Economy
President Obama recently commented that business success relied upon government to succeed. Operators of lemonade stands, however, have found govenrment an obstacle, not an aid, to success.
Last week, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney made a bold assertion: President Obama’s 2009 economic stimulus law is “widely recognized to have broken the back of the recession.” The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which was signed into law on February 17, 2009, had an original cost estimate of $787 billion, but has since been revised by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to an elevated tune of $831 billion.
Monday's report from the California Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) contained two numbers that are spelling out the death spiral of that plan: too little money making too little returns. How bad are the returns? According to the report, the plan made a paltry one percent in the past year (July 2011 - June 2012), far below what's needed for the plan to be able to keep its promises to its beneficiaries
Compelled under the despotic power of a local government in Virginia, one business owner is losing his property under the government’s alleged authority of eminent domain. And it’s not because officials in Norfolk plan to build a new road or a public park; it’s so they can clear the area for new “retail space.”
Another pressing eminent domain debacle has sprouted in San Bernardino County, California, where the local government is seeking to seize and restructure “underwater” residential mortgages — those whose owners owe more than their mortgages' worth — by forcibly purchasing them from mortgage-backed securities (MBS) investors at low rates and reselling them with lower balances to other investors.
The U.S. Treasury Department announced on Thursday that the federal government’s deficit for the first nine months of its 2012 fiscal year exceeded $900 billion and that the country is on target for another $1 trillion annual deficit for the fourth year in a row. And this was despite the fact that revenues for the same period actually increased by five percent.
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