Here’s the full quote from CNN.com. http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/09/politics/gop-nh-main/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

Asked about health insurance at an event in Nashua, New Hampshire, Romney said he wanted a person to be able to own his or her own policy “and perhaps keep it the rest of their life.”

“That means the insurance company will have the incentive to keep you healthy. It also means if you don’t like what they do, you can fire them,” he said.

“I like being able to fire people who provide services to me,” Romney added. “If someone doesn’t give me the good service I need, I want to say I am going to get somebody else to provide that service to me.” - Jan. 9, 2012

“Deficit-worriers portray a future in which we’re impoverished by the need to pay back money we’ve been borrowing. They see America as being like a family that took out too large a mortgage, and will have a hard time making the monthly payments.

“This is, however, a really bad analogy in at least two ways.

“First, families have to pay back their debt. Governments don’t — all they need to do is ensure that debt grows more slowly than their tax base. The debt from World War II was never repaid; it just became increasingly irrelevant as the U.S. economy grew, and with it the income subject to taxation.

“Second — and this is the point almost nobody seems to get — an over-borrowed family owes money to someone else; U.S. debt is, to a large extent, money we owe to ourselves.”

NYT: Jan. 2, 2012

Investment strategists and money managers expect the S&P 500 will rise 7%, on average, in 2012, according to an exclusive CNNMoney survey. 

While Schaeffer’s Investment Research’s Ryan Detrick agrees that debt problems will result in ongoing volatility, he’s more optimistic about the market’s overall performance for the year.

“Europe’s problems are obviously still out there, and there’s potential for more curve balls, but we’re making a bullish assumption: things won’t spiral out of control and we will get some good news,” said Detrick, whose year-end target for the S&P 500 stands at 1,450, which translates to an impressive 15% gain for the year.

CNNMoney - Jan. 2, 2012

From WSJ: in short, sounds like everything’s still a mess, but you can buy gold, government bonds…and stocks. 

“Robert Prince, co-chief investment officer at Bridgewater, and his managers at the world’s biggest hedge fund firm are preparing for at least a decade of slow growth and high unemployment for the big developed economies. Mr. Prince describes those economies—the U.S. and Europe, in particular—as “zombies” and says they will remain that way until they work through their mountains of debt.

I always need to take an extra minute to think through baseline issues. David Walker explains it pretty well in Politico (Oct. 20).

The supercommittee could choose from two primary bases to keep score. The first is the Congressional Budget Office’s extended baseline, or the current-law baseline. This assumes that the Bush tax cuts will expire at the end of calendar 2012; the alternative minimum tax will not be addressed and physician reimbursements under Medicare will be cut dramatically.

The other is the CBO’s alternative baseline, or the current-policy baseline — which assumes that most of the Bush tax cuts will be extended; the alternative minimum tax will be patched and physician payments will not be cut dramatically.

The latter method results in more than $6 trillion in additional deficits over the next 10 years.

Because the hole is deeper under current policy, it’s much easier for Congress to show big progress. That’s why Walker recommends looking at current law.

Tax breaks ($253 billion)

Half of payroll tax (3.1%) on first $5 million payroll; Full holiday for added workers or increased wages (how long?) ($65 billion)

100% expensing of investment: $5 billion

$4,000 for hiring LT unemployed ($8 billion)

Extend payroll tax for workers ($175 billion)

“Returning Heroes”: $5,600 to $9,600 to encourage hiring of unemployed veterans

Infrastructure: $105 billion

$50 billion: Immediate investment in infrastructure

$10 billion: iBank

$15 billion: construction workers on vacant and foreclosed homes

$30 billion investment in school infrastructure

Access to high-speed wireless

Aid to states ($35 billion)

$30 billion to prevent layoffs of 280,000 teachers

$5 billion for public safety and first responders

Safety Net: $54 billion

Unemployment Insurance programs ($49 billion)

Pathways back to work fund ($5 billion)

Regulations

Speeding up payments

Work with SEC to reduce burdens for raising capital

 the agency is considering ideas, like gaining the right to deliver wine and beer, allowing commercial advertisements on postal trucks and in post offices, doing more “last-mile” deliveries for FedEx and U.P.S. and offering special hand-delivery services for correspondence and transactions for which e-mail is not considered secure enough.

