While Moody’s is confident it will not have to downgrade the nation’s rating because of a default, it maintained that long-term debt and deficit problems will continue to weigh on the AAA mark.
“Any downgrade I think is ultimately going to be based more on fundamental issues. We have a huge debt now almost eight times our tax revenues. That’s massive. It’s fundamentally a toxic asset.
The U.S. currency has had an “exorbitant privilege because it was the reserve currency that most central banks had,” Lagarde said in an interview on PBS’s “Newshour” yesterday. “If there was a dent in this exorbitant privilege and the confidence that most people have towards the dollar, it would probably entail a decline of the dollar relative to other currencies.”
“There is no means of avoiding a final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.” – Ludwig von Mises
Bad news, stock-market bulls: Corporate insiders are selling their companies’ shares at an abnormally fast pace. What do insiders know that outsiders do not?
It has long been clear that America’s recovery sagged worrisomely in the first half of 2011. This morning’s (07-29-2011) second-quarter GDP report reveals, however, that despite concern, most observers were too optimistic in their assessment of the economy’s strength. Even more distressing, a series of revisions to past figures reveals a recession that was substantially worse than previously understood, which has left America in a bigger hole than imagined.
Economic growth in the first half of the year slowed to a crawl, the Commerce Department reported Friday, suggesting there will be few new jobs prospects for the nation’s unemployed in the months ahead and renewing fears of a double-dip recession.
The debt dilemmas in Europe and the US prove yet again that elected officials will ignore long-run costs to achieve short-run benefits, and will act only when forced, in a doomed effort to circumvent the laws of economics and revoke the laws of arithmetic. And that implies an extended period of episodic economic disruption and political upheaval far beyond this summer’s debates on America’s debt ceiling and Europe’s distressed sovereign debtors. These debates represent just one round in an ongoing struggle, with vast political and economic consequences for years to come.
Red and white, blue suede shoes, I’m Uncle Sam, how do you do?
Gimme five, I’m still alive, ain’t no luck, I learned to duck.
Check my pulse, it don’t change. Stay seventy-two come shine or rain.
Wave the flag, pop the bag, rock the boat, skin the goat.
Wave that flag, wave it wide and high.
Summertime done, come and gone, my, oh, my.
I’m Uncle Sam, that’s who I am; Been hidin’ out in a rock and roll band.
Shake the hand that shook the hand of P.T. Barnum and Charlie Chan.
Shine your shoes, light your fuse. Can you use them ol’ U.S. Blues?
I’ll drink your health, share your wealth, run your life, steal your wife.
Wave that flag, wave it wide and high.
Summertime done, come and gone, my, oh, my.
Back to back chicken shack. Son of a gun, better change your act.
We’re all confused, what’s to lose? You can call this song the United States Blues.
Wave that flag, wave it wide and high.
Summertime done, come and gone, my, oh, my.
Largely invisible to a radar screen dominated by concerns over the US and eurozone debt crises, the Chinese economic miracle, one of the few apparent bright spots that remains in a world beset by trouble, has in recent weeks also been showing unnerving signs of strain. Indeed, it may even be about to come off the rails entirely – quite literally.
China Daily reported Friday that unnatural deaths have taken the lives of 72 mainland billionaires over the past eight years. (Do the math.)
Which means that if you’re one of China’s 115 current billionaires, as listed on the 2011 Forbes Billionaires List, you should be more than a little nervous.
Mortality rate notwithstanding, what’s more disturbing is how these mega wealthy souls met their demise. According to China Daily, 15 were murdered, 17 committed suicide, seven died from accidents and 19 died from illness. Oh, yes, and 14 were executed. (Welcome to China.)
Seventy-three percent of Americans in Gallup Daily tracking over the July 22-24 weekend say the U.S. economy is getting worse. This is up 11 percentage points from the three days ending July 6, and the worst level for this measure since the three days ending March 12, 2009.
