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| January 27th, 2012 by Cindy in Economy/Budget Few now doubt that the U.S. government is rushing headlong toward a major fiscal crisis. Promised future outlays, mainly for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, far exceed projected future revenue, and the total federal debt continues to grow beyond previous boundaries, says Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, an associate economics professor at San Jose State University.
- The latest estimate by Laurence J. Kotlikoff puts the gap’s present value at the bone-crushing level of $211 trillion, while a more modest estimate from Jagadeesh Gokhale and Kent A. Smetters estimates the gap as of 2010 at $79.4 trillion.
- The Congressional Budget Office’s most recent long-term outlook has federal expenditures (without interest payments) accounting for 35 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), while revenues account for only 20 percent.
- Marc Joffe, a former employee of Moody’s Analytics, projects that by 2040 the national debt will have already reached more than 180 percent of GDP.
Continue reading from NCPA…
| January 25th, 2012 by Cindy in Economy/Budget The federal government is spending more per household than ever before. Since 1965, spending per household has grown by nearly 162 percent, from $11,431 in 1965 to $29,401 in 2010. From 2010 to 2021, it is projected to rise to $35,773, a 22 percent increase. Click here for budget charts…
| December 19th, 2011 by Cindy in Economy/Budget Even though most Americans have become very frustrated with this economy, the reality is that the vast majority of them still have no idea just how bad our economic decline has been or how much trouble we are going to be in if we don’t make dramatic changes immediately. If we do not educate the American people about how deathly ill the U.S. economy has become, then they will just keep falling for the same old lies that our politicians keep telling them. Just “tweaking” things here and there is not going to fix this economy. We truly do need a fundamental change in direction. America is consuming far more wealth than it is producing and our debt is absolutely exploding. If we stay on this current path, an economic collapse is inevitable. Hopefully the crazy economic numbers from 2011 that I have included in this article will be shocking enough to wake some people up. Continue reading from The Economic Collapse…
| November 15th, 2011 by Cindy in Economy/Budget If Americans needed any further proof that the Obama Administration is one of the most political on record, or that, for all the recent demagoguing, it really cares only about re-election, not about job creation, then you need look no further than its cynical Keystone XL oil pipeline decision last week.
Over the last several months, radical environmentalists along with Hollywood celebrity activists descended on the White House in protest, urging President Barack Obama to block the construction of the $7 billion pipeline that would bring in more than 700,000 barrels of oil per day from Alberta, Canada, to the Texas Gulf coast. Last week, they got their wish.
So, block the XL pipeline if you think the environment will be better served by shipping Canadian oil an extra 6,000 miles across the Pacific in oil-consuming super tankers and then refining it in less-regulated Chinese refineries. In addition, be aware that replacing the Canadian oil means the U.S. also must import more oil by tankers, which are less efficient than pipelines. Continue reading…
| November 15th, 2011 by Cindy in Economy/Budget The head of China‘s biggest ratings agency, Dagong Global Credit Rating, is warning that it may downgrade the US’s sovereign debt rating again because of Washington’s failure to tackle the federal budget deficit.
Dagong, which has maintained a pessimistic outlook on US fiscal policy, has been leading the charge to downgrade US debt over the last 12 months, lowering the US rating from AA to A+ a year ago.
In August it downgraded US debt again, to A. Days later, Standard & Poor’s followed in its wake, becoming the first western agency to downgrade US debt after the threat of a default was narrowly avoided following weeks of political squabbling in Washington over whether President Obama should be allowed to raise the US debt ceiling. Continue reading…
| November 8th, 2011 by Cindy in Economy/Budget The Federal Housing Finance Agency, the government regulator for Fannie and Freddie, approved $12.79 million in bonus pay after 10 executives from the two government-sponsored corporations last year met modest performance targets tied to modifying mortgages in jeopardy of foreclosure.
The executives got the bonuses about two years after the federally backed mortgage giants received nearly $170 billion in taxpayer bailouts. Continue reading from The Politico.
| November 8th, 2011 by Cindy in Economy/Budget Despite bipartisan promises to cut spending after the 2010 elections, Washington politicians are still voting to make the government even bigger and more expensive than ever.
Even though the federal government is nearly $15 trillion in debt, it’s spending at record-high levels. Federal spending has gone up 5 percent in the first nine months of this year alone.
Just last week, Democrats and Republicans in the Senate passed three new spending bills to increase 2012 funding above 2011 funding levels. The bills will increase spending for the Department of Agriculture by $6.4 billion; for the Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development by more than $2 billion; and for the Commerce, Justice, and State departments by more than $694 million. Continue Reading from National Review Online.
| October 11th, 2011 by Cindy in Economy/Budget Families were more dependent on government programs than ever last year, says the Wall Street Journal.
- Nearly half — 48.5 percent — of the population lived in a household that received some type of government benefit in the first quarter of 2010, according to Census data.
- Those numbers have risen since the middle of the recession when 44.4 percent lived in households receiving benefits in the third quarter of 2008.
Continue reading from NCPA….
| October 11th, 2011 by Cindy in Economy/Budget The Obama administration passed another fiscal milestone this week, according to new data released by the Treasury Department. As of the close of business on Oct. 3, the total national debt was $14,837,099,271,196.71—up about $44.8 billion from Sept. 30. Continue reading…
| October 10th, 2011 by Cindy in Economy/Budget The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. An amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders to the Wall Street reform law passed one year ago this week directed the Government Accountability Office to conduct the study. “As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world,” said Sanders. “This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else.” Continue reading…
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