Congress Passes Controversial Free Trade Agreements

Congress approved free trade agreements Wednesday with South Korea, Colombia and Panama, ending a four-year drought in the forming of new trade partnerships and giving the White House and Capitol Hill the opportunity to show they can work together to stimulate the economy and put people back to work. The three landmark deals between the United States and trading partners South Korea, Colombia and Panama approved by the U.S. Congress late Wednesday represented the largest free trade agreements in the U.S. since 1994 and the first free trade agreement made by the U.S. since 2007.

Although free trade provides overall benefits, removing a trade barrier on a particular good hurts the shareholders and employees of the domestic industry that produces that good. Some of the groups that are hurt by foreign competition wield enough political power to obtain protection against imports. Consequently, barriers to trade continue to exist despite their sizable economic costs. According to the U.S. International Trade Commission, for example, the U.S. gain from removing trade restrictions on textiles and apparel would have been almost twelve billion dollars in 2002 alone. Read more....

WikiLeaks - Israel Kept Gaza On Brink Of Economic Collapse

Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip was meant to push the area's economy "to the brink of collapse," according to a U.S. diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks on Wednesday, signaling that Israel was well aware that the policy was taking a heavy toll on the area's civilian population.

Israeli leaders have long maintained that the blockade was necessary to weaken the ruling Hamas militant group. The newly released document, published in Norway's Aftenposten newspaper, indicates that Israel hoped to accomplish that goal by targeting Gaza's 1.5 million people. Read more....

10 Worst Places to Live in America

You don't need the US Misery Index to tell you that things are bad in some parts of the US. Unemployment is near or at all-time highs in many parts of the country, foreclosures continue to happen at unprecedented rates and there are some very real indicators that we are heading toward a double-dip recession.

Factors like unemployment, poverty, and crime are inevitable in American cities with large populations. However, there are some cities which do have a substantial crime rate and unemployment levels, making them America’s most dangerous cities. The worst cities in America to live are generally sorted out according to factors such as the crime rate, unemployment, population, traffic, and poverty level. In the following, you will go through a list of few worst cities in America. Although I haven’t been to all of these places, I’ve seen enough pictures to know that I probably don’t want to visit, let alone live there. Read more....

1/4 American Kids In Poverty & Record Profits, Bonuses

Cenk Uygur discusses yet another report on how corporations are making record profits and executives are taking huge bonuses – at the same time about a quarter of children of America are living in poverty and the unemployment rate is still incredibly high. Also, Republicans are slashing taxes on the rich and corporations while attacking workers rights and other programs that benefit the poor and middle class. Watch the video....

As Public Sector Sheds Jobs, Blacks Are Hit Hardest

Don Buckley lost his job driving a Chicago Transit Authority bus almost two years ago and has been looking for work ever since, even as other municipal bus drivers around the country are being laid off.

At 34, Mr. Buckley, his two daughters and his fiancée have moved into the basement of his mother’s house. He has had to delay his marriage, and his entire savings, $27,000, is gone. “I was the kind of person who put away for a rainy day,” he said recently. “It’s flooding now.”

Mr. Buckley is one of tens of thousands of once solidly middle-class African-American government workers — bus drivers in Chicago, police officers and firefighters in Cleveland, nurses and doctors in Florida — who have been laid off since the recession ended in June 2009. Such job losses have blunted gains made in employment and wealth during the previous decade and undermined the stability of neighborhoods where there are now fewer black professionals who own homes or who get up every morning to go to work. Read more....

Eurozone: Is this really the end?

EVEN as the euro zone hurtles towards a crash, most people are assuming that, in the end, European leaders will do whatever it takes to save the single currency. That is because the consequences of the euro’s destruction are so catastrophic that no sensible policymaker could stand by and let it happen.

There are signs that the euro zone’s economy is heading for recession, if it is not there already. Industrial orders in the euro zone fell by 6.4% in September, the steepest decline since the dark days of December 2008. A closely watched index of euro-zone sentiment, based on surveys of purchasing managers in manufacturing and services, is also signaling contraction, with a reading of 47.2: anything below 50 suggests activity is shrinking. The European Commission’s index of consumer confidence fell in November for the fifth month in a row.

Many are warning that if political leaders don't change course, a breakup of the Eurozone would plunge the United States and the rest of the world into a slowdown and possibly another recession.

"If Europe turns out badly, it's much more likely we'll go into recession," said Michael Spence, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at the New York University Stern School of Business. "If you take a big chunk like Europe and turn it down, it would probably bring everybody else down, including us." Read more....

