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Uh oh - here we go again. Do you remember the subprime mortgage meltdown during the last financial crisis? Well, now a similar thing is happening with auto loans. The auto industry has been doing better than many other areas of the economy in recent years, but this "mini-boom" was fueled in large part by customers with subprime credit. According to Equifax, an astounding 23.5 percent of all new auto loans were made to subprime borrowers in 2015. At this point, there is a total of somewhere around $200 billion in subprime auto loans floating around out there, and...

Ever since the financial crisis, many outside the wealthy elite (sometimes referred to as populists) have argued that the largest banks are too big and too risky. Minneapolis Federal Reserve president Neel Kashkari recently echoed those beliefs.Yet if a new Federal Reserve proposal goes through, Wells Fargo and other large banks might get even bigger and riskier, adding billions to their balance sheets that could increase the banks’ risk profiles.The Federal Reserve says the proposal, which specifies the amount and kind of debt that systemically important large banks must hold, could help make sure that those banks can be wound...

Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen faced what may have seemed like an absurd line of questioning on Capitol Hill this week: Has the Fed considered negative interest rates? It's not a fantasy. At central banks around the world, negative benchmark interest rates have become the new normal, leading to some unusual paradoxes. In Denmark, instead of paying interest on their mortgages, many borrowers have been receiving payments from banks on their home loans. On the flip side, some Swiss bank customers have had to pay banks to keep cash in savings accounts. Yellen told Congress Thursday, following negative moves by central banks in Europe and elsewhere, the Fed has...

HOUSTON (FOX 26) - Believe it or not, the US Marshals Service in Houston is arresting people for not paying their outstanding federal student loans. Paul Aker says he was arrested at his home last week for a $1500 federal student loan he received in 1987. He says seven deputy US Marshals showed up at his home with guns and took him to federal court where he had to sign a payment plan for the 29-year-old school loan. Congressman Gene Green says the federal government is now using private debt collectors to go after those who owe student loans. Green...

Kanye West made a reference to being "$53 million dollars in personal debt" on Saturday. West, whose Twitter announcements have made headlines multiple times in recent days, tweeted, "I write this to you my brothers while still 53 million dollars in personal debt... Please pray we overcome... This is my true heart..." I write this to you my brothers while still 53 million dollars in personal debt... Please pray we overcome... This is my true heart...

Will the crash of 2016 be worse than 2008? Central banks have failed to solve the crisis, and instead have taken on more debt than any time in history. At the same time, western institutions are welcoming in Islamic money. Does this mean Sharia-compliant finance? Listen here: http://usatransnationalreport.org/2016/02/13/usa-transnational-report-february-13-2016-guest-charles-ortel/ While European banks, such as Deutsche Bank, falter, what does this mean for the U.S. economy? And what does the future look like? Charles Ortel is an investor and writer interested in economics, geo-politics, history, travel and just, lasting peace. He has done extensive research on the fraudulent activities of the Clinton...

While the rest of the world focused on the New Hampshire primary, the White House dropped a budget bomb. Congress will get a $4.1 trillion spending plan for FY2017 from Barack Obama, complete with a massive $2.8 trillion tax hike and a set of assumptions that boggles the imagination nearly as much as the topline spending number:CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO “The budget that we're releasing today reflects my priorities and the priorities that I believe will help advance security and prosperity in America for many years to come,” Obama told reporters at the White House. “It adheres...

How will history remember the presidency of Barack Obama? In the budget message he sent Congress this week, Obama portrays himself as a president who led America back to economic good times. "When I took office, our nation was in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression," Obama wrote. "The economy was shedding 800,000 jobs a month. The auto industry was on the brink of collapse and our manufacturing sector was in decline. Many families were struggling to pay their bills and make ends meet. Millions more saw their savings evaporate, even as retirement neared. "But...

According to the latest White House budget projections, the government's interest costs are expected to more than triple to $787 billion by 2026, as interest rates rise, from $223 billion in 2015. By 2025 and 2026, the government will spend more on interest costs than all non-defense discretionary outlays. Under the White House budget, the national debt will increase from $19 trillion to more than $27 trillion over the next decade.

A pernicious cycle of collapsing commodities, corporate defaults, and currency wars loom over the global economy. Can anything stop it from unravelling? A global recession is on the way. This truism of economics holds at any point in which the world is not in the grips of a contraction. The real question is always when and how deep the upcoming downturn will be. "The crash will come, but it would be nice if it came two years from now", Thomas Thygesen, head of economics at SEB told over 200 commodity investors and analysts in London last month. His audience was...

