We certainly do not need help issuing debt. But Europe’s crisis may help us to do so. Read about it and the macro outlook on money flow with their effects on treasuries and equities.

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A sad set of statistics out of CA recently. Employers complain there are not enough skilled workers to fill positions. How will we lead with an educational system in shambles ?

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The average tuition for grades K-12 is $22k a year. Costs have risen 4% yoy causing families in the income range of $150-$300k to apply for help.

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“Even having good health insurance is no guarantee of getting the best health care. Ashlie Hubbard learned this the hard way after the birth of her daughter, who has special needs.”

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Unload before they explode.

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In mid-October 2008, as the Treasury was discussing which banks would be bailed out in the Trouble Asset Relief Program (TARP), Kerry bought up to $550,000 worth of Citigroup stock and up to $350,000 worth of Bank of America shares. Days later, the American public learned that Citigroup would receive $50 billion from the TARP fund and up to $277 billion in additional loan guarantees. Bank of America also received $50 billion from TARP.

During the contentious healthcare debate in 2009, Schweizer noted, Kerry loaded up on pharmaceutical stocks, purchasing close to $750,000 worth of shares in one company—Teva Pharmaceuticals—in the month of November alone.

Drug companies were viewed to be among the major beneficiaries of the Democratic healthcare legislation. Pharmaceuticals “kicked in $80 billion to help make the bill work, but stand to make 10 times that amount in revenues from added government and government-subsidized business,” liberal columnist Howard Fineman wrote inNewsweek.

Teva stock was trading at about $50 a share when Kerry started buying, but jumped to $62 a share after the healthcare bill was passed, an increase of nearly 25 percent. After Obama signed the bill into law, Kerry sold his Teva shares, realizing tens of thousands in capital gains.

Kerry also bought shares of ResMed, a company that makes medical devices, which surged more than 70 percent after the healthcare bill’s passage. Throughout the healthcare negotiations, Kerry consistently opposed efforts to increase taxes on companies like ResMed.

He also purchased stock in Thermo Fisher Scientific, a firm providing products and services to hospitals, at $35 a share. After passage, they were trading at $50 a share, an increase of more than 40 percent.

I found this to be a very interesting read on our student loan problem.

Other accounts of the student loan debt problem put the estimates of total debt to $5-$7 trillion due to derivatives traded behind the market place.

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Good news for pensioners….

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Chong, 23, was never arrested, was not going to be charged with a crime and should have been released, said a law enforcement official who was briefed on the DEA case and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Chong told U-T San Diego that he drank his own urine to survive and that he bit into his glasses to break them and tried to use a shard to scratch “Sorry Mom” into his arm.

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What will Blankfein pick? Lighter regulation and lower taxes or progressive social issues?

Read the article here.

This is just absurd and juvenile.

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The FDIC provides an important insurance element that helps small business lend. Currently that insurance is set to expire later this year. The consequences could be huge for lending and employment.

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[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEvq7Te7eh0 450 300]

via NYDAILYNEWS.com

CNBC ‘freaking out’ over decline in ratings for Andrew Ross Sorkin and Maria Bartiromo

‘Their biggest attractions have become their biggest losers,’ says industry insider

Andrew Ross Sorkin is apparently not too big to tank.

The same goes for “Money Honey” Maria Bartiromo.

CNBC insiders tell us executives at the cable business channel are “freaking out” because viewership levels are down essentially across-the-board, particularly with its marquee shows, “Squawk Box” and “Closing Bell.”

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/cnbc-freaking-decline-ratings-andrew-ross-sorkin-maria-bartiromo-article-1.1068973#ixzz1tU59xYiX

This is legal, but is it legitimate? Without the F.B.I., would the culprits commit violence on their own? Is cultivating potential terrorists the best use of the manpower designed to find the real ones? Judging by their official answers, the F.B.I. and the Justice Department are sure of themselves — too sure, perhaps.

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Read the DHS Environmental Justice Strategy

Read some commentary and analysis of the “strategy.”

Paul Ryan is trying to shrug off reports that he is a cold, heartless, Rand devotee.

“I, like millions of young people in America, read Rand’s novels when I was young. I enjoyed them,” Ryan says. “They spurred an interest in economics, in the Chicago School and Milton Friedman,” a subject he eventually studied as an undergraduate at Miami University in Ohio. “But it’s a big stretch to suggest that a person is therefore an Objectivist.”

“I reject her philosophy,” Ryan says firmly. “It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas,” who believed that man needs divine help in the pursuit of knowledge. “Don’t give me Ayn Rand,” he says.

This is despite the reports that her books were required reading for his staffers.

Read the rest here.

“I’m not showing anything, you know, in the train because I really don’t feel safe,” Figueroa said.

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