Top 10 money wasting habits of American

The Census Bureau recently released a study showing that the average American household income was forty-nine thousand four hundred forty-five dollars last year. When you factor in inflation, that puts us exactly where we were fifteen years ago. Want to hear something even more hope-killing? Our poverty rate last year was over fifteen percent. That’s the highest rate since 1993, and a number that translates into forty-six million people. It’s an understatement to say that Americans do NOT have a lot of excess money in their pockets. That’s why we all owe it to ourselves to keep a tight handle on the cash that we DO have.

Spending wisely and putting a stop to wasting money can help deliver you safely on the other side of hard times. Reckless spending during a recession, whether on a personal, business or governmental level, can only perpetuate or deepen financial problems.

Here are the top ten ways that you – and most Americans – blow money when you don’t need to.

The first item on the list?

Buying New Things

Buying things new when there is no good reason not to buy secondhand. When you “have” to buy something with its original packaging, you can usually bank on paying double what you should. Experts will tell you that automobiles are the biggest offenders here: nobody should buy a new car, they reason, because it inevitably makes better financial sense to buy a solid used car. Read more.....

Outstanding Explanation: Why Israel can't withdraw to its pre '67 borders line

An outstanding Explanation on Why Israel can't withdraw to its pre '67 borders line. Please Share this link or video. Watch the video....

Reasons For Our Economic Downfall

A brief analysis of our economic condition is provided. The list of problems is of course not exhaustive. Consider, for example, the exorbitant amount of legal fees, litigation, and frivolous advertising in this country that add virtually nothing to our economic well-being, or the insane profits that the few oil companies, banks, and investment firms are making while keeping the rest of us hostage to themselves...

more also need to be said about the banks and Wall Street gambling casinos who through hedge funds, derivatives, and other complicated financial instruments continue to screw the masses for the benefit of the 1% who control the Congress and the rest of the population... or the business schools who train the future generation while entrenched in this morass of greed and self interest without themselves realizing it. Watch the analysis video....

Legal Education Reform

American legal education is in crisis. The economic downturn has left many recent law graduates saddled with crushing student loans and bleak job prospects. The law schools have been targets of lawsuits by students and scrutiny from the United States Senate for alleged false advertising about potential jobs. Yet, at the same time, more and more Americans find that they cannot afford any kind of legal help.

Addressing these issues requires changing legal education and how the profession sees its responsibility to serve the public interest as well as clients. Some schools are moving in promising directions. The majority are still stuck in an outdated instructional and business model. Read more....

American Failure in Education, Reason- Moyers, Susan Jacoby

Bill Moyers and Susan Jacoby review her book, "American Unreason." They discuss the current state of American education and discourse, and our failure to produce informed citizens. We "get the government we deserve." Regardless of political party or religious conviction, we should demand better. Watch the analysis video....

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke: Long-Term Unemployment A 'National Crisis'

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday that long-term unemployment is an American "national crisis" and suggested that Congress should take further action to combat it. He also said lawmakers should provide more help to the battered housing industry.
THE failure of the Congressional super committee to come up with any agreement on the budget deficit makes it even less likely that Congress will rise above its partisan divisions and act on behalf of the millions of out-of-work Americans.

A tax cut that reaches 160 million Americans and government aid for the long-term unemployed will expire at the end of the year — sucking $165 billion out of the economy next year — unless Congress takes action.

The Federal Reserve is also paying heed. At a speech in late August, Chairman Ben Bernanke warned that long-term unemployment could harm the economy’s long-run growth prospects, though since then he has done little to help. Nothing would be so effective as a strong economy and a tight labor market. Despite growing interest in their troubles, that seems a distant prospect for those languishing on the edge of the working world. Read more....

US debt: how big is it and who owns it?

Who owns US debt around the world - and how big is it? Find out how China got to own over $1.4 trillion - and see which other countries have a slice.

Is the US economy going to avoid a $14tn debt meltdown? Barack Obama stepped up pressure on Republicans to sign up to a deficit reduction deal on Monday, warning that he will deploy his presidential veto to prevent them blocking billions of dollars in automatic spending cuts that are now scheduled to start in 2013.

The cuts to military and domestic spending were triggged by the collapse of the congressional super committee set up to reach a compromise on reducing the national deficit. How big is the national debt?

