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The $2 Trillion Public Pension Hole and What You Can Do About It
The cover story of Barron's is on public pensions, an issue I have been railing about for years, and heatedly so for several months. Please consider The $2 Trillion Hole.
LIKE A CALIFORNIA WILDFIRE, populist rage burns over bloated executive compensation and unrepentant avarice on Wall Street.
Deserving as these targets may or may not be, most Americans have ignored at their own peril a far bigger pocket of privilege -- the lush pensions that the 23 million active and retired state and local public employees, from cops and garbage collectors to city managers and teachers, have wangled from taxpayers.
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For Profit Schools Turn Students Into Debt Zombies; It's Time To Kill The Entire Pell Grant Program
If president Obama gets his way, still more money, up to $50 billion, will be thrown at the failed Pell Grant system. Pell Grants are based on a means test and the funding comes with no strings attached. The money does not have to be repaid. That alone should tell you the program is rife with fraud. And it is.
Regardless of grades, ability, or likelihood to graduate, students can apply for the money, take it and run, without ever attending one day of class. Many do.
Those who do use the money for education, as apposed to partying and drugs, frequently waste it on useless degrees that leave students deep in debt after graduation, assuming of course the students even graduate.
Obama Wants To Throw More Money Down This Obvious Sinkhole
Let's start off with a review of the most recent proposal as described by the Washington Post in New funding projection could squeeze Obama's education agenda.
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Obama's Backbone Like Over-Cooked Spaghetti; So Where Are The Fiscal Conservatives?
Please consider 4 visualizations of Obama's Budget Cuts.
$17 Billion Cuts In Context
Obama Budget Cuts Visualization
Obama's "Unsustainable Course" (And what he's NOT doing something about)
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Sunday Funnies 2010-03-14: Lighter Side of the News - Something From Nothing
Today, in lieu of a cartoon today, let's take a look at an article that belongs in The Onion, or the back page of the Sunday Funnies.
The only problem is the author is dead serious. Please consider In Defense of Deficits
There are two ways to get the increase in total spending that we call "economic growth." One way is for government to spend. The other is for banks to lend. Leaving aside short-term adjustments like increased net exports or financial innovation, that's basically all there is.
Governments and banks are the two entities with the power to create something from nothing. If total spending power is to grow, one or the other of these two great financial motors--public deficits or private loans--has to be in action.
When Obama says, even offhand, that the United States is "out of money," he's talking nonsense--dangerous nonsense. One wonders if he believes it.
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Obama's $3 Trillion Tax Increase; IRS To Track PayPal Transactions; Toledo Ohio Fiscal Emergency; Obama's Utopian Education Goals
Here are a few stories this past week that caught my eye that I have yet to mention.
$3 Trillion Tax Increase
Obama's $3,000,000,000,000 Tax Hike
From the Heritage Foundation
When he released his new budget proposal on February 1, President Barack Obama asserted that the government "simply cannot continue to spend as if deficits don't have consequences; as if waste doesn't matter; as if the hard-earned tax dollars of the American people can be treated like Monopoly money; as if we can ignore this challenge for another generation."[1]
Yet the President's new budget does exactly that-- raising taxes by $3 trillion and federal spending by $1.6 trillion over the next ten years. If enacted, this budget would increase the 2010 deficit to more than $1.5 trillion, and leave a deficit of more than $1 trillion even after an assumed return to peace and prosperity. Overall, the President's budget would double the national debt over the next decade.[2]
President Obama's Budget
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Spotlight on the Non-Recovery in Texas; Heads Still Buried In The Sand
Here are a pair of articles about the recovery in Texas that simply did not happen. Please consider New data, new story on jobs.
For much of 2009, Central Texas business leaders hung their hats on reports that showed, even in a recession, Austin was still adding jobs.
Turns out there was a problem with those positive reports: They were wrong.
Revised figures show Austin lost more in '09, and numbers began to decline earlier than thought.
The revised data also show that Texas as a whole had a tougher job market last year than thought. The state lost 354,000 jobs in 2009, which is 78,000 more than the 276,000 previously estimated, according to the updated data.
The commission and its counterparts around the country revise their job data each year based on newly available information from employers' tax records that show how many people were on payrolls. The monthly numbers are estimates, based on surveys from employers.
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Two Sets of MD Pension Books: One with Real Salaries, the other Includes What Government Documents Refer to as "Phantom" Cost-of-Living Adjustments
As noted on numerous occasions, public union greed and arrogance has no bounds.
Worse yet, today we have yet another major example that shows many elected politicians still have zero political willpower to do anything serious about it. In Montgomery, Maryland, the politicians are even willing to cook the books for the benefit of unions.
Please consider Montgomery, Md., pension deal eases sacrifice for unions.
The politics of shrinking government spending can lead to tortured math and bureaucratic back flips. In one of the Washington area's wealthiest counties, recession has prompted a bout of creative bookkeeping and something called the "Phantom COLA."
As state and local officials from California to Miami have sought to cut payroll costs, officials in Montgomery County last year pressed government employees to forgo part of their negotiated pay raises. They did. But some of the county's powerful public employee unions also benefited from an unusual deal.
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Greece Bailout Ping-Pong, No Deal Underway; Pension Promises Add To Greek Debt Woes; How Does Greece Compare To US?
On March 12 the Guardian reported Greece debt: EU agrees bailout deal
Exclusive: Germany plays pivotal role in potential eurozone rescue package for Greek debts
The eurozone has agreed a multibillion-euro bailout for Greece as part of a package to shore up the single currency after weeks of crisis, the Guardian has learnt.
Senior sources in Brussels said that Berlin had bowed to the bailout agreement despite huge resistance in Germany and that the finance ministers of the "eurozone" – the 16 member states including Greece who use the euro – are to finalise the rescue package on Monday. The single currency's rulebook will also be rewritten to enforce greater fiscal discipline among members.
The member states have agreed on "co-ordinated bilateral contributions" in the form of loans or loan guarantees to Greece if Athens finds itself unable to refinance its soaring debt and requests help from the EU, a senior European commission official said.
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Marc Faber and Mish on Tech Ticker; Mish vs. Dr. Doom
I had the great pleasure of meeting Marc Faber in person over the past couple of days after having exchanged emails with him about various things for the past several years. Marc is not only extremely knowledgeable about investments and strategies, he is also a lot of fun to be with personally.
Marc was in Madison Wisconsin for a speech in front of an investment group, CFA Madison. We arranged a couple of Market Tickers with Aaron Task and Henry Blodget at a local ABC affiliate station while in Madison.
Marc took the inflation side of the debate and I the Deflation side. Here are links to the Tech Tickers as well as the videos.
Marc Faber: Don't Expect Another Crash ... Bernanke Won't Allow it
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Stimulus About To Wither On Vine; A look At February Retail Sales
Jed Graham writing for Investor's Business Daily says something I have been saying for several months: Extra Stimulus Aid Fuels Sales, But Fiscal Flood Cresting Early
In gauging the economic recovery's trajectory, you shouldn't forget that this is not a normal tax season.
People who don't pay income tax are getting an extra $30 billion in refundable tax credits thanks to the Recovery Act, the Joint Committee on Taxation has estimated. Based on the timing of tax refunds in past years, well over half of that has likely been paid out already.
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com, said the extra serving of tax-season cash to modest-income families "helps explain the somewhat surprising strength in retail" in February.
Excluding AMT relief, Zandi figures peak stimulus hits this month or next.
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