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Highlights of the $3.73 Trillion Budget Request for 2012
WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama released a $3.73 trillion budget for fiscal-year 2012 Monday where he sought to balance two competing and conflicting agendas: dramatic cuts to federal spending while also investing in programs to improve U.S. competitiveness.
A look at what President Barack Obama has requested in his $3.73 trillion budget for the 2012 fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.
Summary: Homeland Security gets $44 Billion with a priority on naked body scanners. The Transportation Department gets over a half Trillion dollars for new highway and rail construction, including $53 billion for high-speed trains. $500 million will go to the new Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and Enforcement (See my article on LOST.) and NIST, the group that dropped the ball on the Sept. 11th investigation will be getting $764 million, roughly a 17% increase from last year.
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Agency: NASA
Spending: $18.7 billion
Percentage Change from 2011: 0.9 percent decrease
Discretionary Spending: $18.7 billion
Highlights: Obama’s space budget is about the same as the previous year, avoiding the major proposed cuts other agencies are facing, partly because of the long planned Read more…
Algeria shuts down internet and Facebook as protest mounts
Internet providers were shut down and Facebook accounts deleted across Algeria on Saturday as thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators were arrested in violent street demonstrations.
Plastic bullets and tear gas were used to try and disperse large crowds in major cities and towns, with 30,000 riot police taking to the streets in Algiers alone.
There were also reports of journalists being targeted by state-sponsored thugs to stop reports of the disturbances being broadcast to the outside world.
But it was the government attack on the internet which was of particular significance to those calling for an end to President Abdelaziz Boutifleka’s repressive regime.
Protesters mobilising through the internet were largely credited with bringing Read more…
Peter Schiff -There Will be Riots in the Streets
Peter Schiff says that ultimately the United States will go the same way as Greece. Before the entire country goes, a state like California may go bankrupt.
The major problem is all of the unfunded liabilities. Social Security is a big problem, but even worse may be all of the guaranteed pensions for government employees.
Of course, one woman on the panel thinks that raising taxes on the rich will solve all of the problems. Peter Schiff explains that he already pays 45% of his income in income taxes. He says that if he is so tired of getting taxed that he would rather work less than to pay more taxes.
The main problem with Europe is that everyone is addicted to their entitlements. Of course, that would also accurately describe a large portion of the American public. If the government defaults on its debt, the people who are hurt the most will be ex-government workers and the elderly who may mostly rely on monthly checks from the federal government.
The Youth Unemployment Bomb
From Cairo to London to Brooklyn, too many young people are jobless and disaffected. Inside the global effort to put the next generation to work
Cairo, Egypt: A cloud of tear gas drives back antigovernment protesters on Jan. 28 Jorge Dirkx/Reporters/Redux
By Peter Coy
In Tunisia, the young people who helped bring down a dictator are called hittistes—French-Arabic slang for those who lean against the wall. Their counterparts in Egypt, who on Feb. 1 forced President Hosni Mubarak to say he won’t seek reelection, are the shabab atileen, unemployed youths. The hittistes and shabab have brothers and sisters across the globe. In Britain, they are NEETs—”not in education, employment, or training.” In Japan, they are freeters: an amalgam of the English word freelance and the German word Arbeiter, or worker. Spaniards call them mileuristas, meaning they earn no more than 1,000 euros a month. In the U.S., they’re “boomerang” kids who move back home after college because they can’t find work. Even fast-growing China, where labor shortages are more common than surpluses, has its “ant tribe”—recent college graduates who crowd together in cheap flats on the fringes of big cities because they can’t find well-paying work.
In each of these nations, an economy that can’t generate enough jobs to absorb its young people has created a Read more…
HOW BANKS AND INVESTORS ARE STARVING THE THIRD WORLD
Ellen Brown
“What for a poor man is a crust, for a rich man is a securitized asset class.”
