Sunday, Dec 14th
Last update09:33:21 AM GMT
Economic Glance
The federal government DOES NOT fund Social Security! Social Security funds the federal government.
Since the Johnson Administration of the 60s, the S.S. fund has been plundered and the surplus from the fund used to finance wars and the daily operations of the federal government. This came as a result of Johnson declaring that these surplus funds would be added to the general fund. Once there, the funds could be used for anything and everything.
In Inside Job, the name that keeps cropping up is Larry Summers, a friend of President Bill Clinton and more recently Barack Obama. Summers exemplifies the links between cheerleaders in academia, Wall Street, supine regulators and an ignorant Capitol Hill that Ferguson stresses were at the root of the problem. It helps that Summers looks like a mafia boss, but the difficulties in making the case against him are shown by the need to explain financial products like credit default swaps and how securitisation was used by banks to increase their borrowing.
Being unemployed is, for many, not fun. There are no co-workers to mock at the water cooler, no expense accounts on which to wine and dine associates and no impressive title to drop when you're trying to pick up the ladies (or men, for that matter).
Now there's a growing trend of employers refusing to consider the unemployed for job openings, according to a number of people who testified before the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Wednesday. They say that employers are barring the unemployed from job openings, which is particularly unfair to older workers and African Americans because more of them are unemployed.
A package of Oscar Mayer cold cuts. A pair of Nine West boots. A Whirlpool washing machine. By the fall, people will most likely be paying more for each of them, as rising prices hit most consumer goods, say retailers, food companies and manufacturers of consumer products.
Cotton prices are near their highest level in more than a decade, after adjusting for inflation, and leather and polyester costs are jumping as well. Copper recently hit its highest level in about 40 years, and iron ore, used for steel, is fetching extremely high prices. Prices for corn, sugar, wheat, beef, pork and coffee are soaring. Labor overseas is becoming more expensive, meanwhile, and so are the utility bills to keep a factory running.
New York’s Public Advocate, Bill de Blasio, recently released a very important study about Wal-Mart’s effects on local communities. It represents a major step forward in the understanding of the effects of Big Business.
The main conclusions are shocking, to the point, and make clear what damage Wal-Mart actually managed to do to the American economy. The fundamental conclusions are these:
An AMAZING fact: The Federal bailout is more than the cost of the First World War, the Second World War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Marshall Plan, the New Deal, the Invasion of Iraq, and landing on the moon COMBINED!
And, with this bailout Obama has nearly created more debt than ALL the previous presidents COMBINED.
Dr. Paul is now the Chairman of the Congressional subcommittee overseeing the Federal Reserve, which as you may know, is a private entity yet largely responsible for our economic policies.
U.S. grain prices should stay unrelentingly high this year, according to a Reuters poll, the latest sign that the era of cheap food has come to an end. U.S. corn, soybeans and wheat prices -- which surged by as much has 50 percent last year and hit their highest levels since mid-2008 -- will dip by at most 5 percent by the end of 2011, according to the poll of 16 analysts.
The forecasts suggest no quick relief for nations bedeviled by record high food costs that have stoked civil unrest. It means any extreme weather event in a grains-producing part of the world could send prices soaring further.
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