So, how does the US borrow money? Treasury bonds are how the US - and all governments for that matter - borrow hard cash: they issue government securities, which other countries and institutions buy. So, the US national debt is owned mostly in the US - and the $4tn foreign-owned debt is owned predominantly by Asian economies. Read more....

Protesters re-Occupy Wall Street after expulsion

Last night Occupy Wall Street got a rude awakening when protesters were forced out of Zuccotti Park. Demonstrators were evicted by police in order to address safety and sanitation concerns. But this morning protesters marched back to the park after a Manhattan judge ordered the park to reopened. Alexa O'Brien, founder of USDayofRage.Org, gives us the latest and tells us what it was like during the raid. Watch the video...

Where does the money go?

There's no denying the fact that Americans love to spend money. The bigger, faster, sleeker, and shinier something is, the better - and in all likelihood more expensive - it is. This line of thinking is what leads so many people into the kind of unnecessary debt that is serious enough to scare off creditors and sometimes even employers.

The nation’s economic crisis has changed how Americans think about and handle money, according to a report today in the Chicago Sun-Times. The newspaper cited an Aug. 31 survey by Peter D. Hart Associates for Citibank that shows that 57 percent of Americans believe that the economic realities of the nation have changed forever. That’s up from 51 percent in the same survey conducted a year ago.

The national phone survey was conducted within the United States by TNS on behalf of ING DIRECT USA from June 22 to June 26, 2011 and included 1,000 adults age 18+. No estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated.

The average consumer has a budget that is split into a large number of monthly and yearly spending. The average consumer spends $49,638 a year on a range of necessary and desired expenditures. These expenditures come out of an annual household income of $63,091 per year on average, before taxes. The average consumer owns 1.9 vehicles, and 67 percent of them are homeowners with loans. Households average 2.5 people and 1.3 earners reside in each. The largest expenditure of the average household is housing. This takes up an average 34.1 percent of the yearly budget of households. Read more....

The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class

Distinguished law scholar Elizabeth Warren teaches contract law, bankruptcy, and commercial law at Harvard Law School. She is an outspoken critic of America's credit economy, which she has linked to the continuing rise in bankruptcy among the middle-class.

Distinguished law scholar Elizabeth Warren teaches contract law, bankruptcy, and commercial law at Harvard Law School. She is an outspoken critic of America's credit economy, which she has linked to the continuing rise in bankruptcy among the middle-class. Watch the video....

What Percent Are You?

The Occupy Wall Street movement seeks to speak for the bottom 99% of the population by income, which includes pretty much everyone who makes less than $500,000 a year.

According to the protesters’ unofficial website, “Occupy Wall Street” is a leaderless movement of people from many different backgrounds. “The one thing we all have in common is that we are the 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%,” the website says. A related site called We Are the 99% records stories from people around the country.

The calculator above shows where your income stands on the wide range of the 99%. An annual salary above $506,000 puts you in the top 1%, while you need to make less than $2,500 a year to be in the bottom 1%. Where do you stand? Read more....

Is the Cost of Living Really Rising?

According to Prof. Steve Horwitz, one contemporary economic myth is that the cost of living has consistently risen for Americans over the past century. In fact, prices are higher today than they were 100 years ago. However, prices today have been heavily influenced by inflation. One way of avoiding inflationary distortions is to look at amount of labor hours required to make a purchase. Using this analysis, Prof. Horwitz finds that most goods and services have never been cheaper. Watch the video.....

Theft is on the rise in a worsening economy

It is not strange to hear about cars, jewelry or money being stolen. These days, desperate thieves are choosing bizarre targets: copper wires, air conditioning units, storm drain covers, grapes, ambulances, pain killers and even bees. This petty thievery of agricultural goods and odd supplies is the new norm in a rapidly worsening economy where unemployment is rampant.

A sagging economy and high beef prices have stock thefts on the rise. Thefts are on the rise from the Beef Belt in Texas and Oklahoma to other beef producing states in the Midwest and South. These modern rustlers won't fit the typical Hollywood image of mounted desperados wearing 10-gallon hats with bandannas covering their faces, said Billy Powell, executive vice president of the Alabama Cattlemen's Association.

It seems that more and more Americans are becoming desperate enough to steal scrap metal in order to survive this economy. With staggering unemployment figures at an all-time high; home foreclosures in the millions, and with little hope of ever achieving that “American Dream”, stealing scrap metal here and there to put food on their tables may be the only option left for some Americans. The downturn in the economy and record unemployment numbers have created a heightened sense of desperation, which subsequently is leading to a rapid increase in crime levels all over the country. Read more....