The U.S. government will foot the bill for half of all health care costs in the United States by 2020, according to a government report released Thursday.
In the near term, the Europeans have the bigger problem – and this will only be compounded by slower growth in the United States (home to about one-quarter of the world economy). Over the longer haul, it remains to be seen when and how politicians in the United States will take up the real budget issues.
Plunging rates for chartering container vessels that carry sneakers, furniture and flat-screen TVs may signal a U.S. consumer slowdown and losses for shipping lines in what is traditionally their busiest time of the year.
CME Group Inc. is evaluating whether to move some operations to other states from Chicago to reduce its taxes, but it has not decided on an exact timeline, CEO Craig Donohue said Thursday.
NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth’s atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxidetrap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.
First, China made cut-price clothes and knick-knacks. Then it learned how to make mobile phones and iPads. Now it is making a 2,050ft-long bridge spanning the San Francisco bay.
General Electric Co.’s health care unit, the world’s biggest maker of medical imaging machines, is moving the headquarters of its 115-year-old X-ray business to Beijing.
Illegal immigrants who come to the United States in the hope of giving their children a better chance at life often see those kids doing the same kind of low-paying, menial jobs they themselves do, a new University of Chicago study has found.
Visa Inc., the world’s biggest payments network, said fiscal third-quarter profit rose 40 percent, beating analyst estimates for the 14th straight period, as consumers boosted credit-card spending.
“U.S. bonds are not safe, but people think they are safe,” Yu, a researcher at a Beijing institute under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told reporters at a briefing in Mumbai, India, today. “That is a mirage.”
China is certainly concerned about the U.S. debt impasse, but unlike in past situations, Beijing has little choice but to cross its fingers and hope its vast holdings of Treasury notes keep their value, according to Chinese market participants.
The Chinese have long admired America’s economic dynamism. But they have lost confidence in America’s government and its dysfunctional economic stewardship. That message came through loud and clear in my recent travels to Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, and Hong Kong.
In April 2000, we had effective full employment. Among working age adults, 64.74% had jobs, and our unemployment rate was 3.8%. Things have been getting worse pretty much ever since.
At least the Transportation Security Administration official didn’t prevent the man from videotaping a screener running her hands up and down the body of a female passenger to the point that she was in tears.
So maybe TSA is finally learning that videography is permitted at security checkpoints.
But now it begs the question to what extent must we go through in order to enjoy the privilege of traveling?
The law states that police need some type of reasonable suspicion before they can grope your body.
Yet the same law also allows TSA screeners to do the same simply because you choose to opt-out of a full body scanner.
The above video, which was uploaded Tuesday, was recorded at Chicago O’Hare International Airport.
The man who uploaded the video goes by marklyon on Flyertalk, where he gives his account of what took place.
The female passenger walked away sobbing, saying she felt humiliated.
Remember that old adage about how the terrorists hate us for our freedoms?
Using that logic, they probably don’t hate us as much anymore.
Japanese government killing its own people in Fukushima – This is a must watch video. It will show you exactly what happens when you turn the individuals right to all powerful centralized government, where the bureaucrats decide what is right and best for the citizens…
And we, America,we are on the path to become a country like this…Those government assholes must kill themselves for dooming the future generations of Japan, so today’s government and Emperor does not look bad in the eyes of the world.
By the way, if they do not care for their own people, do you think they care for the people around the Globe who will get exposed to the radiation leaking from the Japanese plants? NO!!!! I do not think so….
I personally think that they cannot stop the leaking radiation, but do not want to admit it, so they probably think….”as we will go down dying from the radiation, the whole damn world will go down with us….”
Would you be willing to pay more in taxes to save your government? – TCE comments…
To Joanne and Kevin from Yourkville UK – Yeah? Look at what your country has become… wealthy people are leaving it…I haven’t heard of government or poor people that create sustainable job growth…You have already taxed your wealthy people to extinction - Wealthy Britons want to leave UK. What will happen to a country where only morons like you will be left to live?
