Tag Archives: Middle Class Dismissed

Should Cities Be in the Business of Issuing Debit Cards? [2013]

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“The city of Oakland already offers residents a municipal ID card, a form of identification thought to help undocumented immigrants, in particular. Now, they’ve upped the ante, becoming the first city to add a pre-paid debit-card function to its ID.  Residents can reload the card at Western Union, direct-deposit paychecks to it, withdraw cash from it at ATMs, and shop with it like any other pre-paid Mastercard.  With nearly one in 10 households considered ‘unbanked’ in the U.S., Oakland’s initiative is part an effort by many cities to broaden the financial options available to low-wage workers beyond check-cashing stores and payday lenders.”

http://www.citylab.com/work/2013/08/should-cities-be-business-issuing-debit-cards/6474/

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Swiss sanctions dilemma over Russia

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“Moscow’s response to EU sanctions – a ban on fresh food imports from the EU – does not apply to Switzerland.  For Swiss cheese maker Anthony Margot, that has led to ‘dozens’ of calls a day from Russian cheese distributors, hoping to fill the huge gap which will be left by French camembert, Dutch edam or Italian mozzarella.  ‘Some of them are calling in tears,’ he says. ‘The situation is terrible for them, they fear they will lose their jobs, everyone wants to buy Swiss cheese now.’  Unfortunately for the Russians, Swiss cheese makers are unlikely to be able to meet the demand as most of them are small, village-based businesses.”

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-28833360

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The Fed: Strangling the Saving Ethic and Values

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“Around the time Nixon was pulling the plug on what remained of the gold standard, the personal savings rate in America was north of 12.5%. These days, it’s 5.4%, and that’s up from 2.2% in the boom year of 2005. The 2008 crash tightened people’s belts. However, prudence is not bursting out all over. The WSJ says the personal savings rate has increased ‘in large part because it counts reductions in personal debt, such as mortgages and credit-card balances, as savings’, but that most debt reduction has been driven by defaults, rather than paying back.  It’s clear that since the last tethers tying the dollar to gold were cut, money production has soared, and a casualty has been the savings ethic.”

http://www.caseyresearch.com/articles/the-fed-strangling-the-saving-ethic-and-values

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Ex-Fed chief Bernanke denied loan to refinance his home

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“Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke revealed last week that he was turned down when he tried to refinance his home loan.  ‘I think it’s entirely possible’ that lenders ‘may have gone a little bit too far on mortgage credit conditions,’ he said.  Bernanke also told the conference of the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing and Care that the first-time homebuyer market is ‘not what it should be.’  Bernanke was paid $199,750 annually as head of the central bank and reportedly earned $250,000 in March for his first public speaking engagement since stepping down in January.  He also reportedly received $1 million in a deal to write his memoirs.”

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/10/06/ex-fed-chief-bernanke-denied-loan-to-refinance-his-home/

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Venezuela’s newest shortage: breast implants

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“Beauty-obsessed Venezuelans face a scarcity of brand-name breast implants, and women are so desperate that they and their doctors are turning to devices that are the wrong size or made in China, with less rigorous quality standards.  Venezuelans once had easy access to implants approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. But doctors say they are now all-but impossible to find because restrictive currency controls have deprived local businesses of the cash to import foreign goods. It may not be the gravest shortfall facing the socialist South American country, but surgeons say the issue cuts to the psyche of the image-conscious Venezuelan woman.”

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/venezuelas-newest-shortage-breast-implants

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Shocking Events — Past, Present and Future

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“Fifteen years ago, well before al-Qaeda’s first attacks on America, our tech stocks began to crumble. Over $5 trillion in equity value was wiped out. Our entire economy was temporarily paralyzed. And what’s worse, that crisis set off a tragic chain of economic events that also continue to ricochet through time …  Radical interest-rate cuts …  A great housing bubble — and BUST …  The emergence of a deadly debt crisis …  And now, the most risky and largest Fed money-printing operation of all time.  This chain of events has wiped out vast amounts of invested wealth; the hard-earned savings of millions of everyday Americans.”

http://www.moneyandmarkets.com/shocking-events-past-present-future-65272

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Broken Links: Fed Policy and the Growing Wall Street-Main Street Gap

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“Probably the strongest feature of the foregoing chart is the tendency for inflation to move higher and lower in trends that have very little to do with unemployment, and for unemployment to move up and down in trends that have very little to do with inflation. Not to ruin a good theory with the facts, the failure of this misguided Phillips Curve formulation to describe the real world has resulted in a wide variety of ways to ‘augment’ it using expectations, varying ‘natural’ rates of unemployment, and so forth. The idea seems to be that using the right set of assumptions, we can make sense of the fact that the planets that circle around the Earth keep stopping and going backwards.”

http://www.hussmanfunds.com/wmc/wmc140825.htm

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They’re Coming for Your Accounts

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“Just a week or two ago, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) published a horrifying paper, called The Fund’s Lending Framework and Sovereign Debt. That paper, in turn, was based on one from December 2013, called Financial and Sovereign Debt Crises: Some Lessons Learned and Those Forgotten.  Major media ignored all of this, of course.  The December 2013 document, right at the start, says that ‘financial repression’ is necessary.   That’s not my interpretation; those are their words.  It’s not just the IMF, of course. The US Treasury has had a group working on these ideas since the Bush administration.”

http://www.caseyresearch.com/freeman/they-are-coming-for-your-accounts

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New IRS rule could cut into restaurant workers’ tips

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“Even as President Obama and progressive activists are trying to sell the nation on hiking the national minimum wage to help restaurant workers and other low-wage employees, the Internal Revenue Service is seemingly determined to make life harder for those same workers.  A change in tax policy implemented Jan. 1 will prevent restaurant workers from collecting automatic gratuities as part of their tips. Instead, that added fee will be included in their payroll, meaning workers have to wait up to two weeks to get that extra cash and must pay additional taxes on it. It means less money in servers’ pockets and more for the federal government.”

http://watchdog.org/122310/new-irs-rule-cut-restaurant-workers-tips/

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Union Pensions Win, Homeowners Lose in “Victory” Against Banks

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“Perhaps the biggest winners in the largely tax-deductible $16.5 billion U.S. settlement against Bank of America was B of A itself, public employee pension funds, state bureaucrats and political hacks. The State’s CalPERS and CalSTRS public pension funds get a $300 million bailout, making these pension funds whole–despite the pension funds’ own irresponsible investments.  Previously Citibank and JP Morgan Chase gave $299 million and $300 million to CalPERS and CalSTRS. Some unknown portion of $500 million from of B of A will go for direct ‘consumer relief’ such as loan modifications, the rest to low income housing programs run by state bureaucrats and community organizers.”

http://www.highlandnews.net/news/political/article_3b1448dc-31ec-11e4-8df5-0019bb2963f4.html

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