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THE last hope of blocking a new European constitution was snuffed out last night - the final kick in the teeth after Labour's betrayal of Britain. The Czech Republic became the last EU nation to sign the Lisbon Treaty, which will now become law. Gordon Brown's Labour broke a promise to give 60million Britons a say on it. Now it's too late as we are dragged screaming into a vastly more powerful European Union yesterday. The last remaining opposition to the new EU constitution ended when Czech president Vaclav Klaus was forced to sign the Lisbon Treaty. His reluctant endorsement...

'Mother of Carry Trades' Leading to 'Asset Bust': Roubini Published: Wednesday, 4 Nov 2009 | 8:19 AM ET By: Jeff Cox CNBC.com The "mother of all carry trades" that Nouriel Roubini warned of recently is growing and threatening to cause a global implosion, the economist warned in a CNBC interview. For the second time in as many weeks, Roubini cautioned that investors using cheap US dollars to embrace risk will quickly reverse course once the greenback strengthens. But he intensified his prediction, saying that the likelihood of the Fed keeping interest rates low and thus weakening the dollar will prolong...

The United States could be energy independent if it possessed the collective political will to make it happen. After all, the country has the largest energy reserves on earth, according to a recently-released Congressional Research Service report.

WASHINGTON – The White House says that Republican wins in two governors' races were not referendums on the president. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Wednesday that voters went to the polls in Virginia and New Jersey to work through "very local issues that didn't involve the president." The presidential spokesman said voters were concerned about the economy. "I don't think the president needed an election or an exit poll to come to that conclusion," Gibbs said. By contrast, Gibbs acknowledged that the 2010 midterm congressional elections will be more about the Obama agenda.

The idea that the government of a major advanced country would default on its debt—that is, tell lenders that it won't repay them all they're owed—was, until recently, a preposterous proposition. Argentina or Russia might stiff their creditors, but surely not the likes of the United States, Japan, or Great Britain. Well, it's still a very, very long shot, but it's no longer entirely unimaginable.

It's understandable that San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, having given up on his gubernatorial ambitions, might want to take time to lick wounds, lie low and, as my colleague C.W. Nevius suggests, do some reflecting. Unfortunately, there's important and immediate mayoral business to attend to. When Newsom's press secretary, Nathan Ballard, told The Chronicle that Newsom will be back "soon," one hoped he meant this morning. That's when Newsom was scheduled to speak to 6,000 land-use professionals, architects, planners, real estate developers and other urban experts from all over the world at the opening of the Urban Land Institute conference...

White House Budget Director Peter Orszag warned Tuesday that large federal deficits will eventually imperil the U.S. economy because they will lead to higher interest rates and more borrowing from overseas. Orszag, in a speech in New York, said that deficits, expected to add $9 trillion to the current national debt of $12 trillion over the next decade, are "serious and ultimately unsustainable." Orszag said that deficit spending was necessary to help boost the economy when unemployment is hovering around 10 percent. But he said that red ink must be stopped as the economy recovers. During a recovery, private investment...

Return to the Article November 3, 2009Why Middle Class Tax Hikes Are ComingBy Josh Barro During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama famously pledged not to raise taxes on individuals making less than $200,000 or families making less than $250,000. With this pledge, he offered over 95% of the electorate something for nothing: you'll get expanded government services, and somebody else will pay for it. The pitch worked, and he became the first winning presidential candidate in a generation whose platform explicitly contained tax hikes. Unfortunately for those who bought in, massive federal deficits will make it impossible for Obama to...

Newspaper publishers are running out of costs to cut, and they need to show some real ad-revenue gains soon. Executives from major publishing chains have clung to a slight moderation in their ad revenue's year-over-year rate of decline from quarter to quarter this year as a sign of improvement. But that probably has more to do with the mathematics of easing comparisons to last year's economic decline than it does with any actual improvements in this year's ad performance. The reality is that newspapers are suffering severe declines in ad revenue this year on top of the double-digit percentage declines...

Jim Costa’s path to reelection isn’t the toughest among House Democrats, but that doesn’t mean the California Democrat feels safe voting for a House health care overhaul bill that he says is too costly and does too little to help rural districts like his own. “I think we’re all vulnerable next year,” said Costa, who won with nearly three-quarters of the vote last year in a district that President Barack Obama carried with 60 percent. Costa is one of a handful of moderate House Democrats from relatively stable districts who aren’t yet on board with the health care bill and...

