Last week, Moody’s cut Greece’s credit rating to the lowest level on its scale, citing risk of default despite the recent write-off deal. Moody’s said the rating decision was “prompted by the recently announced debt exchange proposals for Greece, which imply expected losses to investors in excess of 70%.” The sovereign debt crisis in…
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Pretend for a moment that you’ve just been elected to public office and that you now have the power to choose whose income you’re going to tax to pay for all the vital government programs you believe should be supported. If you want to keep those vital government programs on a sound financial footing,…
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The Wall Street Journal reports in “A New Spending Record: Washington had its best year ever in fiscal 2011″ that: Maybe it’s a sign of the tumultuous times, but the federal government recently wrapped up its biggest spending year, and its second biggest annual budget deficit, and almost nobody noticed. Is it rude to…
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Sam Hananel at the Associated Press reports that despite knowing about the problem since 2005: The federal government has doled out more than $600 million in benefit payments to dead people over the past five years, a watchdog report says. Such payments are meant for retired or disabled federal workers, but sometimes the checks…
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In his article in the Summer 2011 issue of The Independent Review, “The Dilemma of Bailouts,” economist Roy C. Smith (New York University) examines why despite its prohibition of taxpayer-funded bailouts, the Dodd-Frank Act has left the financial system exposed to meltdowns and promotes the shifting of risk from large “systemically important” financial firms…
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With the official unemployment rate having now risen to 9.2%, Patrick Buchanan notes in his new column, “An Establishment in Panic,” that another 7% are underemployed and economic growth is a very weak 1.8%. Obama’s predictable answer is higher taxes and to raise the federal debt ceiling so that even more spending and debt…
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In a new article for the Wall Street Journal, “We’ve Become a Nation of Takers, Not Makers,” Stephen Moore discusses that “More Americans work for the government than in manufacturing, farming, fishing, forestry, mining and utilities combined.” If you want to understand better why so many states—from New York to Wisconsin to California—are teetering…
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“My fellow Americans, I come to you today with a heavy heart. We have a crisis on our hands. It is one of our own making. And it is one that leaves us with no good choices. For many years, our nation’s government has lived beyond its means…We have not faced the hard reality…
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Susanne Walker reports at Bloomberg that because of fears of inflation created by the enormous credit expansion by the Federal Reserve and rapidly increasing U.S. government deficit spending, the world’s biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Company (Pimco) has dropped all U.S. government debt from its portfolio. Bill Gross, who runs the world’s…
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Governor Jerry Brown is proposing measures to balance the California state budget, including cutting $12.5 billion in spending and extending $12 billion in expiring taxes. The politically ambitious move from the new governor involves a sequencing of three legislative parts. The legislature would pass spending cuts, voters would then be able to vote in…
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