Free Republic

How long can our debt levels keep growing much, much faster than the overall economy? We haven’t had a year of 3 percent growth for the U.S. economy since the middle of the Bush administration, but we keep borrowing money as if there is no tomorrow. Much of the focus has been on the exploding debt of the federal government, and that is definitely something I plan to address once I get to Washington. But on an individual level, U.S. consumers have been extremely irresponsible as well. In fact, one new survey has found that more than 80 percent of...

Imagine you open the faucet of your kitchen sink expecting water and instead out comes cash. Now imagine that it comes out at the rate of $1 million a minute. You call your plumber, who thinks you’re crazy. To get you off the phone, he opines that it is your sink and therefore must be your money. So you spend it wildly. Then you realize that the money wasn’t yours and you owe it back. Now imagine that this happens every minute of every day for the next three years. At the end of the three years, you owe back...

What’s the greatest risk to China’s economy? Look no further than its growing corporate and household debt China has been one of the leading generators of debt since 2009, contributing to the latest worries over global inflation that have roiled markets PUBLISHED : Friday, 16 February, 2018, 6:01pm UPDATED : Friday, 16 February, 2018, 6:13pm Few investors study history. And the ones that do, dismiss the lessons as being irrelevant for the current market. Predicting China’s upcoming economic collapse is a popular contrarian viewpoint, but it is not so easy to generate a convenient scenario if you look at data...

In "Hamlet," Shakespeare pens one of the most familiar lines -- and best advice -- ever written. Before Laertes leaves for Paris, his father, Polonius, tells him: "Neither a borrower nor a lender be..." We have ignored that advice for far too long, which is why the U.S. national debt is $20 trillion with more to come, thanks to the Republican Congress, which has passed a two-year spending bill that calls for $300 billion in new spending and removes caps applied by the Budget Control Act of 2011. It's being sold to the public with the highest and purist motives....

There is indeed a student loan crisis. And the numbers show it is entirely the doing of President Obama, with an assist from his supporting cast in the Democrat-run Congress. The crisis has its origins in 2010, when President Obama essentially nationalized the national student lending program by signing a law he had proposed and Congress passed that muscled banks out of the picture as lenders. Banks had been providing government-backed student loans, but Obama, in all of his community organizer wisdom, figured distant government bureaucrats could do it better than bankers and save taxpayers money. It’s laughable, sure, but...

If you’re reading The Hill, chances are you’ve heard the scary statistics or doomsday predictions about government spending. Or you’re heard it from the Congressional Budget office or Congressional Research Service or CBS, or you’ve heard it from House Speaker Paul Ryan or Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney. In short, there is no shortage of professionals sounding the alarm over spending. If you’re like me, each time you’ve heard those, you’ve wondered, “How is that possible?” or “How did we get here?” or “If that were true, Congress wouldn’t be getting away with it.” Well, it’s...

President Trump on Monday rolled out a White House budget that includes deep cuts to some federal agencies, an increase in funding for the Pentagon and $18 billion for a wall on the Mexican border. It includes proposals to cut deficits by more than $3 trillion over a decade and lower debt levels as a percentage of the gross domestic product, but does not balance by doing away with annual deficits.

I am not much one for rubbernecking at car crashes. (I’m not setting you up for a Congress joke, here. That comes later.) Most of the time they are scary but ultimately insignificant episodes involving a little property damage and a great deal of inconvenience. Sometimes they are much worse, and I couldn’t help looking at the car blazing in the middle of the freeway in the middle of the day, looking more like it had been bombed or hit with a rocket than like it had been involved in an accident. Thick black smoke covered both sides of the...

Student loan debt is a crushing problem in America. Over 44 million people have such loans, with an average balance of about $30,000 — making for a total debt pile of $1.4 trillion. Unsurprisingly, people often struggle to repay these debts with their entry-level wages after graduating. Student debt is now the most common form of troubled debt, with about 11 percent of them 90 days or more delinquent. Worse still, thanks to Republicans and neoliberal Democrats alike, they are almost impossible to discharge in bankruptcy.

The White House on Monday will unveil its long-awaited $1.5 trillion infrastructure package aimed at overhauling U.S. public works. The plan is structured around four goals: generate $1.5 trillion for an infrastructure proposal, streamline the permitting process down to two years, invest in rural infrastructure projects and advance workforce training. The current system is fundamentally broken and it’s broken in two different ways,” a senior administration official told reporters in a Saturday phone call. “We are underinvesting in our infrastructure, and we have a permitting process that takes so long that even when funds are adequate, it can take a...