FORT WORTH — A task force formed in the wake of the arrests at the Rainbow Lounge recommended a series of reforms Tuesday designed to give gay and lesbian residents equal treatment at City Hall. The City Council could vote on one recommendation next week, but it may take time to research the legal and financial aspects of others. Police and state liquor agents arrested five people in June at the Rainbow Lounge; one man was seriously injured while in custody. Many patrons said the police used excessive force and targeted the bar because it caters to gays. The results...

House Republicans have produced a draft proposal of their own. It's much shorter and focuses on bringing down costs rather than extending coverage to nearly all Americans.

The pace of layoffs eased in October, but progress in the labor markets remains painfully slow. Private-sector jobs in the U.S. fell 203,000 last month, according to a national employment report published Wednesday by payroll giant Automatic Data Processing Inc. and consultancy Macroeconomic Advisers. The ADP loss is right on par with the drop projected by economists in a Dow Jones Newswires survey. The estimated change of employment from August to September was revised by 27,000 from a decline of 254,000 to a decline of 227,000. The ADP survey tallies only private-sector jobs, while the Bureau of Labor Statistics' nonfarm...

MoveOn.org is sending out emails today seeking more contributions for its campaign to defeat any Democratic senator who does not fully support Obamacare. Yesterday the left-wing activist group asked members to contribute "to a primary challenge against any Democratic senator who helps Republicans block an up-or-down vote on health care reform." Today, MoveOn reports that it has received $2 million in pledges in less than 24 hours. "It's a clear sign of how angry progressives would be at any Democrat who helps filibuster reform," MoveOn executive director Justin Ruben writes in the new email. "The larger the war chest we...

We all know the Rap on capitalism: That it is fundamentally greedy and immoral. That it enables the rich to get richer at the expense of the poor. That open markets are Darwinian places where the most ruthless unfairly crush smaller competitors and where the cost of vital products and services like health care and energy are almost beyond the reach of those who need them. Capitalism has also been blamed for a range of social ills--from air pollution to obesity. Not only have educated, successful people bought into capitalism's bad Rap, but the Rap is taught in our schools....

President Obama's promise to raise taxes only on the wealthy was easy to make and easy to break. He broke it barely two weeks after taking office, and he will break it again if Congress passes the health care legislation he wants. But Obama has come up with a strategy to avoid the fate of George H.W. Bush: Although he will raise your taxes, he will never admit he is raising your taxes. Campaigning in Dover, N.H., in September 2008, Obama declared: "I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will...

Having purchased, rented, or placed a down payment on all the political influence up for sale in America, leftist troublemaker George Soros now plans to ramp up his war on markets worldwide by creating an "Institute for New Economic Thinking" (INET). "The system we have now has actually broken down, only we haven't quite recognized it and so you need to create a new one and this is the time to do it," Soros told the Financial Times last month. In an interview with Der Spiegel last year Soros said European-style socialism "is exactly what we need now. I am...

Steve H. Hanke is a Professor of Applied Economics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., and writes frequently for Globe Asia and Forbes magazine. Professor Hanke starts off his "Hu versus Sarkozy" article (Globe Asia, November 2009) with a warning. There is no more reliable rule than the 95 percent rule: 95 percent of what you read about economics and finance is either wrong or irrelevant. The article contrasts the Chinese versus the French responses to the financial crisis but the major focus is on economic myths. Hanke says that...

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has joined Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in the investment bank's bid to buy $3 billion in tax credits from government-owned mortgage giant Fannie Mae, according to people familiar with the matter. The involvement of Mr. Buffett adds a twist to what was already a politically sensitive deal. The Treasury Department is considering blocking any potential sale on the grounds that it wouldn't benefit taxpayers; the money Fannie Mae would earn would be offset by the fall in the government's tax income. .Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were seized by the government last year and the...

President Obama says he is a fan of the free market. Back in September, Obama spoke to Wall Street. He stated, "I have always been a strong believer in the power of the free market." He then explained that he wanted common-sense regulation of the market: "Common-sense rules of the road don't hinder the market, they make the market stronger. Indeed, they are essential to ensuring that our markets function fairly and freely." To paraphrase Spanish dueler Inigo Montoya from "The Princess Bride": President Obama, you keep using the phrase "free markets." I do not think it means what you...

Long lines at public flu clinics -- initially intended to primarily serve the uninsured -- are now commonplace nationwide as doses of the vaccine remain scarce. Many clinics report seeing large numbers of people who have insurance but have been unable to get H1N1 vaccines from private doctors, who say they have either already run out or have yet to get any. The line at the Glendale clinic, the first to be held in that city since Los Angeles County received doses late last month, was the longest yet, county Department of Public Health officials said. And the stakes were...

