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.
Yet more non-shocking, but completely repulsive news: these crooks aka "managers" and "best and brightest" are setting up reinsurance companies in Bermuda to help them avoid taxes in the US. The link's at the bottom. John Paulson and others involved. There's also a link to the IRS because maybe they might care to end these games (or crimes) by the big boys.
Today, the United States has less equality of opportunity than almost any other advanced industrial country. Study after study has exposed the myth that America is a land of opportunity.
Nowhere is the evidence of unbridled corporate greed stronger than in what the financial crisis did to the U.S. economy. The losses are staggering. Economic growth was killed to the tune of over $13 trillion. Homeowners lost a whopping $8.1 trillion in home values.
The January 2013 Federal Reserve's Industrial Production & Capacity Utilization report shows a monthly decline of 0.1% in industrial production. January's decline would have been much worse if the weather hadn't turned cold. Utilities' output increased 3.5% for January as mining fell 1.0%. Manufacturing alone dropped -0.4% for the month.
Wall Street is now winding their way through the swiss cheese loophole maze financial reform is. Remember credit default swaps, those deadly, bad math, bad computation derivatives which were behind the financial crisis?
America may not get justice on outrageous executive pay but the Swiss might. They are having a national vote on excessive CEO pay.
With more than 100,000 Swiss citizens having signed a petition to limit “fat-cat” pay, voters will decide at a March 3 referendum whether top executives should have their compensation set by shareholders.
Switzerland believes excessive CEO pay was imported from America.
The BLS December JOLTS report, or Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey shows there are 3.4 official unemployed per job opening. Actual hires dropped 4.8% to 4.194 million. Real hiring has only increased 14% from June 2009.
There is a complete disconnect in Washington from the quiet desperation of American lives. While politicians chatter talking points and claim lobbyists' agendas are somehow sane economic and labor policy, a full 23% of Americans have been fired in the last four years.
Credit reports control way too much of an individual's life. A bad credit score can deny someone a job, never mind a credit card and a mortgage. The four billion dollar a year consumer credit rating industry has way too much power and almost no accountability.
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