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US Credit Rating Cut by Egan-Jones … Again

Ratings firm Egan-Jones cut its credit rating on the U.S. government to “AA-” from “AA,” citing its opinion that quantitative easing from the Federal Reserve would hurt the U.S. economy and the country’s credit quality.

Read the rest here.

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Bye, Free Speech: WH Asks YouTube To Take Down Film, Investigates Filmmaker; Media Help Witch Hunt

Unbelievable.

First, the Pentagon called Pastor Jones to ask him to withdraw his support for the film that is being used as a lame pretext to explain the Islamist mobs attacking our embassies. Today, Press secretary Carney did the same. And the White House contacted YouTube in order to get the video removed. The violent attacks and burning embassies aren’t a result of Islamists who want to kill us. No, no. They are all about a crummy video.

Read the rest here.

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This is What Happens When you Have a One-party Media. The Lie Becomes the Truth.

Apologies to Mr. Stein for re-printing a portion of his article. I had to, considering a couple colleagues can attest to me saying almost these exact words, a few hours before Stein published his piece.

By on 9.13.12 @ 8:00AM

Al Qaeda is. Please inform your Ministry of Truth.

So, let me get this straight:

It is September 11, 2012. An Al Qaeda sponsored mob is marching, running, screaming towards the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. Supposedly they are angry about an e-mail cartoon about the Islamic figure, Mohammed. It is known right away that the organizers of the march are the same entity that did the mass murder of Americans on 9.11.01.

The Embassy issues an apology for an American using his free speech rights about a matter of deep concern. They attempt to appease the mob. It doesn’t work. The mobs acts violently and disrespectfully towards the U.S. Embassy. They are al Qaeda. This is what they do.

No comment or almost none from Mr. Obama.

Then an al Qaeda mob attacks the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, Libya, burns it, kills the U.S. Ambassador and three other heroic American diplomats. Again, in a classic al Qaeda move, it is all timed perfectly to infuriate the USA. It isn’t spontaneous. It was 9/11, for Pete’s sake.

No comment from Mr. Obama except terse condolences.

Then along comes Governor Romney, who rightly says, “Hey, why are we appeasing an al Qaeda mob? Why aren’t we calling these guys the vicious killers that they are? Why are we back in this apology to bad guys mode?”

Then, and only then, the Obama White House goes into hyper drive. It turns out that the real problem is not al Qaeda. No, and it’s not Mr. Obama’s appeasement. No, the real threat to America is (wait for it), Mitt Romney. Yes!!! According to White House uber-pal, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Romney is working with the terrorists against the U.S. government by calling for criticism of the al Qaeda!

Yes, Romney is the enemy for pointing out that Mr. Obama is ass kissing the terrorists!

This is terrifying. The media line up to get their marching orders from the Obama Ministry of Truth and suddenly it’s Gospel: the problem is not al Qaeda. It is Romney. With a “more in sorrow than in anger…” look and tone, Mr. Obama pities Romney’s naïveté.

This is disgusting. It is nauseating. This is what happens when you have a one-party media. The lie becomes the truth. George Orwell saw it coming. In 1984, his MiniTrue had up its mission.

Who controls the present, controls the past.
Who controls the past controls the future.

It has happened. The MSM and the White House have outlawed truth. Some of us old ones can remember when it was legal and the media worked to keep it alive. Now, like the firemen in Fahrenheit 451, the MSM press exists to obliterate truth — not to preserve it.

Read the rest here.

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The Fed Made one of its Most Consequential Announcements Yet Today.

Earlier this year, the Federal Reserve reached a crossroads. It had lowered short-term interest rates to zero and promised to keep them there until 2013, and then 2014. It had undertaken multiple rounds of bond purchases to lower long-term interest rates. Yet the recovery was actually losing steam; unemployment had stopped falling. Was there anything left to try?

The answer, it turns out, is yes. The Fed made one of its most consequential announcements yet today. The detailed actions were, in themselves, similar to previous steps: it will buy $40 billion of mortgage backed securities per month, and extend the period of short-term rates near zero until at least mid-2015. But the game changer was what it said: it will keep buying bonds until, and beyond, when the recovery is firmly established. Specifically, the Federal Open Market Committee said in its statement:

If the outlook for the labor market does not improve substantially, the Committee will continue its purchases of agency mortgage-backed securities, undertake additional asset purchases, and employ its other policy tools as appropriate until such improvement is achieved in a context of price stability… [A] highly accommodative stance of monetary policy will remain appropriate for a considerable time after the economic recovery strengthens.

