From Carpe Diem
Classic 30-minute video of Milton Friedman in 1975 (transcript here) discussing the minimum wage, Social Security, politics, the Welfare State, doing good by spending other people’s money, housing, rent control, government intervention and the Great Depression, collectivism, the free society, greed, private charity
From The Guardian
by Tom Parfitt
Russian citizens can be issued official warnings about crimes that they have not yet committed under powers granted to the security services today.
President Dmitry Medvedev signed off on a new law giving the FSB, the successor agency to the KGB, the right to caution people suspected of preparing acts of extremism, or to jail them for obstructing the agency’s work.
The powers appear similar to those enjoyed by Precrime, the police unit in the 2002 Hollywood film Minority Report. “This is a draconian law reminiscent of our repressive past,” said Boris Nemtsov, a leader of the Solidarity opposition movement.
Rights activists had hoped Medvedev would rein in the security services, after his predecessor, Vladimir Putin, a former KGB colonel, stuffed his administration with hawkish veterans. The Kremlin’s tough stance comes against the backdrop of a disparate but emergent civil movement protesting against corruption and authoritarian government.
Under the new provisions, the FSB will be able to echo Soviet practices. The punishment for ignoring a warning was unclear, but 15-day jail sentences are envisaged for “obstructing an FSB officer’s duties”. Sergei Ivanenko, a leader of the Yabloko party, called it “the law of a police state”. He said: “If such a law exists in a democratic country then it is limited by a very powerful system of civil, public and parliamentary control. In our conditions it will mean absolute power for the security services.”
Yesterday I posted You Wanna Be Americano? Sorry, America is No More The Dream Land… the article had an example of a portfolio where almost all of the companies were overseas
The capital is leaving America. Rapidly. No one wants to invest in country where government is taking over the businesses.
Why would someone in their right mind invest in GM, if they do not have a voice in the business decisions? Government and unions are the ones, who are controlling the company.
Why would someone invest in the health insurers? Tomorrow there may be a public option and the Health insurance companies will be out of the business.
Why would someone invest in a country, where the regulations are making your product so expensive that it is almost impossible to sell it, and if you sell it the profits are going to be taxed at such a high level it would make it impossible for you to prosper.
What creates jobs? It is not the government it is the entrepreneurs. And if you remove that main engine behind the entrepreneur’s drive - to prosper, to excel, then…
Why would anyone here will be willing to create new products, new services, new jobs? Just because of the hassle of it?
If you still have doubts that the investors are leaving, read this article from today:
From Bloomberg
by Andrew Frye
Li Lu, the hedge-fund manager who helped Berkshire Hathaway Inc. find profits in China, may push Warren Buffett’s investment company to make more deals outside the U.S. if he takes a role at the company.
“He is a person that Buffett has confidence in from a trust standpoint and who has experience from an international standpoint,” said Michael Yoshikami, who oversees about $1 billion, including Berkshire shares, at YCMNet Advisors in Walnut Creek, California. Hiring Li would mean “Buffett recognizes that the strategy that has worked in the past has to be adjusted in the new environment where more stable economies are likely to grow at slower growth rates.”
Li, 44, is in line to be hired as one of the executives who would eventually replace Buffett, the 79-year-old chief executive officer, and help manage Berkshire’s investments, the Wall Street Journal reported. Berkshire Vice Chairman Charlie Munger said “it’s a foregone conclusion” that Li would probably become a top investment official at Berkshire, the Journal reported.
Buffett is seeking more opportunities abroad after the 2008 investment in China’s BYD Co., which has jumped eightfold. Li helped arrange the deal, according to the Journal.
Buffett plans to tour Japan and India next year in search of deals. In May, he praised the prospects for economic growth in China. Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire, which Buffett has run for four decades, is ready to spend $10 billion on its next takeover, Buffett said this year.
From WIRED
By Noah Shachtman
The investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time — and says it uses that information to predict the future.
The company is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents — both present and still-to-come. In a white paper, the company says its temporal analytics engine “goes beyond search” by “looking at the ‘invisible links’ between documents that talk about the same, or related, entities and events.”
The idea is to figure out for each incident who was involved, where it happened and when it might go down. Recorded Future then plots that chatter, showing online “momentum” for any given event.
“The cool thing is, you can actually predict the curve, in many cases,” says company CEO Christopher Ahlberg, a former Swedish Army Ranger with a PhD in computer science.
