Does everybody have the crazy? Has Wall Street been smoking those much-discussed green shoots? Even as investors argue and rend their hair over relatively trivial issues, they've inhaled enough mind-altering optimism to inflate the value of garbage stocks. Alas, when we finally come down from this collective bad trip, the big problems facing our economy will still be waiting for us.

Missing the point on health care
The health-care debate, fueled more by rage than reason, is just one example of investors' bizarre behavior. Some progressive activists got steamed about Whole Foods Market (Nasdaq: WFMI) CEO John Mackey's opinions on the issue. To retaliate, they called for a boycott -- against one of the most progressive, worker-friendly companies in the country. Yeah, thatmakes sense.

The health-care hubbub is also drowning out important, salient details -- like the rumblings that major health insurers such as UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH), Aetna , and WellPoint have already been trying to make nice with the government to ensure that any legislation benefits them. While shareholders may rejoice, lopsided and preferential treatment from Uncle Sam toward certain members of the industry could unhealthily distort the market in their favor.

The prevailing rationale argues that benevolent government and greater regulation will save the day. (Never mind the further interference with our economy.) But who will reallybenefit from any impending changes? If powerful corporations and special interests walk away grinning, that's no improvement at all. Robust competition among health-care insurers would be a much better outcome for all of us.

If the health-care bill ultimately just showers insurers with federal largesse, it'll be little better than the government bailouts of powerful banking companies such as AIG (NYSE: AIG), Citigroup (NYSE: C), and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC). Instead of letting companies stand or fall on their own merits, we'll have Uncle Sam once again coddling undeserving entities at the possible expense of stronger ones.

Don't look there! Look over here!
Where will we even get the money to pay for health-care reform, anyway? Last I checked, we were deep in debt as is.

Yesterday's fiscal word from the White House may have left most of Wall Street unfazed, but it nearly made me choke. The government now predicts that the U.S. will run a $9 trillion deficit over the next 10 years --$2 trillion more than an earlier forecast this year.

The White House has also now admitted that the "less bad" negative growth figures it's been using to project GDP for the entire year (based on expected improvement from the nauseating freefall reported in the year's first two quarters) will be "more bad" than previously anticipated. By now, it's easy to wonder whether these revised figures will also prove wrong.

Earlier this year, the White House thought that in 2010, GDP would increase by 3.2%; that's now been revised down to 2%. Meanwhile, the government expects public debt to consume 66.3% of GDP in 2010, the highest level since the 1940s. Continued...