Weekly Audit: Republicans Poised to Declare War on Welfare State

Mean Regression
This item is cross-posted from The New Republic. The last few months of 2010 have been illuminating when it comes to the priorities of the Republican Party. By jumping at the Obama-McConnell tax deal, Republicans underscored the fact that protecting the marginal Tax Rates of high earners--not reducing the federal Deficit, and not even denying Obama legislative success--is their party's primary focus at the federal level. It says something that most Conservatives who opposed the tax deal did so...

The Federal Reserve: Aging Magician of the Welfare State
December Currency deposits__ supply_          growth rate        increase__              2005                       728.9              3,233.3 ...

Will The Housing Market Continue To Decline?
. The quick answer to the headline of this article seems to be yes. The volume of housing that is in Mortgage trouble is rising as prices drop in vulnerable markets around the country. There isn't a sufficient floor of buyers in those markets to stop further declines and Foreclosure sales that appear to be on the horizon. It depends on the market. For example, the recent Case-Shiller 20 cities report shows that coastal California has had a positive trend: Los Angeles +4.4%; San Diego +5.0%, and ...

U.S. expects foreclosure probe results next month
WASHINGTON | Mon Dec 20, 2010 5:12pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An Obama administration Task Force examining allegations of Fraud in the Mortgage Foreclosure process will deliver its findings next month, two Top Officials said on Monday. "We expect the results of the investigations will be presented to us next month," Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan said in a joint statement after meeting with the task force. "The Task Force will t...

Time for California to Tax Internet Purchases?
Most people now believe that California's Budget Crisis is revenue-based rather than spending-based. Even outgoing Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger belatedly has adopted that position. The biggest problem with California's revenue-collecting is the state's reliance upon relatively few revenue streams. Because the state collects too much money from too few sources, just about everyone feels that they are overtaxed. As it is, Personal Income taxes account for more than half of the money that goes t...

Mortgage applications fell last week
NEW YORK (AP) — The number of people applying for a Mortgage fell last week as higher rates discouraged borrowing. The Mortgage Bankers Association says its overall Mortgage application index decreased 18.6 percent from the previous week. The refinance index dropped 24.6 percent, marking the sixth decline in a row. The purchase index slipped 2.5 percent last week. Rates on fixed mortgages continued to edge up last week, remaining at the highest levels in six months. They are rising because...

On self-regulation in banking
I spoke to Max Keiser recently about a number of issues in a wide-ranging interview featured below. In the video, Max and Stacy Herbert talk about some of the hot button issues of the day like the banking sector in Ireland and the lack of criminal prosecutions in the US for the first 13 minutes or so. In the last half of the video I talk to Max about a lot of topics including gold, Mortgage Fraud, Wikileaks, currency revulsion, and Sovereign Debt. Let me focus on one: fraud. It is astounding whe...

Deficit Commission Tax Hikes Could Kill Off 20 30% Of Investment In North Dakota
North Dakota has received no small amount of national attention for skipping the national Recession, and the reason why North Dakota is skipping the national recession is because of our Oil boom. And nobody has been more instrumental in that Oil boom than Harold Hamm, chairman and CEO of Continental Resources. BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — The potential loss of a federal Tax Deduction for Oil drilling threatens to dramatically reduce exploration and could cost North Dakota’s economy billions...

Senior Safety Nets at Risk in 2011
When Texas Governor Rick Perry recently threatened to pull his state out of Medicaid, he was hardly alone. Across the country, state Budgets continue to be strapped. Federal stimulus dollars are running out. And the latest Federal Tax and stimulus package will not provide much relief at the state and local levels. Meanwhile, looming provisions of health reform will add a projected 16 million to the Medicaid rolls. Where are the facilities to take care of these folks? Where is the money? [See 1...

Congress Freezes Federal Salaries in Stopgap Spending Bill
The House passed a continuing resolution Tuesday by a vote of 193 to 165 to fund the Federal Government at current spending levels until March 4. The measure made an exception for the Veterans Administration and Pell Grants, which both received funding increases, and included language requested by the White House to freeze salaries for non-military federal workers for the next two years. The stopgap spending measure was the last act in a drama over Federal Funding that has tied Congress in knots...

Downgrade U.S. Treasuries to Junk
Prof. Peter Morici - 12/21/2010 With the new Tax Cuts, rating agencies should downgrade U.S. government Debt to junk. Economists, pundits and politicians had little choice but to endorse the tax deal between President Obama and Congressional Republicans, because snapping back to pre-Bush Tax Rates would crush the Economic Recovery. But Washington exhibited not even the shadow of self-restraint and cut taxes far beyond what is needed or smart. Newly emboldened Republicans demanded all the Bush ta...

Outside View: Downgrade U.S. treasuries
Published: Dec. 21, 2010 at 6:43 AM U.S. President Barack Obama shakes hands with Vice President Joe Biden after signing the middle-class Tax Cut bill in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House in Washington on December 17, 2010. At right is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY. UPI/Roger L. Wollenberg COLLEGE PARK, Md., Dec. 21 (UPI) -- With the new tax cuts, rating agencies should downgrade U.S. government Debt to junk. Economists, pundits and politicians h...

Christie Says Day Of Reckoning Forces Painful Spending Cuts, While Still Pushing Tax Cut Package
Christie Says ‘Day Of Reckoning’ Forces Painful Spending Cuts, While Still Pushing Tax Cut Package CBS’ 60 Minutes ran a segment last night on the fiscal nightmare currently underway in most of the states across the country. Faced with plummeting Tax Revenue and a rising demand for services in the wake of the Great Recession, many states are staring at huge fiscal holes (and most are constitutionally mandated to balance their Budgets). The Center on Budget and Policy Priorit...

