Tag Archives: Topic: Debt

Telegraph: China has called for major strategic concessions from Europe before agreeing to rescue the eurozone, chilling hopes for immediate purchases of Italian bonds.

France 24: The eurozone crisis could wreck the European Union, top EU officials warned on Wednesday as the leaders of Germany and France held talks with Greece to avoid a default and widespread chaos.

Jacob Sullum at Townhall: At the Republican presidential debate in Tampa, Fla., on Monday night, Mitt Romney said Rick Perry has needlessly “scared seniors” by calling Social Security “a Ponzi scheme.” Romney, more sensitive to the anxieties of retirees, prefers to say “the American people have been effectively defrauded out of their Social Security” (as he puts it in his 2010 book “No Apology”) because Congress has spent the program’s surplus revenue instead of saving it to pay for future benefits — the sort of crime for which bankers “would go to jail.”

Terry Jeffrey at Townhall : As I wrote in my book, “Control Freaks,” some of the main players involved in creating Social Security believed it was unconstitutional — and for good reason.

Is Higher Education Worth It?: Even when the economy recovers, that will not guarantee future earnings for graduates. Because times are substantially different from that of the baby boomers, a serious question to consider is whether students should go to college at all.

TheHill.com: The director of the Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday painted a bleak picture of the nation’s fiscal future and warned the deficit reduction “supercommittee” to be wary of the nation’s ailing economy while weighing deep spending cuts and tax increases.

David Limbaugh at Townhall: It is very disheartening to see Republican presidential primary candidates racing to out-demagogue one another in denouncing Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s accurate description of Social Security as a Ponzi scheme.

The Lookout – Yahoo! News: The poverty rate for children rose from 20.7 percent in 2009 to 22 percent last year, making kids more likely than any other age group to be poor. For children under the age of 6, the picture is even bleaker–25.3 percent of them lived in poverty last year.

Star Parker at Townhall: I have a great plan for “saving” Social Security. Today’s average U.S. life expectancy is 78 years. Let’s make the retirement age to collect Social Security 79. Presto. The “system” is saved (or until life expectancy increases, at which point we can raise the retirement age again). Pretty dumb? Sure. But if the goal is “saving” the system, nothing would work better.

MSNBC.com: It may not be a crime to be poor, but it can land you behind bars if you also are behind on your child-support payments. Thousands of so-called “deadbeat” parents are jailed each year in the U.S. after failing to pay court-ordered child support — the vast majority of them for withholding or hiding money out of spite or a feeling that they’ve been unfairly gouged by the courts.

USATODAY.com: The first step to fixing a problem is honestly admitting there is a problem. America’s goal must be to fix Social Security by making it more financially sound and sustainable for the long term. But Americans deserve a frank and honest discussion of the dire financial challenges facing the nearly 80-year-old program.

CSMonitor.com: The average 16-year-old worked 40 percent fewer hours in 2010 than 2007. But for workers older than 62, hours have increased.

CARPE DIEM: Whether Social Security technically meets the technical definition of being a Ponzi scheme is less important than the fact that the current system has become a Pyramid scheme as the population ages

Katie PavichWant to Win the Youth Vote, Talk About Social Security – Page 1 – Katie Pavlich – Townhall Conservative: Well Mr. Romney, Social Security may be working, but it’s working on the backs of young people who are being lied to and scammed out of hundreds of dollars every two weeks when they get their paycheck.

The eventuality of euthanasia as the ‘final solution’ for the damaged offspring of the Boomers to be ‘rid of’ the ‘ME’ generation is real and near at hand.

TheHill.com: With both the economy and his reelection hopes teetering, President Obama on Thursday proposed a $447 billion jobs bill that he and his aides said will immediately put people back to work.

WSJ: The U.S. Senate, in an unusual procedure, cleared the way Thursday for the U.S. to lift its borrowing authority by $500 billion to $15.19 trillion, enough to keep the support federal government borrowing through late January or early February.

