budget deficit

The Student Loan Money Machine

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Going to college these days amounts to sinking oneself into a lifetime of massive debt.  A new student advocacy report spells out some damning facts.  Did you know the federal government is slated to make a whopping $34 billion in 2014 off of student loans?  Meanwhile other reports are showing student debt is keeping people from obtaining credit, buying a home and moving on with their lives.

Sequestration Suicide

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For once he's right.  President Obama came out blasting against the upcoming sequestration as a major threat to the U.S. economy.   He's right.  These draconian cuts, $85 billion for FY 2013, will be enacted starting in March 2013 if Congress doesn't stop it.  The CBO estimates this year's budget costs will cost the United States a full 1.5 percentage points of GDP.

Congress Ushers in 2013 with a Resolution to Push the Economy to the Brink

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capital buildingPast the final hour the House finally passed a bill to avert the fiscal cliff. The Senate had passed the legislation in the wee hours of New Years Day and after much brew ha-ha the House allowed an up and down vote on the Senate bill. We have listened to months and months of squabbling, bringing the economy to the brink over a very simple final result that could have been passed months ago.

Bernanke: No QE3 Wall Street, Congress Get it Together and We Need Jobs

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bernakeFederal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke gave testimony before the Joint Economic Committee and the doves fell from the sky. Bernanke cut short Wall Street's addict like demand for more quantitative easing and instead suggested a host of policies to boost hiring and real economic output.

On the labor markets, Bernanke's testimony validated our analysis, that one cannot blame the pathetic jobs market on the weather.

More-rapid gains in economic activity will be required to achieve significant further improvement in labor market conditions.

In fact, Bernanke suggested the next FOMC meeting discussion question will ask: Will there be enough growth going forward to make material progress on the unemployment rate?  This is good, Bernanke realizes the #1 threat to the U.S. economy is the jobs crisis.

The Fed Chair also warned on the ongoing sovereign debt crisis in the Eurozone:

China's Tails I Win Heads You Lose Economic Strategy Plays

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The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission has issued their new, comprehensive annual report on China for 2011. The 414 page report (large pdf), is a comprehensive, with details on trade, economics, currency manipulation, development strategy, military actions and human rights abuses.

Saturday Reads Around The Internets - It Could Have Been Worse

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shocknews
Welcome to the weekly roundup of great articles, facts and figures. These are the weekly finds that made our eyes pop.

 

It Could Have Been Worse

About the only thing Populist Progressive Democrat Congressman Peter DeFazio can say about Obama these days is it could have been worse. Long slide down from the irrational exuberance of 2008.

 

The S&P Debt Downgrade: What It Means

EisenhowerOriginally published by OpEd News.

On Friday, August 5, the credit rating agency, Standard & Poor's, downgraded US debt from AAA to AA+.

Gerald Celente's view that S&P's downgrade of the US Treasury's credit rating reflects a loss of confidence in the political system was confirmed by the rating agency itself. S&P explained the downgrade as the result of heightened political risks, not economic ones. The game of chicken over the debt ceiling increase and the GOP's ability to block tax increases indicate that "America's governance and policymaking is becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable"

The reduction in the government's credit rating to AA+ from AAA is a cosmetic change. It remains a very high investment grade rating and is unlikely to have any effect on interest rates. It is revealing that despite the downgrade, US bond prices rose. It was stocks that fell. The financial press is blaming the stock market decline on the bond downgrade. However, stocks are falling because the economy is falling. Too many jobs have been moved offshore.

The Decline and Fall of the American Empire

Originally published on OpEdNews

The United States Government and its presstitute media have wasted time and energy creating hysteria over a non-existent debt ceiling crisis. After reading the news in the Ministry of Propaganda and witnessing the stupidity of the US government, the rest of the world is struck dumbfounded by the immaturity of the world's only superpower.
flag half staff
What kind of superpower is it, the world wonders, that is willing to go to the eleventh hour to convince the world, which holds its banking reserves in US Treasury debt, that the US government will default on the debt?

Every country in the world now worries about the judgment and sanity of the country with the largest nuclear arsenal in the world.

This is the achievement of the Republicans, who took an ordinary commonplace increase in the debt-ceiling limit, an event that has occurred routinely many times over the course of my life, and turned it into a crisis threatening the world financial system.

To be clear, there was never any risk whatsoever of US default, as President Obama has power established by President George W. Bush's Presidential Directive 51 to declare default a National Emergency and to set aside the debt-ceiling limit and Congress' power of the purse, and to continue to issue the debt necessary to fund the US government and its wars.

That the American press ever took this highly-hyped "crisis" seriously merely demonstrates their prostitute status.

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