The House health-care reform plan unveiled last week by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) would do more than regulate insurance companies – it would even regulate vending machines. The bill, which is posted online, would require that vending machine operators either create new machines that allow the customer to view nutrition facts or post nutritional information for each product near “each article of food or the selection button.” The regulation could wind up costing vendors millions of dollars to make the changes, according to industry estimates. Section 2572 of the bill (H.R. 3962) says, “In the case of an article...

Democrats in Congress are embracing the spirit of President Obama's call to slow the runaway rise of health-care costs but are shying away from some of the most aggressive techniques for achieving that... Instead of revolutionizing how care is delivered and paid for, experts say, the legislation being shaped takes a cautious approach to reining in costs... "The bills are directionally correct, but they're not going far enough," said George Halvorson, chairman and chief executive of Kaiser Permanente and the author of "Health Care Will Not Reform Itself."... Now, as the debate reaches a critical juncture, many are worried that...

By seizing gubernatorial seats in Virginia and New Jersey, Republicans on Tuesday dispelled any notion of President Obama's electoral invincibility, giving the GOP a lift and offering warning signs to Democrats ahead of the 2010 midterm elections. With Obama slipping in polls and many voters unhappy with the Democratic-run Congress, "it's been increasingly clear over the last few months that Democrats were likely to have a tough midterm next year," said Charlie Cook, who handicaps races nationwide for his nonpartisan Cook Political Report. "What we've seen tonight doesn't dispute that assumption." Tuesday's gubernatorial results certainly won't help Democrats. Perceptions are...

HEALDSBURG, Calif., Nov. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- "GUNPAL, Inc. is a transaction-neutral online payment platform with a philanthropic spirit," announces Founder/CEO Ben Cannon. "It is also the first serious competitor for PayPal Inc." A percentage of each transaction is donated to a selected charity at no additional cost to the user. The initial list of organizations includes the American Red Cross, American Cancer Society, and the Supercomputing Disease Research Center. Users can also suggest charities for consideration. An avid supporter of constitutional rights, Cannon created a discrimination-free online payment application, starting with the recognition of the Second Amendment right to keep...

Washington (CNN) -- Victories in New Jersey and Virginia Tuesday provided a major shot in the arm for the Republican Party heading into the 2010 elections, but the Democratic losses of these two governorships should not be interpreted as a significant blow to President Obama. While the economy and jobs were the chief concern for voters in both states, 26 percent of New Jersey residents said property taxes was also a major issue, while another 20 percent mentioned corruption, according to CNN exit polling. In a similar CNN survey taken in Virginia, health care was the most important issue for...

A Florida woman is happily answering Rep. Michele Bachmann's call to storm the steps of Capitol Hill on Thursday to protest Democratic health care proposals. The Minnesota Republican has been encouraging the "tea party" protesters who came to Capitol Hill on Sept. 12 to turn out again Thursday afternoon and arrange face-to-face meetings with their elected officials to talk about the health care legislation that could be put to a House vote as early as this week. "The only way they're going to listen is if real freedom-loving Americans come here to Washington noon on Thursday, look at the whites...

Warren Buffett, the second richest man in the world and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.A), doesn't have much faith in the future of print media. In an interview on CNBC's Nov. 3 "Squawk Box," following the announcement of his purchase of Burlington Northern (NYSE:BNI), Buffett was asked to comment on the future of news media, in particular newspapers and business news by "Squawk Box" co-host Becky Quick. Buffett is optimistic on the future of business news. "Our system has just gotten started," Buffett said. "I mean, we've had a couple of hundred years of progress, but we have not exhausted...

China interested in Russian hydrocarbons; Russia aims to reduce its dependence on European energy markets. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's visit to Beijing earlier this month yielded commercial deals worth $3.5 billion and a sweeping framework for bilateral energy cooperation. China's interest in Russian hydrocarbons is motivated by a desire to meet growing demand and diversify import sources. Russia stands to gain from reducing its dependence on European energy markets and using exports to China to develop Russia's Far East. Oil integration. Earlier this year, the China Development Bank (CDB) provided Russian energy companies Rosneft and Transneft with a $25...

Toyota has quit Formula One motor racing, in a move that leaves the scandal-hit sport without any participation by Japanese automakers in the coming season. Jarno Trulli could soon be looking for another team The decision, which was announced in Tokyo this morning, is part of Toyota’s wider efforts to slash costs after an extraordinary board meeting held at the company’s headquarters. Toyota is already rumoured to be looking for an Asian buyer for the team. Toyota’s pullout follows a similar decision from Bridgestone, which announced three days ago that it would stop providing tyres after the 2010 season. That,...

