Free Republic

Debt is irrelevant and matters not. It’s different this time. That’s the message from politicians, markets and participants. Tax cuts pay for themselves (they do not), leverage doesn’t matter (it does) and the increased costs of servicing the debt as a result of rising rates will be offset by imaginary real wage growth to come (they won’t). But the calmest market waters in history continue to keep these illusions alive as asset prices keep levitating from record to record. Debt does matter and it was ironically left to Janet Yellen to voice any remnant concerns about the sustainability of debt...

Not every college student I have ever taught was really college material, motivated enough to succeed, or even enjoyed being in college. Some could have benefited from attending a trade school or a technical college A Lucrative Technical School or a Four-Year College Degree? “The Ideologies that killed more than 100 million people last century are being praised at our universities today.” - Turning Point USA It is becoming increasingly difficult to find a skilled technician to fix anything. Everything is disposable – something breaks down, let’s buy a new one. There are fewer and fewer technical and trade schools...

he House passed a short-term spending measure Thursday to avert a partial government shutdown at midnight Friday, and quickly voted on a separate $81 billion disaster relief bill to aid victims of recent hurricanes and wildfires. The Senate is expected to vote Thursday evening on the stopgap, which passed the House 231-188 and will push back delicate decisions on spending, immigration, health care and national security until Jan. 17.

39 second video of Pelosi at link (CNSNews.com) - House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, during whose four-year speakership the debt increased by more than $5 trillion, said at her press briefing today that the Republican-controlled Congress is “robbing from the future by increasing the debt.” Pelosi made the remark as part of her criticism of the Republican tax-reform plan. “This is who they are,” Pelosi said. “This is what they came here to do: tax cuts for the rich at the expense of the middle class, at the expense of the health and well-being of the American people. Robbing from...

The number of Americans severely behind on payments on federal student loans reached roughly 4.6 million in the third quarter, a doubling from four years ago, despite a historically long stretch of U.S. job creation and steady economic growth. In the third quarter alone, the count of such defaulted borrowers—defined by the government as those who haven’t made a payment in at least a year—grew by nearly 274,000, according to Education Department data released Tuesday. The total number of defaulted borrowers represents about 22% of the Americans who were required to be paying down their federal student loans as of...

NEW YORK - The Federal Reserve bought $3.447 billion of agency mortgage-backed securities in the week from Nov. 23 to Nov. 29, compared with $5.516 billion purchased the previous week, the New York Federal Reserve Bank said on Thursday. In a move to help the housing market begun in October 2011, the U.S. central bank has been using funds from principal payments on the agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities, or MBS, it holds to reinvest in agency MBS.

With Congress wrestling over a tax reform plan that critics say would explode the government budget deficit, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said she also is concerned over the surging level of public debt. A Senate committee passed the GOP-sponsored proposal, which would slash the corporate tax rate and lower individual income rates for many Americans.However, the price tag of the plan is in the area of $1.5 trillion at a time when the Congressional Budget Official already is projecting a deficit of more than $1 trillion in the years ahead and with the total debt level at $20.6 trillion...

Should the government borrow against the future? Should it guarantee higher taxes for your children and grandchildren in return for lower taxes for you? If government's moral legitimacy depends on the consent of the governed, as Thomas Jefferson argued in the Declaration of Independence, can the federal government morally compel those who haven't consented to its financial profligacy -- because they are not yet born -- to pay higher taxes? These questions are at the base of the debate -- such as it is -- in Congress these days over the so-called Republican tax reform plan. But you will not...

America’s massive $20.5 trillion debt will never go down if the federal government continues spending at the rate it has been over recent decades. No amount of tax increases will close the gap between what our government takes in and what we spend on our ridiculously bloated bureaucracy in Washington DC. We need true spending cuts and a reeling in of big government once and for all. But will that ever happen? Some have declared that Congressional Republicans’ tax plan to cut taxes and increase budget deficits will grow the national debt to almost the size of the entire U.S....

President Trump’s policies have decreased the Debt to GDP ratio by 1% while at the same time the Atlanta Fed announced yesterday that the 4th Quarter GDP estimates have increased by 0.2% to 3.4%. Since his inauguration President Trump has focused his efforts on the security of the country and on the prosperity of its economy. The results of his actions are taking shape.The US GDP has increased each quarter in 2017 with the 3rd Quarter GDP increasing to $19.496 trillion – the highest GDP for any country in world history.On the other hand, the President has curtailed US spending....

