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From Washington’s Blog: Eric Zuesse notes that this year’s subsidy to Wall Street – $83 billion – exactly equals the amount of the this year’s sequester cuts. Spiegel reports that ending the failed “war on drugs” would pay for the sequester cuts by itself: Harvard University professor Jeffrey Miron has advocated the legalization of drugs for decades…
Miron: [P]rohibiting drugs is expensive.
SPIEGEL: How expensive?
Miron: If it legalized drugs, the United States could save $85 [...] 1. Hawaii Last month, the Senate Budget Committee reports that in fiscal year 2011, between food stamps, housing support, child care, Medicaid and other benefits, the average U.S. household below the poverty line received $168.00 a day in government support. What’s the problem with that much support? Well, the median household income in America is just over $50,000, [...] Mac Slavo
By all accounts, the residents of many hurricane stricken areas of the north east are in the midst of a collapse. While FEMA, the National Guard and private relief organizations are in place and providing some level of assistance, the fact of the matter is that for tens of thousands of Americans, the world as they knew it has completely collapsed around them. What we are witnessing are [...] Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones As America’s engineered economic implosion accelerates, the parallels with how the Roman empire fell are staggering. It is now abundantly clear that the ruling class is preparing for a planned economic implosion after which they will declare themselves the saviors. A recent Reuters report highlighting how the Federal Reserve has been telling major banks in the U.S. to prepare for a “worst [...] Britain had a bigger budget deficit than economists forecast in June, casting fresh doubt on whether Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne can meet his full- year fiscal goals. The shortfall, which excludes government support for banks, was 14.4 billion pounds ($23 billion) compared with 13.9 billion pounds a year earlier, the Office for National Statistics said inLondon today. The median forecast of 20 forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey was for a deficit of 13.4 billion pounds. [...] By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Those who say that uncertainty about the future is weakening the economy have it exactly backwards. It’s the weak economy that’s feeding our uncertainty. The American economy is losing momentum because it’s running out of fuel. Our economic fuel is income, and it’s in short supply. Right now, real disposable incomes are growing at barely 1% a year, the slowest growth on record [...] JP Morgan’s credit rating would be much lower without government backing. As Bloomberg noted last week: “JPMorgan benefited from the assumption that there’s a “very high likelihood” the U.S. government would back the bank’s bondholders and creditors if it defaulted on its debt, according to the statement. Without the implied federal backing, JPMorgan’s long-term deposit rating would have been three levels lower and its senior debt would have dropped two more steps, Moody’s said.” And [...] We Are Living in a ‘Modern-Day Depression’: David Rosenberg By Aaron Task | Daily Ticker – Mon, Jun 25, 2012 8:13 AM EDT The Federal Reserve cut its growth forecast for the second half of 2012 and 2013 last week, raising concerns yet again about the potential for a “double-dip” recession. While some, notably the cycle watchers at ECRI, believe the U.S. economy is definitely heading for another recession (or already there), [...] The federal government paid at least $439 million in employee bonuses last year, down $43 million since new austerity restrictions were announced. The largest merit awards went to senior executives in Washington and air traffic controllers, an Asbury Park Press investigation found. The highest award, $62,895, went to 16 employees from agriculture to NASA. The $439 million in bonuses may be a staggering amount — enough to buy the former New Jersey [...] Taxpayers are shelling out nearly $4 million a year to pay the expenses of the country’s four living ex-presidents, all of whom are millionaires thanks to lucrative book deals and speaking fees. The perks include $580,000 for Bill Clinton’s office in New York City, $83,000 for George W Bush’s phone bill and $15,000 in postage for Jimmy Carter. Now, a bi-partisan bill in Congress aims to cut government support for former Commanders-in-Chief, [...] Star analyst Meredith Whitney makes an astonishing bullish reversal… “The financial crisis is over…”From Newsmax: Star Wall Street analyst Meredith Whitney is reversing the one call that made her famous in 2007 — she’s upgrading her recommendation on Citigroup, a sign the financial crisis could finally be a thing of the past. Whitney notched up her Citigroup recommendation to hold from underperform, CNBC reports. In 2007, Whitney predicted the subprime mortgage mess would force the bank to cut its dividend to raise capital, making a spot-on [...] Societe Generale SA (GLE) and Credit Agricole SA (ACA) were among French banks to have their credit grades cut by Standard & Poor’s after France was stripped of its top rating earlier this month. Societe Generale, France’s second-largest lender, and No. 3 Credit Agricole had their ratings downgraded to A from A+, with a stable outlook, S&P said yesterday in statements. Caisse des Depots et Consignations also was cut to AA+ from AAA. European nations are grappling [...] A new book by Hoover Institution fellow Peter Schweizer details the startling extent of the cronyism that has pervaded President Obama’s “green jobs” push. According to Schweizer, 4 out of every 5 renewable energy companies backed by the Energy Department was “run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers.” Those companies’ “political largesse