There are two key innovations here, both aimed at altering expectations. First is the commitment to open-ended bond purchases. Last week, the European Central Bank put its unlimited capacity to print money to bear on the euro crisis by promising to buying peripheral country bonds with no “ex ante quantitative limit”.  The Fed has done the same thing, though in the cause of boosting output rather than saving the euro. Do not underestimate the psychological impact on investors of “unlimited.”

Read the rest here.

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Franchisors Warn Obamacare Will Halve Profits

Wait until newspapers figure out how Obamacare will impact their bottom lines. They are barely keeping their heads above water as it is.

The International Franchise Association held a convention in Washington this week where most of the Radio Shack, Dunkin Donuts, Curves and other franchisers were grumbling about new federal regulations, especially the impact of Obamacare.

Most, said Atlanta Taco Bell and Kentucky Fried Chicken franchiser David Barr, presumed that the reports about how hard Obamacare will hit them were overblown. “They had their head in the sand,” he told Secrets.

That is until he pulled out his powerpoint showing how funding Obamacare will cut his–and likely their–profits in half overnight. With simple math the small business folks understood, he spelled out that their only choice is to slash employee hours so they aren’t eligible for company-paid health care or stop offering insurance and pay the $2,000 per employee fine.

Read the rest here.

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Exclusive: America ‘Was Warned of Embassy Attack but Did Nothing’

The killings of the US ambassador to Libya and three of his staff were likely to have been the result of a serious and continuing security breach, The Independent can reveal.

American officials believe the attack was planned, but Chris Stevens had been back in the country only a short while and the details of his visit to Benghazi, where he and his staff died, were meant to be confidential.

The US administration is now facing a crisis in Libya. Sensitive documents have gone missing from the consulate in Benghazi and the supposedly secret location of the “safe house” in the city, where the staff had retreated, came under sustained mortar attack. Other such refuges across the country are no longer deemed “safe”.

Read the rest here.

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Sovereign Debt: A Modern Greek Tragedy

by Fernando M. Martin and Christopher J. Waller
in Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review, September/October 2012 Vol. 94, No. 5, pp. 321-340

The authors of this article provide a general introduction to the concept of sovereign debt—including the seductive nature of borrowing and the strategies associated with default—before analyzing the current debt crises in Europe. They focus on Greece’s current woes but also discuss Portugal, Ireland, Italy, and Spain. The authors also discuss the environment in the United States, which has a high debt burden of its own, and present fiscal choices for policymakers and taxpayers.

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Charter Schools in Session Despite Strike

Now you know why liberals hate Charter Schools. They are effective, and they break the suction between the unions and the taxpayer teat.

Leslie Daniels enrolled her son in a Chicago charter school three years ago because she didn’t like the education he was getting in his local neighborhood school.

In the back of her mind, she also knew the school was less likely to be affected by labor problems because its teachers are not members of the Chicago Teachers Union. That’s an added benefit now that the union has called for its first walkout in 25 years. All of the city’s charter schools will remain open Monday.

“I’m glad I made the switch,” said Daniels, 55. “I feel for the other parents because a lot of them are working. What are their children going to be doing?”

Charter schools, which are independently run but largely rely on public funding, have been growing steadily in Chicago over the last decade. Former Mayor Richard M. Daley pushed a major expansion of charter schools in the mid-2000s, promoting them as options for parents frustrated by low-performing public schools in their neighborhood.

As a result, the city’s charter enrollment has nearly doubled in the last five years, reaching about 52,000 students this fall, according to Chicago Public Schools figures. Mayor Rahm Emanuel, like his predecessor, wants to see charter options expand even further, and there are plans for 60 more charter schools in Chicago over the next five years.

Read the rest here.

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The Surprising Ingredients of Swedish Success – Free Markets and Social Cohesion

Sweden’s success is not a result of its extensive welfare state, as many argue, but of its positive cultural norms and its recent free market reforms.

A new report, The surprising ingredients of Swedish success – free markets and social cohesion, shows that an over-bearing welfare state, along with high taxes, damaged the economy in Sweden as well as undermining its social capital.

It suggests that it is only through focusing on increasing economic freedom and introducing more choice in public services that it has rebuilt its economy. Specifically, by reducing taxes and benefits it has increased work incentives and by introducing more choice, for example through voucher schemes, they increased productivity in areas like education, pensions, healthcare and elderly care.