WASHINGTON - The federal government began its new budget year with an October deficit of $63.2 billion, up sharply from a year ago. The Treasury Department reported Monday that the October deficit was 37.9 percent higher than the $45.8 billion deficit recorded in October 2016. Both government receipts and spending were up for the month, with receipts climbing 14.3 percent to $235.3 billion, a record for the month of October. The larger spending figure was up a sizable 11.6 percent to $298.6 billion. The deficit for the 2017 budget year, which ended on Sept. 30, totaled $666 billion, up 13.7...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A company owned by Gov. Jim Justice and his family says it wanted to settle a $4 million debt by selling a helicopter, but the lender hasn’t been cooperating. James C. Companies, Justice Aviation — and the governor personally — were sued in the Southern District of New York in September over default on a loan for the companies’ private helicopter. A little more than $4 million is remaining on the loan. The plaintiff, Citizens Asset Finance, wants to foreclose and take back the helicopter. In an answer filed on Friday, lawyers for Justice and his companies...

President Donald Trump called from South Korea on Tuesday to share with Democrats what his accountant told him about the GOP tax measure, namely that he is "going to get killed in this bill." According to NBC News and other news outlets, the exact quote made by the president as he spoke to 12 Senate Democrats during a phone call was: "My accountant called me and said 'you're going to get killed in this bill.' The deal is so bad for rich people, I had to throw in the estate tax just to give them something."

There are two very different pictures of the students roaming the hallways and labs at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering. At the undergraduate level, 80 percent are United States residents. At the graduate level, the number is reversed: About 80 percent hail from India, China, Korea, Turkey and other foreign countries. For graduate students far from home, the swirl of cultures is both reassuring and invigorating. “You’re comfortable everyone is going through the same struggles and journeys as you are,” said Vibhati Joshi of Mumbai, India, who’s in her final semester for a master’s degree in financial engineering....

President Nicolás Maduro on Thursday called for a restructuring of Venezuela’s foreign debt, blaming heightened U.S. sanctions by the Trump administration and potentially signaling a critical new phase in the country’s economic collapse. Maduro stopped short of declaring the kind of broad, messy default that analysts have feared in the oil-producing nation, and he said Venezuela would on Friday make a key $1.1 billion bond payment for its state energy firm, PDVSA.

Something has been going on this past month that has as usual been lost in the shuffle of other mainstream media prioritized news. Lost in the hysteria around the Vegas shooting (of which we still have many unanswered questions) and Harvey Weinstein and Mueller indicting Manafort and the wacky World Series is the rapid rate of growth of the U.S. national debt during the early months of the Trump administration. In October alone, America’s debt has soared by almost a quarter of a trillion dollars. This is on top of already well over $20 trillion. A monumental story. Lost again...

North Carolinians agreed to borrow $2 billion last year to support higher education and infrastructure. Should they borrow a similar amount to more quickly build Interstate 87 and other important roads? Some local officials say yes. For more than a year, Interstate 87 has been a burning issue for elected officials in Pasquotank and surrounding counties. Creating that road from Raleigh to the Virginia state line would cost more than $1.3 billion, based on early estimates, and it could take decades to develop. Just widening U.S. Highway 17 to interstate standards from northern Pasquotank through Camden may cost almost $187...

SHIFT IN THOUGHT   In a world awash in red ink, Argentina’s reforms since 2015 show how attitudes can shift toward excessive debt. The world’s largest economies are awash in red ink, the International Monetary Fund reported in October. And they are hard-pressed to service their debts, which on average amount to more than twice their domestic output. China accounts for much of this global rise in debt. After a leadership reshuffle this week, Beijing may start to finally tackle the problem. But one country in particular, Argentina, has shown how to change attitudes and turn around an unhealthy dependence...

Senate Republicans approved a $4 trillion budget measure Thursday, taking a crucial step toward their goal of passing a tax plan this year. The chamber approved the budget resolution by a 51-49 vote. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., was the only GOP senator to vote against it. Senators will now have to reconcile their budget resolution with a separate one passed by the House. The other chamber could simply choose to pass the Senate budget blueprint. Passing a budget unlocks reconciliation, which enables the GOP to pass a tax bill with a simple 51-vote majority in the Senate. Using the tool...

Moody’s Investor Service issued a dire warning to lenders Thursday: Hartford will likely default on its debt by November and, if the city does not change course, will run up annual deficits exceeding $60 million through the next twenty years. On Sept. 26, Moody’s downgraded the city’s bond rating to Caa3 from Caa1, reflecting the investor service’s belief that “in the likely event of a default, bondholder recovery will be 65%-80% of principal,” it stated Thursday. Moody’s projects the city’s operating deficits will reach $60 million to $80 million per year through 2036, largely driven by fixed costs, which command...