The continuing debate over the Affordable Care Act and the commentary on this blog have convinced me that nothing can ever unite Americans on their vision of an ideal health system.

We need different health insurance systems for different Americans. I mean by this not Americans who differ by age or ability to pay but Americans with different notions of a just society.

This is where Germany’s approach to a health insurance system can serve as an inspiration.

Germany’s population of close to 82 million is served by two distinct health insurance systems:

1. The Statutory Health Insurance System, founded in 1883 by Otto von Bismarck and constantly amended over the ensuing century.

2. A p

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A while back, I wrote about whether it was a good time to buy real estate.

While I argued that it certainly wasn’t a bad time, thanks to the reduced home prices and rock-bottom mortgage rates, I didn’t really touch on why one would buy now.

Back during the housing boom, the trend was clear. Buy as much as you can now and flip it in six months, a year, etc.

After all, home prices will definitively be much higher in a few months. And can you imagine how high they’ll be a year from now?

Well, we all know where that mentality got us…in this huge mess we’re in now, because after everyone and their mother got in, scores of homeowners got burned as unsustainable home prices plummeted back to earth.

So if we can no longer expect home prices to rise exponentially, what’s the motivation behind buying a piece of property now?

Isn’t that the point of owning real estate? To experience

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Who wouldnt want to get some cashback just for using their credit card to pay for their shopping?

With the festive season almost upon us, credit cards everywhere are taking a hammering. No matter how tight our budgets, we’ll always spare some cash for Christmas.

But wouldn’t it be great if we could feel we are earning even a little while we spend?

Seasoned cardholders know we can – and that’s by using a cashback credit card. These cards simply offer a percentage of your spend back as cash (up to a limit). Then, typically when the anniversary of your card is reached, you receive the cashback either as credit on your account, or as a cheque.

Sounds great, but what if you don’t really use your credit card? Well, it

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When you are in debt, it is very important that you keep a tab on how much debt payment you are making and how long will you take to get out of debt and other such important information. Usually when you have multiple credit card debts, it becomes very difficult to deal with all the debt payments together. These are the times when you need debt calculators to bring things back to perspective by knowing the figures of calculation. You should remember that it is extremely important to make your debt payments on time, failing which you can face severe consequences. First of all repeatedly missing your debt payments makes you default on your loan and it gets marked on your credit report by the credit reporting agencies. This decreases your credit score. Read full article…

The government has agreed to sell nationalised lender Northern Rock to Virgin Money, the banking arm of Richard Branson’s Virgin empire, in a loss-making deal that marks the start of the government’s exit from banks it bailed out in the 2008 crisis.

The disposal, five months after Chancellor George Osborne formally put Northern Rock up for sale, will fetch between 747 million pounds and 1 billion pounds, Britain’s Treasury said on Thursday.

That represents a loss of at least 400 million pounds on the 1.4 billion pounds in equity pumped into the lender by taxpayers.

“The sale of Northern Rock to Virgin Money is an important first step in getting the British taxpayer out of the business of owning banks,” Osborne said in a statement.

Virgin Money, partly backed by U.S.

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