To Paul from UK – You see the truth brother…
To Richard from New Jersey – Right on the money. Make everyone pay tax. How? Abolish all taxes and adopt the fair tax – national sales tax taxing according to what you spend. Buy a corporate jet you get taxed 25%, buy a truck you get taxed 25%, buy a car you get taxed 25%, buy a motorcycle you get taxed 25%, buy a bike you get taxed 25%, buy a shoes you get taxed 25%. Now that’s what I call fair and everyone is contributing. Our chairman Obama said that we have to do what he calls “SHARED SACRIFICE TO BRING FINANCIAL SANITY”….That’s how we do it Mr Obama….That’s what is fair – if you buy jet you pay 0.25% tax on $ 40 000 000 which is $ 10 mill, if you buy car you pay 0.25% tax on $30 000 which is $7 500 or, if you are a poor guy that can buy only a shoes you pay 0.25 % tax on $ 30 that comes up to $ 7.50. THAT IS HOW EVERYONE PAYS THEIR FAIR SHARE!!!! MILLIONAIRES AND BILLIONAIRES WILL PAY A WHOLE LOT MORE THAN THE AVERAGE CITIZENS!
To Linda from Chicago – It seems to me that you have been drinking from the same poison Obama drunk….Look what happened when your broke state of Illinois tried to raise taxes… Sears, Caterpillar, Motorola, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, they all are thinking of leaving you stinking state….
To Jake from New Jersey – Good thinking buddy. No one should be able to take from you what you have earned by working more and give it to anyone else that hasn’t been working at all
To Clause from Denmark – Clause,….are You high again!?!…You are a delusional junkie, that think we can have utopia on earth – “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs”….DOES NOT WORK!!!
To Arnold from Brussels, Belgium – Just confirming the Laffer curve….Ordinary people know this stuff. If governemnt taxes me more I am willing to pay less in taxes, either by working less or by tax evading….The more government taxes the less revenue it gets.
Americans are more pessimistic about where the economy will be a year from now than they have been at any time in almost the last 15 years, a new poll Monday showed.
In all, 59 percent of those surveyed for a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll said they expect economic conditions in the United States to be poor a year from now, while 40 percent expect conditions to be good. That’s the highest percentage since CNN began asking the poll question in October, 1997
I have been away from the Internet for the weekend, and return to find myself being fitted out for a supporting role in Friday’s evil slaughter in Norway. The mass murderer Breivik published a 1,500-page “manifesto.” It quotes me, as well as several friends of NR — Theodore Dalrymple, Daniel Pipes, Roger Scruton, Melanie Phillips, Daniel Hannan (plus various pieces from NR by Rod Dreher and others) — and many other people, including Churchill, Gandhi, Orwell, Jefferson, John Locke, Edmund Burke, Bernard Shaw, Mark Twain, not to mention the U.S. Declaration of Independence.* Those new “hate speech” codes the Left is already clamoring for might find it easier just to list the authors Europeans will still be allowed to read.
It is unclear how seriously this “manifesto” should be taken. Parts of it simply cut and paste chunks of the last big killer “manifesto” by Ted Kaczynski, with the occasional [insert-your-cause-here] word substitute replacing the Unabomber’s obsessions with Breivik’s. This would seem an odd technique to use for a sincerely meant political statement. The entire document is strangely anglocentric – in among the citations of NR and The Washington Times, there’s not a lot about Norway.
If it had been a scene in “Atlas Shrugged,” the guy would have disappeared into the secrecy of Colorado with a shadowy figure who we would later learn to be John Galt. In real life, the story will probably be more complex. But I wonder how long it’s going to be before businesspeople really do start walking away and deciding it’s not worth doing business in America today. Or it it already happening and we just don’t know it?
