“Should we throw our bantam weight behind the president in search of personal gain? Or should we put on our Good Citizen lapel flag and rally round to save the country’s finances?”
Read more: http://bonnerandpartners.com/trumps-tax-plan-would-bankrupt-the-empire/
“Issuing longer-dated Treasuries is … 1. A sign you’re broke. 2. A sign you’re desperate for credit. 3. A sign of great weakness to your foreign trade and credit sources. 4. A major Achilles’ heel in our economy. 5. A major mistake, if implemented.”
Read more: http://www.moneyandmarkets.com/more-on-crashing-sovereign-debt-markets-83770
“The Social Security Trust Fund just suffered its first annual decline since Congress shored up the retirement program in 1983. The unexpected $3 billion decline is an indication of the precarious state of Social Security’s finances. Since 2010, the program has been paying out more in benefits than it gets in tax revenue, but the trust fund, which earns about $95 billion a year in interest, had kept growing, though a little less each year. Social Security’s cash shortfall is expected to rapidly escalate from $74 billion a year to $361 billion in 2025 alone, the Congressional Budget Office projects. Under current policies, the CBO says the trust fund will be gone by 2029.”
http://www.investors.com/social-security-trust-fund-ends-32-year-streak/
“French President Francois Hollande has warned that his country is in a state of economic emergency and has unveiled a €2b two-year job creation plan. The proposal aims to offer subsidies to small firms in a bid get them to take on more employees. Speaking at an annual speech to business leaders, Hollande said: ‘Our country has been faced with structural unemployment for two to three decades and this requires that creating jobs becomes our one and only fight.’ He warned that France was facing an ‘uncertain economic climate and persistent unemployment’. France was in a state of economic and social emergency, he said. France’s unemployment rate is 10.6%.”
“While Congress made scant effort to protect average Americans from rampaging regulators, it hustled to include a provision requesting the Capitol Police to permit sledding on Capitol Hill. House Freedom Caucus member Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., summarized the GOP leadership’s wacky reasoning: ‘Give the Democrats what they want now so next time they won’t want as much.’ Republicans have been thunderously promising for decades to protect Americans against federal waste, fraud and abuse. At this rate, Republicans’ credibility gap will soon rival the $18 trillion federal debt.”
“Efforts to halt the fighting have made little progress. The war is also a political test for the kingdom’s coming man, Deputy Crown Prince Prince Mohammed bin Salman. As defense minister, he’s in charge of it and stands to lose face if it fails. Najran was home to one of the peninsula’s Jewish communities, about 200 strong, before the Saudis captured it in 1934 — with the help of a loan from Standard Oil of California, which Saudi leaders used to buy weapons and form a regular army, according to ‘The History of Saudi Arabia’ by Alexei Vassiliev. By 1949, the Jewish population had fled — to Yemen.”
“[In 1956], as today, in both London and Paris, an emotional thirst for revenge overrode sober calculation. The vicious Isis attacks in Paris represent another unpardonable offence. Through war, Cameron and Hollande seek to avenge the innocents who were killed and wounded. But as the humiliating outcome of the Suez war reminds us, there are some problems to which war is an unsuitable response. Across much of the greater Middle East today, we confront one such problem. For western governments to reflexively visit further violence on that region represents not a policy but an abdication of policy. It’s past time to think differently.”
http://new.spectator.co.uk/2015/11/sorry-but-just-bombing-isis-in-syria-wont-help-anyone/
“Francois Hollande has come into his own. After nearly bankrupting France and raising taxes so aggressively that he has driven many of France’s best and brightest abroad, Hollande has found his voice as a wartime president. Bombing Syria is not going to forestall further violence in France. In fact, such actions will surely increase the chaos and over time add to the bloodletting. But Hollande has found his voice! He bays for blood and lobbies Britain to join him in bombing Syria. The Middle East mistakes of the past decade are about to be repeated. And actually, after a point one cannot call them ‘mistakes.'”
“In spite of claims that the US is currently engaging in ‘historic’ cuts, today’s anemic military reductions have a long way to go to match the military reductions put in place by Dwight Eisenhower during his administration. If any president today attempted anything similar to what Eisenhower attempted, he would be immediately denounced as a terrorist and collaborator. And, naturally, we have every reason to believe that, regardless of who the president is, military spending will spike again the next time a president mobilizes for a new war, whether it’s in Ukraine, Syria, or some other exotic location where we will be assured that the absolutely vital interests of the US are in grave danger.”
https://mises.org/library/no-military-has-not-withered-away-under-obama
“It is indeed a crisis but one that was, to an embarrassing extent, made right here in America. It was foisted on Puerto Ricans by one lousy New Dealer in particular. His name was Rexford Guy Tugwell. By 1941, Rexford Guy Tugwell had behind him a 20-year career of pontificating for big government and managing expensive government flops. Somehow that gave Franklin Roosevelt the idea of naming him governor of Puerto Rico. What Tugwell did for the mainland, he could now do for an island. Maybe this central planning stuff works better if you work small, right?”
http://fee.org/anythingpeaceful/detail/the-man-who-sowed-the-seeds-of-puerto-ricos-collapse