Economy
The Washington Post Tells Us What the White House "Believes" About Financial Transactions Taxes

In a blogpost discussing the push by many groups to get a financial transactions tax the Post told readers: “The White House believes it would be easy to evade, could hamper economic growth, and might make markets more volatile, not less so. Instead, Obama has proposed a new “financial crisis responsibility fee” on big banks, [...]

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Posted on 20th May 2012No Comments
First Time Ever – Majority of Unemployed Have Some College Education; Five Solutions to Education, Student-Loan Crisis

Those who think the answer to the unemployment problem is more education might be surprised to learn the Majority of Unemployed Attended College. For the first time in history, the number of jobless workers age 25 and up who have attended some college now exceeds the ranks of those who settled for a high school [...]

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Posted on 20th May 2012No Comments
Gretchen Morgenson Makes the Case for an Accurate Accounting of Bailout Costs

The methodology that the Treasury Department is using when claiming that we made money on the TARP would imply that the government could make money by issuing a 30-year mortgage at 1.0 percent interest to every homeowners in the country. The vast majority of these mortgages would of course be paid off with interest, therefore [...]

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Posted on 20th May 2012No Comments
Front Page WAPO Story on Jaywalking by Government Employees

It wasn’t quite that bad, but it was pretty close. A front page Washington Post story told readers that: “The overpayments, discovered in an inspector general’s audit, boosted the annual pay of some of the employees [some of four employees] by as much as $64,000.” I will be the last person to defend to people [...]

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Posted on 19th May 2012No Comments
WAPO Provides Important Misinformation on Greece’s Choices

A front page Washington Post article discussed the choice that people in Greece must consider, of either staying in the euro and facing perhaps a decade or more of double-digit unemployment, or leaving the euro and facing the uncertainty of going back to its own currency. The Post misrepresented the tradeoffs involved when it presented [...]

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Posted on 19th May 2012No Comments
Apparel Sales by Price and Volume Provide Interesting Viewpoint

Reader Tim Wallace provides an interesting chart of apparel sales in the US by price and by unit volume. In this case, volume is likely the more telling statistic. click on chart for sharper image Tim writes … Hi Mish As always, I am watching imports, especially with fascination the apparel imports. In the attached [...]

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Posted on 19th May 2012No Comments
Italy Deploys 20,000 Law Enforcement Officers to Protect Individuals and Sensitive Sites; Anecdotes From Italy via Canada: Taxed Out of House and Home

Italy Deploys 20,000 Law Enforcement Officers to Protect Individuals and Sensitive Sites The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports Italy deploys 20,000 to protect sensitive targets Italy increased security Thursday at 14,000 sites, and assigned bodyguards to protect 550 individuals after a nuclear energy company official was shot and letter bombs directed to the tax collection agency. [...]

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Posted on 19th May 2012No Comments