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The White House is picking winners and losers as it cuts back because of the sequester, and a planned reception for American Jews is getting the short end of the stick.
Many other events are proceeding as planned, but according to the Jewish news service JTA, the annual White House celebration of Jewish American Heritage Month is canceled.
“Jewish invitees usually include luminaries in the arts, sports and sciences, lawmakers, armed services personnel [...]
Currency Wars Return, 1930s Style…
The balance of power now rests with Japan, according to the bank, as Japan’s policy-makers’ more dovish approach looks set to bring the world a step closer to a currency war.
The Bank of Japan doubled its inflation target to 2 percent in January and made an open-ended commitment to continue buying assets from next year. This follows a leadership change, with new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe [...]
The Federal Reserve has been trying with all its power to stoke inflation. This is not the stated mission and you will not hear this proclaimed over loud speakers but if actions speak louder than words, this is the policy they are following. Yet the Fed is picking winners and losers with their inflation targeting. The reason the CPI for example is not reflecting major changes is the massive wealth destruction that has occurred [...]
January 2, 2012
Common ground is hard to come by in Washington these days, but everyone, it seems, hates tax “loopholes.” Democrats claim they rob the government of revenue and benefit the rich. Republicans say tax loopholes distort free markets by letting the government pick winners and losers, thereby potentially introducing artificial and undesirable incentives.
Indeed, during the 2012 presidential race, Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan attacked tax loopholes for [...]
2 million Americans will lose unemployment insurance by January 1 and the debt ceiling limit being hit on December 31st.
To most of America the fiscal cliff is some sort of fiscal enigma. Most realize that we are spending more than we are bringing in and also that taxes are part of our system. What most have a harder time understanding is the machine of the Fed and how it selects [...]
Solyndra is back in the news again. The solar manufacturer, which received a $535 million taxpayer-funded loan from the Obama administration, filed for bankruptcy on September 6, 2011. 1100 employees lost their jobs.
On Thursday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee released a 154 page majority report on their investigation of Solyndra. Their conclusion: officials in the Obama administration ignored warning signs about the company’s financial conditions and then were “willing [...]
We’ve never put much stock in the judgment of credit-ratings agencies. But by issuing a series of downgrades of giant banks this week, Moody’s Investors Service may have performed a taxpayer service. Two years ago President Obama and Congressional Democrats told Americans they had strengthened the banking system and revoked too-big-to-fail privileges from the financial giants. Now Moody’s can help Americans understand that the 2010 Dodd-Frank law has fulfilled [...]
MON JUN 04, 2012 AT 01:45 PM PDT
Mitt Romney expands his personal collection of Massachusetts Solyndras
Isn’t there a saying about those in glass houses throwing stones? (Beck Diefenbach/Reuters)
Mitt Romney, who last week attacked President Obama over the failure of Solyndra despite having backed two failed green energy firms with public funds in Massachusetts, just got another Solyndra-style failure hung around his neck:
A Massachusetts solar company to which Mitt Romney [...]
June 2, 2012
The Washington Post featured an article today titled “Is Bilderberg a conference on world affairs or a powerful global cabal? Depends on who you ask“.
The asserted contradiction in the headline is actually a paradox- a supposedcontradiction, while in fact Bilderberg is both of course. Yes, by all accounts it is a conference on world affairs- and yes, its core members form a powerful global cabal. So to suggest [...]
Think JPM is the “whale” in the market? Think again. Bill Gross exposes the real food chains on Wall Street, and you may be surprised just who is truly the biggest “whale” in the “developed” world. Hint- it is the creature controlled by a Princeton economics professor.
From Pimco’s Bill Gross
Wall Street Food Chain
Soaring debt/GDP ratios in previously sacrosanct AAA countries have made low cost funding increasingly a function of central banks as [...]
The Romney campaign has a quick response to Joe Biden’s pro-bailout speech in Youngstown Ohio this week.
Basically the line of attack is this. In the auto-bailout, the Obama administration had to pick winners and losers: firms to recapitalize, and firms that to let die. And salaried employees like the ones in this commercial, were left out in the cold while the presumably pro-Democratic union workers were saved by the government. That’s not fair, and [...]
Political risk strategist Ian Bremmer tells Business Insider that the most likely outcome of a period without politicial leadership is a world fractured along regional lines.
His new book, Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in A G-Zero World, describes a current global paradigm in which American influence is fading without a new power stepping in to fill the void. He calls this world “G-Zero”—a troubling but unsustainable period of tense geo-political relationships and uncertain investments.
We spoke with him about [...]
In the ongoing saga that is the Greece’s insolvency, only 85.8% of Greek-Law bond holders “participated” in the public sector involvement (PSI) debt swap offer, therefore Greece will retroactively force participation using a Collective Action Clause (CAC). The headlines read:
GREECE: WILL AMEND TERMS OF GREEK LAW BONDS FOR ALL HOLDERS
Once they use the coercion clause (CAC), in order to avoid paying full value to the hold-outs, that will be a [...]
From Points and Figures:
Obama has been all out in his assertion that we need to tax the rich to bring in more revenue so we can get this pesky deficit under control. He doesn’t mention that he accelerated the level of deficit spending so we are now careening off a fiscal cliff. His logic and thought process to higher taxes equating higher levels of revenue are also very much off [...]
From the Ron Paul 2012 website:
“Tonight, President Obama once again showed that he does not represent the fundamental change this country needs. Instead of offering solutions to the problems our country faces, the President was intent on delivering a campaign speech, further dealing in the typical Washington political gamesmanship that has gotten us exactly nowhere close to improving the lives of the American people.
