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| The battle-stretched US military Saturday vowed to keep up US assistance in Haiti as long as needed on Saturday as it pointed to a likely 45 to 50 day armed mission. |
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| Real estate, stocks, credit. China sure has its share of bubbles. Oddly, little attention is paid to the biggest one of all. |
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Rolfe Winkler argues that - in the short-run - the PIIGS countries (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) will slash their budgets and get bailed out by the EU. |
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| December was the worst month for US unemployment since the Great Recession began. |
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Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said the U.S. is in no danger of losing its Aaa debt rating even though the Obama administration has predicted a $1.6 trillion budget deficit in 2010. |
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The impact of the recession is likely to hit the giant retirement system even harder this year and next. The Congressional Budget Office had projected it would operate in the red in 2010 and 2011, but a deeper economic slump could make those losses larger than anticipated. |
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| A record 38.2 million Americans were enrolled in the food stamp program at latest count, up 246,000 from the previous month and the latest in record-high monthly tallies that began in December 2008. |
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| THE Greek debt crisis has spread to Spain and Portugal in a dangerous escalation as global markets test whether Europe is willing to shore up monetary union with muscle rather than mere words. |
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| THE world's top central bankers began arriving in Australia yesterday as renewed fears about the strength of the global economic recovery gripped world share markets. |
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| How can the US conceivably extricate itself from debt? That is $1 to $2 trillion deficits annually as far as the eye can see. |
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| President Barack Obama said on Wednesday China and Asia would be a huge market for U.S. exports going forward but it would be important to address currency rates to ensure American goods were not facing a disadvantage. |
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| Jobs, jobs, jobs. Meet the new mantra, same as the old mantra |
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The administration budget released yesterday would reinstate 10-year-old income tax rates of 36 percent and 39.6 percent for single Americans earning more than $200,000 and joint filers making more than $250,000 as part of a broad $1.9 trillion tax increase proposal. |
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| The budget plan released Monday by the Obama administration illustrates why this escalation is warranted. The numbers are mind-numbing: a $1.6 trillion deficit this year, $1.3 trillion next year, $8.5 trillion for the next 10 years combined—and that assumes Congress enacts President Barack Obama's proposals to start bringing it down, and that the proposals work |
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| The Senate quietly passed legislation Thursday implementing tough new sanctions against Iran that advocacy groups say will cause more pain for the citizens of the country than for the government it's intended to cripple. |
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| The head of the International Monetary Fund warned the U.S. and European countries against launching separate initiatives to beef up the regulation of banks, urging governments to pursue multilateral agreements instead. |
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| Key Obama economic adviser Larry Summers coined a telling way to look at the current American economic state of play. He said the U.S. is experiencing a “statistical recovery and a human recession.” |
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| Some of the world’s most prominent bankers have come out in favour of a global bank wind-down fund, a concession from the industry after weeks of fighting proposals for new taxes in the US and Europe. |
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| he Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC) said First Regional Bank in Los Angeles, Florida Community Bank, First National Bank of Georgia, American Marine Bank in Washington, Marshall Bank in Minnesota and Community Bank and Trust in Georgia had failed -- pushing the tally to 15 banks that have failed this year. |
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| The Bank of England said Wednesday that it and other major central banks are ending emergency lending arrangements put in place with the U.S. Federal Reserve in the wake of the global credit crisis, citing improvements in financial markets. |
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| The Democratic-controlled Senate has muscled through a plan to allow the government to go a whopping $1.9 trillion deeper in debt. |
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| Britain's biggest banks are to announce profits of up to £25bn raising fresh fears of a public backlash against the sector that was propped up by billions of pounds of taxpayer money less than two years ago. |
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| U.S. consumers defaulted on store-branded credit cards at near-record levels during the holiday shopping season, with 2010 likely to bring more of the same trend, according to Fitch Ratings. |
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| The U.S. economic recession has taken a particularly heavy toll on young Americans, with a record one out five black men aged 20 to 24 neither working nor in school, according to research released on Tuesday. |