<p>Trump tweeted, “Just signed Bill. Our Military will now be stronger than ever before. We love and need our Military and gave them everything — and more. First time this has happened in a long time. Also means JOBS, JOBS, JOBS!”</p>

From Tyler Durden: Back in 2011, Standard & Poors’ shocked the world, and the Obama administration, when it dared to downgrade the US from its vaunted AAA rating, something that had never happened before (and led to the resignation of S&P’s CEO and a dramatic crackdown on the rating agency led by Tim Geithner). Nearly seven years later, with the US on the verge of another government shutdown and debt ceiling breach (with the agreement reached only after the midnight hour, literally) this time it is Warren Buffett’s own rating agency, Moody’s, which on Friday morning warned Trump that he...

America's states and municipalities should be awash in good budget news. Unemployment remains below 5%, inflation is tame, and the stock market rose more than 20% in 2017 — the ninth year of a bull market. Yet many local governments faced intense struggles last year to balance their books. Localities have confronted unrelenting fiscal pressure since 2008, a result of the weakest recovery since World War II of tax revenues combined with ever-escalating costs. Many states and localities have had to rewrite budget books in ways that leave taxpayers paying more — and receiving less. "U.S. states have entered a...

Allow me to confess that I’ve been right out there with the best of them (or is it the worst?) when it comes to high-fiving and back-slapping over the positive results of the tax cuts enacted before Christmas. Businesses are hiring, handing out bonuses and onshoring capital. Workers are seeing more money in their paychecks and will see significant benefits when they file their taxes next year. Yes, there is plenty to celebrate, but there’s also a second, far less pleasant reality to contemplate.As the WaPo reports this weekend, the federal government is now on track to borrow a massive...

he federal government is on track to borrow nearly $1 trillion this fiscal year — President Donald Trump's first full year in charge of the budget. That's almost double what the government borrowed in fiscal year 2017.

New York to Chicago by train in under five hours. It’s not science fiction, but old-school tunneling—a critical, yet oddly ignored, part of President Donald Trump’s forthcoming infrastructure plan that supporters say will cost the federal government virtually nothing, but experts say the proposal's deregulation approach amounts to a handout to Big Business. The plan calls for creating new high-speed rail lines deep underground—the basic idea behind the English Channel tunnel, or Chunnel, that whisks travelers at 186 miles per hour from London to Paris in just two hours and 20 minutes. That’s less time than the Amtrak from New...

Because the tax bill reduced government revenues, Congress must act to raise the debt limit by early March, instead of as late as April, the Congressional Budget Office said today, according to Bloomberg. Why it matters: Failing to raise the debt limit — which would prevent the U.S. from continuing to borrow money to pay its bills — is perhaps the most dangerous of the deadlines awaiting Congress early this year. Treasury markets are already "starting to show apprehension," Bloomberg reported. A failure would be chaotic to the world economy, and could mean delays in Social Security benefit or other...

In its latest reminder that China is a (for now) happy holder of some $1.2 trillion in US Treasurys, Chinese credit rating agency Dagong downgraded US sovereign ratings from A- to BBB+ overnight, citing “deficiencies in US political ecology” and tax cuts that “directly reduce the federal government’s sources of debt repayment” weakening the base of the government’s debt repayment. Oh, and just to make sure the message is heard loud and clear, the ratings, which are now level with those of Peru, Colombia and Turkmenistan on the Beijing-based agency’s scale of creditworthiness, have also been put on a negative...

Public employees in California may have their pension benefits slashed due to the rollback of a longstanding rule in the state, Gov. Jerry Brown revealed in a recent budget briefing. The California governor revealed that he has a “hunch” legal proceedings could pave the way for cuts to public employees’ benefits. “There is more flexibility than there is currently assumed by those who discuss the California rule,” Brown said during the briefing.

As the stock market soars to new highs, here's some sobering statistics to consider. The stock market is at an all-time high but Americans Owe More, Save Less, and are Poorer Than in Decades. Negative Wealth Percentage On the Rise Net Worth Going Nowhere Sobering Stats A greater share of Americans have more debt than money in the bank than at any point since 1962, according to Deutsche Bank economist Torsten Slok.30.4% of US families have negative net worth despite the recovery in housing and the stock market.Median net worth is below where it was in 1989. But perhaps the...