Our most audacious forecast yet

Nothing much from the markets yesterday. The Dow fell 72 points. Gold went down $5.

Meanwhile, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement goes on in America. And 70,000 Greeks “clash with police”, say the news headlines.

People are upset. They know something is wrong. But they don’t know what. The real explanation is too complicated. They won’t sit still for it. So, they look for scapegoats – the rich, the banks, the Chinese.

There’s a joke making its way around the internet. Goldman Sachs has decided to try to profit from the OWS protests. They’ve set up a “Rage Fund” that will invest in companies that make police batons, pepper spray, bandages and glass windows.

It’s a joke. But it may turn out to be a good investment strategy. Read more....

MADE IN U.S.A. vs. MADE IN CHINA

The illegals here are getting free housing, welfare, food stamps etc, they can be found applying for it in health departments and human resource offices across the nation, that’s how they can work cheap! BTW Barry is backed by the muslim nations, it’s his job to destroy this country, they’ve paid for his schooling and political funds, he’s approaching a billion for the next election. The economy can’t recover until people are back to work, but jobs are outsourced to cheaper countries!

Most Americans just don’t care about this country and all companies located in the U.S. LIKE ACADEMY really just care about the dollar. Watch the video....

Payroll Tax Cut To Come Up After Thanksgiving

President Barack Obama said on Tuesday U.S. lawmakers would have a chance to vote again next week to extend a payroll tax cut which, he said, would hurt the economy and employment if it were not extended into 2012.

"In the spirit of Thanksgiving, we are going to give them another chance," Obama said, referring to lawmakers in Congress and Thursday's U.S. Thanksgiving holiday.
Once the Turkey coma wears off, Congress will take up the payroll tax cut and an extension of unemployment insurance.

Both are scheduled to run out at the end of the year. Estimated price tag for them is in the neighborhood of $200 billion. "Next week they are going to get to take a simple vote. If they vote no again the typical family's taxes will go up $1,000 next year."

While the details were still being worked on, Democrats could attempt to pay for extending the tax cut by raising taxes on the wealthy. Republicans have blocked that idea in the past and likely would do so again. Read more....

Insight: Fidelity's expensive debt raises eyebrows

Fidelity Investments gives a select group of employees an unusual perk. It lets them make unsecured loans to the company at annual interest rates that have paid them nearly 20 percent in recent years.

"It was the best investment I could have made," said Ani Chitaley, a former Fidelity senior vice president. "When I left (in 2007) to start my own company, I had to give them up. That was a sad day."

The promissory notes, officially called junior subordinated debentures, have become a key but expensive source of capital for the world's second-largest mutual fund over the past decade.

The interest on the debt is tax deductible and some of the debentures also double as an equity substitute for top performers and other insiders.

Several current and former Fidelity executives, who did not want to be identified for this story, said the debenture program is a relic of the past when Fidelity's profit margin was substantially higher. And they argue the expensive debt puts the company at a competitive disadvantage.

Analysts at Moody's Investors Service have singled out the employee-held debenture debt as an area of concern.

"In our view, the debentures carry substantial coupon rates that have driven FMR's interest expense to very high levels," Moody's analyst Dagmar Silva wrote in an October 27 research note. "...Fidelity's net income margins have consistently been more in line with our expectations for lower rated firms, in part due to its corporate structure."

Fidelity spokeswoman Anne Crowley said the company uses the internal debt to make investments to grow its businesses and better serve its customers. Fidelity declined to make executives available for comment.

ADVANTAGES OF PRIVATE OWNERSHIP

"We believe our private ownership and capital structure gives us many strategic and competitive advantages that make us very comfortable with our approach," Crowley said. Read more...

When will America Collapse? .....

When will America Collapse? Answers from Jim Rogers, Max Wolf, David Walker, Gerald Celente, David Vickers, CNN's Jack Cafferty The end of the Mayan Calender on Dec 2012 may just be coincidence with the coming economic turmoil, but damn isn't it odd they picked that year. Only God can foresee the future, but it don't look good. Read more....

10 Things not to do with your money

1. Don't finance your child's education with retirement savings

Alexey Bulankov, a certified financial planner for McCarthy Asset Management in Redwood Shores, Calif., says, "You can finance your child's education, you cannot finance retirement." Look into every possible avenue to finance your child's education, including student loans, grants, scholarships and work internships, which are offered at some private colleges. It's possible your child may not get to attend the college he or she would like, but it's important that your retirement savings not be touched. There's little room for "do-overs" for your financial security at this point, the experts say.

