Brazil Raises Key Interest Rate

SÃO PAULO, Brazil—Brazil’s central bank raised its benchmark interest rates less than what many economists say is needed to keep inflation in check, in a gamble that the soaring global food prices helping drive inflation higher will eventually ease off by themselves.

The bank raised its benchmark interest rate a quarter of a percentage point to 12%. That was a smaller raise than two previous increases of half a percentage point earlier this year.

“They are capitulating in terms of their inflation target for this year and are going to let inflation run through system,” says Alberto Ramos, an Latin …

Read the rest here.

Federal borrowing is on pace to hit the legal limit on the national debt in less than a week.

As set in a law passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama on Feb. 12, 2010, the legal limit on the national debt is $14.2940 trillion. As of the close of business Tuesday, according to the Daily Treasury Statement released at 4:00 pm today, the portion of the national debt subject to this legal limit was $14.268365 trillion. (The total national debt, including the portion exempted from the legal limit, was $14.3205 trillion.)

This left the U.S. Treasury with the authority to borrow only an additional $25.635 billion before it hits the statutory debt limit.

Read the rest here.

“In 2008, the most recent year for which full data is available, the infamous top 1% – those earning over $380,354 – paid 38.02 percent of federal income taxes, according to an analysis of IRS data by the Tax Foundation. Meanwhile, the bottom 50 percent of income earners – the group that, according to the liberal world view, is subsidizing tax handouts to the wealthy – shouldered just 2.7 percent of the federal income tax burden. And keep in mind, in 2008, the higher income earners share of taxes slipped from the previous year’s 40.4 percent due to the economic downturn.”

“When you make this argument to liberals, they’ll often respond that the only reason such a distribution exists is that there’s a lot of income inequality in America. But even if you account for that, the wealthy are paying disproportionately. The top 1 percent, for instance, earned 20 percent of the nation’s adjusted gross income in 2008 – yet their share of the tax burden was nearly twice that. Meanwhile, the bottom 50 percent earned 12.75 percent of the nation’s income, while their share of the tax burden was about one-fifth of that. You can see this demonstrated in the chart below.”

Read the rest here.

A former employee of the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. at the Rainbow Push Coalition has filed a bombshell wrongful termination and discrimination complaint against the civil rights leader with the City of Chicago’s Commission on Human Rights.

The complaint, filed sometime last year by Tommy R. Bennett, a regular on the Tom Joyner Radio show and member of Barack Obama’s LGBT Leadership Council, includes shocking allegations about Jackson’s behavior toward the openly gay staffer including an allegation that the civil rights leader propositioned him.

Read the rest here.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Thursday evening that he and a group of negotiators have “nailed down” language on a Libya resolution and are waiting for instructions from leadership on how to proceed.

The measure would serve as a symbolic gesture of support for President Barack Obama’s use of military force in the North African country. Under the War Powers Act, Congress must authorize continued military presence in Libya after a May deadline if American troops are still active there, but it’s unclear if the Senate needs to act.

Burry, a Vanderbilt University School of Medicine alumnus profiled in author Michael Lewis’ bestselling book The Big Short, is best-known as the first financial analyst to predict America’s financial crisis.

In an op-ed he wrote for the New York Times in 2010, Burry says that he began worrying about the housing marketing in 2003 when “lenders first resurrected interest-only mortgages, loosening their credit standards to generate a greater volume of loans.” By 2005, he was convinced that the housing market would melt down causing “substantial damage to the economy.”

Our leaders in Washington either willfully or ignorantly aided and abetted the bubble“Our leaders in Washington either willfully or ignorantly aided and abetted the bubble,” wrote Burry. “It did not have to be this way.”

Burry was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome as an adult, which he credits with helping him bring a unique perspective to the economy and financial markets. Lewis agrees, saying, “He has a great ability to concentrate in just raw data.”

Read the rest here.

WASHINGTON (AP) – The District of Columbia is becoming the first U.S. jurisdiction to allow Internet gambling, trying to raise millions of dollars from the habits of online poker buffs and acting ahead of traditional gambling meccas like New Jersey and Nevada.

Permitting the online games was part of the 2011 budget and a 30-day period for Congress to object expired last week, said D.C. Council member Michael A. Brown, who authored the provision. The gaming would be operated by Intralot, a Greece-based company, and would be available only to gamblers within the borders of the district.