Which naturally makes the 16-person Cambridge, Massachusetts, firm attractive to Google Ventures, the search giant’s investment division, and to In-Q-Tel, which handles similar duties for the CIA and the wider intelligence community.
It’s not the very first time Google has done business with America’s spy agencies. Long before it reportedly enlisted the help of the National Security Agency to secure its networks, Google sold equipment to the secret signals-intelligence group. In-Q-Tel backed the mapping firm Keyhole, which was bought by Google in 2004 — and then became the backbone for Google Earth.
This appears to be the first time, however, that the intelligence community and Google have funded the same startup, at the same time. No one is accusing Google of directly collaborating with the CIA. But the investments are bound to be fodder for critics of Google, who already see the search giant as overly cozy with the U.S. government, and worry that the company is starting to forget its “don’t be evil” mantra.
America’s spy services have become increasingly interested in mining “open source intelligence” — information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the daily avalanche of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports.
“Secret information isn’t always the brass ring in our profession,” then CIA-director General Michael Hayden told a conference in 2008. “In fact, there’s a real satisfaction in solving a problem or answering a tough question with information that someone was dumb enough to leave out in the open.”
U.S. spy agencies, through In-Q-Tel, have invested in a number of firms to help them better find that information. Visible Technologies crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day, scraping more than a million posts and conversations taking place on blogs, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon. Attensity applies the rules of grammar to the so-called “unstructured text” of the web to make it more easily digestible by government databases. Keyhole (now Google Earth) is a staple of the targeting cells in military-intelligence units.
Recorded Future strips from web pages the people, places and activities they mention. The company examines when and where these events happened (“spatial and temporal analysis”) and the tone of the document (“sentiment analysis”). Then it applies some artificial-intelligence algorithms to tease out connections between the players. Recorded Future maintains an index with more than 100 million events, hosted on Amazon.com servers. The analysis, however, is on the living web.
“We’re right there as it happens,” Ahlberg told Danger Room as he clicked through a demonstration. “We can assemble actual real-time dossiers on people.”
Recorded Future certainly has the potential to spot events and trends early. Take the case of Hezbollah’s long-range missiles. On March 21, Israeli President Shimon Peres leveled the allegation that the terror group had Scud-like weapons. Scouring Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s past statements, Recorded Future found corroborating evidence from a month prior that appeared to back up Peres’ accusations.
That’s one of several hypothetical cases Recorded Future runs in its blog devoted to intelligence analysis. But it’s safe to assume that the company already has at least one spy agency’s attention. In-Q-Tel doesn’t make investments in firms without an “end customer” ready to test out that company’s products.
Both Google Ventures and In-Q-Tel made their investments in 2009, shortly after the company was founded. The exact amounts weren’t disclosed, but were under $10 million each. Google’s investment came to light earlier this year online. In-Q-Tel, which often announces its new holdings in press releases, quietly uploaded a brief mention of its investment a few weeks ago.
Both In-Q-Tel and Google Ventures have seats on Recorded Future’s board. Ahlberg says those board members have been “very helpful,” providing business and technology advice, as well as introducing him to potential customers. Both organizations, it’s safe to say, will profit handsomely if Recorded Future is ever sold or taken public. Ahlberg’s last company, the corporate intelligence firm Spotfire, was acquired in 2007 for $195 million in cash.
Google Ventures did not return requests to comment for this article. In-Q-Tel Chief of Staff Lisbeth Poulos e-mailed a one-line statement: “We are pleased that Recorded Future is now part of IQT’s portfolio of innovative startup companies who support the mission of the U.S. Intelligence Community.”
Just because Google and In-Q-Tel have both invested in Recorded Future doesn’t mean Google is suddenly in bed with the government. Of course, to Google’s critics — including conservative legal groups, and Republican congressmen — the Obama Administration and the Mountain View, California, company slipped between the sheets a long time ago.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt hosted a town hall at company headquarters in the early days of Obama’s presidential campaign. Senior White House officials like economic chief Larry Summers give speeches at the New America Foundation, the left-of-center think tank chaired by Schmidt. Former Google public policy chief Andrew McLaughlin is now the White House’s deputy CTO, and was publicly (if mildly) reprimanded by the administration for continuing to hash out issues with his former colleagues.
In some corners, the scrutiny of the company’s political ties have dovetailed with concerns about how Google collects and uses its enormous storehouse of search data, e-mail, maps and online documents. Google, as we all know, keeps a titanic amount of information about every aspect of our online lives. Customers largely have trusted the company so far, because of the quality of their products, and because of Google’s pledges not to misuse the information still ring true to many.
