I read an interesting article today and wanted to hear people’s feedback. The Digital Journal ran a piece called “Pay Down the National Debt Instead of Contributing to Political Campaigns” The article announces: Today, the Association to Reduce the National Debt launched the “Campaign Dollars to Debt Reduction” program to give Americans an alternative…
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MyGovCost has just launched MyGovCost mobile! Whether it be a conversation at work, an event, or any circumstance where you are unable to access a computer, you now have the ability to obtain the calculations wherever you are! Just go to “mygovcost.org” on your mobile device and you should be automatically redirected to the mobile version of…
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Today Moody’s downgraded Japan’s sovereign rating to Aa3. Guess what happened? Nothing much. When S&P released it’s decision on Aug. 5 to cut the U.S. to AA+ with a negative outlook, the S&P 500 Index swung by at least 4.6 percent in the four trading days following the change and gold prices rose 5…
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The Congressional Budget Office has come out with its final projection of the U.S. federal government’s budget deficit for the current 2011 fiscal year. The bad news? It’s about to set a brand new record (emphasis ours): For the federal government, the sharply lower revenues and elevated spending deriving from the financial turmoil and…
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Today, The Economist is facilitating a discussion between the two sides of the stimulus debate. On one side of the spectrum is Richard C. Koo, Chief economist at Nomura Research Institute, who opens his argument with: Monetary policy is largely useless in this type of recession because those with balance sheets underwater are not interested in…
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Article published in the Sacramento Bee: Washington is injecting uncertainty and instability into an economy that otherwise can be quiet resilient in the face of change. Many businesses are doing well and making profits. But the economy isn’t growing because businesses are uncertain about the how to best use those profits, and other resources….
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Since last summer, the top 3 ratings agencies (S&P, Moody’s, and Fitch Ratings) have made 196 “super-downgrades” on municipal bonds, according to research popularized in today’s Wall Street Journal. Super-downgrades are defined as cuts of at least three grade-letter scores on the traditional scale used by the firms. For example, when the US treasury…
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A Credit Default Swap (CDS) is a special kind of insurance policy that can be purchased by individuals or institutions that invest in debt securities to protect themselves from losses if the issuer of the debt chooses to default on their obligations. The annual cost of this special kind of insurance policy is called…
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One in seven Americans now receive food stamps. As yet another indicator of the utter absurdity of Keynesian economics, Obama’s Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack is claiming that food stamps (“Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program”) “mean more jobs” and provide “the most direct economic stimulus”. In the process, he somehow fails to mention that food…
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The market is a yo-yo following the S&P downgrade – investors are searching for stability amid the policy flux created by the current Congress and Administration. Businesses and investors are struggling to create and sustain stable and accurate expectations as to the rules they are likely to face in the future. Steve Horowitz gives…
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