2. Don't spend on impulse, make a budget

You need to calculate how much money you need every month. You should have a clear idea as to where your money goes. A good planning and budgeting on household and other expenses will help you control your finances. Identify your wants and needs and make a clear choice. Always keep an account of what you are spending on.

3. Don’t use IRS like piggy bank

Don’t use the IRS like a piggy bank. There is no reason to take your hard-working money out of commission. Just think, if you’re annual refund is $1,000 that means you could increase your take - home pay by more than $83 a month. Read more...

4.

Big Myths about the US Economy

The problem with what passes for debate about American capitalism these days is that it's underpinned by lies and spin. Do you believe any of these tall tales?

Most people have no idea what's really going on in the economy. They're living on spin, myths and downright lies. And if we don't know the facts, how can we make intelligent decisions? There's just one problem: We're still living in a fantasyland.

Here are the three biggest economic myths -- the things everything thinks they know about the economy that just ain't so:

Taxes have been going up and are high compared to levels in other countries.

The first part is wrong; the second is also wrong but contains a grain of truth.
The percentage of income that Americans spend on taxes is the lowest it’s been since 1958, according an analysis by USA Today. And with the exception of five years after the 1986 Tax Reform Act, the highest marginal income and corporate tax rates are the lowest they’ve been since World War II.

The only tax increases passed during the Obama administration were part of the health-care reform bill, through which Congress, among other things, raised the Medicare payroll tax for high earners, said Curtis Dubay, a senior tax policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation. The problem, he said, is the federal corporate tax rate, which stands at 35 percent.

While it’s true the official rate is high, few corporations pay it, said Robertson Williams of the Tax Policy Center.

“The effective tax rates that corporations pay actually goes down a lot with deductions and puts us closer to the middle of the pack,” he said. “It complicates the tax system substantially and makes it more difficult for corporations to figure out what their taxes are.”

Land of Homeowners

The dream of owning a home is actually more the reality in other countries. In the book, the authors point to the most recent data, which show only 68% of Americans owned their home in 2002, compared with 92% in Hungry, 84% in Mexico, 72% in the U.K. and 71% in Australia.

Read more....

Now, France, and Sarkozy, look vulnerable as Euro crisis persists

PARIS: With the humiliating defeat on Sunday of the Socialists in Spain, the two-year euro crisis has already toppled eight governments, sending shivers of anxiety through the Elysee Palace and even the White House.

The main theme of recent elections has been voters' unhappiness with austerity, uncertainty and whatever party or coalition happens to be in power. But under the pressure of the markets and the demands of Germany, Europe's de facto financial leader, new governments have largely had to promise more of the same.

As the markets have swung from one vulnerable target to another, Ireland, Portugal, Greece, Italy, Finland, Denmark and Slovakia have all altered their governments, either through elections or parliamentary maneuverings.

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France fears being next, with French bond costs rising to record highs, growth flat and a presidential election in April. The danger of a downgrade of French bonds has weakened Sarkozy, undermining his efforts to stay a full partner in the Franco-German couple that is leading efforts to solve the euro crisis. Read more...

Top 20 cheapest public universities in America

According to the U.S. Department of Education, the average tuition fee at four-year or above public universities in the United States is $6,397 for the 2009/2010 academic year.

The College Affordability and Transparency Lists released by the department on June 30, rank U.S. College price tags for perspective students and their parents. One list named the public universities with the lowest tuition.

The net price refers to the price of attendance for full-time students after grants and scholarships are taken into account. The U.S. national average net price is $10,747.
Following are the top 20 public universities in U.S. with lowest tuition: Read more...

Obama: $1.2 trillion in cuts must happen

President says that despite the super committee's failure, Congress cannot escape necessary cuts.

Click here to watch the video..

Warren Buffett says the super-rich pay lower tax rates than others

It's not often you see someone stand up and say, "Tax me more!"

Yet that's just what famed investor Warren Buffett has done in an op-ed in the New York Times headlined, "Stop Coddling the Super-Rich." Buffett says that very wealthy people like himself pay lower tax rates than the middle class, thanks to special tax categories for investment income.