But unease has been growing. Thirty seven state Attorneys General are demanding answers from the company after Google hoovered up 600 gigabytes of data from open Wi-Fi networks as it snapped pictures for its Street View project. (The company swears the incident was an accident.)
“Assurances from the likes of Google that the company can be trusted to respect consumers’ privacy because its corporate motto is ‘don’t be evil’ have been shown by recent events such as the ‘Wi-Spy’ debacle to be unwarranted,” long-time corporate gadfly John M. Simpson told a Congressional hearing in a prepared statement. Any business dealings with the CIA’s investment arm are unlikely to make critics like him more comfortable.
But Steven Aftergood, a critical observer of the intelligence community from his perch at the Federation of American Scientists, isn’t worried about the Recorded Future deal. Yet.
“To me, whether this is troublesome or not depends on the degree of transparency involved. If everything is aboveboard — from contracts to deliverables — I don’t see a problem with it,” he told Danger Room by e-mail. “But if there are blank spots in the record, then they will be filled with public skepticism or worse, both here and abroad, and not without reason.”
Wells Fargo’s Stumpf Sees New Costs for Customers – Wells Fargo & Co. Chief Executive Officer John Stumpf said customers, not just the bank, will bear the financial burden for U.S. regulations that cover services ranging from home loans to credit cards.
U.S. debt not sustainable – Kai Ryssdal talks to Harvard Professor Niall Ferguson about the unsustainable debt load of the United States.
Sun could set suddenly on superpower as debt bites – Good read by Niall Ferguson
21 Reasons Why The So-Called Recovery Is A Joke For Most Americans – Yes, U.S. GDP is growing and corporate profits are beating expectations across the board. Companies are flush with cash, and banks are confident again. It’s surely a recovery… for them.
Recession in U.S. Was Even Worse Than Estimated, Revisions Show – The worst U.S. recession since the 1930s was even deeper than previously estimated, reflecting bigger slumps in consumer spending and housing, according to revised figures.
Taxes: A Defining Issue – At a time when the American people need to make some decisions about the nation’s purpose, along comes Barack Obama to make the choices crystal clear
Who Doesn’t Pay Taxes and Why – For the 2009 tax year, an estimated 47% of U.S. households did not pay any federal income tax. The percentage was a bit higher than normal due to the lousy economy and some allegedly temporary tax breaks that may not be renewed. The long-term percentage of non-taxpaying households is apparently around 40%…
Jim Rickards Compares The Collapse Of The Roman Empire To The US, Concludes That We Are Far Worse Off – the similarities are just far too many, starting with the debasement of the currencies, whereby Rome’s silver dinarius started out pure and eventually barely had a 5% content, and the ever increasing taxation of the population, and especially the most productive segment – the farmers, by the emperors, to the point where the downfall of empire was actually greeted by the bulk of the people as the barbarians were welcomed at the gate with open arms.
UNFUNDED LIABILITIES OF STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE RETIREMENT BENEFIT PLANS (pdf file) -Total unfunded liabilities for all benefit plans are an estimated $3.1 trillion
Experts warn Obama panel: Fiscal crisis is getting ‘closer’ – The government should consider capping what it pays in benefit programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, experts told President Obama’s fiscal commission
U.S. Economy Grew 2.4% in Second Quarter, Below Forecast - Growth in the U.S. slowed to a 2.4 percent annual rate in the second quarter, less than forecast, reflecting a larger trade deficit and an easing in consumer spending.
U.S. Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index Fell to 67.8 – Confidence among U.S. consumers fell in July to the lowest level since November, posing a threat to the biggest part of the economy.
Free Enterprise — Not Government Oversight — Key to GM Turnaround, Say Company Officials - Free enterprise and the American marketplace – not the guiding hand of government – have revitalized the beleaguered automaker General Motors, which expects to announce another profitable quarter, according to GM officials.
Foreclosures boom among nation’s most creditworthy – A record number of borrowers once judged the most creditworthy are heading into foreclosure as the job market leaves more homeowners unable to keep up with mortgage payments.
How Uncertainty Hinders Economic Growth - Richard W. Fisher’s (currently the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas) remarks before the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce
China overtakes Japan as No.2 economy – China has overtaken Japan to become the world’s second-largest economy, the fruit of three decades of rapid growth that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.
