CLibertyC

Junk Bonds Soar in Price as Investors Seek Higher Rates

"Junk bonds are high-risk bonds. They are rated CCC — barely above default status. They pay higher interest rates because there is risk of default. You may not get your money back. The rush to buy junk bonds indicates desperation on the part of investors to get something like a decent return on their money. But to get less than 6%, an investor must put his money at risk — high risk. Investors are saying that they trust Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve. They are saying that the FED can create $1 trillion in fiat money from now on, and prices will not rise -- long-term rates will not rise -- the economy will recover." Continue reading →

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Report: Obama officials issued $216 billion in regulations last year

"The Obama administration issued $236 billion worth of new regulations last year, according to a report from a conservative think tank. The analysis from the American Action Forum, led by former Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, found that the administration added $216 billion in rules and more than $20 billion in regulatory proposals in 2012. Complying with those rules will require an additional 87 million hours of paperwork, the report said. The group put the total price tag from regulations during Obama’s first term at more than $518 billion." Continue reading →

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Stossel: No Regulation? No Problem

"Private companies found they could 'crowd-source' enforcement against fraud and low-quality products, in much the same way that Wikipedia discovered an encyclopedia could be created without a central organizer. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales tells me that method 'works far better than the top-down system that it replaced.' We almost always assume that top-down government regulation is necessary, even though history says otherwise." Continue reading →

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The Bizarre Government Regulations that May Send Gasoline Prices Through the Roof

"Prices for premium gas are now about 30.2 cents over the price of regular. That is up from 24.1 cents in 2010 and 18.2 cents in 2000 Refiners blame Congress, arguing that the ethanol quota was set at a time when gasoline demand was expected to rise steadily. Instead, demand has declined, and refiners, obligated to blend more ethanol than they can actually use, have resorted to buying a lot of ethanol credits, known as renewable identification numbers (or RINs), to meet the mandated levels. Ms. Lundberg described this as 'buying forgiveness from the government.' The credits' popularity has driven up the price nearly tenfold since January." Continue reading →

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Stop Fooling Ourselves: Americans Can’t Afford the Future

"Simply continuing along the status quo is a vote for digging ourselves deeper as the constraints of the future arrive. Behavior change is necessary in order to improve our chances. At the core of the needed change is redefining prosperity. In modern society, it has largely come to be defined by material possessions, usually assuming that the more (and the more expensive), the better. In the future, we'd do much better to define it by: our health (both physical and emotional), our purpose, our ability to meet our needs sustainably, our relationships, our level of happiness. In sum, all things that were once valued much higher in our culture." Continue reading →

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A Fiscal Lesson in Cyprus for Americans

"Would the U.S. government ever do these sorts of things? Well, don’t forget that President Roosevelt did it during the Great Depression when he nationalized gold and made it a felony offense to own it, notwithstanding the fact that it had been the official constitutional money of the United States since the founding of the nation. FDR ordered Americans to deliver their gold to the federal government, which paid them off in cheapened, devalued, irredeemable notes. It was a confiscation of wealth no different in principle from that that was done by the Argentine government and that is now being conducted by the Cyprus government." Continue reading →

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JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is accused of hiding information about big losses

"Washington dealt a double blow Thursday to JPMorgan Chase as a Senate report accused its iconic chief executive of hiding information about a massive loss from regulators while the Federal Reserve unexpectedly said it had found a 'weakness' in the bank’s capital plans. The report takes the bank to task for hiding losses for three months last year, overstating the value of its trading positions and ignoring red flags. When regulators grew concerned, JPMorgan withheld information about the nature of the portfolio, Senate investigators say." Continue reading →

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The Deeper Meanings of Cyprus

"This is not just the perfection of neocolonialism but of neofeudalism as well. The peripheral nations of the E.U. are effectively neocolonial debtors of the core (quasi-Imperial) banks, and the taxpayers of the core nations (now reduced to Germany and The Netherlands) are now feudal serfs whose labor is devoted to making good on any bank loans to the periphery that go bad. Though we can term the E.U. a plutocracy or oligarchy, the neofeudal structure compels us to distinguish a class of those holding wealth and political power that is not limited to national border: this is an Aristocracy." Continue reading →

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Gold Rises, Dollar Rises, Stocks Fall: The Cyprus Disaster Begins

"Over the weekend, Eurozone bureaucrats at a closed meeting came up with a plan. The committee demanded that the government of Cyprus impose a tax of 3% on all bank accounts under $130,000, and close to 10% on all accounts over $130,000. If the government refuses, the Eurozone will not provide a $13 billion bailout for the banks of Cyprus. The story is all over the European press, for good reason. The Eurocrats had always said that bank accounts would be sacrosanct. This announcement says, 'We lied.' But they also assured depositors that this will never happen again. 'Trust us.'" Continue reading →

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