The New York Times reports of more financial woes for municipalities. Suffolk County will run $530 million into the red over the next three years and has declared a financial emergency. The New York state oversight board already seized financial control of Suffolk’s Long Island neighbor, Nassau County.
The Federal Reserve ran another "stress test" on major financial institutions and has determined that 15 of the 19 tested are safe, even in the most extreme circumstances: an unemployment rate of 13%, a 50% decline in stock prices, and a further 21% decline in housing prices. The problem is that the most important factor that will determine these banks' long-term viability was purposefully overlooked - interest rates.
In the wake of the Credit Crunch, the Fed solved the problem o... (more)
A company whose value is dependent on the continued success of two key products, now has a larger market capitalization (at $542 billion), than the entire US retail sector (as defined by the S&P 500). Little to add here.
The money masters at the Federal Reserve have done a splendid job, haven’t they? Well, no, and all the more reason to End the Fed, in the legendary slogan of Ron Paul.
Every few months since the great meltdown of 2008, there’s been some announcement that appears in the financial press about the latest f... (more)
Who ever imagined that Ben Bernanke would become a poster child for the student loan debt problem in America? Recently Bernanke told Congress that his son will graduate from medical school with about $400,000 of student loan debt. For most Americans, such a staggering amount of debt would almost certainly guarantee a lifetime of debt slavery. Unfortunately, Bernanke'... (more)
Late last month, Bloomberg reported that British Petroleum continues to experience substantial growth in the amount of money it receives from the Pentagon for its oil services. From 2010 to 2011, Pentagon contracts with BP increased by one-third from about 1 billion to 1.35 billion.
This was presented by some in the media as a scandal, since presumably, BP... (more)
Being a billionaire isn't such an exclusive group anymore. Back in 1998, there were reportedly 230 billionaires worldwide. Now, according to Forbes magazine, the number has grown to 1,226. The United States still has the most with 425, but now 58 countries have billionaires. Russia and China have nearly 100 each.
Nobody seems too excited about billionaires, likely because a billion is an unimaginable number--a thousand million. There was once a time when being a millionaire... (more)
The gold doomsayers have found their champion in the media's favorite financial advisor and one of the world's richest men. Warren Buffett, the man dubbed the "Oracle of Omaha," has repeatedly and publicly denied that gold is an investment, and called gold buyers "speculators" and people "who fear almost all other assets." In fact, Buffett claims that gold's rise has the same characteristics as the housing and dot-com bubbles, and it is only a matter of time before it reverses course. ... (more)
The Obama Administration's green energy development program, which has leveraged billions of taxpayer dollars into high-risk green energy startups, is rapidly turning out to be one of the biggest financial scams on the American people in recent history. A new investigative report by ABC News has revealed that many of the now-bankrupt green energy companies that received massive taxpayer-funded loan infusions from the Department of Energy (DOE) awarded huge cash bonuses to their exe... (more)
The U.S. government last year announced a $10 million award, dubbed the “L Prize,” for any manufacturer that could create a “green” but affordable light bulb.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the prize would spur industry to offer the costly bulbs, known as LEDs, at prices “affordable for American families.” There was also a “Buy America” component. Portions of the bulb would have to be made in the United States.
... (more)
In its history, America has experienced two major periods of drug prohibition. This first was the Federal alcohol prohibition from 1920-1933. The second is the current war on drugs, which began in 1971.
According to Prof. Angela Dills, during these periods of prohibition in America, both homicide rates and police enforcement costs increased. This makes s... (more)
Robert Rubin, who as U.S. Treasury secretary in the 1990s promoted a stronger dollar, said he has too much of his personal investments in the currency.
A “disproportionate amount” of his assets are in cash and he “should be more allocated away from the dollar,” Rubin, 73, said yesterday in a speech at the TradeTech conference in New York. He said he also was “greatly overweighted” in private equity and had investments in hedge funds.
The communist revolutions in the 20th century sought to nationalize the wealth generated by privately held industries back to the “exploited” workers on whose backs the profits were supposedly derived. America has made the rejection of this idea and its support of free market principles the centerpiece of its economic narrative. However, as a result of our current and proposed tax policies towards corporate shareholders, our government collects a portion of industrial output that wou... (more)
With more than 40 years as an economist to his credit and claiming gold as the "biggest position in my life," Gloom Boom & Doom Report Publisher Marc Faber assures us that gold is nowhere near a bubble phase, but cautions that corrections of 40% are not unusual in a bull market. At the end of March, Faber will share his secrets for surviving corrections at the World MoneyShow in Vancouver. In advance of that appearance, he sat down with The Gold Report for this exclusi... (more)