UCF gets $434K NIH grant – The University of Central Florida was awarded a $434,800 National Institutes of Health grant that will allow researchers there to develop a game using life-size avatars and real-life scenarios to promote sexual abstinence among Latina middle schoolers.
Consider GREAT BRANDS OF TOMORROW
Credit Suisse released a superb piece of research earlier this year on the great brands of tomorrow. CS found that a strong brand is a vastly underappreciated investment thesis. Most interesting, however, is that the strategy approach pays. According to their research the “brand company” index has outperformed the S&P 500 by 64 points since 1997:
“An underappreciated investment thesis. There are few true competitive advantages in modern industry: scale, proprietary technology, monopolies, and network externalities come to mind. We believe brand is an equally powerful and even more sustainable advantage, but one often ignored by financial markets owing to its intangible nature. Our research indicates that companies focused on brand building consistently generate outsized long-term growth, profitability, and returns. An equal-weighted stock index of companies that spend at least 2 percent of sales on marketing outperformed the S&P 500 by more than 400 basis points annually since 1997; the top quintile of these companies outperformed the market by an amazing 17 percent per year.”
This is an interesting study for several reasons, not the least of which is the global strength it pinpoints. This is a truly globally diversified portfolio. So what are the companies they currently consider “strong brands”? The list of 27 follows:
1. Alibaba
2. Amazon (AMZN)
3. Almarai
4. Apple (AAPL)
5. BIM
6. Capitec
7. China Merchants Bank
8. Comac
9. Enfamil (MJN)
10. Facebook
11. Hyundai
12. Indian Hotels
13. Julius Baer
14. Li Ning
15. Mahindra & Mahindra
16. MercadoLibre (MELI)
17. Mercedes-Benz
18. Polo Ralph Lauren (RL)
19. Sonova Holding
20. Swatch
21. Tiffany & Co. (TIF)
22. Tingyi
23. Trader Joes
24. Tsingtao Brewery
25. Under Armor (UA)
26. Uniqlo
27. Yakult Honsha
Is it only me that sees the disturbing trend in this portfolio?
The bets for future growth are in foreign companies and countries
Compare what the investors held in their portfolio ten years ago and where they are advised to invest today according to the article
Instead of e-bay.com - it is alibaba.com and marcado libre
Instead of Coca cola - it is Tingyi (We will overtake Coke in five years)
Instead of BAC, CITI, GS - it is Capitec, China Merchants Bank and Julius Baer
Instead of Ford and GM - it is Mahindra and Hyundai
Instead of GE - it is Sonova
Instead of Nike – it is UniQlo, Li Ning and Under armor
Instead of Boeing – it is Comac
Instead of Hilton – it is Indian Hotels
Is America NO MORE THE INVESTORS HEAVEN?
Is America NO MORE THE DREAM LAND?
TheCynicalEconomist think so.
Think about it: What is the American dream all about
My definition is – Through hard work and devotion to rise from poverty to riches…
Can you do it nowadays?….
It is getting harder and harder
The unfriendly business environment is chocking innovations and investments here in the USA… the capital and brains are going abroad in Asia and South America where the governments are lowering taxes and promoting free markets
What is your opinion?
For your amusement here is a song from a time long gone ….
Time when everyone looked at America as the country of prosperity and good life…
Time when everyone, wished to be an American and worked hard so they could rise from the bottom to the top
Listen to the lyrics….
Where do you get from the bottom to the top?
Where do you shop non stop?
Yeah it used to be the dream land…America
Sorry, the opportunities in America are gone with the wind now….You can thank our political class, that is working against the interest of the people, who elected them….
At your attention – here it is another story from few days ago ….India unveils prototype of $35 tablet computer…..Yeah, I think we are really, really screwed as a nation……..
Now, haven’t I told you that hyper stagflation (hyperinflation combined with very high unemployment) is the most probable outcome from all that money printing and government meddling with the free market….
I have seen it first hand in Eastern Europe when the Soviet Union collapsed. Unemployment was over 20% and hyperinflation was so bad, that some of the workers got paid by taking home certain quantity of the products, they were making instead of getting their salaries paid with cash (in Communist countries no one was writing checks, all transactions were done with cash, just business deals were done electronically by the banks). I remember I needed a jacket for the winter, but I did not have work back then, so my mother “loaned” me money to buy one. Later I found It took her entire monthly salary to do so. And I assure you I did not purchase some fancy jacket…
Think about it! She worked a whole month and at the end of that month the money, that she earned were as valuable as one jacket…
Of course we do not see the inflation here (yet), but I think it is in our future.
