Tag Archives: Welfare-Warfare State

This Could Shake Muni Bonds to the Core

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“Detroit went bankrupt, but so what?  Its own decades-long gross political mismanagement, corruption and incompetence pushed the city over the cliff into bankruptcy.  Why should we care? The largest Chapter 9 filing in U.S. history will reverberate well beyond this once- bustling city and its creditors. What’s most threatening to muni bond investors, and in fact all investors, is whether the city’s general obligation bonds are secured or unsecured issues.  General obligation bonds, backed by a city’s ability to levy taxes to pay interest and principal, are thought to be the safest of all munis.  Detroit is putting this to the test.”

http://moneymorning.com/2013/08/02/this-could-shake-muni-bonds-to-the-core/

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Debt in the United States: Charts

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http://www.garynorth.com/public/11361.cfm

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The Financial Tale of Two Cities: Detroit and Chicago

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“At State Data Lab, we calculate and report a metric called ‘Net Revenue’ for all 50 states. Net Revenue subtracts total reported net expenses from general revenue. It can inform whether a state is truly ‘balancing its budget,’ at least as far as reported results.  Net revenue can also be calculated for cities. The chart above shows how net revenue in Detroit was persistently negative in the five years before its bankruptcy filing. The chart also shows an even more alarming trend for the city of Chicago. And those results can understate reality; they rely on the city’s financial reports, which do not include accumulating off-balance sheet retirement obligations.”

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/08/the-financial-tale-of-two-cities.html

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The Latter-Day Rome Lives And Kills

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“Libya is no longer. Ditto Iraq. Afghanistan is not doing much better since Rome set up camp there. The Comitatus – ‘the sprawling apparatus that encompasses the ministries of government, the lawyers, the diplomats, the adjutants, the messengers, the interpreters, the intellectuals’ – refused to keep count of the casualties in the Iraq war. Likewise has ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ in Afghanistan, still ongoing, been the direct and indirect cause of the deaths and displacement of many thousands of Afghan civilians. The latter-day Rome has mechanized the warfare state’s killing capabilities and has refined its propaganda wing to an art.”

http://www.wnd.com/2013/08/the-latter-day-rome-lives-and-kills/

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Last Hurrah of the Interventionists?

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“In what a Washington Post columnist describes as a rout of Rand Paul isolationism, the Senate just voted overwhelmingly to send another $1.5 billion in foreign aid to Egypt. The House voted 400-20 to impose new sanctions on Iran’s oil exports, two days before Iran’s new president, elected on a pledge to re-engage the West on the nuclear issue, takes his oath. Do these triumphs of AIPAC and the War Party, of neocons and liberal internationalists, tell us where we are going? Or are they the last hurrahs of the interventionists, as America’s long retreat proceeds apace.”

http://buchanan.org/blog/last-hurrah-of-the-interventionists-5741

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Kill Wasteful Missile Defense Efforts

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“In the 30 years, since President Ronald Reagan created his expensive pie-in-the-sky Strategic Defense Initiative—quickly and appropriately named ‘Star Wars’ by critics and journalists alike—the United States has spent a whopping $250 billion on trying to shoot down fast intercontinental ballistic missiles, such as those that might someday be fielded by Iran and North Korea. This government effort has been a boondoggle, but then huge costs and poor performance rarely cause any government program to be terminated—evidence of this effect is exhibited by the continued flow of money to the project despite three decades of failure.”

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=4682

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Peter Schiff: Detroit Broke City

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“The good news is that the same forces that built Detroit could help turn it around. First off, Detroit needs to default on its debt. This means the bond holders and the citizenry will suffer. But after this painful process is complete, Detroit will have a few things going for it. It will boast abundantly cheap real estate and plenty of desperate workers. [..] Liberals would rather the unemployed stay that way rather than suffer the degradations of capitalism. So instead of such honest cures, look for Detroit to borrow its way out of the crisis while pretending to fix its chronic problems. If we laugh at their foolishness, we should all look in the mirror.”

http://www.europac.net/commentaries/detroit_broke_city

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Population trends cloud Europe’s post-recession outlook

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“Slowly but unsurely, Europe is facing up to population trends that will sap long-run economic growth. Some countries are getting an early taste of difficulties that await Europe as the continent’s baby boomers retire and, because of flagging fertility rates, the average age of those left in the labour force rises.  Spain, Portugal and Ireland all lost about 2 percent of their working-age adults between 2010 and the first quarter of 2013, raising the question of who pays for pensions and age-related health care costs in countries that are educating their youngsters only to see many of them emigrate and pay taxes elsewhere.”

http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/07/31/economy-europe-demographics-idINDEE96U0BB20130731

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Bankrupt Detroit Receives Less U.S. Aid Than Colombia

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“President Barack Obama proposed giving Colombia about $323 million in aid next year, mostly to combat drug trafficking and violence. Detroit, with an 81 percent higher homicide rate, will get $108.2 million. Detroit’s implosion has rekindled debate over how and whether a federal government that managed to provide more than $700 billion in aid to banks and automakers in 2008 and 2009 should help cities with unsustainable retirement debt, hollowed-out tax bases and diminished services that endanger the public. From 1990 to 2010, the percentage of the U.S. population that lives in urban areas grew to 81 percent from 75 percent.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-31/bankrupt-detroit-receives-less-u-s-aid-than-colombia.html

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Company pensions in peril as shortfalls hit record

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“Young workers may want to start counting on something other than company pensions to fund their retirements. It turns out that the plans of S&P 500 companies are underfunded to the tune of $451.7 billion, a number that has grown some 27 percent in just the last year alone.  Though many workers have switched to 401(k) plans over the years, pensions still have far more workers—91 million to 51 million. This year actually was supposed to be better for pensions under an accounting trick Congress approved in 2012. The move would allow corporations to use a 15-year average of bond yields, rather than the current level, to calculate their obligations.”

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100928506

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