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| Computer-driven trading raises meltdown fears |
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| Bankers' reputations are at an all-time low, but top financial officials are turning out in force at this year's World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, calculating that the business opportunities of rubbing shoulders with industry CEOs, regulators and world leaders outweigh any public-relations flak for attending an elite jamboree in a Swiss ski resort. |
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| It is time for Asia to use its stronger voice to take a more prominent role in this new world order. The progression from the Western-dominated G8 to a more inclusive G20, with meaningful positions for leading Asian economies, rightly reflects the shift to a new equilibrium in which Asia has much greater weight. |
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| U.S. securities regulators originally treated the New York Federal Reserve's bid to keep secret many of the details of the American International Group bailout like a request to protect matters of national security, according to emails obtained by Reuters. |
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| Everyone seems to know the current path of federal fiscal policy is a deathtrap over the long term. What’s peculiar is the relative inattention to the balance sheets of state and local governments. |
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| There's one method that the Federal Reserve has been employing to shovel money to the bank elite that is rarely mentioned, though I hear the sums that have been shoveled are in the billions and they are showing up on the books of firms like Goldman Sachs as pure profit. It's really pure scam. |
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| Russia’s central bank announced on Wednesday that it had started buying Canadian dollars and securities in a bid to diversify its foreign exchange reserves |
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| Layers of money managers that don’t bear the brunt of losses but walk away with big payouts when things go well have turned the US economy to a type of “ersatz capitalism,” Joseph Stiglitz, Columbia University professor and Nobel laureate, told CNBC Tuesday. |
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| A bill currently before the Senate would empower the Obama administration to nationalize the student lending industry, eliminating the federally subsidized private loans millions of university students rely on to finance their educations. |
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| The government wants Americans to believe the greatest economic collapse in history was the result of ineptness and mistakes yet still have confidence in their financial institutions. |
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| A record one in seven U.S. mortgages were in foreclosure or at least one payment past due in the third quarter, according to fresh data signaling the recovery in the housing market will be tepid at best. |
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| Carlyle Group, the world’s second- largest private-equity firm, said it will set up a domestic Chinese private equity fund with the Beijing government. |
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| Tyranny and abuse always begin with what first seems to be harmless acts of legislation. Phone your state Governors today and demand your voice be heard. |
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| Mr. Obama, in brief comments at the White House Thursday, said his goal was not to punish banks, but to prevent them from a behavior of excess, including new employee bonuses he called “obscene.” |
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| The United States must soon raise taxes or cut government spending to curb its debt, and failure to act will risk a crippling dollar crisis as investor confidence ebbs, a panel of experts said on Wednesday. |
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| US farmers plant fewest winter wheat acres since 1913, Kansas seedings lowest since 1957 |
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| U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue warned the U.S. faces a double-dip recession because of the taxes and regulations under consideration by the Democratic Congress and President Barack Obama |
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| Britain and other countries with fast-rising government debts must steel themselves for a year in which “social and political cohesiveness” is tested, Moody’s warned. . |
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| The lawsuit does not cover Goldman’s bonuses for all of 2009, which have yet to be publicly revealed. Bloomberg reported last year that the firm’s compensation during the first nine months were $16.7 billion, but other estimates put the figure at more like $22 billion for the entire year |
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| Venezuela's Hugo Chavez ordered soldiers to seek out businesses that raise prices after a sharp devaluation of the bolivar currency last week, saying he will expropriate firms that engage in price gouging. |
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| A privacy group says the Transportation Security Administration is misleading the public with claims that full-body scanners at airports cannot store or send their graphic images. |
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THE $182.3 billion (€126.5 billion) bailout of AIG is getting more costly by the day for the Obama administration. New revelations last week cast the spotlight back on Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary who played such a vital role in the credit crunch bailouts.
