budget

Ridiculous Budget Games

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The most mean spirited and absurd budget came out today while the Republicans are threatening to shut down the government. Yes, we know politicians, both parties, are all bought and paid for, corrupt as hell, but a government shut down? This affects real people and the real economy, not just federal workers but all of the Americans who rely on them. All federal workers except emergency services go unpaid, but guess who still collects their paycheck? Why the ones who caused it, our President and our lovely Congress.

Imagine That, Writing a Budget to Reduce Government Waste

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The GAO released a report for efficiencies in various government programs, Opportunities to Reduce Potential Duplication in Government Programs, Save Tax Dollars, and Enhance Revenue. While the headlines buzzed about savings, ya all need to read this. The GAO is going after a lot of low hangin' fruit, that being not large corporations but instead social programs and individual taxpayers.

Take this paragraph for example:

The housing market downturn is resulting in billions of dollars of forgiven mortgage debt. In tax year 2008 (the most current data available), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) estimates that individual taxpayers excluded $6.4 billion to $11.8 billion in forgiven mortgage debts on principal residences. While most forgiven debt is treated as a financial gain and included in taxable income, forgiven mortgage debt is, according to complex rules, sometimes excluded from taxable income.

Forgiven mortgage debt means you probably were foreclosed on and declared bankruptcy. The GAO is recommending this be treated as taxable income? Talk about adding insult to injury.

Through 2012, taxpayers may exclude forgiven mortgage debts from taxable income if the mortgage proceeds were used to buy, build, or substantially improve a principal residence. Forgiven mortgage amounts used for other purposes, including purchases of vacation or investment properties, would generally still be considered taxable income unless the taxpayer is bankrupt or insolvent.

That 70's Show Revisited

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Sometime in the next couple of years we are going to see the virtual death of the dollar and its death is going to be perpetuated by the very recovery the administration is now engineering.

The death I speak of may not necessarily come in the form of terrible exchange rates, but it will definitely manifest itself in the form of very high interest rates and likely inflation as well (through commodities again).

The Budget of 2010

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Oh here we go. The headlines scream the biggest budget in history, it is wealth redistribution and on and on.

So, let's find out what is in the Obama administration Budget Proposal of 2010. Firstly the actual budget is on The White House website. Secondly, here is the total cost:

government outlays for this year will end up at $3.94 trillion, up 32 percent from a year ago. That would yield a record deficit of $1.75 trillion in the year ending Sept. 30, equal to about 12 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, the highest since World War II.

Here are some hard numbers discovered so far that might be of interest:

  • E-verify legal worker: $110 million
  • TARP II: $750 billion
  • Bush Tax Cuts expire: -$318 billion

How do we prevent another Bust-out?

http://www.correntewire.com/bust_out_the_republican_approach_to_governance

http://www.hbo.com/sopranos/episode/season2/episode23.shtml

Herewith from the Encyclopedia of Credit:

Bustout
The intentional act of driving a company into insolvency in order to extract as much of the assets as possible form the company for the use of the operators.

Bubbles, Tiny Bubbles - Bush's Real Economic Performance

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The House of Representatives Democratic Caucus released the below summary table to the press. This economic summary on the major economic indicators of the last 7 years deserves reposting. That said, the title should read Corporate lobbyists policy and legislation, the real Economic performance. One must note that Democratic leadership is pushing for more bad trade deals, more guest worker Visas and enabling more offshore outsourcing as well. If you notice in the Presidential campaigns, a dramatic and much needed strategic change in trade, fiscal and labor policy is not discussed. One might get the token "labor and environmental standards" sound bytes without nary a question on the reality those cannot be enforced in other nations. Both administrations in the last 15 years had bubble economies, the dot con and now the housing bubble.

An Economy Fueled, Funded and Fed by Debt

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Debt, debt, an economy fueled, funded and fed by debt. That's what many economists and economics bloggers are reporting via real bona fide facts.

Via the Manufacturing and Technology Newsletter, Dr. Charles W. McMillion reports:

In just the past seven years, U.S. household debt almost doubled and federal debt soared by near two-thirds, rocketing by a combined $10.5 trillion. The total combined debt of households ($14.4 trillion) and the federal government ($9.2 trillion) is now 168 percent of GDP, far higher even than in the brief spike during World War II

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