“In a speech where much of the rhetoric [...]
Raleigh, N.C. – Newt Gingrich heads into South Carolina election day as the clear front runner in the state: he’s now polling at 37% to 28% for Mitt Romney, 16% for Rick Santorum, and 14% for Ron Paul. Gingrich’s lead has actually increased in the wake of his ex-wife’s controversial interview with ABC. Although one night poll results should always be interpreted with caution, he led the final night of [...]
Any attempt to analyze the economic programs of the Republican presidential candidates is fraught with danger. While some have some interesting ideas, none measure up in total.
Certainly Ron Paul’s desire to truly cut spending recommends him economically, Newt Gingrich presents an interesting plan for taxation (Mitt Romney’s taxation scheme is certainly the weakest), and then many of the candidates at least pay lip service to the notion of ridding the [...]
The nature of inequality is a topic that is getting a lot of attention these days. It’s worth taking a careful look at how inequality arises in our economy. In fact, inequality is built into capitalism and it perpetuates itself, steadily increasing, even in the absence of greed. Inequality naturally arises whenever future wealth is contingent upon the wealth you already have — almost the definition of capitalism — even if individual decision-making is no better than a [...]
It is not unusual for us to note the Knightian uncertainty that lies ahead of us (the unknown unknowns) and question the nth-decimal-place accuracy of VaR-based risk budgeting when the next long-only strategist suggests 90% allocation to high-dividend-US-Equities. In a quick and thought-provoking Q&A from the Swiss Private Bank Pictet, they see the world in a similarly non-normal manner and focus in one case on the growing tension that globalization has created between [...]
Rather than focus simply on the actual adjustments in the real effective exchange rates which shows the UK and US as having used monetary policy to devalue/weaken their currencies since the 2008 crisis really took shape, we look at an intriguing chart from Nomura’s EEMEA FX research team. Google Trends shows, that in the year since Brazil’s finance minister Mantega warned of a currency war’s immediacy, a dramatic pickup in [...]
SAT NOV 19, 2011 AT 09:00 AM PST
Key Republican backed loans to failed solar energy firm
Republicans keep on getting caught with their pants down over their Solyndra scandalmongering:
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), who has criticized the administration for its failed loan guarantee to the firm Solyndra, urged the Energy Department to approve funding assistance for a Michigan solar company that said last week it is [...]
Michele Bachmann just weighed in “Debategate,” telling Whispers that the media is trying to pick the Republican presidential winner, cutting voters out of the process.
“There’s always a suspicion of maybe a bias and I guess this just confirmed it,” she said of a CBS memo before Saturday’s debate, which suggested that the Minnesota Republican congresswoman would be ignored during the foreign policy chatfest.
The memo, she said, “demonstrates that the media [...]
Every Fed action involves the choice of winners and losers. In evaluating such actions it’s important to recognize that the Federal Reserve Board is an entity established by bankers for bankers. That recognition explains why maintaining the health of banks and bankers always appears to be the most important objective in any rescue effort. That intention becomes all the more galling in the current instance in which ultra-wealthy bankers, whose firms [...]
President Obama toured the Solyndra manufacturing facility in California in 2010. The bankrupt firm, which received a $535 million federal loan guarantee under the Obama economic stimulus program, is now being investigated by Congress, the FBI and the Treasury Department’s Inspector-General. (AP Photos)
Oklahoma billionaire George Kaiser has been in the headlines in recent months thanks to his role as a major investor in [...]
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said Tuesday that his committee plans to investigate government loan programs to private corporations in light of allegations of improper dealings between the White House and failed energy company Solyndra and wireless start-up LightSquared.
“I want to see when the president and his cronies are picking winners and losers… it wasn’t because there were large contributions given to them,” the chairman of [...]
The market seems to be driving the change in the direction of membership changes (via restructurings and temporary devaluations – e.g. GRE CDS and WI Drachma) while the euro-zone-’management’ seem prone to structural changes (i.e. EFSF umbrella, Euro-bonds, and fiscal union). While the cost of either approach is likely extremely high, some research from early Summer by ESCP Europe suggests a non-trivial approach that reduces [...]
I do hate with a passion all of these subsidies for special interests and tax break with the government picking winners and losers. The tax code needs to change. At least 90% of the population needs to be putting into the system. Companies need to compete on the merit of their products and services, not be propped up by special tax treatment. I’d like all [...]
Last night, Congress passed and the president signed a four-year extension of three expiring provisions of the Patriot Act. You may recall that the original expiration was scheduled for December 31, 2009 — and what did Congress do after 18 months of short term extensions, sporadic hearings and a markup or two? Nothing. The Patriot Act was reauthorized [...]
The House is expected to consider a bill soon that would offer $5 billion in tax credits to the natural gas industry, a proposal that is causing a split among conservative members and groups.
The bill, called the The New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions, or NAT GAS Act, would provide a generous tax credit to transportation companies that buy a vehicle that runs on natural gas. The measure has 180 [...]
Dr. B. Posted this on Marketwatch last week:
America’s recent GDP growth reflects population growth, the resurgence of the financial sector (speculation), the impact of QE2, the growth of national debt, and “real inflation” in services (meaning the same prices in many cases but reduced quality, thus necessitating the creation of “remedial” and supplemental service work that adds to GDP, but not constructively). These are not [...]