Related: Tim Geithner Thinks We Can’t Handle the Truth |
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| The labour force contracted by 661,000. This did not show up in the headline jobless rate because so many Americans dropped out of the system. The broad U6 category of unemployment rose to 17.3pc. That is the one that matters. |
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| Chinese banks have cemented their position as the most highly valued financial institutions, taking four of the top five slots in a ranking of banks’ share prices as a multiple of their book values. |
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| Venezuelans rushed to the shops on Saturday, fearful of price rises after a currency devaluation that will let President Hugo Chavez boost government spending ahead of an election but feeds opposition charges of economic mismanagement. |
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| The number of Americans filing for personal bankruptcy rose by nearly a third in 2009, a surge largely driven by foreclosures and job losses. |
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| We cannot recover until we purge the excess debt from the system, and the longer we take to do that, the longer the pain will last and the worse it will be. |
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| Hopes that low interest and higher spending would halt slide |
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| A Google energy subsidiary was created last month for the internet giant to control their own energy destiny so to speak. They then applied for permission from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commision to buy and sell energy on the wholesale level. |
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| The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp said Horizon Bank had approximately $1.3 billion in total assets and $1.1 billion in total deposits as Sept. 30. |
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| A lawsuit filed against investment bank Goldman Sachs by a shareholder alleges that the company spent more money on corporate bonuses than it earned in 2008. |
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| Even in a world of massive deficits and rising national debt, not many problems come in packages that are in the trillions of dollars. The deficit facing U.S. public pension funds will grow to $2 trillion |
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| The number of Americans filing for personal bankruptcy rose by nearly a third in 2009, a surge largely driven by foreclosures and job losses. |
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The ultimate insider, Robert Rubin, who is a former secretary of the Treasury (1995–99) and now serves as co-chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations and is a fellow of the Harvard Corporation, in a Newseek opinion piece had this to say |
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| The recent hanging of Briton Akmal Shaikh in China proves that Beijing has no need to worry about what Britain thinks, argues Con Coughlin. |
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Bloomberg reports this morning, some of the nation's largest banks have actually bought more risky home loans instead of getting them off their balance sheets. |
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| Treasuries were the worst performing sovereign debt market in 2009 as the U.S. sold $2.1 trillion of notes and bonds to fund extraordinary efforts to bolster the economy and financial markets. |
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| Of the 44 predator strikes carried out by US drones in the tribal areas of Pakistan over the past 12 months, only five were able to hit their actual targets, killing five key Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders, but at the cost of over 700 innocent civilians. |
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| Is the Fed manipulating the stock market? TrimTabs CEO Charles Biderman seems to think so, and he makes a strong case for his theory in an article at zerohedge.com. |
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Legislation intended to reform Wall Street and protect consumers is currently waddling along in the House of Representatives, moving as best a 1,200-page document can. Bloomberg columnist David Reilly decided to read all of HR 4173 (the “Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act”) and found plenty of “gristle” among its provisions that could make any taxpayer ill. |
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| For most of the past 70 years, the U.S. economy has grown at a steady clip, generating perpetually higher incomes and wealth for American households. But since 2000, the story is starkly different. |
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| For all banks and Wall Street firms, “I’m sure we’re talking $200 billion total compensation, which would create a tax savings for the firms of $80 billion,” said Robert Willens, an accounting and tax analyst in New York who runs a consulting firm, Robert Willens LLC. |
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| Taxpayer losses from supporting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will top $400 billion, according to Peter Wallison, a former general counsel at the Treasury who is now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. |
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It is obvious that many republicans oppose the proposed health care bill. But many liberals and progressives oppose it as well. |
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| Chinese oil companies have spent at least $13 billion on overseas assets since December last year as they take advantage of lower valuations caused by the economic slowdown. |
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| About 36 percent of all Florida banks are ``problematic'' or ``troubled'' -- three times the national average -- according to a report released by BauerFinancial, a Coral Gables research firm. |
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| In nearly 200 years of recorded stock-market history, no calendar decade has seen such a dismal performance as the 2000s. |
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| ShadowStats.com founder John Williams explains the risk of hyperinflation. Worst-case scenario? Rioting in the streets and devolution to a bartering system |
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| IMPLODING equities, exploding credit default swaps, soaring gold and slumping oil — if, at any time over the past 18 months, it seemed that markets were in the grip of lunacy, it may be because investors are, technically, lunatics. |
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| The bill would cost $871 billion over 10 years and expand access to 31 million people. With this vote, President Obama is one step closer to obtaining his top priority. |
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The Senate voted Thursday to raise the ceiling on the government debt to $12.4 trillion, a massive increase over the current limit and a political problem that President Barack Obama has promised to address next year |
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