Fox News: Republicans have decided they’re not going to give a rebuttal to President Obama’s jobs speech later this week, a decision House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi took as a high affront to the White House.

This amount has to cover the government’s official debt plus the present value of all future government purchases of goods and services (discretionary spending). If it doesn’t, the difference that’s not covered is called the fiscal gap.

AP: The U.S. has tumbled further down a global ranking of the world’s most competitive economies, landing at fifth place because of its huge deficits and declining public faith in government, a global economic group said Wednesday.

BusinessStandard.com: At the same time, decades of contractual promises made to unionised workers, including no-layoff clauses, are increasing the post office’s costs. Labour represents 80 per cent of the agency’s expenses, compared with 53 per cent at United Parcel Service and 32 per cent at FedEx, its two biggest private competitors. Postal workers also receive more generous health benefits than most other federal employees.

The Hill: Cheney writes that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Act of 1991 allowed for a major injection of federal funds into the banking system, but that Bernanke said he would “feel much more comfortable with congressional approval, so we went to work trying to secure it.” The unpopular votes for the legislation still resonate in congressional politics.

TheHill.com: White House communications director said in a tweet Wednesday that Obama has asked for the 8 pm session on Sept. 7.

Law.com: The public dialogue between U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and the American Bar Association continued this week, with the ABA responding to Grassley’s request for additional information about law school employment, student loan defaults and accreditation procedures.

The Hill: In a memo to rank-and-file Republicans, Cantor said the House will target 10 major regulations for elimination, and will also seek to enact one major tax cut for businesses.

The Washington Post: After months of partisan rancor over the record federal debt and spending cuts to reduce it, congressional Republicans are working to avoid the heated political warfare when Congress turns its attention to annual spending measures next month.

Tulsa World: We now have a president, and I don’t mean this disrespectfully, who is destroying these very institutions that made America great,” Inhofe, R-Okla., said.

RealClearPolitics (includes video): Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) on the challenges in reining in government spending. “There’s going to be an inflation tax to hit us and I am just afraid there will be people in the streets when they don’t get what they want,” Paul told the FOX Business Network.

The American Spectator: Woodrow Wilson is the president most associated with early 20th century liberalism, second only to Franklin Roosevelt. During the Bush years, every self-described conservative who believed, as Wilson did, that it was America’s mission to “make the world safe for democracy” spoke the language, however unknowingly, of an earlier left-wing liberalism. William F. Buckley and George Will explained in a 2005 interview . . .

The Hill: The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on Wednesday estimated deficits over the next 10 years will total $3.5 trillion, about half of what was projected at the beginning of the year.

NCPA Policy Digest: Borrowing looms large in American life from homes to cars. But the explosion of student debt in the last decade is a pernicious trend that the colleges themselves are encouraging. As this semester begins, college loans are nearing the $1 trillion mark . . .

AP: Standard & Poor’s says that its president is stepping down, an announcement coming only weeks after the rating agency’s unprecedented move to strip the United States of its AAA credit rating.

Religion Clause: In Britain, the Federation of Student Islamic Societies is pressing the British government to create a new student loan system that is consistent with Sharia law.

LaTimes.com: Updated numbers for the national debt are just out: It’s now $14,639,000,000,000. When Barack Obama took the oath of office twice on Jan. 20, 2009, CBS’ amazing number cruncher Mark Knoller reports, the national debt was $10,626,000,000,000. That means the debt that our federal government owes a whole lot of somebodies including China has increased $4,247,000,000,000 in just 945 days. That’s the fastest increase under any president ever.

Fortune: Brought down to individual terms, a typical Wharton MBA in this class will graduate with average debt of nearly $124,000. With monthly payments of $1,477 over 10 years, the total would come to $177,256, including nearly $53,000 in interest alone. It would be the proverbial bite that would be hard to chew for most because a graduate would need an annual gross salary of $176,560 to comfortably pay down the loan, according to financial advisors. That’s not a comforting thought when the median starting pay of a Wharton grad was only $110,000 last year. (You can crunch your own numbers on an online loan calculator to estimate the impact of your own debt.) And none of these numbers include the debt assumed by students during their undergraduate years.