Mr. Donahoe’s hope is to cut $20 billion of the $75 billion in annual costs by 2015. To do that, he wants to close many post offices and slash the number of sorting facilities to 200 from 500 and trim the agency’s work force by 220,000 people, from its current 653,000. (A decade ago, the agency employed nearly 900,000.)

— NYT, 9/5/2011

The Office of Management and Budget said in a new report that it now expects the

GDP Growth
2011: 1.7%
2012: 2.6%
2013: 3.5%

Unememployment
2011: 9.1%
2012: 9.0%
2013: 8.5%

2016: 6.1%

From “Mid-Session Review”, Released Sept. 1, 2011

A third option for further monetary policy easing is to lower the rate of interest that the Fed pays banks on the reserves they hold with the Federal Reserve System.

Inside the Fed this rate is known as the IOER rate, the “interest on excess reserves” rate. The IOER rate, currently set at 25 basis points, could be reduced to, say, 10 basis points or even to zero.

On the margin, a reduction in the IOER rate would provide banks with an incentive to increase their lending to nonfinancial borrowers or to participants in short-term money markets, reducing short-term interest rates further and possibly leading to some expansion in money and credit aggregates.

However, under current circumstances, the effect of reducing the IOER rate on financial conditions in isolation would likely be relatively small.

The federal funds rate is currently averaging between 15 and 20 basis points and would almost certainly remain positive after the reduction in the IOER rate. Cutting the IOER rate even to zero would be unlikely therefore to reduce the federal funds rate by more than 10 to 15 basis points.

The effect on longer-term rates would probably be even less, although that effect would depend in part on the signal that market participants took from the action about the likely future course of policy.

Moreover, such an action could disrupt some key financial markets and institutions. Importantly for the Fed’s purposes, a further reduction in very short-term interest rates could lead short-term money markets such as the federal funds market to become much less liquid, as near-zero returns might induce many participants and market-makers to exit.

But I read it as them saying, this is your last chance.

Nice things:

The affirmation of the US ‘AAA’ sovereign rating reflects the fact that the key pillars of US’s exceptional creditworthiness remains intact: its pivotal role in the global financial system and the flexible, diversified and wealthy economy that provides its revenue base. Monetary and exchange rate flexibility further enhances the capacity of the economy to absorb and adjust to ‘shocks’.

Warning:
The fiscal profile of the US government has deteriorated sharply and is set to become an outlier relative to ‘AAA’ peers. The overall level of general government debt, which includes debt incurred by states and local governments, is estimated by Fitch to reach 94% of GDP this year, the highest amongst ‘AAA’ sovereigns. However, federal government indebtedness is lower than in other major ‘AAA’-rated central governments. Fitch estimates that federal debt held by the public will be equivalent to approximately 70% of GDP this year compared to around 75% for the UK (‘AAA’) and France (‘AAA’).

Fitch currently projects federal debt held by the public and gross general government debt stabilising in the latter half of the decade at 85% and 105% of GDP, respectively, higher than for any other currently ‘AAA’-rated sovereign. In Fitch’s opinion, this is at the limit of the level of government indebtedness that would be consistent with the US retaining its ‘AAA’ status despite its underlying strengths.

  In the event that the Joint Select Committee is unable to reach an agreement that can secure support from Congress and the Administration, Fitch would be less confident that credible and timely deficit-reduction strategy necessary to underpin the US ‘AAA’ sovereign rating and Stable Outlook will be forthcoming despite the USD1.2trn of automatic cuts that would follow.