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UPS, and roughly 270,000 retired truck drivers, construction workers, and other service workers can breathe a collective sigh of relief... for now. As we previously reported, the Central States Pension Fund had submitted a plan to Treasury that if approved would have cut member benefits, and triggered UPS to take an estimated $3.8 billion charge. As the WSJ reports, Kenneth Feinberg (who was appointed by the Treasury to review all such applications) rejected the plan presented by the CSPF. Feinberg cited a few reasons for his decision, one being that it imposed cuts in a disproportionate manner, another was that...

Mortgage giant Fannie Mae posted net income of $1.1 billion for the first quarter, down from a year ago as declining interest rates reduced the value of the financial instruments it uses to hedge against rate swings. […] Washington-based Fannie is paying a dividend of $919 million to the U.S. Treasury next month. Fannie will then have paid a total $148.5 billion in dividends, exceeding the $116 billion it received from taxpayers during the financial crisis. …

Prior to his remarks about Obama’s final days in office, Savage told his listeners he believed Trump would defeat Clinton in a landslide, describing the former secretary of state, senator and first lady as “Fidel Castro in a dress.” If Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination and defeats likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in November, President Obama will sabotage the economy in his final months in office, predicts talk-radio host Michael Savage. “If Trump wins – and I think he will – there will be an economic crash,” Savage told listeners of his nationally syndicated show, “The Savage Nation,” Monday....

Speaker Ryan has made it crystal clear that House Republicans' number one priority is to shield American taxpayers from a bailout of Puerto Rico My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income.—Errol Flynn Due to Puerto Rico’s gross habits, the commonwealth has amassed a total debt of over $72 billion and has already defaulted on $221 million of its’ debt. When unfunded liabilities (pensions) are included, these additional costs bring the total value of their debt closer to $165 billion, approximately $150% of its’ GDP.

Illinois’ college and universities received a much-needed lifeline Friday when lawmakers approved a $600 million short-term funding fix for the institutions, which have been struggling without state funding during the months-long budget stalemate, even laying off employees. Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner is expected to sign the bill, which is a one-time deal and includes nearly $170 million in tuition grants for low-income students. But state Comptroller Leslie Munger said she wouldn’t wait for the Republican’s signature, instead immediately begin processing payments for schools. The rare bipartisan deal comes at an especially crucial time for Chicago State University, which has been...

Please insert a big fat TOLDYASO right here. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is lashing out at opponents to his Puerto Rico bailout bill demanding they stop calling it a “bailout”. Instead Ryan demands his opposition use the gaslighting term “restructuring”. Hogwash.

The special inspector general for the TARP bailout, said that "Goldman took $10 billion in TARP bailout funds knowing that it had fraudulently misrepresented to investors the quality of residential mortgages bundled into mortgage-backed securities.

Years of fiscal irresponsibility have caught up to Puerto Rico. Its government has long lived beyond its means and today the bills are coming due, but the island’s economy has also been hampered by costly local and federal mandates. Rather than reward Puerto Rico’s spend-happy politicians with a bailout as legislators are currently contemplating, Congress should remove impediments to economic growth so that the island can prosper. As the third-largest issuer of municipal bonds in the United States, Puerto Rico has racked up $73 billion in debt under the mistaken notion that borrowing and spending are the path to prosperity....

Here are a few that I believe all Americans want. Limit Congress from serving more than two terms. That is all that presidents are allowed. Stop Congress from voting for their own raises. How did that ever get started? Stop paying for lawmakers' high-priced insurance premiums. After all, they are only part-time employees. They might pass some law changes on the insurance companies, if they had to find one. Stop paying lawmakers their full salary after serving just one term, or at retirement. We need to get rid of that pension plan; they've let other companies get rid of theirs....

The Republican presidential primaries have been chaotic thus far. And the chaos could continue. Nearly a third (31 percent) of likely GOP caucus goers say they could change their vote before Monday, according to a fresh survey from Public Policy Polling. The new data suggest that “there are still a lot of votes on the table," PPP wrote in a release accompanying the results. What the numbers imply, though, is a mixed bag. On the one hand, Trump may be insulated from such fickle caucus goers, as 80 percent of his supporters say they're "firmly committed to him". Compare that...

