"Not that far behind. In fact, the cost per resident to just payoff pension liabilities is greater in Chicago, Los Angeles and Baltimore than in Detroit." Continue reading →
"Paul Krugman and Dean Baker took the Washington Post editorial page to task yesterday for stating that unfunded state and local pension liabilities amounted to $3.8 trillion. They accuse the page of misquoting a study in which the total was cited as only $1 trillion. Currently, standard practice measures the funding status of public pensions in the US under the laughable assumption that every dollar in the pension funds will earn compound returns of 7.75% or 8% per year. That’s the basis for the $1 trillion in unfunded liabilities. If unfunded liabilities are $1.0 trillion under an 8% rate, then they are $3.4 trillion unfunded under a 4% rate." Continue reading →
"Paul Krugman and Dean Baker took the Washington Post editorial page to task yesterday for stating that unfunded state and local pension liabilities amounted to $3.8 trillion. They accuse the page of misquoting a study in which the total was cited as only $1 trillion. Currently, standard practice measures the funding status of public pensions in the US under the laughable assumption that every dollar in the pension funds will earn compound returns of 7.75% or 8% per year. That’s the basis for the $1 trillion in unfunded liabilities. If unfunded liabilities are $1.0 trillion under an 8% rate, then they are $3.4 trillion unfunded under a 4% rate." Continue reading →
"Even though Quantitative Easing started in 2008, it seems as if Democrats didn’t really 'get it'. They viewed it as a way to save the banksters’ collective bacon—they didn’t see it as the way by which the Federal government could go into limitless debt. But with Thursday’s testimony, it’s clear like a bomb blast that the Democrats finally understand what QE really means: The Federal government can go into as much deficit spending as it wishes, because the Federal Reserve will be buying the bonds that finance this deficit spending by way of QE. And now that they understand this, they are all in favor of more of it." Continue reading →
"If Bernanke really shakes the tree, half the world may fall out ... We no longer have a free market. The world's financial asset prices have become a plaything of central banks and the sovereign wealth funds of a few emerging powers. Julian Callow from Barclays says they are buying $1.8 trillion worth of AAA or safe-haven bonds each year from an available pool of $2 trillion. Nothing like this has been seen before in modern times, if ever." Continue reading →
"Hundreds of convicts, including senior members of al Qaeda, broke out of Iraq's Abu Ghraib jail as comrades launched a military-style assault to free them, authorities said on Monday. The deadly raid on the high-security jail happened as Sunni Muslim militants are gaining momentum in their insurgency against the Shi'ite-led government that came to power after the U.S. invasion to oust Saddam Hussein. Suicide bombers drove cars packed with explosives to the gates of the prison on the outskirts of Baghdad on Sunday night and blasted their way into the compound, while gunmen attacked guards with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades." Continue reading →
"The ACA could actually cause the number of our covered employees to decrease, particularly in the first year. The penalty for declining coverage will be low compared with the cost of coverage; and employees will know that if they happen to get sick, they can get insurance after that. So the economically rational decision for young people, like our crew employees, is to pay the penalty and forego the insurance. Despite what the government may believe, our employees are smart enough to figure this out. For insurers, it's simple math: Premiums collected must exceed claims paid. If too few young healthy people enroll, insurers will raise premiums on those who do." Continue reading →
"Any citizen wanting to take a job would face the regulation that his or her digitized high-resolution passport or driver's license photo be collected and stored centrally in a Department of Homeland Security Citizenship and Immigration Services database. The pictures in the national database would then need to be matched against the job applicant's government-issued 'enhanced' ID card, using a Homeland Security-mandated facial-recognition 'photo tool.' Only when those systems worked perfectly could the new hire take the job." Continue reading →
"Japanese utility said Monday its crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is likely leaking contaminated water into sea, acknowledging for the first time a problem long suspected by experts. Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, also came under fire Monday for not disclosing earlier that the number of plant workers with thyroid radiation exposures exceeding threshold levels for increased cancer risks was 10 times what it said released earlier. TEPCO has been repeatedly blamed for overlooking early signs, and covering up or delaying the disclosure of problems and mishaps." Continue reading →
"In addition to being a talented ID forger, Celtic was a Secret Service agent. The government calls it 'Operation Open Market,' a four-year investigation resulting, so far, in four federal grand jury indictments against 55 defendants in 10 countries, facing a cumulative millennium of prison time. What many of those alleged scammers, carders, thieves, and racketeers have in common is one simple mistake: They bought their high-quality fake IDs from a sophisticated driver’s license counterfeiting factory secretly established, owned, and operated by the United States Secret Service." Continue reading →