It’s Friday morning, and so far today, the Obama administration has posted 165 new regulations and notifications on its reguations.gov website.
In the past 90 days, it has posted 6,125 regulations and notices – an average of 68 a day.
via CNSNews.com.
Shear insanity.
Makes me think of the old Guns & Roses song Signs.
We’re no longer free. Very sad.
United Continental Holdings, parent of United Airlines, is giving back $5.6 million in City of Chicago tax incentives.
The incentive money is tied to United’s 2007 move to its corporate headquarters at 77 W. Wacker Drive, along the Chicago River. Because of United’s recent plans to move out of that building and consolidate its headquarters into Willis Tower where it has other operations, the airline said it was “appropriate” to return the money. However, it wasn’t necessary.
City officials said United had so far fulfilled its obligations for receiving the money, such as maintaining a minimum employment level in the 77 W. Wacker Drive building, and that the incentives would have traveled with the company as it moved several blocks down Wacker Drive to Willis Tower.
via Chicago Tribune.
Well Kudos to United Continental!!
As you (should already) know, TIF’s are evil. United’s actions are commendable. Abolishing TIF’s; putting as much money back into the general tax rolls as possible is the goal. Giving the money back to the TIF shows that it’s not needed. That’s a great first step in getting rid of the TIF altogether.
An incredible complication of stories over at TheBlaze.com.
Here’s a partial list of layoffs announced since the election:
Energizer – laying off 1,500 employees
Exide Technologies – laying off 150 employees
Westinghouse – laid off another 50 employees
Research in Motion Limited – laid off about 200 employees
Lightyear Network Solutions – laid off more than a dozen
Providence Journal – laid off 23 employees
Hawker Beechcraft – laying off 240 employees
Boeing – laying off 30% of executives at Boeing Defense, Space & Security
CVPH Medical Center – laid off 17 employees
US Cellular – laying off 980, 640 in the Chicago area
Momentive Performance Materials – laying off 150
Rocketdyne – laid off about 100
Brake Parts – laying off 75
Vestas Wind Systems – reducing headcount by 3,000
Husqvarna – laying off 600
Center for Hospice New York – laying off 40
Bristol-Meyers – laying of 480
OCE North America – laying off 135
In its statement, UtahAmerican Energy blames the Obama administration for instituting policies that will close down “204 American coal-fired power plants by 2014″ and for drastically reducing the market for coal.
United Blood Services Gulf South region, the non-profit blood service provider for much of south Louisiana and Mississippi, will lay off approximately 10 percent of its workforce. It was a hard decision to make according to Susan Begnaud, Regional Center Director for the Gulf South region.
Insane right? Here’s a partial list of businesses closing announced since the election:
Caterpillar Inc. will close its plant in Owatonna Minn.
Mount Pleasant’s Albrecht Sentry Foods
The Target store at Manassas Mall Va.
Millennium Academy in Wake Forest NC
Target Closing Kissimmee FL Location
The Andover Gift Shop in Andover MA
Grand Union Family Markets Closing Storrs Location CT
Movie Scene Milford Location NH
Update: TE Connectivity Closing Greensboro Plant – 620 Layoffs Expected
Gomer’s Fried Chicken in South Kansas City
Fresh Market on Pine Street in Burlington
AGC Glass North America to permanently close its Blue Ridge Plant in Kingsport Tenn
The Target store at Platte and Academy in Colorado Springs
The Roses store on Reynold Road in Winston-Salem NC
Bost Harley-Davidson at 46th Avenue North and Delaware Ave. in West Nashville TN
Townsend Booksellers in Oakland
The Kmart store in Parkway Plaza off University Drive in Durham NC – 79 Jobs Lost
Where’s Chris Matthews on this story? Where the rest of the media on this story?
Americans’ taxes will rise in a few weeks. Though the direction is clear, the exact amount is yet to be determined.
More than a dozen tax cuts are set to expire Dec. 31 and a couple of new taxes are scheduled to start with the new year. Combined, they would affect nearly 90 percent of taxpayers, from the very richest to the very poorest, with the typical household’s tax bill rising by about $2,000 in 2013, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.
via NYTimes.com.
I had this story on Sept. 21. I called it 100 Days until Taxmageddon.
Funny how the NYT saved this story until AFTER the election.
The Legatum Prosperity Index assessed and ranked the prosperity of 142 countries based on eight sub-categories: economy, entrepreneurship and opportunity, health, governance, education, safety and security, personal freedom, and social capital.
via Business Insider.
We are now 12th.
Embarrassing. No wonder people are leaving in droves.
Democratic Speaker Michael Madigan has many advantages as he tries to extend his nearly uninterrupted three-decade control of the Illinois House.
His Democrats have more campaign money. His party has home-state President Barack Obama to drive the vote. Perhaps most important, Madigan drew the district boundaries for each of the 118 House contests that will play out in Tuesday’s election.
Given all that, Madigan is positioned to add to his 64-54 majority.
via Chicago Tribune.
Someday Michael Madigan’s daughter will not be the Illinois Attorney General.
Someday the people of Illinois will realize just what self serving piece of garbage Michael Madigan really is and demand that he be thrown in jail, burn his house down, and then burn the ashes.
All of Illinois’ problem can be laid at the feet of Michael Madigan. The debt, the fraud, the corruption, the bad roads, the pension fiasco, … everything. It’s been his piss poor planning for the last 30 years that has brought us to this point in time where the state is bankrupt and looking for a federal bailout.
We need to Kill the Machine.