China, finally, is ready to build a house for Mickey Mouse. Beijing has approved plans to build a Disney theme park in Shanghai, a major milestone in the more than decade-long effort by Walt Disney Co. to dramatically expand its reach into China. Disney and the Shanghai municipal government jointly submitted plans in January to build a $3.59-billion park to open as early as 2014. It would be the entertainment giant's fourth theme park outside the U.S., after Paris, Tokyo and Hong Kong -- and the first in mainland China, the fastest-growing mass market in the world. The Chinese central...

Trading volume of Class B stock will rise, meeting a benchmark criteria Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s decision to split its Class B shares could put the company in the benchmark S&P 500 Index, spurring a big round of buying by index funds, analysts said Tuesday. Berkshire said its board approved a 50-for-1 split of its Class B common stock /quotes/comstock/13*!brk.b/quotes/nls/brk.b (BRK.B 3,325, +60.35, +1.85%) to help smaller investors handle the company's $44 billion acquisition of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. /quotes/comstock/13*!bni/quotes/nls/bni (BNI 97.00, +20.93, +27.51%) Berkshire Chairman Warren Buffett is notorious for his aversion to stock splits, saying such moves have...

LISTEN ON KFI Economic Exposé Analyst of geopolitics and foreign policy, Craig B. Hulet will discuss why the banking bailouts are the biggest rip-off in history and have set the stage for a global financial system that excludes the United States.

Why not scrap it, root and branch? One central libertarian tenet is that governments should not use subsidies or price controls to distort the operation of competitive markets. The soundness of that position was brought home once again in the recent decision of the New York State Court of Appeals in Roberts v. Tishman-Speyer, a case in which both subsidies and price controls were far too much in evidence. Roberts required the New York State Court of Appeal to interpret New York's antiquated rent stabilization law, which it did in a way that will roil for years to come New...

Is Bill O'Reilly the new moderate voice of America's right? That would seem to be the case after Bill O' took on Rush Limbaugh, the fire-eating grand poobah of everything right-wing. O'Reilly took exception to Limbaugh's claim that President Obama was trying to deliberately destroy the economy. In an interview with Fox News, Limbaugh said Obama represented the most "radical leadership" in the history of the country, and that the economy was "under siege" by Obama. Limbaugh also said Obama had "not done one thing to revitalize the economy." In response, Bill O' asked the logical question — but one...

Senior Congressional Democrats say reform before end of year is highly unlikely. Senior Congressional Democrats told ABC News today it is highly unlikely that a health care reform bill will be completed this year, just a week after President Barack Obama declared he was "absolutely confident" he'll be able to sign one by then. "Getting this done by the by the end of the year is a no-go," a senior Democratic leadership aide told ABC News. Two other key Congressional Democrats also told ABC News the same thing. This may come as an unwelcome surprise for the White House, where...

General Motors last night staged a dramatic U-turn by choosing to hold on to its European Opel and Vauxhall subsidiaries in a major snub to Magna International and the German government. The surprise decision by GM places a further question mark over the future of the company’s van plant at Luton, which employs around 1,500 workers, but is likely to safeguard the future of its Ellesmere Port facility, where it employs about 2,000 workers. The 11th-hour volte-face, made during a GM board meeting in Detroit, is understood to have come as a result of the potential threat to the Magna...

Obama's Half Brother Recalls Their Abusive Father November 3, 2009 China (AP) -- President Barack Obama's half brother has broken his media silence to discuss his new novel -- the semi-autobiographical story of an abusive parent patterned on their late father, the mostly absent figure Obama wrote about in his own memoir. In his first interview, Mark Ndesandjo told The Associated Press that he wrote ''Nairobi to Shenzhen'' in part to raise awareness of domestic violence. ''My father beat my mother and my father beat me, and you don't do that,'' said Ndesandjo, whose mother, Ruth Nidesand, was Barack Obama...

Ford, the least public of all U.S. auto firms, has increased its market share in 12 of the past 13 months.

The withdrawal of Dede Scozzafava from the special election for Congress in upstate New York has predictably set off another wave of media-led hand-wringing about the health of the GOP. (See here [1] and here [2], for example.) These stories are like crack for reporters, especially those with a hard-left slant. It is always framed as a battle between ‘conservatives’ and ‘moderates,’ but the focus is actually much narrower. To Big Media, conservatism comes in only one flavor, social conservatism, namely anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage and a smattering of other issues that would fall flat over canapés and seltzer (liberals...

