There were scary rumours around this morning that Caroline Flint was going to get health. Instead, it’s to be Andy Burnham, a man who cut his healthcare teeth with Particia Hewitt.

Andrew Neil is an excellent interviewer. He cuts to the quick far more quickly than Paxman and Humphreys and does so without causing offence. And why were doctors so dissatisfied with the NHS changes despite the large sums of money thrown at them? Because top-down micro-management, protocols and target culture sapped morale, stifled professional autonomy and failed to deliver better care for the patients.

Burnham may be the short serving Health minister of modern times.

via NHS Blog Doctor.

Because ruling from some form of emotional gestalt is stupid… Hickey gets this right…

It didn’t have to be this way. But Obama made a crucial appointment early in his presidency that showed he was a fool. He appointed Tim Geithner as his Treasury Secretary. Geithner had been the Governor of the New York Federal Reserve. It was his job over the last couple of years to regulate and understand the big New York banks. He failed dismally. He is clearly too close to Wall St and his reflexive actions have been to bail out the big banks he become close to over the years. He has left the managers in charge of the banks and insurers that lost hundreds of billions of dollars.

Even Obama allies such as Paul Krugman have pointed out that carrying on with the failed bailout policies of Bush was a mistake. Geithner is also widely loathed in Asia because he stuffed up the IMF’s response to the Asia crisis when he was a senior bureaucrat in the IMF in the late 1990s. Those same Asian bankers now don’t trust America’s spend and borrow policies. This will drive the US dollar down further (and therefore the New Zealand dollar up) and increase interest rates.

Yet Obama has persisted. Bailout after bailout has ensued. Barry Ritholz from The Big Picture tells the story best in his book Bailout Nation. It’s clear Obama has no idea that he has gone down the wrong track or, even worse, he knows it’s wrong and doesn’t have the ability or fortitude to change it.

He is a liar and a fool that New Zealanders should fall out of love with. I have.

via Blogging On Interest Rates, Economics & Business in New Zealand.