Free Republic

Caught in the sluggish recovery from the last recession, Social Security and Medicare face an increasingly dismal fiscal future, the federal government reported Friday in its annual review of the two mammoth entitlement programs. Medicare, which now provides health insurance to some 47 million elderly and disabled Americans, could begin running a deficit in 2024, five years earlier than projected last year. And Social Security, which last year began paying out more in benefits than it collected in taxes, now faces insolvency in 2036, compared to 2037 in last year’s projections. Over the years, the Social Security and Medicare trustees...

OCALA - A former restaurant owner and chef was arrested Friday for refusal to pay or file tax return, theft of sales tax and failure to file six consecutive sales tax returns. Loring W. Felix, 52, was picked up by Sheriff's Deputy Brian Haworth at 2811 S.W. 19th Court at 7 a.m. He was taken to the Marion County Jail, where he was booked in. The warrant was signed by Judge Willard Pope on Monday. Bond for the charges was $7,500. Felix's Restaurant had been a fixture at 917 E. Silver Springs Blvd. for close to a decade before closing...

If Congress doesn't lift the debt ceiling by mid-May, the sky won't fall, at least not right away. The Treasury has several ways to forestall a federal default. Yet today's massive deficits limit how long these measures can be used. The national debt is expected to hit the $14.3 trillion legal ceiling by May 16. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has urged Congress to act to avoid a government default that would have "catastrophic economic consequences that would last for decades."

Yesterday Tim Geithner sent another letter to Congressional leadership urging them to cleanly pass the debt ceiling fast. The Treasury's special accounting tricks will only last until August, he says, at which point he'll lose his borrowing authority. The nut paragraph in his letter is this one: "As I have written previously, default by the United States on its obligations would have a catastrophic economic impact that would be felt by every American. A broad range of government payments would have to be stopped, limited or delayed, including military salaries, Social Security and Medicare payments, interest on debt, unemployment benefits...

... that is, just enough to pay the interest payment? He says that it must be raised to avoid defaulting, so surely this is all he wants, right? If he were to say that more is needed, then he really is fearmongering for more massive borrow-and-spend. Boehner could agree to voting for just enough of a raise in exchange for a balanced budget amendment vote. If Dems don't good along they put then country at risk of defaulting

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner vowed Tuesday that the United States would never follow a strategy to weaken the US dollar. "Our policy has been and will always be, as long as I will be in office, that a strong dollar is in the interest of the country," Geithner said at a New York conference organized by the Council of Foreign Relations. "We will never embrace a strategy to weaken the dollar." It was the first time this year that Geithner had publicly proclaimed a US strong-dollar policy, a mantra of treasury secretaries for more than a decade. In the...

Yet Geithner actually further reduced their credibility by attacking S&P. In interviews on Fox Business News, CNBC and Bloomberg TV, he said there is "no risk" of an actual downgrade and that S&P was "absolutely" wrong. Problem is, the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act gives the government added power over the ratings agencies. The law -- written and passed on Geithner's watch at Treasury -- places special emphasis on conflicts of interests: Half of the rating agencies' board members must be "independent" and agencies are warned not to allow themselves to be unduly influenced by the organizations they are rating. A...

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner boldly predicted that Congress will vote to raise the debt ceiling next month, warning that failure to do so would bring "catastrophic" consequences for the U.S. and global economies. Geithner, appearing on ABC's "This Week," said that if House Republicans were to push the vote to the brink or fail to raise the limit, it would "make the last [financial] crisis look like a tame, modest crisis." Geithner said that Republicans have told President Obama they "recognize we have to do this, and we're not going to play around with it." "There's no alternative, and they...

Sunday, April 17, 2011 Geithner: World Faces 'Significant Economic Policy Challenges' WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--International watchdogs need to bring more pressure to bear on countries with artificial exchange rates, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Saturday, warning that the current system is straining international economic cooperation. Geithner, in a statement to the International Monetary and Financial Committee in Washington, called on the International Monetary Fund to provide better oversight on countries that artificially value their currencies. While he didn't cite any specific countries in the remarks, they were likely an indirect reference to China, which U.S. officials have repeatedly said needs to...