Buffett said if it were up to him, people earning $50 million would not see any tax increases, only people who “make a lot of money and pay a very low tax rate, like me.” Buffett did not put on a number on what he considers a “very high income.” As an example, Buffett said he paid an effective tax rate of 17.4 percent, while people who worked in his office made much less but paid higher effective tax rates of between 33 percent and 41 percent, averaging 36 percent.

OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.

"If you make money with money, as some of my super-rich friends do, your percentage may be a bit lower than mine. But if you earn money from a job, your percentage will surely exceed mine — most likely by a lot," Buffett wrote. "To understand why, you need to examine the sources of government revenue. Last year about 80 percent of these revenues came from personal income taxes and payroll taxes. The mega-rich pay income taxes at a rate of 15 percent on most of their earnings but pay practically nothing in payroll taxes. It’s a different story for the middle class: typically, they fall into the 15 percent and 25 percent income tax brackets, and then are hit with heavy payroll taxes to boot." Read more....

The Bush-era tax cuts that sank the supercommittee

The tax cuts have proved to be the kryptonite that defeated supercommittee set up to tackle the US's $15tn deficit

In June 2001, president George W Bush signed into law one of the most sweeping changes in US tax history. More than a decade later the cuts are being blamed for the collapse of bipartisan talks aimed at tackling the debt mountain the built up in the decade that followed.

The Bush-era tax cuts are set to expire at the end of next year and have proved to be the kryptonite that defeated a bi-partisan "supercommittee" set up to find ways to tackle the US's $15tn deficit. Republicans dug in against any agreement that did not extend current income-tax rates, Democrats held out for higher rates on families with taxable income over $250,000 a year.

Away from Washington the senior economists – and even some senior Republicans - seem to agree that a compromise was needed and that the tax cuts had done more harm than good.

"This is going to be the big debate for 2012," said Simon Johnson, professor of entrepreneurship at MIT's Sloan School of Management and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The tax cuts were "inappropriate, excessive and irresponsible," he said. "Cutting taxes when you are going to war is a pretty silly thing to do," he said. "They were based on extremely optimistic projections that turned out not to be correct. If you don't extend them, the amount of additional cuts you need to make to reach a sustainable debt level are pretty small. If you do extend them, make them permanent, you are looking at a very big adjustment."

In a recent report the non-partisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities concluded government spending under president Barack Obama was not the prime reason for today's massive deficit. "The fact remains, the economic downturn, president Bush's tax cuts and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq explain virtually the entire deficit over the next ten years," the center concluded. Read more...

Top ten most expensive colleges and universities in the US

Below is the list of top ten most expensive colleges and universities in the US

1. Bates College

Tuition: $51,300
Location: Lewiston, ME

2. Connecticut College

Tuition: $51,115
Location: New London, CT

Read more....

The Top 0.1% Of The Nation Earn Half Of All Capital Gains

Capital gains are the key ingredient of income disparity in the US-- and the force behind the winner takes all mantra of our economic system. If you want even out earning power in the U.S, you have to raise the 15% capital gains tax.

Income and wealth disparities become even more absurd if we look at the top 0.1% of the nation's earners-- rather than the more common 1%. The top 0.1%-- about 315,000 individuals out of 315 million-- are making about half of all capital gains on the sale of shares or property after 1 year; and these capital gains make up 60% of the income made by the Forbes 400.

It's crystal clear that the Bush tax reduction on capital gains and dividend income in 2003 was the cutting edge policy that has created the immense increase in net worth of corporate executives, Wall St. professionals and other entrepreneurs.

The reduction in the tax from 20% to 15% continued the step-by-step tradition of cutting this tax to create more wealth. It had first been reduced from 35% in 1978 at a time of stock market and economic stagnation to 28% . Again 1981, at the start of the Reagan era, it was reduced again to 20%-- raised back to 28% in 1987, on the eve of the October 19 232% crash in the market. In 1997 Clinton agreed to reduce it back to 20%, which move was an inducement for the explosion of hedge funds and private equity firms-- the most "rapidly rising cohort within the top 1 per cent." Read more.....

U.S wages are out of line

America's familiar debate over income inequality conceals and confuses at least as much as it reveals. To hear most journalists and activists tell the story, our country is the scene of a rampant and long-running economic travesty, as the rich grow richer, the poor grow poorer, and the distance between them belies the promise of America even in times of prosperity. Wages in the United States are out of line with the rest of the world. The basis for this assertion is that the U.S. has a large trade deficit.