Finding work may not be quite that simple, but it sure seems that way. While the nation’s job growth has limped along since the economic recovery began two years ago, the Lone Star State is enlarging payrolls in Texas-size fashion.
As the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act winds down, the unemployment rate remains over 9 percent and the economy is idling. It is increasingly clear that Keynesian stimulus has failed to get the economy where it needs to be.
Alabama’s largest county began laying the groundwork Tuesday for what would be the largest-ever U.S. municipal bankruptcy after three years of trying to work out a solution with Wall Street to more than $3 billion in debt linked to a massive sewer rehabilitation project tainted by corruption.
“Even within the equity market,” Rosenberg writes, “there are ways to garner relatively safe income, which is becoming increasingly scarce. The era of aggressive growth is giving way to an era of income equity as the boomers switch more and more of their capital into hybrid strategies…
“If you ask me, this has been for the past two years, and remains, the most compelling risk-adjusted strategy. It is akin to playing the role of landlord: get paid an economic rent while the property appreciates over time.”
The nationwide decline in house prices has created a vacuum in the U.S. mortgage market. Private financing for home loans has all but dried up and the U.S. government is now guaranteeing almost every new mortgage. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have received most of the media’s attention, but policy makers need to focus on the third leg of the housing- support stool: the Federal Housing Administration.
Currently the post office operates more than 31,000 retail outlets across the country, down from 38,000 a decade ago, but in recent years business has declined sharply as first-class mail moved to the Internet. In addition, the recession resulted in a decline in advertising mail, and the agency lost $8 billion last year.
A downgrade of the United States’ AAA credit rating is a bigger risk than a default and could over time add up to 0.7 percentage point to bond yields, members of a U.S. securities industry group said on Tuesday.
Jim Rogers: “The US Has Already Lost Its AAA Status…I Am Short The US Bond Market As We Speak”
Congressional gridlock over whether to cut or raise income taxes is obscuring a different threat to six-figure earners: a host of stealth taxes implemented in the name of deficit reduction. Many of the provisions, as with the dreaded alternative minimum tax, have never been adjusted for inflation. As a result, they have morphed into tax traps for upper-middle-income earners. Here are three of the most glaring examples.
The US economy is a broken machine, burdened by an oversized financial sector and policy failures abounding in taxation, trade, and regulation.
Unfortunately the governance failures have their roots in crony capitalism and a variety of white collar crimes, disinformation campaigns, and public ignorance, so they are going to be difficult to surmount.
In the weird world that is Washington, men and women say things daily, hourly, even minutely, that they know deep down are simply not true. Inside the Beltway, we all call those utterances “rhetoric.”
But across the rest of the country, plain ol’ folk call ‘em lies. Bald-faced (even bold-faced) lies. Those folks have a tried-and-true way of determining a lie: If you know what you’re saying is patently false, then it’s a lie. Simple.
While Washington wrangles over how to avoid defaulting on the government’s massive debt load, voters are worried the final deal will raise taxes too much but won’t cut spending enough
Most of the big banks have repaid the government funds they received under the Capital Purchase Program (CPP), the pillar of TARP under which Treasury bought preferred shares in the nation’s banks. Enough so that, combined with dividends and sales of warrants, Treasury has declared that taxpayers have earned a profit on the CPP. Thus far, $245 billion has gone out, and $255 billion in repayments, interest and warrants has come back, yielding a profit to taxpayers of $10 billion. And there’s several billion more where that came from.
RadioAstron Flight Model Astro Space Center, Russian Academy of Science
A new Russian space telescope that will work in concert with radio telescopes on the ground launched earlier today, capping an effort that germinated during the Cold War. It will be the biggest telescope ever, with an effective antenna size spanning 30 times the diameter of the Earth.
The RadioAstron telescope has a 10-meter antenna, a tenth of the size of the biggest radio telescopes on Earth, but when combined with ground-based observatories it will be huge — with a resolution up to 10,000 times better than the Hubble Space Telescope.