Tens of thousands of homeowners who suffered wind and storm damage this week will get financial relief from rulings by several governors that insurers must treat Sandy as a tropical storm and not a hurricane. …
“Whether they call it a hurricane or something else, that translates into the percentage I have to pay to get my apartment redone,” she said before Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Wednesday that homeowners would not have to pay hurricane deductibles. “I had no idea. It’s crazy, and it’s going to cost so much money.”Homeowners’ insurance policies in coastal areas almost always include a provision that the deductible will be higher when damage is caused by a hurricane than a lesser windstorm. The difference can be steep — in the thousands of dollars — because the regular deductible is a flat dollar amount, while the hurricane deductible is connected to the replacement value of the house.
via NYTimes.com.
Right about now dozens of actuaries at all the big insurance companies tossed a huge pile of paper in the air and started to bang their head against the wall.
The title of this story at the NYT is “Governors Promote Lower Deductibles for Homeowners” which is one way of looking at it. The other way is to say, “Governors pander for votes, interfere with the insurance system, annual premiums going to go up up up.”
You don’t get to negotiate your insurance policy terms after the fact. If you wanted a lower deductible then you could have purchased insurance with a lower deductible. If you wanted hurricane replacement value insurance then you could have bought that as well. But if you went cheap and bought the typical policy… then you got the typical policy.
So when the insurance companies start running the numbers they will figure out how much more they’re going to pay out as a result of Gov. Cuomo’s unilateral action. Then they divide that amount over all the policies in the area over 5 or 10 years.
So take your joy now. Because when you get your insurance bill next year something tells me the NYT will not be writing a story about how you can’t afford to pay it.
Europe is on the ropes as investors shun peripheral euro-area government debt. In the United States, interest rates are fixed at zero, and government bonds are arguably already quite far along in an epic 30-years-and-running bull market.
Given the state of global debt markets and the apparent lack of value across the investment landscape, it’s easy to see why interest has turned to emerging economies.
via Business Insider.
So begins an article that’s no where near long enough to explain what’s really happening. It’s just the facts; the analysis is missing. I’m not economist but here’s how I see this:
Gabriel Sterne, an economist at the frontier-market brokerage firm Exotix, told Business Insider, “You get some of these big funds – a lot of the funds in the States – just getting these inflows every month. What do they do with them? They tend to just double up and put them in [emerging markets].”
Sterne went on, saying, “In the absence of any bad news, there is not enough supply out there, so yields just fall down.”
UBS rates strategists Bhanu Baweja, Stephen Mo, and Nicholas Smithie were lamenting the lack of “distressed” investment opportunities around the world right now – given all of the recent interest in EM debt and assets – in a note to clients Wednesday.
The strategists highlighted a major dilemma that investors in emerging markets now face:
Consumer staples in EM trade at 20 times future earnings. Mexican stocks are 33% above pre crisis highs, South African equities are impervious even as the weakness in the labour markets become manifest. Implied currency volatility is at post crisis lows despite the trade cycle remaining very weak.
10 year paper of some non investment grade sovereign names in Asia trades at a spread well below 100 bps. Ukraine debt has been amongst the top performers in recent months with little to show for it from within the country. Bolivia can issue 10y paper below 5 pc. We can honestly say that we would not have predicted 5 years back that this day would come.
There are worse things in life than being an asset manager sitting on continued inflows, but given where assets trade, security selection can’t be that straight forward today. Are things getting silly, and if so, is that true across all asset classes? Is anything still distressed out there?
In other words, it’s getting harder and harder for investment managers to find good value opportunities in emerging markets as money flows into those economies.
I have an old friend who’s told many a story where the ending is, “If you have more than one girlfriend you really don’t have any.” Not to make investing like relationships, but if you can’t find any distressed investments, then all investment options are distressed. The bottom line is that everything is overpriced and nothing is safe.
America’s boomers are nearing retirement and they are flooding the system with money. Lots and lots of money. Professional investors are looking for places to put all this money and they’ve driven up the prices of everything to the point of absurdity. Bolivian bonds under 5%.
There is so much money out there that it’s essentially free. So we’re stretching the rubber-band putting more and more and more money into the system and simply doesn’t know what to do with more money. Sooner or later something is going to have to give. What’s happening is that the system is getting less and less stable; more people are taking greater risks simply because there is no other alternative.
I don’t believe it’s possible to predict (with any accuracy) exactly when a bubble will burst. But we’re going to see a world-wide financial melt-down like nothing the world has ever seen before. We’re going to see it soon.
President Barack Obama was a pioneering contributor to the national subprime real estate bubble, and roughly half of the 186 African-American clients in his landmark 1995 mortgage discrimination lawsuit against Citibank have since gone bankrupt or received foreclosure notices.
As few as 19 of those 186 clients still own homes with clean credit ratings, following a decade in which Obama and other progressives pushed banks to provide mortgages to poor African Americans.
via The Daily Caller.
Kudos to The Daily Caller for putting together this incredibly well researched piece about Obama being one of the lawyers who sued Citibank to make sub-prime loans.
That this story is being written in 2012 and not 2008, and by a small independent website and not by any of the major media outlets is a complete indictment of our entire media system.
I can remember when I stopped watching The Daily Show. It was shortly before the 2008 election and Michelle Obama was the guest. After she comes out, the first question John Stewart asks is something like, “Tell us something we don’t know about you?” and the crowed goes wild. It was an sardonic arrow aimed at those who were screaming to anyone who would listen, ‘What do we really know about these people?’
The truth Mr. Stewart, is we knew very little about these people. We still know very little about these people. It’s a same that the media didn’t do its job 4 years ago and any time since. So because you ignored your responsibilities for the last 4 years someone has now produced some facts showing how:
Mr. Obama help create the problem he inherited.
That is what the press should be reporting.