If there is one report you will read on China, this is the one. The U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission releases a report on China every year and it will make the hair on your head stand on end.
"Mr. Buffett. You are no different than Goldman Sachs and the other exploiters funded by the hard work of everyone other than those who reap the benefits of that work."
The people's oligarch Warren Buffett just wrote a thank you letter to "Uncle Sam" published in the New York Times. It is the height of cynicism. (Image)
Buffett has a carefully crafted public image as a brilliant but people-friendly master of investments. We hear about his regular table at an Omaha diner where he conducts business (just plain Warren) and we see his occasional public stands for reasonable policies like the inheritance tax.
He claims that "Uncle Sam", the government, saved us from a financial catastrophe that would have swallowed up his company. He then endorses the notion that the housing bubble was based on "mass delusion" - meaning it wasourfault. But he forgets to mention that he took advantage of the 2008 crisis to purchase a $5 billion interest in Goldman Sachs. And he forgets whose money "Uncle Sam" stole from the Treasury to save him and the rest of his cronies. What a hypocrite.
On its current economic trajectory the United States runs the risk of seeing millions of workers unemployed or underemployed for many years. As a society, we should find that outcome unacceptable. - Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke
Yesterday a hearing was held and during JP Morgan Chase Home Lending CEO Mr. David Lowman's testimony, a protester yelled out the Chase Bank representative was committing perjury.
This is the battlefield on which corporations and their customers are struggling for survival. If companies can make price increases stick, the consumer is going to bear the burden of inflation, and for a lot of consumers this can be the last gasp to bankruptcy.
The Federal Reserve is on the defensive over its next round of Quantitative Easing, known as QE2. Over 20 distinguished economists and market analysts placed an ad yesterday in The Wall Street Journal urging the Fed to drop its plan to purchase $600 billion in Treasury securities over the next six months. Finance ministers around the world have deplored this policy for its tendency to generate global inflation and scupper the dollar on the foreign exchange markets. Even that noted financial expert Sarah Palin has published a Facebook criticism of the Fed’s “running the printing presses.”
Some Federal Reserve governors have warned about the potential inflationary implications of QE2, even though they voted for it. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and NY Fed President William Dudley have been in the media during the past week, justifying their QE2 decision. If you analyze their comments carefully, you realize they haven’t been helping their cause.
One Washington insider summed it all up: "What do you expect when you elect a guy who praises Ronald Reagan and stops his campaign in early October 2008 to return to the Capitol to make sure the Wall Street bailout gets passed? Have you been paying attention?"
(Washington) President Barack Obama has confided his plans to become a registered Republican some time before the end of the lame-duck session of the 111th Congress. Speaking to his inner circle, he lamented failing to bring the two major parties together. One of his confidants reported Obama saying, "It's really just one party anyway and clearly the Republicans have the confidence of the people. I can finish my original mission much easier within the GOP." Sources wouldn't elaborate on what that mission is. (Image: juvetson)
President Barack Obama's top adviser suggested to The Huffington Post late Wednesday that the administration is ready to accept an across-the-board, temporary continuation of steep Bush-era tax cuts, including those for the wealthiest taxpayers.
The infamous Bush tax cuts, what are they exactly? Below are the tax rates for 2010.
President Obama gave some good rhetoric after the G-20 meeting.
“It is undervalued,” Obama said of the yuan, speaking to reporters in Seoul after the meeting concluded. “And China spends enormous amounts of money intervening in the market to keep it undervalued.”
In case you missed it, China had a record surplus on trade.
"There are two fundamental reforms we need - to get adequate capital and, two, to get far higher levels of enforcements of statutes of fraud statutes, existing ones. I'm not even talking about new ones. Things were being done which were certainly illegal and fairly criminal in certain cases. Fraud, fraud is a fact. Fraud creates very considerable instability in competitive markets. If you cannot trust your counterparties, it won't work. And indeed, we saw that it didn't." Alan Greenspan Nov. 9, 2010
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