That’s Fit had this article about how daytime naps can supposedly create a link to stroke risk, but the article (I saw this same one in Yahoo Health, BTW) does NOT differentiate between naps taken on purpose and the occasional nodding off that elderly people do. I personally clock out of consciousness every day from about 1-4 p.m., and my doctor says I’m not even close to having risks for stroke. Tiredness is to be expected when your adrenal glands no longer perform as they did in youth, or are subject to inflammatory/rheumatoid onslaught from arthritis or other rheumatic diseases.

On the Animal Front
This article over at Dogster and Catster Vetblog warns us of the possible risks to a dog’s knee ligament from neutering at too young an age. Every time I’ve gone to the vet with a new pet, they always recommend we wait until 6 months of age. I’ve never asked why—now I think I know.

From the “Prior Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance” Department
Ivan Ciano at Not Another Project Management Journal tells us how to visualize risks better and include risk management into the planning phases of a project.

Something overheard in high school shop class: “You’re gonna trip, fall, and land on all those corners you cut.”

From Mid-Wife Central
Dr. Amy Tuteur of the Home Birth Debate blog has an article on the risks of home births and how advocates aren’t being honest with themselves.

That’s all for this edition of Cavalcade of Risk. I now pass you onto the capable (and safety-gloved) hands of John Cogan and Regulating Health Insurance, and am going to attempt taking my trash out amidst careening backhoes, rampant bulldozers, and totally unsafe construction workers. Maybe I should wait for them to take their lunch break.