Free Republic

"Obama to Announce $8 Billion High-Speed Rail Plan After State of the Union Speech" Wednesday, January 27, 2010 By Julie Pace, Associated Press SNIPPET: "Washington (AP) - A day after delivering a State of the Union address aimed at showing recession-weary Americans he understands their struggles, President Barack Obama intends to award $8 billion in stimulus funds to develop high-speed rail corridors and sell the program as a jobs creator. Obama and Vice President Joe Biden plan to announce grants for 13 major corridors during a town hall meeting in Tampa, Fla., Thursday..."

On December 29, 2009 The New York Post [josh.kosman@nypost.com] published an article titled, Deep in derivatives, where scribe Josh Kosman ‘took-a-shot’ at explaining the ABSURDITY of the bind boggling derivatives positions amassed by financial behemoths such as J.P. Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs. In an attempt to explain how dangerously systemically-interconnected derivatives makes ALL banks, Kosman began; “The amounts are so large that if the swaps and other derivative contracts the banks broker go bad because the parties on either side of the deal collapse, the banks could be in trouble.” Kosman then goes on with some very superficial analysis...

Costs a burden on businesses While President Obama and congressional leaders say they would like to do more to spur job creation, economists and business executives warn that their plans to impose new health care and climate-change costs on corporations would have the opposite effect. The initiatives, according to this analysis, are likely to overwhelm any positive impact on jobs from stimulus measures by giving businesses a reason to keep laying people off. The House's health care bill would raise the cost of hiring in a straightforward way: by charging businesses a new payroll tax of up to 8 percent...

Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric, blasted the Obama administration and Congressman Barney Frank this morning telling a banking audience that the Democrats’ actions to restructure the entire economy are “insane.” “I hope that the New Jersey and Virginia governor’s race will put some realism into this administration,” Welch told an enthusiastic crowd at the Bank Administration Institute convention at Boston’s Convention and Exhibition Center. “I hope it will cause them to pause and not just jump into anything they encounter.” Welch was referring to the races on Tuesday where Republicans bested Democrats, a sign some say that...

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...

The White House is beginning to send strong signals that it recognizes the $1.4 trillion budget deficit is a looming political problem that needs to be addressed, even as President Obama reminds Americans that the country's fiscal crisis originated with the Bush administration and will not be resolved overnight. The president's budget director, Peter R. Orszag, on Tuesday will deliver the second major speech on the deficit in a week by a top White House official. Mr. Orszag's speech on "reining in the deficit" will be the first time that a top White House economist will look forward at the...

The GDP numbers out yesterday, which showed economic growth at 3.5% in the third quarter, brought a deafening chorus from public and private economists who all agreed that the recession is officially over. With such a strong report, they are happy to tell us that not only has the Fat Lady finished her aria, but she has left the building and is sipping champagne in the bath. As usual, it falls on me to rain on the parade. Even the giddiest commentators admit that the upside GDP surprise resulted almost entirely from government interventions. But, by pushing up public and...

These people are pure nazis. It's incredible what they are attempting to pull off through taking over healthcare. It's like the ultimate ponzi scheme. First, none of you can opt out. We'll fine your ass if you try. We will fine your ass if you have coverage and we don't like it. Next, we'll put our own government plan in there to rig the deck. A crappy plan we made sure none of us would ever have to go into, but only the proletariat would. Then we'll put all the people who are desperate into the rationed government plan. They...

With the massive increases in federal spending, inflation is one of the risks that await us. To protect us from the political demagoguery that will accompany that inflation, let's now decide what is and what is not inflation. One price or several prices rising is not inflation. Increases in money supply are what constitute inflation, and a general rise in prices is the symptom. As the late Nobel laureate professor Milton Friedman said, "Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, in the sense that it cannot occur without a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in...

"Obama’s Spending Plans Will Nearly Double the National Debt--White House Leaked the News Late on Friday" Monday, August 24, 2009 SNIPPET: "(CNSNews.com) - In news leaked late Friday to the Reuters news agency, the White House conceded that the national debt will increase by $9 trillion over the next ten years, nearly doubling a national debt that now stands at $11.67 trillion." SNIPPET: "The good news that the White House leaked to Reuters late on Friday is that it is now projecting that this year’s deficit will be $1.58 trillion, down from the $1.84 trillion it earlier estimated. At $1.58...

A late Friday afternoon candygram from the White House to help you get the weekend started right. And to think, China’s starting to doubt that American debt is a smart investment. It’s a good thing our massive new health-care bureaucracy’s going to be deficit-neutral. Imagine how much higher this number would be if it wasn’t. The Obama administration will raise its 10-year budget deficit projection to roughly $9 trillion from $7.108 trillion in a report next week, a senior administration official told Reuters on Friday. “The new forecasts are based on new data that reflect how severe the economic downturn...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration will raise its 10-year budget deficit projection to roughly $9 trillion from $7.108 trillion in a report next week, a senior administration official told Reuters on Friday. "The new forecasts are based on new data that reflect how severe the economic downturn was in the late fall of last year and the winter of this year," said the official, who is familiar with the plans. "Our budget projections are now in line with the spring and summer projections that the Congressional Budget Office put out." The CBO said in June that deficits between 2010...

THE BRIEFING ROOM • THE BLOG THE BLOG TUESDAY, AUGUST 4TH, 2009 AT 6:55 AM Facts Are Stubborn Things Posted by Macon Phillips Opponents of health insurance reform may find the truth a little inconvenient, but as our second president famously said, "facts are stubborn things." Scary chain emails and videos are starting to percolate on the internet, breathlessly claiming, for example, to "uncover" the truth about the President’s health insurance reform positions. In this video, Linda Douglass, the communications director for the White House’s Health Reform Office, addresses one example that makes it look like the President intends to...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stays optimistic as President Obama calls anew on his congressional allies to push through comprehensive health care reform. To pay for the Democrats' trillion-dollar health care plan, New York Rep. Charlie Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, on Friday called for new tax hikes on the wealthy.

One of President Barack Obama's most prominent Wall Street backers gives him high marks on just about everything except his approach to Wall Street.

MUST SEE: Rush Limbaugh: Obama is Destroying the Economy * * * Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10

Just a spoof of our wacky Fearless Leader's economic plan, posted at the link above (http://www.phawkins.com/obamabucks.html). It is mostly graphics or I'd post it here.

A United Nations document on "climate change" that will be distributed to a major environmental conclave next week envisions a huge reordering of the world economy, likely involving trillions of dollars in wealth transfer, millions of job losses and gains, new taxes, industrial relocations, new tariffs and subsidies, and complicated payments for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon taxes — all under the supervision of the world body. Those and other results are blandly discussed in a discretely worded United Nations "information note" on potential consequences of the measures that industrialized countries will likely have to take to implement the...

Adding up the bailout dollars Monday, March 30, 2009 Here's the latest scorecard for all the bailout money that has been promised or already spent (hat tip EU). The graphic is interactive over at CNN/Money.

The eye-popping national debt surpassed $11 trillion Monday, the largest in U.S. history. The new Treasury Department figures on the national debt were released as the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office is expected to project that the annual budget deficit will be higher than previously estimated by the White House's Office of Management and Budget. The debt, which refers to the cumulative amount of money the government owes, hit $10.9 trillion on Friday. The whopping number has major ramifications for President Barack Obama, who is trying to push through a raft of big-ticket bills on health care, energy, education and climate...