Category: Finance
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National Debt (Strangely) Unchanged for 70 Days
The U.S. national debt for the past 70 days has been stuck at exactly $16,699,396,000,000, CNSNews.com reports, citing the Daily Treasury Statement for July 26.“That is approximately $25 million below the legal limit of $16,699,421,095,673.60 that Congress has imposed on the debt,” the report notes.Fed debt subject to the legal limits imposed by Congress first…
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More Bankruptcy Coming (to a city near you)
The top 10 biggest U.S. cities on the brink of pension bankruptcy. #1 Philadelphia – Unfunded liability of $9 billion, $16,696 per household, only 1 year before the pension accounts are empty #2 Chicago – Unfunded liability of $44.8 billion, $41.966 per household, money runs out in 4 years #3 Boston – Unfunded liability of…
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Welfare-Funded Groceries Shipped to Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Haiti
Food stamps are paying for trans-Atlantic takeout — with New Yorkers using taxpayer-funded benefits to ship food to relatives in Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Welfare recipients are buying groceries with their Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards and packing them in giant barrels for the trip overseas, The Post found. The practice is so…
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IL Public Pension Debt at $133 Billion
Ten U.S. states have public pension liabilities that are at least as big as their annual revenues, according to a Moody’s Investors Service report released on Thursday that found the Illinois pension bill was equal to 241 percent of its revenues. … According to Moody’s, Illinois has the largest net pension liability in the country,…
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China Economy to Overtake U.S. by 2016
China’s economy expanded last year at 7.8pc – its slowest pace in more than a decade – and recent data has fuelled concerns that any rebound in the country’s growth is losing steam. However, the OECD was upbeat, predicting in a new survey of China’s prospects that the country’s economy could expand by 8.5pc this…
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Moody’s Downgrades Chicago’s Motor Fuel Debt
Moody’s Investors Service has downgraded to A3 from Aa3 the rating on the City of Chicago’s (IL) $181 million of outstanding rated motor fuel tax debt. The outlook has been revised to negative. via Moody’s. Surprises no one. Barely qualifies as news actually. The City’s broke. Unemployment (real unemployment, the U6 number) is out of…
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SEC Hits Illinois with Securities Fraud Charges
Illinois broke federal securities laws in misstating the true health of the state’s depleted pension funds when going out onto the bond market between 2005 and early 2009, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced Monday. … The finding of securities fraud doesn’t subject the state to any fines or penalties but amounts to a warning…
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Druckenmiller: Old Stealing From Young
Druckenmiller, who is known to be media shy, told Bloomberg TV that he sees “a storm coming, maybe bigger than the storm we had in 2008, 2010” and it has to do with a demographic bubble. “But the demographic storm is just starting now. It reminds me of ’05 when people just extrapolated housing prices…
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Illinois Pensions — A Simple Primer
I found this while at the Khan Academy. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tczu_dvVuuk]
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Quinn Spends Another $1.5 Billion We Don’t Have
Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn on Thursday signed into law an extra $1.5 billion in spending for road construction and child welfare investigations, even as Republicans decried the measure as including ill-timed, pork barrel money. via Chicago Tribune. What is wrong with this guy? Really? Quinn already stopped a bond auction because the rates for Illinois…