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President Biden on Friday signed a short-term funding bill to keep the government open through next week as congressional negotiators haggle over the details of a longer-term spending deal. Biden signed the bill upon returning to the White House from Delaware, where he’d given remarks about legislation to help veterans who were exposed to toxic burn pits. The Senate on Thursday night voted 71-19 to pass the continuing resolution (CR), sending it to Biden for approval after it passed the House the night before in a 224-201 vote. The CR freezes funding levels through Dec. 23 to buy time for...

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on March 23, 2018 in New York City. Stocks plunge more than 500 points 47 Mins Ago | 02:18 Stocks fell sharply on Friday as worries of a trade war brewing between the U.S. and China grew. Wall Street also digested disappointing employment data. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 740 points, with Boeing and Caterpillar as the biggest decliners in the index. The S&P 500 declined more than 2.5 percent, with industrials as the worst-performing sector. The Nasdaq composite dropped 2.7 percent. The sell-off accelerated in the...

On the seventh day of the shutdown, President Obama called on House Republican leaders Monday to allow a vote immediately on a short-term measure to reopen government operations. Mr. Obama said he strongly suspects “there are enough votes” in the House to reopen the government today. “The truth of the matter is, there are enough Republican and Democratic votes in the House of Representatives right now to end this shutdown immediately with no partisan strings attached,” Mr. Obama said during a surprise visit to FEMA headquarters in the district. “The House should hold that vote today.” The president said he...

Did the White House just blink on the debt-ceiling fight? After weeks of insisting it won’t negotiate on either the budget or the debt ceiling, a top White House adviser said this morning that Barack Obama would sign a short-term lift in the latter to gain more time for a longer-term agreement: President Obama would accept a short-term increase in the federal borrowing cap , rather than one lasting a year or more, a senior White House official said Monday. The statement was an acknowledgment by the administration that it may not be possible to reach a deal on a...

The next four years are likely to be unpleasant. There are already several crises heading towards us, and in the fiscal, monetary, regulatory and general economic areas the Barack Obama administration's policy is likely to be counterproductive. In these circumstances, there's only one sound course of action for the Republican congressional majority: they must abandon all their natural politicians' preference for avoiding short-term pain and adopt a root-canal approach, welcoming short-term economic pain for the sake of preserving the US economy intact for better times ahead. For the past four years, Obama's trillion-dollar deficits and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke's...

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said President Barack Obama would accept a short-term extension of the debt limit ceiling, if it allowed Congress time to act on a larger deal. Obama had opposed any short-term debt ceiling deal, though the change in tune reflects the growing realization that a "big deal" the President demands cannot be completed in full by August 2nd. Carney maintained that Obama believes that if Congress demonstrated "a willingness to back a big deal," then one could be completed before the deadline. He that Obama would still push a major deficit reduction package after August...

The White House signaled Wednesday that President Obama could accept a short-term deal to raise the debt ceiling, but only if it appeared lawmakers were close to an agreement on a significant deficit reduction plan. The hope of such a "grand bargain" was revived Tuesday by the so-called Gang of Six senators, who outlined a deal that would achieve nearly $4 trillion in deficit reduction in the next decade through spending cuts, entitlement reform and an overhaul of the tax code. (Snip) Obama has repeatedly called for a debt limit increase that would carry the government through to 2013

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's ambitious new budget faced bipartisan skepticism Thursday as key senators questioned the administration's long-term budget outlook and the deficits it envisions rising in the middle of the next decade. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner defended it in testimony before the Senate Budget Committee, saying current increases in spending are short term and will have to be substantially reduced to get the country back into fiscal shape. Still, the Democratic chairman of the Budget Committee, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, called the track of future deficits "unsustainable" and singled out Obama's proposal for spending $634 billion on...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 14, 2006 – The ongoing effort to secure Baghdad is an evolution, and solutions must be long-term, the spokesman for Multinational Force Iraq told reporters in Baghdad today. “Abating the extremists in the capital will neither be easy nor rapid,” Army Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said of progress in Operation Together Forward. “Challenges will ensue, but efforts will march forward block by block.” A variety of activities are occurring in Baghdad, with Iraqi and coalition forces working together to help quell violence and build stability, Caldwell said. Caldwell cited some of the statistics that reflect Operation Together Forward’s...

WASHINGTON, April 6, 2006 – Protection of America in the near term and trying to lay a foundation for peace in the long term make the war in Iraq worthwhile, President Bush told a Charlotte, N.C., audience today. Speaking at Central Piedmont Community College in a town-meeting format, the president said he believes future generations will be grateful for the world that will result from victory in the global war on terror. "I believe that one day an American president will be talking about the world in which he is making decisions, or she is making decisions, and they'll look...

Greenspan Can't Explain Rates Divergence By MARTIN CRUTSINGER WASHINGTON - Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Monday he does not have a good explanation for why long-term interest rates have been falling at a time when he and his Fed colleagues have been raising short-term rates. Greenspan called the pronounced decline in long-term interest rates over the past year at the same time the Fed was boosting short-term rates "clearly without recent precedent." Speaking by satellite to a monetary conference in China, Greenspan rejected the suggestion that U.S. rates have been held down by a massive flow of foreign investment...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst warned Wednesday that while Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's $111.7 billion budget plan solves next year's problem, the state still faces big deficits in the future because spending remains out of balance with tax income. But Analyst Elizabeth Hill also advised against Schwarzenegger's proposed long term solution to the problem - a constitutional amendment that would trigger accross-the-board cuts when revenues fail to meet spending obligations. Hill said the measure, which Schwarzenegger wants to put before voters in a special election this year, would put even more spending "on cruise control" while undermining the Legislature's...

Now that President Bush has twice gotten himself to the White House, the question is whether he wants to try for Mount Rushmore. One of the luxuries of a second term is an opportunity to think about the long run, not simply for one's own "legacy," but for the future of the nation as a whole. Even during his first term, George W. Bush's long-run strategic view, exemplified by the war on terrorism, contrasted sharply with former President Bill Clinton's preoccupation with short-run political tactics, though this contrast seemed to be little noticed in most of the media....Too often Republicans...

As Sunday's guest on "Meet the Press," former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean shot some pointed remarks at Republicans. Dean said, "These people, who are running this country, are running it in a short-term way. Racking up enormous deficits, enormous future national security problems for us. We can't afford Republicans, we have got to get rid of them as soon as possible, because they can't run the country properly." One of the candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2004 race, Dean is now thinking about running for chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

<p>Rarely in the course of market events have so many been so wrong about so much. Two months ago, the pundits warned us that Japanese-style deflation was upon us in the form of collapsing bond yields. When the 10-year Treasury yield jumped to an intraday peak of 4.6% on Aug. 1 from close to 3%, we heard that soaring interest rates endangered the financial markets. Now the 10-year yield has settled down at the benign level of around 4.25%.</p>

This post is to alert all freepers to the rudeness of Jim Robinson as an administrator of this forum. I posted an article about black racism. I did not make any racist or offensive comments, yet Jim pulled the thread and banned me. I email him, and the following is my email and Jim's reply. Email: Dear Jim, I posted an article on Black Racism, it stirred up quite a few interesting comments from FReepers, but I've not posted anything remotely racist, offensive, or unconservative in nature. Yet my posting privilage has been removed. In fact that entire thread has...