Read the rest here.

Refiners are one of the energy sub-sectors that could benefit the most from higher oil prices. Historically March marks the end of a five-month stretch in which monthly crack spreads (value of refined products minus the prices of the crude oil feedstock) tends to increase. Spreads are generally 4 percent wider in March than February.

This year, some refiners are getting an added bonus because of the significant price difference between WTI and Brent crude oil. Currently, Brent is trading about $15 a barrel higher than WTI, which means that some refiners are buying their oil $15 below global prices. This adds to the profitability of each barrel.

The discount may remain wide for the time being because crude oil supplies from Canada and the mid-continental region of the U.S. have risen faster than demand. These supplies travel to storage facilities at the delivery hub in Cushing, Oklahoma, which makes it difficult to be exported overseas. This creates a supply glut unique to the region.

Tripoli, Libya (CNN) — Embattled Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, in negotiations with the African Union, has agreed in principal to a deal that would end the conflict in the nation he’s ruled for 42 years, South African President Jacob Zuma told reporters Sunday.

Negotiations remained under way Sunday night between Gadhafi and the African Union delegation.

Details of the agreement were not available, though it is believed to include an immediate ceasefire in the nearly two-month long war between Gadhafi’s forces and those fighting to unseat him. In his comments, Zuma also discussed an end to NATO airstrikes aimed at enforcing a no-fly zone and targeting Gadhafi’s troops.

After staying overnight in Tripoli, the African Union delegation will fly Monday to the Libyan rebel stronghold of Benghazi to meet with opposition leaders there.

Read the rest here.

Wow. Perhaps Gaddafi wasn’t lying when he stated that Al Qaeda was responsible for the uprising.

“Whereas American officials have been straining to make out “flickers” of intelligence suggesting a jihadist influence in the eastern Libyan rebellion against the rule of Muammar al-Gaddafi, Fouchet encountered a flagrant jihadist presence and met with participants who talked openly about their dedication to jihad and/or their desire to establish an Islamic state.”

Read the rest here.

Our budget, which we call The Path to Prosperity, is very different. For starters, it cuts $6.2 trillion in spending from the president’s budget over the next 10 years, reduces the debt as a percentage of the economy, and puts the nation on a path to actually pay off our national debt. Our proposal brings federal spending to below 20% of gross domestic product (GDP), consistent with the postwar average, and reduces deficits by $4.4 trillion.

A study just released by the Heritage Center for Data Analysis projects that The Path to Prosperity will help create nearly one million new private-sector jobs next year, bring the unemployment rate down to 4% by 2015, and result in 2.5 million additional private-sector jobs in the last year of the decade. It spurs economic growth, with $1.5 trillion in additional real GDP over the decade. According to Heritage’s analysis, it would result in $1.1 trillion in higher wages and an average of $1,000 in additional family income each year.

Read the rest here.

(CNSNews.com) – The U.S. Treasury has released a final statement for the month of March that demonstrates that financial madness has gripped the federal government.

During the month, according to the Treasury, the federal government grossed $194 billion in tax revenue and paid out $65.898 billion in tax refunds (including $62.011 to individuals and $3.887 to businesses) thus netting $128.179 billion in tax revenue for March.

At the same, the Treasury paid out a total of $1.1187 trillion. When the $65.898 billion in tax refunds is deducted from that, the Treasury paid a net of $1.0528 trillion in federal expenses for March.

That $1.0528 trillion in spending for March equaled 8.2 times the $128.179 in net federal tax revenue for the month.

Read the rest here.

Tokyo Electric Power is struggling to block a crack discovered in a pit that is leaking highly radioactive water into the ocean at its Fukushima Daiichi plant, and said it had discovered the bodies of its two missing employees at the stricken plant.

Staff discovered the 20 centimetre-wide crack in a shaft storing supply cables close to reactor No 2. Tepco is making preparations to inject a type of polymer into the pit in its latest effort to block the leaking water, after Saturday’s attempts to plug the crack with concrete failed.

It is the first time that the company has discovered a source of radiation leakage, amid signs it was continuously seeping into the sea. High levels of radiation inside and outside the building were detected at the reactor No 2 in the past week.

Read the rest here.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says the U.S. is “deeply concerned” about the situation in the Ivory Coast and reports of human rights abuses and a massacre of more than 1,000 people.

