Middle Class Dismissed

French and Italian debt chiefs warn on EU Tobin Tax

"The proposal - now in the hands of working groups - is to come into force in early 2014. It will raise a fee of 0.1pc for shares and bonds, and 0.01pc for derivatives. These rates are far higher than the Swedish tax in 1989 that led to an 85pc crash in bond sales, a 98pc fall in bond futures, and shut-down of options trading, before the experiment was abandoned. The Chancellor, George Osborne, said the FTT scheme would amount to a tax on pensioners and cost up to 1m jobs across the EU 'without costing bankers a penny'. The traders would migrate to the US or Asia, taking the financial industry with them." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingFrench and Italian debt chiefs warn on EU Tobin Tax

Officials: 80 Percent Of Recent NYC High School Graduates Cannot Read

"When they graduated from city high schools, students in a special remedial program at the Borough of Manhattan Community College couldn’t make the grade. They had to re-learn basic skills — reading, writing and math — first before they could begin college courses. They are part of a disturbing statistic. Officials told CBS 2′s Kramer that nearly 80 percent of those who graduate from city high schools arrived at City University’s community college system without having mastered the skills to do college-level work." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingOfficials: 80 Percent Of Recent NYC High School Graduates Cannot Read

The Dorm Boom: Higher Education’s Fellow Traveler

"It’s a curious time for a campus construction boom. Alternatives to a traditional college education are growing every day. Amid the change and uncertainty, real estate developers are rushing to build student housing. Major homebuilding companies like Lennar and Toll Brothers that ramped their businesses up in the single-family housing boom have now shifted their focus to another boom: student housing. While Freddie Mac, a large purchaser of student housing loans, is a bit cautious after purchasing $1.7 billion in loans last year, the private sector is ready to build. Bricks-and-mortar higher education is a bubble searching for a pin. Student housing is going along for the ride." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingThe Dorm Boom: Higher Education’s Fellow Traveler

At BoE, Mark Carney could be handed powers to spur economy

"Last month, the Treasury set up a unit to explore changes to the Bank's remit amid mounting political pressure for action to boost economic growth. Options include giving the Monetary Policy Committee greater time to bring inflation back to the 2pc target, handing the Bank a dual mandate to target both employment and inflation – similar to that of the Federal Reserve in America – or targeting spending in the economy rather than inflation. The Canadian central banker, who replaces Sir Mervyn King in July, has said that 'considerable monetary policy' is required to take up the slack in the British economy." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingAt BoE, Mark Carney could be handed powers to spur economy

Think New York Is Costly? In New Delhi, Seedy Goes for 8 Figures

"Real estate prices in the heart of New Delhi, especially for the bungalows built nearly a century ago during the British Raj, are among the highest in the world. The obvious question about the prices, in a country where hundreds of millions of people still live on less than $2 a day, is: Why? To a large degree, India is experiencing the sort of real estate boom common to big, emerging economies. When Japan’s economy was soaring in the 1980s, prices in Tokyo were so frothy that the 845-acre compound of the Imperial Palace was valued at more than all the real estate in California. More recently, China has seen a boom, with values rising in some cities by 500 percent." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingThink New York Is Costly? In New Delhi, Seedy Goes for 8 Figures

Egyptian Austerity Seen as Inflation Goes Up Hard

"Egypt's policy, apparently, is to engineer a controlled devaluation and hope that the IMF will come to the rescue. In the meantime, Egypt's reserves are being depleted and a surge in oil or commodity prices would put the bank and the country as a whole deeper into insolvency. It is regularly taught that only enlightened central bank monetary control can lift nations out of financial crises but as the 21st century dawns, it increasingly seems that the reverse is true. Central banks fix the price of money and price-fixing inevitably fails. As a result, most central banks lurch from one crisis to another, participating first in sustained booms and then terrible busts." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingEgyptian Austerity Seen as Inflation Goes Up Hard

What Could Go Wrong with the Housing Recovery in 2013? Plenty.

"Given the preponderance of housing in bank assets, household wealth, and the perception of wealth, the key policies of Central Planning largely revolve around housing: keeping interest rates (and thus mortgage rates) low, flooding the banking sector with liquidity to ease lending, guaranteeing low-down-payment mortgages via FHA, and numerous other subsidies of homeownership. At least three aspects of this broad-based support are historically unprecedented." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingWhat Could Go Wrong with the Housing Recovery in 2013? Plenty.

What Could Go Wrong with the Housing Recovery in 2013? Plenty.

"Given the preponderance of housing in bank assets, household wealth, and the perception of wealth, the key policies of Central Planning largely revolve around housing: keeping interest rates (and thus mortgage rates) low, flooding the banking sector with liquidity to ease lending, guaranteeing low-down-payment mortgages via FHA, and numerous other subsidies of homeownership. At least three aspects of this broad-based support are historically unprecedented." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingWhat Could Go Wrong with the Housing Recovery in 2013? Plenty.

Italian Elections: Europe’s Lost Generation Finds Its Voice

"They are the latest example of an uprising of the lost generation, that mass of people on Europe's periphery who are under the age of 40, desperate, unemployed and who have very little left to lose. The public outrage in Europe came to a boil in tent camps in Madrid's Puerta del Sol. It inspired the Occupy Wall Street activists. And it continued in Greece, where youth unemployment has reached 59.4 percent, and where there are no jobs and no economic recovery. In the eyes of many, the power of the politicians only serves their own interests." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingItalian Elections: Europe’s Lost Generation Finds Its Voice

Ireland is the poster-child of EMU cruelty and folly

"It has stabilized the colossal debts left from taking on the gambling losses of Anglo Irish Bank at EU behest, that is to say from shielding German, British, Dutch and Belgian lenders from systemic contagion at a critical moment. Deo volente, it will be the first of the EMU victim states to escape control of the EU-IMF Troika, though it will answer to inspectors for another 20 years and the yet unborn will be paying off the €67bn of Troika indenture until 2042. A mass exodus of 40,000 to 50,000 each year to the four corners of the Irish Diaspora have kept unemployment down to 14.1pc, 'What we need here in Ireland is a good dose of inflation,' confided one official." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingIreland is the poster-child of EMU cruelty and folly