In the midst of the election circus and pageantry, it seems once again fiscal policy issues have taken a backseat. This might not matter if the issue were not of dire importance to Americans and their futures. But on the heels of the new Budget and Economic Outlook released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) last week, it has become all too clear that the fiscal issues our country faces are very real and must be dealt with. Every year, this non partisan analysis of our projected debt and deficit published doesn't mince words- the deficit only continues to get...

Federal Reserve Bank of New York officials secretly conducted real-time exercises during the 2011 and 2013 debt-limit crisis that demonstrated the federal government could function during a temporary shutdown by prioritizing spending, even as Treasury Secretary Jack Lew publicly claimed many times that such efforts were "unworkable," according to a new report by the House Financial Services Committee obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The staff report, to be released Tuesday, charges that Lew and other Obama administration officials deliberately misled Congress and the public during the federal budget and debt limit showdowns in both years. The committee will...

Federal Reserve Bank of New York officials secretly conducted real-time exercises during the 2011 and 2013 debt-limit crisis that demonstrated the federal government could function during a temporary shutdown by prioritizing spending, even as Treasury Secretary Jack Lew publicly claimed many times that such efforts were “unworkable,” according to a new report by the House Financial Services Committee obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The staff report, to be released Tuesday, charges that Lew and other Obama administration officials deliberately misled Congress and the public during the federal budget and debt limit showdowns in both years. The committee will...

The Tea Party movement began as a response to federal bailouts of Wall Street and auto makers in 2008 and 2009. These unprecedented government interventions in the economy padded the wallets of special interests by privatizing profits and socializing losses. Where was Donald Trump on this? As it happens, he appeared on television more than once to discuss what was happening. And when he did, he came in favor of the bailouts that soured conservative voters, especially Tea Partiers, on both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Of the auto companies, which were failing because of years of union intransigence...

Video at link. David Stockman (Office of Budget and Management, Reagan Administration) explains why the market will not be going up any time soon.

The Dow plunged 540 points on Wednesday after crude oil plummeted another 7% and crashed below $27 a barrel. The S&P 500 slumped 3.5% to its lowest intraday level since October 2014. The Nasdaq is down another 3.5%. It's the latest blow in what's already been the worst start to a year on record for the stock market. The Dow is now down more than 11% in 2016. "Despite improving valuations, global equities continue to get hammered," Bespoke Investment Group wrote in a client note. The firm said the appetite for risk remains "awful." Turmoil in China and the crash...

Does anyone remember the national debt? Judging from the presidential campaign so far, perhaps we should put the debt's image on a milk carton somewhere. In the last Republican debate, there was precisely one question on the debt -- and the candidates answered it by talking about their tax plans. That was far too typical. According to the FiveThirtyEight website, "the deficit" was mentioned an average of two times in the first five televised Republican debates (including the "undercard" debates) by all the candidates -- and the moderators -- combined. And "the national debt" was brought up an average of...

The global financial system has become dangerously unstable and faces an avalanche of bankruptcies that will test social and political stability, a leading monetary theorist has warned. "The situation is worse than it was in 2007. Our macroeconomic ammunition to fight downturns is essentially all used up," said William White, the Swiss-based chairman of the OECD's review committee and former chief economist of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). "Debts have continued to build up over the last eight years and they have reached such levels in every part of the world that they have become a potent cause for...

Brazil is the new Greece, and 90% of government spending cannot be cut by law: At 70% of GDP, public debt is worryingly large for a middle-income country and rising fast. Because of high interest rates, the cost of servicing it is a crushing 7% of GDP. The Central Bank cannot easily use monetary policy to fight inflation, currently 10.5%, as higher rates risk destabilising the public finances even more by adding to the interest bill. Brazil therefore has little choice but to raise taxes and cut spending. Too often, at the popular level, there is a confusion between "austerity...

As Wilbur Ross so eloquently noted, for Puerto Rico "it's the end of the beginning... and the beginning of the end," as he explained "Puerto Rico is the US version of Greece." However, as JPMorgan explains, for some states the pain is really just beginning as Municipal bond risk will only become more important over time, as assets of some severely underfunded plans are gradually depleted. But, as JPMorgan details, Muni risk is on the rise for US states, but broad generalizations do not apply (in other words, these five states are 'screwed')... The direct indebtedness of US states (excluding...