Free Republic

No, not just Greece - all of Europe. Without Congressional authorization or notice, of course. Hattip to a nice emailer.... Or if you prefer it on a one-year time scale... That nice little vertical line is a gain of $421.8 billion dollars of outstanding loans and leases in one week's time. WHERE THE HELL DID THAT MONEY GO AND WHAT COLLATERAL WAS TAKEN AGAINST A FOUR HUNDRED BILLION DOLLAR INCREASE IN OUTSTANDING LOANS? You won't find anything like that in the records - because it's never happened before. That's beyond unprecedented, it's ridiculous, and assuming it's also accurate, someone has...

It's one thing to hear fringe bloggers raving breathlessly against the collision course that the US economy is on. It is something else to see the Bank of International Settlements call for the baseline projection for US debt/GDP to hit over 400% by 2040. And this excludes the bankrupt GSEs, bankrupt Social Security, and the soon to be bankrupt Medicare. In a must read report, the BIS (of the central bankers' central bank) provides the much needed segue to the work of Reinhart and Rogoff, and in not so many words confirms that the entire developed world is now bankrupt...

For all who doubt the Obama administration will raise tax rates into the stratosphere in the very near future, here is a chart created by dshort.com which compares the total level of debt to GDP with Federal tax brackets over the past century. The correlation between the two is unmistakable . Unless the administration promptly finds a way to reduce the massive amount of debt that it continues to issue (in March alone the US Treasury issued a massive $333 billion in net debt), tax rates will have no option but to spike to levels not seen since the 50's....

As I pointed out on March 17th, the housing "tax credit" has run out of gas - and today's existing home sales numbers prove it: Sales of existing homes have thus fallen three consecutive months, a reversal after having risen steadily through the fall in response to a federal subsidy for first-time home buyers. The tax credit has been restored and expanded to repeat buyers, but there has been no increase in sales yet. Notice the "yet" - despite the fact that you must have a signed contract by April 30th to get the credit. Let's cut the crap -...

50% of the federal budget right now goes to entitlements. This last month we posted a record $220.9 billion budget deficit. We took in $107 billion but spent $328 billion. Isn't that special. We only funded 32% of expenditures? Remember - entitlements were half of that $328 billion. So let's see if we can do the math here. Entitlements were about $164 billion last month in spending. The rest was, of course, the rest. But we only took in $107 billion. So even if we eliminated all entitlement spending we still did not have enough money to cover the rest....

*CBO SAYS DEFICIT THIS YEAR TO AMOUNT TO $1.5 TRILLION *CBO SAYS PUBLICLY HELD DEBT TO GROW TO 90% OF GDP BY 2020 *CBO SAYS OBAMA BUDGET WOULD PRODUCE $9.76 TRILLION IN DEFICITS Not a snowball's chance in hell we get to 2020 doing this. Oh, that's $1.4 trillion more than their last guess, mostly on lower tax collections (no really?) Here's the problem with this new CBO number - it more than doubles the public Treasury debt float over the next nine years. It also "predicts" that China and other investors will increase their holdings of US Government debt...

Now this is a guaranteed rape job. In a short conversation this noontime that CNBC apparently has omitted from their archives (Why's that folks?) Rick Santelli was talking about a potential to effectively force money into the Treasury market. Where would they get this? From your 401k and IRA accounts! From Businessweek: The U.S. Treasury and Labor Departments will ask for public comment as soon as next week on ways to promote the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams, according to Assistant Labor Secretary Phyllis C. Borzi and Deputy Assistant Treasury...

All we need is for The Fed to encourage and promote the dollar carry trade, and we can pump the stock market to the moon - even though unemployment continues to skyrocket and consumer confidence, a leading indicator of consumer spending and activity, was in the tank this morning. You need no further proof that the stock market has exactly nothing to do with the consumer or the broader economy - that it has become nothing more or less than a raw casino that responds to one and only one thing - the Federal Reserve and Federal Government's encouragement of...