  • As late as 1950, Swedish tax revenues were still only around 21 per cent of GDP. The policy shift towards a big state and higher taxes occurred mainly during the next thirty years, as taxes increased by almost one per cent of GDP annually.
  • The rapid growth of the state in the late 1960s and 1970s led to a large decline in Sweden’s relative economic performance. In 1975, Sweden was the 4th richest industrialised country in terms of GDP per head. By 1993, it had fallen to 14th.
  • Big government had a devastating impact on entrepreneurship. After 1970, the establishment of new firms dropped significantly. Among the 100 firms with the highest revenues in Sweden in 2004, only two were entrepreneurial Swedish firms founded after 1970, compared with 21 founded before 1913.
  • As Swedes became accustomed to a system of high taxes and generous government benefits, their positive social norms gradually declined. In the World Value Survey of 1981-84, almost 82 per cent of Swedes agreed with the statement ‘claiming government benefits to which you are not entitled is never justifiable.’ At that time, Sweden was still a nation with very strong morals related to public benefits but as the population adjusted its norms to the higher tax and welfare regime, the number who held this view dropped steadily in further surveys. In the survey of 1999-2004, only 55 per cent of Swedish respondents believed that it was never right to claim benefits to which they were not entitled (Heinemann, 2007).
  • The favourable social outcomes in Swedish society were evident before the creation of an extensive welfare state. The expansion of welfare benefits, however, created huge social problems. Generous benefits, in conjunction with high taxes and a rigid labour market led to high levels of dependency amongst large segments of the population and have limited the ability of Swedish society to integrate migrants into the labour market.

Notes to editors

To arrange an interview about the publication please contact Ruth Porter, Communications Director, [email protected] or 077 5171 7781.

The full report, The surprising ingredients of Swedish success – free markets and social cohesion, by Nima Sanandaji, can be downloaded from www.iea.org.uk.

Nima Sanandaji is a Swedish author with a Kurdish Iranian background. He has a Master’s Degree from the Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, an Advanced Master’s Degree from The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and has previously conducted research studies at both Chalmers and the University of Cambridge.

Nima has previously published seven books, covering subjects such as entrepreneurship, tax policy, women’s career opportunities, integration and innovation within the IT sector. He is also the author of several reports, dealing with various public policy subjects in Sweden, as well as articles in international publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Human Events and The Guardian.

The mission of the Institute of Economic Affairs is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems. The IEA is a registered educational charity and independent of all political parties.

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CPS Offers Fair and Reasonable Deal to CTU to Avoid a Strike

This should make any tax payer sick. Keep in mind that over 80% of Chicago 8th Graders do not pass the state reading examinations…

Source

September 9, 2012

 

The Chicago Board of Education is Offering the Chicago Teachers Union a Fair and Reasonable Proposal

to Set the Stage for a Deal and Avoid a Strike:

 

Increases in Pay: 16 percent average salary increase equaling $320 million over the next four years, including COLA (3% year 1; 2% years 2,3,4) lanes and modified step increases that both reward experience and provides better incentives for mid-career teachers to help keep them serving in the Chicago Public School system.

 

New Opportunities and Security for Laid Off Teachers:

  • Teachers displaced due to school closings: will receive a job at a school receiving their students if there is a vacancy; placed in a reassigned teacher pool for five months or may elect to receive a three-month lump sum severance; or placed in a Quality Teacher Force Pool in which teachers who apply for positions shall be entitled to an interview and explanation if not hired.
  • Teachers displaced due to turnarounds or phase outs: placed in a reassigned teacher pool for five months or may elect three-month lump sum severance.
  • Teachers displaced for other reasons: shall have recall rights for one year for the same unit and position and will be offered interim assignment in substitute teacher pool.

Joint Implementation of Teacher Evaluations with Flexibility When Needed: The Board has proposed to work jointly with CTU to fully implement REACH Students and maintain performance standards and student growth requirements. This proposal will also allow CPS and CTU to study REACH’s implementation jointly and make adjustments as needed.

 

New Short-Term Disability Policy, Including First-Ever Paid Maternity Leave: While the banking of sick days will end, the Board will offer short-term disability to all CTU members, including paid-maternity leave. Employees will no longer need to use sick days to take time off needed for the birth of a child – nor will they need to bank the number of sick days needed before starting their family planning. Employees who have a short-term illness will not have to use sick days in order to take time needed to get well; short-term disability coverage will cover their needs and provide pay while recovering. The proposal will protect accrued sick-day accumulation for teachers with over 15 years of service in the form of pension service credits.