Bernanke and the Feds think they can control things much better than the rest of the central banks around the world, because you see, the dollar is the worlds reserve currency, you know…
Not for long, not for long…
From The Telegraph
Bank of England Governor Mervyn King has warned that high inflation will continue to erode earnings power through next year as the economy faces the threat of ‘stagflation’.
Prices rises have consistently defied the Bank’s expectations of a slowdown, adding to pressure on households as wage growth remains weak and the Government introduces a strict austerity package.
The Bank’s rate-setters are charged with keeping inflation at 2% but the Consumer Prices Index benchmark has been above 3% throughout the year.
However, addressing a committee of MPs, Mr King suggested that they will be reluctant to try to curb the problem by raising borrowing costs from 0.5 per cent any time soon because of the weakness of the economy.
“There will come a point when we will certainly need to ease off the accelerator and return Bank Rate to more normal levels,” Mr King told MPs today.
“I look forward to that time because it will probably be a signal that there is a smoother drive ahead, with the economic outlook improving in a durable way. But I fear there is some considerable distance to travel before we can begin to use the word ‘normal.’”
The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), which slashed interest rates to a record low of 0.5pc during the depths of the recession, faces an acute dilemma on when to begin raising them. Not everyone on the MPC agrees with the Governor that the threats to the recovery present a greater danger than that of rising prices.
And despite “encouraging” 1.1% growth for the economy in the second quarter, the governor warned that we “cannot be confident” the recovery will be sustained, raising the spectre of ‘stagflation’ – high inflation and stuttering growth.
“We must be careful not to read too much into one number,” King said. “And the wider economic problems around the world underline the fact that we cannot be confident that the recovery in demand, output and employment here in the U.K. will be sustained.”
Howard Archer, an economist at Global Insight, said “one thing that does look clear is that interest rates are likely to remain very low for a considerable time to come.
“Monetary policy will need to remain loose for an extended period to offset the impact of the major, sustained fiscal squeeze,” said Mr Archer.
Mr King also suggested the US has been wrong to prioritise growth over cutting debt levels.
“All countries need to have a credible medium term plan within which they can demonstrate that they will get back to a position in which structural deficits are eliminated and there is a sustainable path for the long-term public finances,” he said.
“Not spelling it out is, I think, a problem.”
The Bank said austerity measures were part of a painful rebalancing of economies towards the private sector.
“I think we are are in for a long haul,” said Mr King.
More Than 1,300 Space Shuttle Workers Get Layoff Notices – More than 1,300 space shuttle workers received layoff notices this week from United Space Alliance, a NASA contractor that is cutting 15 percent of its 8,100-person workforce ahead of the shuttle fleet’s retirement next year.
SEC Says New Financial Regulation Law Exempts it From Public Disclosure – So much for transparency.
Paradigm Shifts And Gold Rocket Launches – You all know where I stand. U.S. government bonds are the biggest bubble I’ve seen in my life. If you are trying to rationalize 10-year yields at 3%, then you are probably the kind of person who rationalized bubble home prices by using the “there’s a fixed amount of land but a growing population” argument
Nevada’s Economic Misery May Be America’s Future – So many homes in Las Vegas have been foreclosed upon that banks rarely bother to hang a “For Sale” sign on the front lawn anymore. Instead, visitors identify bank-owned properties by the brown grass and the 8.5 x 11-inch sheet of paper taped to the front door or the garage.
The Consumption Gap – They thought Asia would save the world economy. They were wrong.
Mortgage brokers to be fingerprinted and registered – Mortgage loan originators will have to be fingerprinted and sign up to a central registry to do business in future, according to final rules issued on Wednesday by the Federal Reserve and other regulators.
Obama’s Elizabeth Warren mess - The right and left are both itching for a nasty fight over who will protect consumers from Wall Street
Feds demand diversity on Wall Street – A little-noticed section of the Wall Street reform law grants the federal government broad new powers to compel financial firms to hire more women and minorities — an effort at promoting diversity that’s drawing fire from Republicans who say it could lead to de facto hiring quotas.
BP taking $10 billion tax credit from Gulf spill – BP PLC will reduce its contribution to U.S. coffers by roughly $10 billion due to a tax credit the company is claiming it incurred from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
Schwarzenegger orders more furloughs for state workers – The governor’s new executive order requires employees take three unpaid days off per month.