LifeSiteNews.com: The government could save literally billions simply by taking modest steps to fight rampant divorce, according to prominent divorce-reform advocates.

The Volokh Conspiracy: Student loan debt has grown by 511% over this period. In the first quarter of 1999, just $90 billion in student loans were outstanding. As of the second quarter of 2011, that balance had ballooned to $550 billion.

AP: Laid-off workers and aging baby boomers are flooding Social Security’s disability program with benefit claims, pushing the financially strapped system toward the brink of insolvency.

Bloomberg: The largest borrower, Morgan Stanley (MS), got as much as $107.3 billion, while Citigroup took $99.5 billion and Bank of America $91.4 billion, according to a Bloomberg News compilation of data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, months of litigation and an act of Congress.

Education News: While the job market remains sluggish, student loan debt continues to rise, fueling fears that a higher-education spending bubble may be underway.

Armstrong Williams at Townhall: Now that the debt ceiling charade is over (for now) and the politicians have smugly retreated to their lavish homes and offices, the average American is faced with the stark reality. How are we going to get back to work to rebuild the wealth that was lost over the past few years?

The Washington Post: The leaders of France and Germany called Tuesday for greater economic discipline and unity among European nations but declined to take the expensive financial measures seen by many investors as the only way to halt the continent’s spiraling debt crisis.

WSJ: But student loans are up sharply. There was $550 billion in student debt outstanding in the second quarter, up 25% from $440 billion in the third quarter of 2008.

AP: Panetta said the Pentagon is prepared to make $350 billion in cuts over the next 10 years, as agreed by Congress. But he warned of dangers to the national defense if bigger reductions are required.

The Hill: Vice President Biden will tout the debt ceiling deal during a trip to China and Japan, two holders of huge amounts of U.S. debt.

Yahoo! News: Ron Paul, once seen as a fringe candidate and a nuisance to the establishment, is shaping the 2012 Republican primary by giving voice to the party’s libertarian wing and reflecting frustration with the United States’ international entanglements.

Lewis E. Lehrman at WSJ.com: By severing the dollar’s convertibility to gold in 1971, the president ushered in a decade of inflation and economic stagnation.

Iowa Caucuses: “Iran is a threat because they have some militants there, but believe me … Iran does not have an air force that can come here — they can’t even make enough gasoline for themselves,” Paul said. “And here we are…we’re building up this case against them, just like we did with Iraq.”

Jim Daly of Focus on the Family at The Washington Post: Prayer provides perspective, connection, introspection, a calming effect, guidance from the Lord, wisdom … and the list goes on. Not everyone, of course, shares that firsthand experience with or belief in the power of prayer – Mr. Bruni certainly seems to question it. So let’s take a few more sentences to put “The Response” into historical context. The difficulties facing our nation today, noted in the question above, are certainly challenging. But would any of us say they are more challenging than what our Founding Fathers faced when they forged this nation?

AP: The United States’ budget deficit has topped $1 trillion for a third straight year, adding pressure on Congress and the White House to make more progress on a long-term plan to shrink the growing imbalance

WSJ.com: “The No. 1 complaint that we hear from community bankers is that they feel that regulators have gone one step too far and are choking off lending,” says Paul Merski, chief economist at the Independent Community Bankers of America, a trade group that represents small banks.

Janice D’Arcy at the Washington Post: There needs to be some acknowledgment that the ‘Me Generation’ of baby boomers and their false illusion of independence when in fact they’ve been economically robbing their children is also part of the problem here.”

The Hill: House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) blamed President Obama and the Democrats Tuesday for the recent downgrading of the U.S. credit rating, saying that if Democrats had joined with Republicans in passing the GOP budget, which the House passed in April, “”it’s unlikely anyone would be talking about the United States being downgraded today.”