The guillotine has begun its descent at Time Inc. Sources at the publishing company (which is part of the same conglomerate as DailyFinance parent AOL) say executives have asked for an emergency meeting with representatives of the Newspaper Guild to discuss job eliminations. A Time Inc. spokeswoman declined to comment, but John Shostrom, chairman of the company's Guild unit, said the meeting will take place "soon." He said it was Time Inc. that called the meeting. "They act, and we react," said Shostrom. "The Guild doesn't lay people off. We just fight back when they make proposals to lay people...

Taxation: Policymakers piled up a $1.4 trillion deficit for fiscal 2009. The figure is so high that if Congress were to use the income tax to balance the budget, rates would have to be nearly tripled. The 2009 deficit was larger than the combined federal debt of the first two centuries of the country's existence. As staggering as that is to the mind, the 2010 deficit projects to be even bigger, roughly $1.5 trillion. The rates for joint filers earning at least $373,601 would have to be almost tripled, from 35% to 95.2%, to help close the 2010 deficit. (See...

WASHINGTON – Republicans wrested political control of Virginia from the Democrats on Tuesday and New Jersey's unpopular Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine was fighting for his political life as independent voters swung behind the GOP in both states. It was a troubling sign for President Barack Obama and his party heading into an important midterm election year. Republican Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell's victory in Virginia over Democrat R. Creigh Deeds was a triumph for a GOP looking to rebuild after being booted from power in national elections in 2006 and 2008. It also was a setback for the White House in a...

In mid-August, the National Marine Fisheries Service closed down the red snapper fishery, then a couple of weeks ago they took away the greater amberjack with a week left in the Fishing Rodeo - Destin's longest running fishing tournament. I'm out here criticizing the 'do-gooder,' ” who thinks they are helping the fishery with the closures, Brunson said. “I call 'em educated idiots. They ought to listen to someone who's been fishing for more than 80 years.” “The amberjack is what tore me up,” said the 96-year-old Capt. Reddin “Salty” Brunson, who was sporting a protest sign attached to his...

Vast economic discontent marked the mood of Tuesday's off-year voters, portending potential trouble for incumbents generally and Democrats in particular in 2010. But in Virginia, where polls closed at 7 p.m., Creigh Deeds' main problem looks to have been Creigh Deeds. The Democratic gubernatorial nominee fell short on several measures in connecting with Virginia voters: They divided evenly in preliminary exit poll results on whether Deeds "shares your values" – 48 percent yes, 49 percent no. His Republican opponent, Bob McDonnell, scored better; 60 percent said he shares their values. Similarly, just 42 percent in Virginia saw Deeds as "about...

Since the economy has taken a dive, some very big celebrities are realizing their lavish estates just aren't worth as much as they used to be. In fact, now might be the best time in history to buy the extravagant former home of one of your favorite stars. Here are some of the celebrity palaces that have recently been put on the real estate clearance rack: * Eddie Murphy's 32-room manor in Englewood, New Jersey, which he calls Bubble Hill, has been on the market for $30 million for five years without a sale, so last month Murphy slashed the...

BAGHDAD — A chicken processing plant here recently received aid from U.S. Soldiers who lent their agriculture and engineering expertise to help open the doors. North Carolina Guardsmen with 1st Battalion, 120th Infantry Regiment, 30th Heavy Brigade Combat Team, who have agribusiness and engineering backgrounds, visited the al-Kien plant near Mahmudiyah to offer advice and seek ways to help the plant begin operations. Capt. Bobby Lumsden, the battalion's operations officer, walked through the plant with owner Rafea Abass Ali to inspect the plant's machinery and the massive coolers that will help keep poultry fresh. Getting the plant up and running...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - It's another fall-out of the bad economy, unemployed exes and the alimony they can't afford. According to Nashville-area attorneys, more and more divorced couples are returning to court to discuss alimony. Family law attorney Bobby Jackson, who mediates requests to modify alimony payments, told News 2 that after a long period of time where it was rare for exes to change agreed upon payments, the economy is bringing them back. "I've noticed an influx of petitions to modify or decrease alimony or child support based on a change in financial circumstances," he explained. "The law says if...

The campaign to crack down on Wall Street bonuses was dealt a serious intellectual blow today when the winner of the 2006 Nobel prize in economics described attempts to blame misaligned compensation incentives for the financial crisis as "the most profound fallacy." Edmund Phelps wrote a piece critical of neoclassical and Keynesian responses to the financial crisis for the Financial Times today. It's a great takedown of both schools from a Hayekian perspective. But it concludes by delivering a hammer blow to those who want to blame the financial disaster on bonuses. From the FT: The most profound fallacy is...

A look at whether the City of Chicago's first TIF district was successful, or whether the City is simply blowing smoke.