In a statement Sunday, Clinton called on Laurent Gbagbo (luh-RAHN’ BAHG’-boh), the entrenched incumbent who lost a November vote, to step down immediately. She also says forces loyal to the internationally recognized President Alassane Ouattara (AL’-ah-sahn wah-TAHR’-ah) must respect the rules of war and stop attacks on civilians.

Read the rest here.

Executive Summary: the FCC is going to help reconstitute Ma Bell all over again. Let’s call it Ma Bell 2.0.

The damage to the economy will be significant as it results in less competition, less risk-taking, less entrepreneurship, and less innovation. Higher prices for consumers and a step backwards for the U.S.

I can prove it.

Think of the most unregulated marketplace in the U.S. One with the least government intervention. If you answered software and Internet applications, you’re a winner.

Over the last 25 years, the largely unregulated world of software has created untold trillions in value creation: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, eBay, Oracle, Facebook… the list goes on and on. Anyone with a good idea and some hacking skills can create a business worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.

No regulation. Unfettered competition.

Read the rest here.

James Pethokoukis

If only it were an April Fools’ Day prank. With Japan officially cutting its corporate tax rate as of today, America now has the highest rate among advanced economies. Even its effective tax rate is way above average despite the likes of General Electric spending billions to game the labyrinthine code. A smarter approach would be to substitute a business consumption tax.

Now the United States might cling to second place if Japan cancels the rate reduction to help pay for the tsunami and earthquake devastation. After factoring in state taxes, America’s top rate of 40 percent would still exceed the average of 26 percent for the rest of the OECD.

Headline rates, of course, are like sticker prices on new cars. The real numbers are lower, thanks in part to the $40 billion companies spend annually to comply with, and often sidestep, the maximum levy. GE, for example, has taken heat for consistently paying less than what the U.S. tax code would imply it should.

But even taking into account the efforts of attorneys and lobbyists, the average effective U.S. rate in 2010 was 29 percent against 21 percent for international counterparts, according to the  American Enterprise Institute. And before the recession, corporate tax revenue as a share of U.S. GDP was at its highest since the 1970s.

Politicians of all stripes have been talking about lowering corporate taxes and eliminating loopholes to pay for a sharp rate reduction.  A sharply lower rate —  Canada’s will be just 15 percent in January 2012 — would boost worker wages, investment, productivity, jobs and growth. Such reforms, though a big improvement, would still leave in place a flawed and unwieldy structure.

Read the rest here.

Lee Stranahan

The Huffington Post is certainly doing a spectacular job of keeping their readers completely in the dark about the entire story of their caving to pressure from the group Color of Change and banning Andrew Breitbart from their front page. This story has been covered by Slate, Mediaite, the New Yorker and a host of conservative sites but there hasn’t been one single word mentioned about it in the Huffington Post, which has an entire section devoted to covering Media. (Paging Jason Linkins.) Not a peep. No stories, articles, statements of clarification.

As far as Arianna and her bosses at AOL are concerned THIS NEVER HAPPENED.

Furthermore, they are now in full hush-up mode to the outside world, too. Huffington Post’s poor flack Mario Ruiz has gone from simply giving nonanswers when pressed to explain this new policy to completely ignoring his emails on the subject.

You think the Arianna Huffington and editor Roy Sekoff don’t know what the reaction of their readers would be if they told them that they both knew Andrew Breibart wasn’t a racist? Do you think they don’t know the reaction of the anyone fair minded if they made it clear that they had ALWAYS known this but still let HuffPo serve as the platform for attack after attack on him?

Read the rest here.

We’ve Become a Nation of Takers, Not Makers

By STEPHEN MOORE

If you want to understand better why so many states—from New York to Wisconsin to California—are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, consider this depressing statistic: Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government.

It gets worse. More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined. We have moved decisively from a nation of makers to a nation of takers. Nearly half of the $2.2 trillion cost of state and local governments is the $1 trillion-a-year tab for pay and benefits of state and local employees. Is it any wonder that so many states and cities cannot pay their bills?

Read the rest here.

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s two-year fight to shield crisis-squeezed banks from the stigma of revealing their public loans protected a lender to local governments in Belgium, a Japanese fishing-cooperative financier and a company part-owned by the Central Bank of Libya.

Read the rest here.