President Obama says Americans want to go to work. Unemployed Americans don't want a handout he says, each time he proposes extending unemployment benefits. Republican Senate leaders, he said, “are advancing a misguided notion that emergency relief somehow discourages people from looking for a job should talk to these folks.”
“That attitude, I think, reflects a lack of faith in the American people,” says Mr. Obama. “Because the Americans I hear from... (more)
Herman Cain has been gaining much traction with his 9-9-9 Plan, a bold proposal to replace our dysfunctional tax code with what could be a simpler, less invasive, and more economically stimulative alternative. While I don't agree with the full spectrum of Mr. Cain's policy choices, I applaud his courage on the tax front. Judging by his rising poll numbers, this appreciation is widely shared. However, the plan has deep flaws, the most glaring of which is its creation of a hidden payroll tax which... (more)
When Republicans took control of the House in January, they pledged to make deep cuts in federal spending, and in April they succeeded in passing a bill advertised as cutting $38 billion from fiscal 2011's budget. Then in August, they pushed for a deal to cut an additional $2.4 trillion over the next decade.
Some analysts have blamed these spending cuts for this year's economic slowdown.
But data released by the Treasury Department on Friday show that, so far, there... (more)
Vast cities are being built across China at a rate of ten a year, but they remain almost uninhabited ghost towns. It's estimated there are 64 million empty apartments.
Support for redistribution, surprisingly enough, has plummeted during the recession. For years, the General Social Survey has asked individuals whether "government should reduce income differences between the rich and the poor." Agreement with this statement dropped dramatically between 2008 and 2010, the two most recent years of data available. Other sur
(NaturalNews) If you buy or sell secondhand goods and live in the state of Louisiana, you can no longer use legal tender to complete such transactions. Ackel & Associates LLC (A&A), a professional law firm, explains that House Bill 195 of the 2011 Regular Session (Act 389), which was recently passed by the state legislature and signed into law by Gov. Bobby Jindal, prohibits anyone who "buys, sells, trades or otherwise acquires or disposes of junk or used or secondhand property [from entering] i... (more)
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The Treasury Department on Friday indicated that it is seriously thinking about issuing floating-rate notes for the first time.
Treasury separated floating-rate notes from the pack and asked dealers for more specifics. The request came in the latest series of quarterly questions for a meeting of the advisory committee that coincides with the large bond and note auctions known as the quarterly refunding.
At the Casey Research/Sprott Summit When Money Dies, Rick Rule spoke with Stefan Molyneux about energy and gold investments and his outlook for the near-future market overall.
Imagine you are in command of the state, defined as an institution that possesses a territorial monopoly of ultimate decision making in every case of conflict, including conflicts involving the state and its agents itself, and, by implication, the right to tax, i.e., to unilaterally determine the price that your subjects must pay you to perform the task of ultimate decision making.
To act under these constraints — or rather, lack of constraints — is what constitutes po... (more)
For Cain on the housing bubble, see Herman Cain, "The Media Say the Economy Is Horrible, So It Must Be True."
http://www.mrc.org/bmi/commentary/2005/Commentary_The_Media_Say_the_Economy_Is_Horrible_So_It_Must_Be_True.html
For Cain on the economy in 2006, see Herman Cain, "More Economic Bull from Media Bears."
http://www.mrc.org/bmi/commenta... (more)
Once again, the latest fire and brimstone sermon by Marc Faber is absolutely spot on, starting and ending with his "policy" recommendation for what the US needs: "I will tell you what the US needs. The US needs a Lee Kwan Yew who stands in front of the US and tells them, listen you lazy bugger, now you have to tighten your belts, you have to save more, work more for lower salaries and only through that will we get out of the current dilemma that essentially prevents the economy fr... (more)
The most accurate foreign-exchange forecasters say the dollar’s best quarterly rally since 2008 has no chance of continuing to year-end as a slow economy spurs the Federal Reserve to flood the world with more U.S. currency.
Led by JPMorgan Chase & Co., the five best strategists as measured by Bloomberg News in the six quarters through September see the currency averaging $1.34 per euro in the final three months of 2011, from $1.3387 on Sept. 30. They estimate it will average... (more)
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), whose shares have fallen 43 percent this year, may report its lowest quarterly profit since the 2008 financial crisis. Far from Wall Street, Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) is headed for record earnings.
Third-quarter U.S. bank earnings, which kick off with JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) on Oct. 13, will show that investment- banking businesses such as bond trading and merger advice declined, while retail operations like mortgage lending prospered, according to ... (more)
One of the Bank of England’s leading economists has warned it may need to print even more money to bolster the sickly economy.
In a sign of growing fears over a double-dip recession, Dr Martin Weale signalled that it will step up its money-printing scheme if growth does not pick up soon.
The warning came before the Bank has even begun distributing the extra £75billion it set aside for its quantitative easing (QE) programme just days ago.
Marc Faber is out with the latest issue of his famous Gloom, Boom and Doom Report, which is always a must read for serious investors. Unlike most of the other talking heads, Faber has an excellent track record. He correctly predicted the top in the equity markets in Nov. 2007, and caught the bottom in March 2009, making his subscribers a lot of money. Here is a summary of his October 2011 report:
Stocks--Yes, stocks are very oversold, but that does not mean they cannot go ... (more)
In order to keep the ongoing class warfare waged by the administration in perspective, today the CBO was kind enough to score the revenue impact of the proposed and much debated Buffett Tax, now appearing in non-populist literature as "Surtax on Millionaires." According to the Budget Office, said tax which is the source of substantial consternation among the population, would generate, over the next decade, a grand total of... drum roll... $453 billion. Why the drum roll? Because as we pointed o... (more)