–Futures trader Ann Berg, quoted in the UK Guardian
Underlying the sudden, volatile uprising in Egypt and Tunisia is a growing global crisis sparked by soaring food prices and unemployment. The Associated Press reports that roughly 40 percent of Egyptians struggle along at the World Bank-set poverty level of under $2 per day. Analysts estimate that food price inflation in Egypt is currently at an unsustainable 17 percent yearly. In poorer countries, as much as 60 to 80 percent of people’s incomes go for food, compared to just 10 to 20 percent in industrial countries. An increase of a dollar or so in the cost of a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread for Americans can mean starvation for people in Egypt and other poor countries.
Follow the Money
The cause of the recent jump in global food prices remains a matter of debate. Some analysts blame the Federal Reserve’s “quantitative easing” program (increasing the money supply with credit created with accounting entries), which they warn is sparking hyperinflation. Too much money chasing too few goods is the classic explanation for Read more…
Employment Report: IT SUCKS
Wow…. if you remember on the ADP and Claims numbers, I said I was expecting +100k.
That was way off – we really got +36k.
The unemployment rate fell by 0.4 percentage point to 9.0 percent in January, while nonfarm payroll employment changed little (+36,000), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment rose in manufacturing and in retail trade but was down in construction and in transportation and warehousing. Employment in most other major industries changed little over the month.
Youch.
There’s no love in here. Worse, the benchmark revisions are out, and they show about 300,000 supposedly-reported jobs that didn’t really happen. No, really? How come that number seems to always be in this direction? That is, why is it that the BLS always seems to over-report reality in the establishment survey?
That inconvenient truth, incidentally, is why I always use the household numbers. They’re at least a real survey without BS “adjustments” applied and while they’re subject to Read more…
Take a look at how many ounces of silver have been needed to buy a median-priced home in the US:
For most people, there are some surefire luxuries that signify wealth, a few pearls of conspicuous consumption that say “you’ve made it!” For me, it’s always been a second home. My grandparents owned a vacation home in Arizona and then Florida when I was a kid, and it was an annual highlight to travel there every year.
But something happened on the way to my generation’s iteration of the American dream. Of all the people I know that have second homes, only one acquired it through his own hard work and success. The rest inherited them.
With high unemployment, shaky business conditions, desperate governments, weak real estate demand, and a suspect stock market, owning a vacation home is not even on the radar these days for most Americans. Paying their existing mortgage is the primary concern, something millions of homeowners still aren’t able to do. So, how is it that I can suggest a way to buy a vacation home in this market?
Because there are two trends in motion that I believe will continue working in our favor. And it likely won’t take long for them to reach a culmination point, allowing those of us with such a goal to see it realized.
First, Read more…
Thousands protest in Jordan for third week
Suha Philip Ma’ayeh
AMMAN // For the third consecutive on Friday, Jordanians poured into the streets after noon prayers to protest against soaring prices and call for a change in government.
The Islamist led opposition, professional associations and leftist activists marched yesterday from Al Huesseini Mosque to the capital’s center. They held banners that read “Corruption and normalisation are two faces of the same coin,” called for a “national unity government” and called for the prime minister Samir Rifai to step down.
Police estimated 3,500 people took part in the protest, one of several demonstrations held this month despite two recent government aid packages to mitigate the impact of soaring prices. The measures included a 20-dinar (Dh100) monthly salary increase for state workers and in pension, while the previous aid package increased subsidies for some commodities, including fuel and food staples such as rice and sugar.
Another 2,500 people also took to the streets in six other cities across the country after the noon prayers yesterday. Those protests also called for Mr Rifai’s ouster. Read more…
Economic Warning Signs
Do you see all of the warning signs that are flashing all around you? These days it seems like there is more bad economic news in a single week than there used to be in an entire month. 2011 is already shaping up to be a very dark year for the world economy. The price of food is shooting through the roof and we have already seen violent food riots in countries like Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia. World financial markets are becoming increasingly unstable as the sovereign debt crisis continues to get worse. Meanwhile, the number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits is up, foreclosures are up and poverty continues to spread like a plague throughout the United States. What we are starting to see around the globe is a lot like the “stagflation” of the 1970s. All of the crazy money printing that has been going on is overheating prices for agricultural commodities and precious metals, but all of this new money is not doing much to help the average man or woman on the street. Read more…
United States of Shame…Where does YOUR State Rank?
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