It is time to reform public employee compensation in California. Public employee compensation is out of line with the private sector in every area. There are thousands of individual government agencies in the state, employing almost 2 million individuals. Whether the standard is salary, working conditions, benefits, or especially pensions, public employees in California receive compensation far in excess of what workers in the private sector do. It is illiberal and unjust, and no true liberal or progressive should support current public employee compensation. Read more....

Bill O'Reilly To Quit Fox News Over Obama Tax Increase?

Fox News host Bill O'Reilly threatened to stop doing his job if President Obama raises the top marginal tax rate on the richest Americans. The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur gives his take. Click here to watch the video....

Top 10 Companies That Will Save the American Economy

America lost its lead as the world’s top manufacturer to China. Some experts on the global economy argue that the demise of US industry will accelerate as unemployment remains high and the government wrestles with its budgetary problems. The critical global needs of the 21st Century that 24/7 Wall St. reviewed were: the ability to organize and control information, the ability to cure disease, the ability to control the efficient use and distribution of natural resources, the ability to educate broad groups of people and the ability to transport people and cargo.

The American companies that are the leaders in providing solutions for each of these needs are often without parallel outside the US. If they do have competition, it is rare and usually a fraction of their size. Below is the list of American companies which really helps to save the economy:

Read more...

Top 10 cities with the most powerful economies

So what cities are the most economically powerful? Florida developed The Global Economic Power Index to rank cities based on economic output or gross regional product, banking and financial power, and innovation.

Here are the top 10 most powerful economic cities:

Click here for more....

Hopeful Signs for Jobs and Home Construction in America

The number of people applying for unemployment benefits fell last week to the lowest level since early April, a sign that layoffs were easing and that hiring might pick up. The American economy added 80,000 jobs in October, and job growth in the two previous months was much stronger than first thought, an encouraging sign as the nation searches for a way out of the jobs crisis. The U.S. unemployment rate dropped in July to deliver the labor market's best performance in a year, and while the decline was slight it was enough to raise hopes that the economy is on the cusp of a recovery.

A report from the Commerce Department showed that home builders broke ground on a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 628000 homes last month. That is roughly half the 1.2 million that economists equate with a healthy housing market. Several builder analysts have upgraded various public builders recently, expecting a turnaround in the sector sometime next year. Housing starts rose significantly in September, but that was largely on the back of the multi-family sector, responding to increased rental demand. Expectations for October starts are flat to lower. Read more....

Do Americans want new health care law repealed?

As the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to review President Barack Obama's healthcare reform, more Americans want to see it repealed than want to keep it, a poll released on Wednesday shows. The vote fulfils a top promise made to Republican voters in the November's mid-term elections. Republicans have also vowed to deny Mr Obama the funds to implement the law. A Rasmussen Reports poll released Monday reveals most voters believe the law will increase the cost of health care, increase the federal deficit and erode the quality of care. Though the Obama administration stepped up its public defense of the law in advance of an unsuccessful repeal vote in the Senate, the numbers suggest many Americans are not accepting the administration's arguments.

Mr Obama, who signed the healthcare change into law in 2010, has said he will veto the bill to overturn the law if it passes in both the House and Senate. Meanwhile, the renewed debate has given congressional Democrats an opportunity vigorously to defend the law's more popular provisions.

Americans' views on repealing the healthcare law mirror their reactions to its passage. In October, Gallup found 40% of Americans saying passage of the healthcare law was a good thing and 48% a bad thing. The poll indicates a wide partisan divide on the issue, with 78 percent of Republicans saying they want their House member to vote to repeal the law, with only 15 percent saying they want their lawmaker to vote to let the law stand. It's a different story for Democrats questioned, who say by a 64 to 24 percent margin that they want their House member to vote against repealing the law. Independent voters are divided, with 43 saying they want their lawmaker to vote to repeal them measure and 39 percent saying they want their House member to vote to uphold the law. Read more.....

How the 1% got richer, while the 99% got poorer

How the 1% got richer, while the 99% got poorer

The just-released Congressional Budget Office report, Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007, supports a basic claim of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement sweeping the country: that deep economic inequality is corrupting politics, culture and American society as a whole.

CBO reports are almost universally considered and relied upon as epitomes of non-partisan research. Simply put, the CBO report shows that over the last quarter century (1979 to 2007, to be exact), the top 1% of income earners enjoyed far, far bigger real income gains than the other 99%. As a result, the share of total income earned by the top 1% rose dramatically – doubling from 10% to 20% – at the expense of falling shares of income for all of the other 99% of the US population.

