When former Goldman Sachs exec Henry Paulson was Treasury Secretary he apparently gave his hedge fund buddies extremely helpful and lucrative secret information about his plans to seize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac while still assuring the public everything was fine. To a room full of hedge fund mangers, including many of his former colleagues, [...]

A nation wide pattern, possibly coordinated among officials from many states, has emerged for how political officials are trying to deal with the occupy protest. In the Northern locations the pattern has been to wait until the cold winter freezes them out. In the warmer climates, where the cold can’t be counted on to crush [...]

The ratings agency Standard and Poor’s is threatening another downgrade of the United States credit rating if the Super Committee doesn’t get results. From Bloomberg: “If there were another downgrade, it would probably be because something has happened with the budget control act, that it has somehow been watered down” or “the fiscal committee doesn’t [...]

President Obama has spent a lot of time and political capital on the issue of long term deficit reduction. He made deficit reduction a top focus of the health care reform law. He create his own deficit reduction commission when Congress failed to create their own. When that failed he spend months talking about the [...]

Tomorrow will be President Obama’s big jobs speech before the joint session of Congress. This is Obama’s pivot to unemployment, which is the biggest crisis in American right now and predicted to drag on for years. Unfortunately, reports are that this pivot to jobs probably won’t even last a full week before Obama puts his [...]

Not surprisingly, the Republicans are going to call Obama’s bluff by pushing for a short term debt ceiling extension. From Bloomberg: House Speaker John Boehner plans to press ahead with a shorter-term increase in the U.S. debt limit than President Barack Obama has requested, he told lawmakers today, defying a veto threat and signaling continued [...]

The number of Americans now depending on the use of credit to buy the basic necessities has increased significantly. This is one of the scariest stories I have seen in a while.

With Washington now terrifyingly obsessed with immediate austerity, despite the UK being a perfect example of how misguided such a move is right now, it is important for millions to realize that our economy is in no way back to stable. Two recent stories are great reminders that while the economy probably seems fine for [...]

It seems not only the President of the United States but a large bipartisan group of senators have developed a love for the comically unserious idea of automatic budget triggers. From Bloomberg: Proposals being circulated among the bipartisan “Gang of Six” Senate negotiators, and about 20 other lawmakers in both chambers, would set deficit-cutting targets, [...]

In the context of reducing the budget deficit, a new Bloomberg poll (PDF) asked Americans if they would support pulling all troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. The poll found an overwhelming 66 percent would favor this action, while only 30 percent oppose it. A full withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan was one of only [...]