Wall Street cash bonuses for 2012 could rise 8 percent to a grand total of $20 billion according to the Wall Street Journal, in an industry where the average salary is $362,900, higher than before the financial crisis began. Those who bagged the fat bonuses are doubtless popping the bubbly and heading for the…
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As Thomas Sowell has pointed out, politicians like to spend money on government pensions, for obvious reasons. It reinforces their professional ruling-class status, they are spending other people’s money on themselves, and the spending comes down the line in the future. But in a lingering recession and shrinking economy, articles like this are starting…
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If the looming sequester cuts to the federal government’s spending were a real threat to the U.S. economy, who would be complaining the loudest? There’s only one correct answer to that question: U.S. companies and corporations. The reason why is because they are the ones who would be most impacted by the negative effects…
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Lawyers are beginning to complain about California’s cuts to the court system, one of “the hardest hit arms of government during the recession” with revenue “slashed by $1.1 billion over the last five years – an agonizing 30 percent cut since 2007” according to Brian Kabateck, president of Consumer Attorneys of California. As a…
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At what point does the size of a country’s national debt begin to weigh down the growth potential of its economy? Previously, the threshold at which that happened was believed to be when a country’s national debt reached 90% of its annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is based on the historic research of…
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Gasoline prices are up 75 cents a gallon since December and now double what they were when President Obama was inaugurated. Motorists in southern California are already paying more than $5 a gallon and prices are headed resolutely skyward. What could be the reason? First, understand that soaring gasoline prices are not due to…
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Like the proverbial poltergeists from a certain sequel to an 80’s horror flick, former co-chairs of the national debt commission that President Obama chartered to create a plan to balance the federal government’s budget, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, have returned with an updated plan to raise $600 billion in taxes by closing “loopholes”…
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The hefty raises given to U.S. Postal Service bosses did not prevent losses of more than $15 billion last year. The postal bosses now want to reduce those massive losses by eliminating Saturday mail delivery, a congressional mandate dating from 1981. But since 2007 first-class mail volume has declined by 37 percent, giving way…
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How do you know if something is really a big deal in Washington D.C.? Quite literally, politicians will do everything they can to make a federal case out of it! So what then are we to make of the reaction of today’s politicians in the nation’s capitol of the impending spending cuts that will…
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“In June 2009, President Obama proposed to address failures of consumer protection by establishing a new financial agency to focus directly on consumers, rather than on bank safety and soundness or on monetary policy.” So explains the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB), the new federal agency that emerged in the midst of a deep…
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