People's retirement savings are a convenient source of revenue for governments that don't want to reduce spending or make privatizations. As most pension schemes in Europe are organised by the state, European ministers of finance have a facilitated access to the savings accumulated there, and it is only logical that they try to get a hold of this money for their own ends. In recent weeks I have noted five such attempts: Three situations concern private personal savings; two others refer to natio... (more)
(Credit: CBS) As Washington gears up for a fight over federal spending and the national debt, lawmakers may want to consider some new polling figures.
A survey from CBS News' "60 Minutes" and Vanity Fair magazine shows that most Americans, given a set limited choices for balancing the national budget, would prefer to see taxes increased for the wealthy.
Investor extraordinaire Marc Faber is out with his latest Gloom, Boom, and Doom report, which discusses his outlook for 2011. Here are a few highlights:
1. Equity Markets – Faber believes a correction is imminent for the stock market as bullish sentiment (AAII sentiment) nears record levels and mutual fund cash positions remain very low. Furthermore, the latest upward move in stocks has occurred on declining volume, which is usually bearish from a technical po... (more)
The federal government released its 2010 financial statements as prepared according to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) a few days before Christmas. The public isn't clamoring for this information and the government's numbers don't seem to be keeping anyone awake at night.
For those looking for scary numbers to wash down with their bubbly tonight, according to GAAP, the government's deficit in 2010 was $2.08 trillion, a considerable widening from the $1.254 trillion... (more)
What we have done to future generations over the past 30 years is absolutely criminal. 30 years ago the U.S. national debt was a bit under one trillion dollars, and at that time it was considered a huge national crisis. Today, the national debt is 14 times larger and the years ahead look absolutely apocalyptic at this point. We have literally sold our children and our grandchildren into perpetual debt slavery. We have accumulated the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world, and ... (more)
Dec. 23 (Bloomberg) -- For almost two decades, the monks of St. Joseph Abbey in Covington, Louisiana, supported themselves by making and selling unadorned handmade pine and cypress caskets.
But if embalmers and funeral directors in the state of Louisiana have their way, the monks will be barred from earning a living by making coffins without a license issued by a state government board, eight of whose nine members work in the funeral industry.
In a November 1, 2010, blog post titled "Could the World Go Back to the Gold Standard?," Martin Wolf, the Financial Times chief economics commentator, comes to the conclusion that "we cannot and will not go back to the gold standard."
Among a number of mainstream-economics arguments leveled against the desirability and feasibility of the gold standard... (more)
Cuba is once again opening its economy in order to prevent further economic retrogression. Raul Castro says that this time it's the real thing. But, he notes, that the act of permitting more capitalism is for the sake of strengthening socialism. What he's really saying, obviously, is that socialism is not working and Cuba needs more free markets in order to make some progress.
For those of us who are demographic buffs, Christmas came four days early when Census Bureau director Robert Groves announced on Tuesday the first results of the 2010 census and the reapportionment of House seats (and therefore electoral votes) among the states.
The resident population of the United States, he told us in a webcast, was 308,745,538. That's an increase of 9.7 percent from the 281,421,906 in the 2000 census -- the smallest proportional increase than in any decade oth... (more)
You are not going to believe some of the things that the U.S. government is spending money on. According to a shocking new report, U.S. taxpayer money is being spent to study World of Warcraft, to study how Americans find love on the Internet, and to study the behavior of male prostitutes in Vietnam. Not only that, but money from the federal government is also being used to renovate a pizzeria in Iowa and to help a library in Tennessee host video game parties. These are just some of the examp... (more)
[...] A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 38% of Adults are at least somewhat confident the Federal Reserve Board will be able to keep inflation under control and interest rates down, with 10% who are Very Confident. Fifty-five percent (55%) do not share that confidence, including 17% whoa re Not At All Confident. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
In six surveys since October 2009, the percentage of those confident the Fed could keep inter... (more)
Europe is in turmoil once again. The sovereign-debt crisis threatens to spread from Ireland to Portugal and Spain. It all began with the financial crisis. Before the financial crisis, several governments of the eurozone, most notably those of Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain (PIIGS), had been able to finance their deficits at artificially low interest rates. Some had accumulated unsustainable levels of public debts.
In light of Bernanke's plans to purchase $600 billion of longer-term government debt, many academic economists are beginning to worry: Could the Federal Reserve itself become insolvent? In this article I'll explain these fears and I'll argue that the Fed, with its printing press, cannot really go bankrupt the way other cor... (more)
A SUBSTANTIAL majority of the Irish people wants the State to default on debts to bondholders in the country's stricken banks, according to a Sunday Independent/Quantum Research poll.
The finding that 57 per cent favour and 43 per cent oppose default reflects a growing view among policymakers and opinion formers that the State simply cannot support the debt burden it has taken on.
The telephone poll of 500 people nationwide has also found that a majority of around t... (more)
And they're 100% right, but, of course, they'll do the exact opposite.
Iceland’s President Olafur R. Grimsson said his country is better off than Ireland thanks to the government’s decision to allow the banks to fail two years ago and because the krona could be devalued.
“The difference is that in Iceland we allowed the banks to fail,” Grimsson said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Mark Barton today. “These were private banks and we didn’t pump money into them in order to keep them going; the state did not shoulder the responsibility of th... (more)
Some analysts are warning that the U.S. dollar is in danger of collapse because of the exploding U.S. government debt, the horrific U.S. trade deficit and the new round of quantitative easing recently announced by the Federal Reserve. Other analysts are warning the the euro is in danger of collapse because of the very serious sovereign debt crisis that is affecting nations such as Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Belgium and Spain. So what happens if the dollar and the euro both collapse? We... (more)
In his interview with the CNBC on November 9, 2010, a highly regarded Wall Street economist, Nouriel Roubini, the cofounder and chairman of Roubini Global Economics, said that a gold standard is unlikely to stabilize the financial system. On the contrary, holds Roubini, such a standard can only make things much worse.
For instance, argues Roubini, an economy that is growing quickly would tend to overheat and this in turn is likely to lead to a higher inflation and asset bubbles.... (more)