TheHill.com: Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) will serve on the ‘supercommittee’ tasked with assembling a $1.5 trillion deficit-reduction package by Thanksgiving.

The Hill: The GOP has announced its picks for the powerful deficit-reduction “supercommittee” established by the debt-ceiling deal.

Washington Times: Pummeled by ghastly economic news, President Obama called Monday for more spending and extended tax cuts that he said would help stimulate the economy — but these also could deepen the deficit problems that helped the federal government earn its first-ever debt downgrade last week.

NCPA Policy Digest: A growing chorus of economists and educators think that the higher education industry will be America’s next bubble. Easy credit, high tuition and poor job prospects have resulted in growing delinquency and default rates on nearly $1 trillion worth of private and federally subsidized loans.

The Hill: The nation could lose its top credit rating from yet another rater over the next year if policymakers lose their grip on fiscal discipline, Moody’s Investors Service said Monday.

Daily Mail : Was it him? George Soros, 80, has been mentioned as potentially being the mystery investor who won a $1billion bet that the credit rating would fall

Reuters (includes video): President Barack Obama on Monday blamed a downgrade in the United States’ credit rating on political gridlock in Washington and said he would offer some recommendations on how to reduce federal deficits.

CNBC: “The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default” said Greenspan on NBC’s Meet the Press. “What I think the S&P thing did was to hit a nerve that there’s something basically bad going on, and it’s hit the self-esteem of the United States, the psyche” said Greenspan

The Hill: The fallout from the nation’s credit downgrade continued Monday, as Standard & Poor’s announced government-sponsored housing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were also getting their top rating slashed.

TheHill.com: John Chambers, the chairman of Standard & Poor’s sovereign debt ratings, on Sunday estimated that it could take between 9 and 18 years for the nation to regain its AAA credit rating.

TheHill.com: resident Obama’s economic advisers are waging a fierce pushback against Standard & Poor’s decision to strip the nation of its AAA credit rating.

CNBC: The man who leads one of China’s top rating agencies says the greenback’s status as the world’s reserve currency is set to wane as the world’s most powerful policy makers convene to examine the implication of S&P’s decision to strip the United States of its triple “A” rating.

FRANCE 24: “The only way the Americans have come up with to improve economic growth has been to take on new loans to repay the old ones,” a blistering commentary published on the official Xinhua news agency said. “To eat May’s grain in April, however, will never be a permanent solution to a problem,” the report said.

CNN: Nearly 15% of the U.S. population relied on food stamps in May, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.

Bloomberg: The U.S. Postal Service, which predicts a $9 billion loss this year, may ask Congress to raise its $15 billion debt limit as a mandatory health-cost payment exhausts its cash, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said.

AP: Government-controlled mortgage company Fannie Mae said Friday that its second-quarter loss widened as it continues to seek loan modifications to help reduce defaults amid the ongoing difficulties in the housing and mortgage markets.

WSJ.com (via Google): Central Falls’s financial problems are not much different from many states and municipalities. Inflexible and costly collective bargaining agreements have driven up its labor costs and crowded out services. The city is running $5 million annual structural deficits on a $16 million budget. Its pension and retiree health-care bills add up to $80 million. Public safety officers contribute a mere 7% of their salaries to pensions and can retire after 20 years with pensions equal to 50% of their final year’s salary.

NCPA Policy Digest: In 1970, agency debt represented only 15 percent of Treasuries. By 2006, this had inflated to 133 percent.

Payrolls Rose in July; Jobless Rate at 9.1% – Bloomberg: The share of the eligible population holding a job declined to 58.1 percent, the lowest since July 1983.

CNBC: Italian prosecutors have seized documents at the offices of rating agencies Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s in a probe over suspected “anomalous” fluctuations in Italian share prices, a prosecutor said on Thursday.

Newsmax: Congress approved and President Barack Obama signed a deal to raise the U.S. government’s debt ceiling Tuesday after the Senate passed it by a 74-26 vote. Here is a list of how each Republican (R), Democratic (D) and Independent (I) senator voted . . .