Happy Holidays to the Super Rich
Happy Holidays to the Super Rich Tuesday, 12/21/2010 - 12:54 pm by Bryce Covert | Post a Comment Are you in the top of Income Distribution in the US? Then happy holidays! You just got a nice fat gift from your government. Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Thomas Ferguson talked to the Real News Network about President Obama’s Tax Cut deal with the Republicans, which he just signed into law. Who comes out on top in that bargain? Tom says, “The super rich. That’s obvious.̶...

Banks Accused Of Breaking Into Homes
Arriving at her home in Truckee, Calif., Mimi Ash found it had been cleared of her possessions New York Times: TRUCKEE, Calif. — When Mimi Ash arrived at her mountain chalet here for a weekend Ski Trip, she discovered that someone had broken into the home and changed the locks. When she finally got into the house, it was empty. All of her possessions were gone: furniture, her son’s ski medals, winter clothes and family photos. Also missing was a wooden box, its top inscribed with the word...

Wells Fargo agrees to modify California ARM loans
Wells Fargo Bank has agreed to make $2 billion in loan modifications for California Homeowners with risky pay-option, adjustable-rate Mortgages that Wells purchased from other banks, and to pay $32 million to 15,000 borrowers who had similar loans and lost their homes to Foreclosure, according to an agreement with the California Attorney General's office. "Customers were offered adjustable-rate loans with payments that mushroomed to amounts that ultimately thousands of borrowers could not aff...

Banks Break Into Homes, Not Always Legally
Banks have made the occasional huge mistake in the massive home Foreclosure crisis of the last decade, including illegally ordering home break-ins once in a while. When Homeowners are behind on their Mortgage payments, or attempting to modify their home loan, or even on occasion fully paid up but lost in the bureaucratic shuffle, they are in danger of having their home broken into and their possessions removed by the banks. A New York Times report details the occasional terrible mistakes banks h...

More Illegal Foreclosure Bank Break-Ins
I wonder if you could go to a Bank CEO’s home, break into his house, and throw out all of his personal possessions — family heirlooms, photos, awards — then claim a paperwork error. That is the excuse they have been using: “In an era when millions of homes have received Foreclosure notices nationwide, Lawsuits detailing bank break-ins like the one at Ms. Ash’s house keep surfacing. And in the wake of the Scandal involving shoddy, sometimes illegal paperwork that has b...

San Francisco Fed Offers Sympathy to Pre-Crisis Mortgage Lenders
By Michael S. Derby Mortgage lenders may deserve more sympathy for their performance in the years leading up to the Financial Crisis than they now get credit for, new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco argues. Bank Economist John Krainer , with Visiting Scholar Stephen LeRoy , argue in a note Monday that even though the market ended up blowing up, mortgage lenders had rationally priced in what was understood about Housing Market risk at the time they wrote the loans. That&#...

Obama vs. The 'Tear Down Congress' (Huffington Post)
WASHINGTON — As Congress and the president prepare to leave town for Christmas, comparisons to LBJ and FDR are in the air — or at least in the Press Releases of the Democratic Party. But Democrats are not playing FDR's stirring "Happy Days are Here Again" anthem, or even Lyndon Johnson's "The Eyes of Texas." Why? Because Democrats here know the dismal truth. They can read new polls, which are a grim follow-up to last month's "shellacking." ...

The Debt Ceiling Threat To Gut The Things Government Does For Us
The country’s huge Debt was caused by Tax Cuts for the rich and increases in Military Spending. But debt-cutting recommendations from the DC Elite never suggest restoring taxes on the rich and cutting Military Spending. Go figure. Instead they suggest cutting the things government does for We, the People. The DC Elite is not We, the People. Let's stop this in its tracks. Just a week after the Senate voted to give a big tax cut to the rich, increasing the Deficit by more than $800 billion, a ...

Dave Johnson: The Debt-Ceiling Threat To Gut The Things Government Does For Us
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF. The country's huge Debt was caused by Tax Cuts for the rich and increases in Military Spending. But debt-cutting recommendations from the D.C. Elite never suggest restoring taxes on the rich and cutting Military Spending. Go figure. Instead they suggest cutting the things government does for We, the People. The D.C. Elite is not We, the People. Let's stop this in its tracks...

Time for California to Tax Internet Purchases?
Most people now believe that California's Budget Crisis is revenue-based rather than spending-based. Even outgoing Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger belatedly has adopted that position. The biggest problem with California's revenue-collecting is the state's reliance upon relatively few revenue streams. Because the state collects too much money from too few sources, just about everyone feels that they are overtaxed. As it is, Personal Income taxes account for more than half of the money that goes t...

Malkin: America, the Crab Bucket
No matter how soothing the White House overtures to business leaders sounded this week, an inconvenient fact remains: Washington is gripped by crab-in-the-bucket syndrome. And there's no cure in sight. Put a single crab in an uncovered bucket, and it will find a way to climb up and out on its own. Put a dozen crabs in a bucket, and 11 will fight with all their might to pull down the striver who attempts escape. President Obama sought to reassure 20 CEOs that he wasn't the king crab holding them ...

Saving Social Security: Stopping Obama's Next Bad Deal
Monday 20 December 2010 by: Dean Baker, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis President Obama insists that he is a really bad negotiator, therefore, the deal he got on the two-year extension of the Bush Tax Cuts and the one-year extension of Unemployment Insurance benefits was the best that he could do. This package also came with a one-year cut in the Social Security tax. This cut will seriously threaten the program's finances if, next year, the Republican Congress is no more willing to end a temp...