Economic Glance
When the bill for the Federal Reserve was being considered, some brave politicians spoke out against its creation calling it “the strangest, most dangerous advantage ever placed in the hands of a special privilege class by any Government that ever existed” and Congressman Victor Murdock said, “I do not blind myself to the fact that this measure will not be effectual as a remedy for a great national evil – the concentrated control of credit.”
The Federal Reserve: The Greatest Scam in History
Social Security to start cashing Uncle Sam's IOUs
For more than two decades, Social Security collected more money in payroll taxes than it paid out in benefits - billions more each year. Not anymore. This year, for the first time since the 1980s, when Congress last overhauled Social Security, the retirement program is projected to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes - nearly $29 billion more.
Sounds like a good time to start tapping the nest egg. Too bad the federal government already spent that money over the years on other programs, preferring to borrow from Social Security rather than foreign creditors. In return, the Treasury Department issued a stack of IOUs - in the form of Treasury bonds - which are kept in a nondescript office building just down the street from Parkersburg's municipal offices.
Now the government will have to borrow even more money, much of it abroad, to start paying back the IOUs, and the timing couldn't be worse. The government is projected to post a record $1.5 trillion budget deficit this year, followed by trillion dollar deficits for years to come.
Nobel Prize-Winning Economist: Federal Reserve System is Corrupt and Undermines Democracy
Joseph Stiglitz - former head economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and a nobel-prize winner - said yesterday that the very structure of the Federal Reserve system is so fraught with conflicts that it is "corrupt" and undermines democracy.
Stiglitz stressed that the Fed banks have clear conflicts of interest, since the banks are largely governed by a board of directors that includes officers of the very banks they're supposed to be overseeing:
GM India to Hire 1,000 Staff in 2010
The company will hire 150 to 200 engineers at its powertrain center in the technology hub of Bangalore, P. Balendran, vice president at General Motors India Pvt. Ltd., told a news conference to launch an automatic transmission version of the Chevrolet Cruze sedan.
How long can the U.S. dollar defy gravity?
Facing mounting inflation and the escalating cost of the Vietnam War, President Richard Nixon, on August 15, 1971, took the United States off the gold standard, which had been in place since 1944 and required that the Federal Reserve back all dollars in circulation with gold. The move amounted to a made-in-America double-digit devaluation, shocking the country's foreign creditors.
Nearly 40 years later, the dollar still dominates world trade. At the height of the financial crisis in 2008, investors fled to the dollar as a temporary safe haven. But the dollar has been falling steadily since 2002, and as the world economy recovered last year, dollar selling resumed, reviving doubts about how long it could remain the world's unrivaled reserve currency.
Credit cards then and now: A look at how the new law changes the rules
The new credit card law is finally here. Starting Monday, banks will need to abide by new regulations on terms and disclosures. The idea behind the landmark law was to prevent banks from using practices that often dug borrowers deeper into debt.A look at how the credit card law affects key aspects of your account.
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Wall Street's Bailout Hustle
Goldman Sachs and other big banks aren't just pocketing the trillions we gave them to rescue the economy - they're re-creating the conditions for another crash
Goldman wasn't alone. The nation's six largest banks — all committed to this balls-out, I drink your milkshake! strategy of flagrantly gorging themselves as America goes hungry — set aside a whopping $140 billion for executive compensation last year, a sum only slightly less than the $164 billion they paid themselves in the pre-crash year of 2007. In a gesture of self-sacrifice, Blankfein himself took a humiliatingly low bonus of $9 million, less than the 2009 pay of elephantine New York Knicks washout Eddy Curry. But in reality, not much had changed. "What is the state of our moral being when Lloyd Blankfein taking a $9 million bonus is viewed as this great act of contrition, when every penny of it was a direct transfer from the taxpayer?" asks Eliot Spitzer, who tried to hold Wall Street accountable during his own ill-fated stint as governor of New York.
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