 

CPS to Cover Part of Employee Pension Contribution: The Board has also offered to continue picking up 7% each employee’s 9% pension contribution.

 

Freeze on Health Care Contributions for Most Plans:  The Board is calling for a modification to the health care plan funding that will freeze all employee health care contributions for single and couple plans with a small increase in family contributions of no more than $20 a pay period in addition to a small increase in emergency room co-pays.  67 percent of all CTU members will not see a change to their healthcare.

 

Increased Opportunity for Promotion: The Board proposes that CPS and CTU collaborate and work together to increase promotion opportunities and identify differentiated compensation models that have worked in other places.

 

Improved Health and Living: Like the nearly 40,000 City employees who have already signed up for the Wellness program, the Board is asking teachers to join the program at no cost. Teachers can opt-out of Wellness, and pay a small premium differential.

 

Improved Monitoring of Class Size Issues: The Board remains committed to protecting and maintaining current class sizes, but will establish a panel and joint supervisory committee with the CTU to monitor and address any class size issues that may arise.

 

Creation of a New CTU/CPS Commission to Find Fair Pension Funding Solution: The Board pledges to partner with the CTU through the formation of a Legislative Commission to find the right solutions for pension reform and draft legislation that ensures equitable pension funding.

 

A Better, Fuller Calendar: Maintain a calendar with 180 student attendance days, and 190 teacher workdays, including 10 Professional Development days.

 

A Full School Day: The newly extended Elementary school day will continue to be 7 hours, while high school days will now be 7.25 hours, a decrease from 7.5 hours. In addition, high school teachers will be limited to teaching only five classes.

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Is Romney’s Tax Plan Mathematically Possible, After all?

After running all the numbers under conditions that were very, very favorable to Mitt Romney’s tax plan, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center concluded that there was simply no mathematical way for Romney to fulfill all his promises simultaneously.

But more recently, Harvard economist Martin Feldstein has said they’re wrong. Feldstein leans to the right — he chaired President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers — but he’s a very respected, very honest economist. No one should dismiss his work.

Read the rest here.

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WATCH: Joe Kernen – Paul Krugman Is A Communist

The CNBC host that once said Paul Krugman reminds him of a “unicorn” now has another word to describe the Nobel Prize-winning economist: communist.

Joe Kernen, an anchor for CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” made the statements Monday while defending CNN anchor Erin Burnett against a recent HuffPost article that took issue with Burnett’s claim that food prices and gas prices have spiked because of the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing programs. Burnett moved to CNN from CNBC last year.

Read the rest here.

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Investor Sentiment: Don’t Become Roadkill

Great article!

So here we find ourselves at the intersection of more QE, which has been highly anticipated for months by market participants, and an overbought and over bullish market.  I still believe this is a market top, and I am basing this upon the indicators, which I am suggesting to throw out the window for now as central banker interventions distort markets and market signals.  Hey, no reason to become roadkill in what might become a short covering stampede that will catapult prices higher.

Be sure to read the rest here to see the charts showing dumb and smart money metrics.

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Are You Better Off? 40 Statistics That Will Absolutely Shock You

I just think that it is very important that we understand that there is not going to be a solution to our problems on the national level and that our economy is headed for collapse no matter who gets elected.

The total amount of debt in the United States has risen from less than 2 trillion dollars to nearly 55 trillion dollars over the past 40 years, and there is nothing that Barack Obama or Mitt Romney can do to prevent the “correction” that is coming.

So are Americans better off than they were four years ago?

Of course not.

But things will soon get a whole lot worse no matter how the election turns out.

The following are 40 statistics that will absolutely shock you….

Read the rest here.

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5 Reasons TacoCopters will be More Important than Hoverbikes

In Forbes, the excellent Adam Ozimek agrees with me that TacoCopters—commercial drones that deliver goods—will be an important economic advance. However, he thinks that they will also cause some economic drawbacks, and that on balance, hoverbikes—like this one designed by Aerofex, but also other flying human transporters more generally—will be more important.

Read the rest here.

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Surprise! HHS Pilot Program to Send 2 Million Poor Seniors from Medicare into “Voucher” Programs

I know that every campaign promise Barack Obama makes has an expiration date … but this is ridiculous.  The confetti is barely off the floor at the Time Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte, North Carolina after Obama’s acceptance speech, and already we find out that he’s flip-flopped.  Remember this part of the speech, in which he attacks the Paul Ryan plan to apply free-market reform and cost controls to Medicare?

Read the rest here.

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