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LOS ANGELES — A federal bankruptcy court judge granted the city of San Bernardino eligibility for bankruptcy protection Wednesday, raising the possibility that the city will propose a plan to dig itself out of debt by cutting money promised to the public pension system. The ruling by Judge Meredith Jury came despite opposition from the powerful California Public Employees’ Retirement System, more commonly known as CalPERS. San Bernardino, a working-class city of 240,000 about 60 miles east of Los Angeles, declared Chapter 9 bankruptcy last summer, saying it had effectively run out of money to pay for day-to-day operations, in...

The fiscal-cliff negotiations have deteriorated into an embarrassing travesty of competing press conferences, off-the-record remarks, closed meetings, and sound bites. The Republican side is frustrated and flabbergasted by the absence of a concrete proposal from the President that can be scored by the Congressional Budget Office and then “marked up” by Congress according to standard procedures. Vague offers of so and so many trillions of revenue increases and spending cuts spread over a decade are just words, not real proposals. The last serious fiscal-cliff projections date back to the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) August 2012 assessment of the budgetary effects...

MOODY'S THREATENS TO CUT USA RATING WITHOUT DEAL TO CUT DEBT/GDP Sam RoSeptember 11, 2012Moody's is warning that it may cut the US government's credit rating from the Aaa to Aa1 if it is unable to negotiate a deal to materially reduce its federal debt to GDP ratio. Here's the annoucnement from Moody's: ------------------- Moody's issues update on the outlook for the US government's debt rating: Budget negotiations key Global Credit Research - 11 Sep 2012 New York, September 11, 2012 -- Budget negotiations during the 2013 Congressional legislative session will likely determine the direction of the US government's Aaa...