<p>Thousands of borrowers on the verge of foreclosure will soon have the option of renting their homes from Fannie Mae, under a policy announced Thursday.</p> <p>The government-controlled company, through its new "Deed for Lease" program, will allow borrowers to transfer ownership to Fannie Mae and sign a one-year lease, with month-to-month extensions after that.</p>

In the news today The Federal Reserve announced that due to the continued lying by banks about asset valuations, a practice that has resulted in ABS and CMBS markets remaining locked up, they are continuing to sponsor and support accounting and control fraud, acts that should be treated as felonies and result in prison sentences: Nonetheless, the markets for asset-backed securities (ABS) backed by consumer and business loans and for commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) are still impaired and seem likely to remain so for some time. To promote the flow of credit to businesses and households and to facilitate the...

Props to Zerohedge for having the nads to run this unconfirmed: Which is why we were greatly troubled when we learned recently on good authority that Federal representatives may have opened multiple undisclosed-type accounts with none other than State Street Global Advisors over the past few months. All of these accounts are allegedly handled by one single trader, who is cocooned and isolated from interaction with other partners. Zero Hedge can, as of yet, not vouch for this being 100% factual and is asking readers who may have additional knowledge of the situtation to please come forward and share their...

Oh do come on: Some banks are prodding the government to let them use public money to help buy troubled assets from the banks themselves. Banking trade groups are lobbying the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. for permission to bid on the same assets that the banks would put up for sale as part of the government's Public Private Investment Program. I predicted this a couple of months ago, if you remember. I was too optimistic - I figured they'd try to hide it through some "side deal" with some company they funded: I have already covered how you can get...

Enough? Time For Options http://anti-federalist.org 'Nuff said. There will be more - much more - very soon there.

Here we go again! Nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline in April (-539,000), and the unemployment rate rose from 8.5 to 8.9 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Since the recession began in December 2007, 5.7 million jobs have been lost. In April, job losses were large and widespread across nearly all major private-sector industries. Overall, private-sector employment fell by 611,000. The total number of unemployed rose to the highest recorded since the BLS began producing these figures - more than 40 years ago - surpassing all previous post-WWII recessions. The only...

It's a train. The "rumor" floated over the weekend and this morning was that some of the banks might need $10 billion under the "stress" scenarios. That they might be able to raise, and it has been part and parcel of fueling the rally. Not so fast, grasshopper. S&P yesterday afternoon stuck virtually the entire sector on Credit Watch Negative and that was just the start. There are now some independent analysts out there with their own numbers on "required capital", and they're ugly. Friedman Billing Ramsey came out and said they believed that Bank of America needs $60 billion...

Obama Proposes Signing Treaty To Ban Reloading -- Even BB guns could be on the chopping block Gun Owners of America Fact Sheet 8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102, Springfield, VA 22151 Phone: 703-321-8585 / FAX: 703-321-8408 When President Obama went to Mexico in April, he proposed that the United States sign the Inter-American Convention Against Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives, and Other Related Materials. Despite the fact that it purportedly deals with “illicit manufacturing and trafficking,” GOA is convinced that this convention defines these terms much more broadly and potentially presents serious dangers to Americans lawfully...

Should Obama make banning assault weapons a top priority?

<p>WASHINGTON--Sales at U.S. retailers unexpectedly fell in March, snapping two months of increases, as motor vehicle and electronic good purchases declined, according to a government report on Tuesday that indicated subdued consumer spending amid rising unemployment.</p> <p>The Commerce Department said total retail sales dropped 1.1% after rising by a revised 0.3% in February, previously reported as a 0.1% fall.</p>

Denninger has two fantastic exposes on the outright theft and extortion that is being perpetrated upon us by our government, via the AIG criminal enterprise: The Scamming Continues (AIG, Fan/Fred, PPIP, etc) FLASH: AIG CALLED CRIMINAL SCAM! His summary says it all: Your money is being stolen at gunpoint via future taxation not only from you but also from your children and grandchildren, yet not one penny has been clawed back from these bankers and other executives who continue to enjoy lifestyles powered by the fruits of imprudent and fraudulent lending - lifestyles that, absent our government stealing from you,...

It would appear that our fine "politicians" have no intention of removing (or even tempering) any part of The Bezzle in our financial system. As a consequence, the market will do it for us. The bad news is that we've chained our ship to Europe, and they're in bigger trouble in this regard than we are: "European banks face a US dollar “funding gap” of almost $2 trillion as a result of aggressive expansion around the world and may have difficulties rolling over debts, according to a report by the Bank for International Settlements. " Bernanke, without the consent of...