Federal Debt and the Risk of a Financial Crisis – With U.S. government debt already at a level that is high by historical standards, and the prospect that, under current policies, federal debt would continue to grow, it is possible that interest rates might rise gradually as investors’ confidence in the U.S. government’s finances declined, giving legislators sufficient time to make policy choices that could avert a crisis. It is also possible, however, that investors would lose confidence abruptly and interest rates on government debt would rise sharply, as evidenced by the experiences of other countries.
Richest Americans You have never heard of – Microsoft’s (MSFT) Bill Gates, Berkshire Hathaway’s (BRK.A) Warren Buffett and Apple’s (AAPL) Steve Jobs are all household names in addition to being among the wealthiest people in the country. There are, however, other billionaires, whose companies or products are also among the best-known in the country, yet they live in relative obscurity, unknown to most — including their best customers.
Fed’s Report Shows Slowing Growth – In some regions, the Fed said, economic activity had started to slow
Obama fights against accusations that administration is anti-business - President Obama will travel to New Jersey on Wednesday as part of an effort to refute Republican assertions that he is anti-business.
EPA Puts ‘Environmental Justice’ Front and Center in Its Rulemaking Process – Achieving environmental justice is an Agency priority and should be factored into every decision
What Would Happen if the Bush Tax Cuts Expire – Much of the focus has been on the wealthy, but what will the expiration of the tax cuts mean for everyone else? Brett Arends runs the numbers.
US Debt May Grow To $60 Trillion From $14.1 Trillion According To Economists – Many international economists, bankers, and politicians now believe the US has overplayed its hand.
Jim Rogers Calls CNBC A Market PR Agency Whose Sole Purpose Is To Make Stocks Go Higher
Taleb: Government Deficits Could Be the Next ‘Black Swan’ - In a new edition of The Black Swan, author Nassim Nicholas Taleb warns against depending “on financial assets as a repository of value”
U.S. Cities, Counties Poised to Cut 500,000 Jobs, Report Finds – U.S. local governments may cut almost 500,000 jobs through next year to cope with sliding property taxes, a decline in state and federal aid and added need for social services, according to a report released today.
K Street goes to the defense of Charlie Rangel – Two of the three firms providing legal counsel to Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., in his pending ethics cases are lobbying firms
Rep. Barney Frank causes scene demanding discount – Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank caused a scene when he demanded a $1 senior discount on his ferry fare to Fire Island’s popular gay haunt…
GM Volt’s price induces some sticker shock – The long-anticipated Chevrolet Volt, General Motors’ electric car, will cost $41,000, the company announced Tuesday
The Year America Dissolved – Year 2017… With the dollar’s demise, import prices skyrocketed. As Americans were unable to afford foreign-made goods, the transnational corporations that were producing offshore for US markets were bankrupted, further eroding the government’s revenue base.
Thanks for the memories, Barack: Or, how to bankrupt a country in three easy steps – “Europe’s prospects brighten as U.S. fades.” Thus a headline in Reuters this morning.
Obama pushes Congress to pass small business plan – President Barack Obama pushed the Senate on Tuesday to pass legislation he says will benefit small businesses and generate jobs, and called on Republicans to back what he described as a plan similar to programs they had supported in the past.
Majority of Small Business Sector Facing Higher Taxes Under Obama Plan – This is a huge slap in the face to small businesses
Housing recovery is about timing and location – The latest report on home prices confirms that real estate is all about timing and location.
Rule By Elites Has Been Tried — And Failed – by Thomas Sowell – The idea that the wise and knowledgeable few need to take control of the less wise and less knowledgeable many has taken milder forms — and repeatedly with bad results as well.
Obama to Hold Aug. 17 Housing Conference on Ways to Repair Fannie, Freddie – The future of our housing-finance system is critical not only to our economic recovery, but also to millions of American homeowners in every corner of our country
If President Obama carries on like this, he will turn into a lame duck – The president hasn’t grown into the job – all that’s needed to beat him is a serious Republican, says Simon Heffer in New York.
Course of Economy Hinges on Fight Over Stimulus
Audit: US cannot account for $8.7B in Iraqi funds
From the White House to the Big House: 25 Impeachable Crimes and Counting
Deportation of illegal immigrants increases under Obama administration
Arizona’s Immigration Surprises
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