Shanghai (AFP) - China's central bank said Tuesday it was injecting 440 billion yuan ($67 billion) into the money market, seeking to ease tight liquidity ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday when demand for funds surges. The injection through the regular open market operations of the People's Bank of China (PBoC) was the largest since 2013, Bloomberg News reported. Chinese companies typically pay salaries and bonuses before the holiday, which falls in early February this year. People also traditionally exchange cash and gifts during the period. The PBoC last week flooded the financial system with more than 1.5 trillion...

President Barack Obama took to the Detroit auto show today for a victory lap around the industry his administration saved in the depths of the financial crisis. There’s no doubt that the American car business today reflects the goals Obama set seven years ago. Detroit automakers enjoy record sales and huge profits, while employing more workers and building more efficient models. The question now is: How long will it last? During his visit, Obama noted how unpopular his plan was at the time: putting General Motors and Chrysler through bankruptcy in 2009, merging Chrysler with Fiat and spending $50 billion...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) blasted 2016 rival Donald Trump on Monday, questioning his ties to Democrats and previous support for liberal positions as the two battle for the top spot in Iowa."If he's giving checks to Democratic politicians and he supports their views... then it starts to suggest, 'gosh if he publicly supports their views if he finances their causes,'" Cruz told Boston radio station WRKO. "Then suddenly when he announces as a candidate for president, every single one of his views changes - listen if he has had a change of heart, I am thrilled." Cruz, who is competing...

The epic-crash in oil prices has wiped out tens-of-thousands of jobs, caused dozens of bankruptcies and spooked global financial markets. The fallout is already being felt in oil-rich states like Texas, Oklahoma and North Dakota, where home foreclosure rates are spiking and economic growth is slowing. Now there are calls in at least some corners for the federal government to come to the rescue. "It is time to send out an S.O.S., before it's too late," John Kilduff, founding partner of energy hedge fund Again Capital, wrote in a recent CNBC column. In the Kilduff dictionary, by the way, S.O.S....

Billionaire businessman Maurice "Hank" Greenberg backed away from an alleged $10 million contribution he was said to have made to a PAC affiliated with the presidential campaign of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.

The Obama Administration's Justice Department is now suing Volkswagen for "up to $90 billion for allegedly violating environmental law." Politically-favored General Motors was fined $900 million, or 1% of that amount, for covering up an ignition switch defect that led to the deaths of at least 124 people. At last count, the number of people who lost their lives as a result of emissions' tampering by VW stood at zero. Meanwhile, the GM board unanimoulsy elected CEO Mary Barra as its Chairman, demonstrating that it is still not independent of the White House political operation, even years after the...

Liberals are trumpeting a looming “humanitarian crisis” that demands a federal bailout: Otherwise, Puerto Rico will have to cut spending on schools and hospitals. Conservatives are emphasizing a governance crisis: Many Puerto Rican politicians have won votes by overspending; and if they get away with it, their counterparts in California, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and other states will keep running toward the cliff. One piece of political evidence: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio flew to Puerto Rico last month and marched with thousands who demanded that Washington send more...

When Barack Obama was campaigning for the presidency in 2008 and when he was selling Obamacare to the public in 2010, he made insurance companies the villains. In fact, on the eve of the passage of the Affordable Care Act, every Democratic spokesperson who appeared on TV to support the health reform legislation had one and only one argument to make: We needed Obamacare to protect ordinary people from ruthless, profit mongering insurance companies. They said almost nothing about insuring the uninsured or controlling costs or making health care delivery more efficient. Instead, every advocate produced at least one example...

I have a friend in Texas who believes everything you see on the news is made up. The 9/11 attacks? A media creation. Newtown? Secret footage exposes the fraud.  The recent Paris attacks? A false flag operation to get us all scared.Part of me thinks my friend is a little wacky, but part of me thinks he has a point. It does seem a lot of what the government treats as a crisis is a crisis only for those who stand to profit from it.  Take the 2008 financial "crisis." After the $800 billion TARP bailout, what truly needed to...

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is not working out the way many insurance companies thought it would. Despite the individual mandate and massive new government subsidies delivered directly to insurers, many participating insurers, whose continued participation is essential to the ACA’s future, are losing substantial money. In order to assist those insurers, the administration is now seeking a taxpayer-financed bailout for them. Congress can block taxpayer funds from being used for this purpose by extending language contained in the 2015 government funding bill. Congress could also look to end the back-end subsidy that transfers money from people with workplace coverage...