is probably the best investment they ever made in alternative energy,” Schweizer explains. “It brought them returns [...] On October 26th, the tenth anniversary of the signing of the PATRIOT Act, the Electronic Frontier Foundation sued the Department of Justice (DOJ) for answers about “secret interpretations” about a particular provision known as Section 215. Several senators have warned that the DOJ is using Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act to support what government attorneys call a “sensitive collection program” that may be targeting large numbers of Americans that [...] From Peter Tchir of TF Market Advisors The Miracle On Ice One of the Greatest Sports Moments of the 20th Century. What made it amazing was that a bunch of American amateurs defeated a team of Soviets that were amateur in name only. The Soviet Union, whatever the ideals of communism were, had given up on them. Individuals with special talents were given special rewards. It wasn’t just the sports teams, it was [...] Like a fever, revolutions come in waves. And if this is a revolution, then it broke first on November 4, 2008, with the election of Barack Obama, second, on February 19, 2009, with the explosion of anger by Rick Santelli, giving birth to the Tea Party, and third, on September 10, 2011 with the #Occupy movements that are now spreading across the United States. The souls in these movements must now decide [...] Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said in a letter to the Ford Motor Company on Thursday that he was “deeply concerned about undue political pressure exerted by the White House.” The House Oversight Committee chairman’s letter comes on the heels of reports earlier this week that the company had pulled an ad critical of the auto bailout following a phone call with administration officials.
Ford denied Tuesday that [...] Bank of America is just one of the banks downgraded by Moody’s. Big news in the financial world yesterday, as Moody’s downgraded three of America’s biggest commercial banks. The ratings agency hit Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Citigroup, and the money-shot quote came from the Wall Street Journal: Moody’s downgraded Bank of America’s long-term senior debt two steps to Baa1, which is three steps above a junk credit rating. [...] TPM2012 BENJY SARLIN SEPTEMBER 21, 2011, 11:54 AM 17266178 By Simon Kennedy, MarketWatch LONDON (MarketWatch) — Moody’s Investors Service on Wednesday downgraded French banks Credit Agricole SA and Societe Generale SA as the credit-rating company also said it has become increasingly concerned about the funding and liquidity needs of the lenders. Moody’s had said in June that it was considering downgrading France’s top three listed banks because of their exposure to Greek debt and said [...] by Alexander Gloy of Lighthouse Investment Management Look At Me – I’m A Junk Rated Bank Everybody hates rating agencies. They missed Enron (balance sheet fraud), the sub-prime crisis (using models provided by banks) and sovereign debt crisis (concealed by foreign currency swaps). They have been wrong – so what? Stock market analysts are wrong all the time, and investors still read their worthless reports. And what would [...] Meredith Whitney is back. In an interview with Fortune, she says that state finances are WORSE than estimated. But… she says: “I never intended on framing the scale of defaults as a precise estimate, but I continue to believe that degree of municipal defaults will be borne out over the cycle. I meant to point out that the state debt problem is a massive headwind for the U.S. [...] None of America’s largest banks raise money on the free market. Every single one of them is propped up by an implicit taxpayer guarantee that is very similar to the backstops provided to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It is a huge subsidy by taxpayers to the banks, enabling them to be far more profitable than they would be otherise. Tim Carney at the Washington Examiner (disclosure: we’re [...] U.S. households are now getting more in cash handouts from the government than they are paying in taxes for the first time since the Great Depression. Households received $2.3 trillion in some kind of government support in 2010. That includes expanded unemployment benefits, as well as payments for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and stimulus spending, among other things. But that’s more than the $2.2 trillion households paid in taxes, [...] via MSNBC: Regulators have approved generous executive compensation at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the taxpayer-backed mortgage finance giants, with little scrutiny or analysis, according to a report published Thursday by the inspector general of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The companies, whose fates are to be decided by Congress this year, paid a combined $17 million to their chief executives in 2009 and 2010, the two [...] Per Reuters: President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing covert U.S. government support for rebel forces seeking to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, government officials told Reuters on Wednesday. Obama signed the order, known as a presidential “finding”, within the last two or three weeks, according to four U.S. government sources familiar with the matter. Such findings are a principal form of presidential directive used [...] by ZH After yesterday TrimTabs Charles Biderman made it all too clear who runs the stock market, today the same firm exposes the system’s dirty socialist core: “In a research note, TrimTabs highlights that government social benefits —including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and unemployment insurance—were equal to 35% of all private and public wages and salaries in the 12 months ended January, up from 10% [...] |
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