World-News

Global Insolvency

By: Bob Chapman

How can the US conceivably extricate itself from debt? That is $1 to $2 trillion deficits annually as far as the eye can see. It is already bogged down in an occupation in Iraq and a war in Afghanistan that stretches into Pakistan. That is all off budget, but it stretches already to more than $1 trillion. Then there is the phony, phantom war on terror the cost of which is unknown.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24584.htm



The Crisis Is Not Over

By Paul Craig Roberts

Readers ask if the financial crisis is over, if the recovery is for real and, if not, what are Americans' prospects. The short answer is that the financial crisis is not over, the recovery is not real, and the U.S. faces a far worse crisis than the financial one.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24576.htm



FHA Defaults Foreshadow A Crush Of Foreclosures

By Dina ElBoghdady and Dan Keating

February 02, 2010 "Washington Post" -- The share of borrowers who are falling seriously behind on loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration jumped by more than a third in the past year, foreshadowing a crush of foreclosures that could further buffet an agency vital to the housing market's recovery.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24579.htm



Study: Hunger in America Jumps 'Unprecedented' 46 Percent

By Daniel Tencer

The study, Hunger in America 2010, found that 37 million people, or roughly one in eight US residents, received food aid in 2009. That's a 46 percent jump from a similar survey carried out in 2006.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24581.htm

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The Obama Budget and the Horse You Rode In On
http://www.lewrockwell.com/daughty/mogambo30.1.html

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Deficit deja vu

Heartland Institute
by Steve Stanek

02/05/10

President Barack Obama Tuesday (Feb. 2, 2010) introduced his budget for next fiscal year. To put it into perspective, consider this: The estimated budget deficit — just the deficit — almost matches the entire federal budget when George W. Bush became president in 2001. A strong case could be made that Bush and Obama represent the most fiscally irresponsible back-to-back presidencies in national history...

http://tinyurl.com/ylxj83l



How government (mostly) created financial crisis

Orange Punch
by Alan Bock

02/05/10

Of course, there are reasons that the narrative survives and, in fact, dominates most conventional discourse — not surprising given that the president has the biggest megaphone in the country, and most of the media simply parrot him: The financial crisis was caused by private greed and unwarranted risk-taking, even ‘predatory lending.’ People in government want you to believe they saved us from all that and have the formula to prevent it ever happening again, if we’ll just cede them the power. So the role of government policies and institutions in creating the crisis is an inconvenient aspect that we don’t need to mention in polite society. That’s why a book like Johan Norberg’s ‘Financial Fiasco’ is so essential to understanding the recent past and charting a course for the future...

http://tinyurl.com/yb5ljd3



The wrong manhood test

Cato Institute
by Christopher Preble and Heather Hurlburt

02/04/10

In last week’s State of the Union address, President Barack Obama declared that he would freeze government spending for three years, excepting Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and ’spending related to our national security.’ This week, we can see what that blanket exemption for the Pentagon will cost us. The base budget (which excludes war costs) weighs in at a whopping $548.9 billion, the largest since the end of World War II. Military spending advocates might note that this represents just a 3.4 percent increase over last year, but inflation-adjusted spending on national defense has ballooned by 60 percent over the past 10 years...

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11199


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

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The Budget Deficit Crisis Puzzle

Dean Baker, Truthout: "The country faces a serious crisis in the form of a manufactured crisis over the budget deficit. This is a crisis because concerns over the size of the budget deficit are preventing the government from taking the steps needed to reduce the unemployment rate. This creates the absurd situation where we have millions of people who are unemployed, not because of their own lack of skills or unwillingness to work, but because people like Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke mismanaged the economy."

http://www.truthout.org/the-budget-deficit-crisis-crisis56749



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