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Thursday told Republican lawmakers that they would shoulder the blame if the country got too close to defaulting on its debt and roiled markets worldwide by not approving a debt limit increase. In yet another warning about the perils of not allowing the U.S. to borrow more to fund spending already approved by Congress, Geithner said it would be deeply irresponsible for lawmakers to use debt limit negotiations for political gains.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Thursday told Republican lawmakers that they would shoulder the blame if the country got too close to defaulting on its debt and roiled markets worldwide by not approving a debt limit increase. In yet another warning about the perils of not allowing the U.S. to borrow more to fund already spending already approved by Congress, Geithner said it would be deeply irresponsible for lawmakers to use debt limit negotiations for political gains. Congress must agree to raise the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling or the legal amount that the country can borrow. But...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The Senate will soon issue findings of a probe of the US mortgage meltdown that fueled the global financial crisis, with Goldman Sachs likely to face fresh embarrassment over its role, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, whose high-profile inquiry commission subpoenaed Goldman's and other executives last year, is due to release its report on the subprime implosion of 2007 and 2008. The paper, citing people familiar with the matter, said the report was expected to release emails from securities firms that developed or sold subprime mortgages and financial vehicles including...

Geithner: inflexible currencies are biggest monetary problem Thu Mar 31, 2:22 am ET NANJING, China (Reuters) – Tightly controlled exchange rate regimes are the main flaw in the international monetary system and the solution is simple, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told a G20 meeting on Thursday. In a thinly veiled swipe at the Chinese hosts of the seminar of the Group of 20 wealthy and developing economies, Geithner said that countries should have flexible exchange rates and permit free flows of capital to be major players in the global currency order. He also used his speech to call for...

Back in October, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner gave a speech in which he answered a question about the U.S. dollar. Geithner said that America needed to "work hard to preserve confidence in the strong dollar." My, oh my, how quickly things change. This week, Geithner said he was "quite open" to the establishment of a new global reserve currency. The dollar plunged upon news of the statement, and one has to wonder, does the Obama administration really support America? In a column written in October, Lawrence Kudlow focused on Geithner's comments (or lack thereof) regarding the dollar. In fact, Geithner...

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has named his department's first director of the new Federal Insurance Office (FIO). Michael McRaith, currently Illinois's insurance director, will be the first person to head the new office, which was created as part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. Geithner announced the pick at Thursday's meeting of the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), a special panel also created by Dodd-Frank that gathers the heads of all major financial regulators to discuss broad issues affecting the financial sector. McRaith's appointment comes after Democrats and Republicans in both the House and Senate had called the administration out...

In a recent testimony from Treasury Secretary Geithner to the Senate Finance Committee one major point was that when considering corporate tax reform: “Congress has to revisit this basic question about whether it makes sense for us as a country to allow certain businesses to choose whether they’re treated as corporations for tax purposes or not.” Secretary Geithner later went on to reference non-corporate businesses specifically. Essentially, this means that Secretary Geithner is considering ending the pass-through tax treatment of businesses. This refers to partnerships, limited liability companies, S-Corporations, and any other type of business entity where individuals will report...

US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner shocked global markets by revealing that Washington is “quite open” to Chinese proposals for the gradual development of a global reserve currency run by the International Monetary Fund. The dollar plunged instantly against the euro, yen, and sterling as the comments flashed across trading screens. David Bloom, currency chief at HSBC, said the apparent policy shift amounts to an earthquake in geo-finance. “The mere fact that the US Treasury Secretary is even entertaining thoughts that the dollar may cease being the anchor of the global monetary system has caused consternation,” he said. Mr Geithner later...

U.S. President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner sought to quell fears on Thursday that unrest in Libya would put oil prices on a long term upward trajectory. "We actually think that we'll be able to ride out the Libya situation and it will stabilize," Obama, referring to fuel prices, told a group of corporate chief executives. Geithner said the world had plenty of oil reserves that could be deployed in the event of a sustained disruption to supply. "We have substantial capacity across the major economies in the strategic reserves," he told the executives. "Hopefully, by reminding people...

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is doing a great job, according to none other than himself. Geithner essentially patting himself on the back at a Bloomberg Breakfast event in Washington on Wednesday, saying: "The core of the American financial system is in a much stronger position than it was before the crisis." Geithner has a point: U.S. banks made $87.5 billion in last year, the highest since 2007, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Bloomberg reports. Of course, as Henry points out in the clip, if the system is indeed safer, it's solely because Geithner, his predecessor Hank Paulson and...