No wonder the OWS movement showed genius in crafting and adopting the slogan "We are the 99%." No wonder polls already show a majority of Americans expressing sympathy with the OWS movement barely five weeks after it was born – a stunning achievement relative to comparable mass movements in US history. Read more....

Job Discrimination Complaints Hit All-Time High

While America has always stood for being a country with diverse ethnic cultures that make us great, the fear is that those who have the least may suffer the most in this economic downturn as unemployment rises and jobs, even those that were previously unwanted, now become a precious commodity.

The federal agency responsible for investigating employment discrimination charges reported this week that the number of complaints coming from workers and job seekers has hit an all-time high. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) is a proposed bill in the United States Congress that would prohibit discrimination against employees on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity by civilian, nonreligious employers with at least 15 employees.

Section 1981 of the U.S. Code provides additional federal remedies to deter harassment and intentional discrimination in the workplace. Amended in 1991, § 1981 provides the requisite elements for proving a disparate impact claim and permits a jury to award compensatory and punitive damages in situations of intentional discrimination. Further, the U.S. Supreme Court has recently interpreted § 1981 to imply a private cause of action for race-based retaliation claims. A race-based retaliation claim is one in which an employer has retaliated against an employee for having previously filed a complaint of racial-discrimination. Read more....

Top 20 Lowest Paying Jobs in America

List of top 20 lowest paying jobs in America

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Cain, Paul, Romney, Gingrich in Dead Heat in Iowa

Herman Cain, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are in a dead heat as the top choices for Iowans likely to attend the Jan. 3 Republican presidential caucuses, according to a Bloomberg News poll. The poll shows Cain at 20 percent, Paul at 19 percent, Romney at 18 percent and Gingrich at 17 percent among the likely attendees. Hans Nichols reports on Bloomberg Television's "InsideTrack." Click here to watch the video

America's Failed Political System

When the 2012 elections finally roll around, Obama will very likely keep the White House. Why? Because the Republicans keep driving the economy down giving help and services to the top 1 percent while the middle class - the voters - are forgotten. Once again Americans will look to our weaker dominate party to fix things, when they can’t even agree amongst themselves.

Since taking back in power in 2010, the Republicans are still talking about stopping so-called “Obamacare,” and making abortion and immigration illegal. While they are talking a great deal, they are doing very little about their key issues and few Americans seem to care.

Meanwhile, the Democrats have been pushed further and further to the right to win conservative voters. Rather than looking out for the average guy, they too court the big corporations. Sure, they talk about us. They still have a few union friends and pretend to stick up for the minorities. But they too are doing very little to fight for the majority of Americans.

Politicians need to wake up to the fact that the American people are still talking about jobs. Obama gave us a very centrist jobs bill, but the point of it is very clearly to help him get re-elected. The jobs it creates will run out in 2013. Many of his Republican would-be replacements seem to think that mirroring the environmental protections, workers rights and education of most third world countries would be the best jobs plan. However, not many Americans are willing to fight for a job making $3 an hour, seven days a week.

It has been said before, but now more than ever it seems clear that what we are doing just isn't working. The fact is that America’s political parties are not able to represent the average American. They have proven this time and time again. The Occupy Wall Street movement is likely the largest evidence, although through all of their efforts, not much real change is taking place. Yes there is the corporate backed Tea Party, but if they were as powerful and anti-government as they like to see themselves, more Libertarians would have been elected back in 2010, not more Republicans. Read more....

Middle-Class Areas Shrink as Income Gap Grows, New Report Finds

The portion of American families living in middle-income neighborhoods has declined significantly since 1970, according to a new study, as rising income inequality left a growing share of families in neighborhoods that are mostly low-income or mostly affluent.

“The middle class really means you are beginning to have more disposable income, not living at a subsistence level. If you think about what drives our current economy, its people’s ability to buy goods and services in the marketplace. With the loss of disposable income which comes with a declining middle class, you have begun to put kinks in the economic engine we all rely on.”

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer at a staggering rate. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a blinding pace.

Here are the statistics to prove it:

• • 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
• • 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007. Read more.....

What is the future of US economy?

Think back to 1967. The job you have today may not even have existed. The Internet, and all the jobs that have come with it, were decades away. The Detroit automakers were dominant. Quality of life was different, too: The median household income was an inflation-adjusted $40,261, compared with $50,303 in 2008. There were also a hundred million fewer of us; 1967 was the year the U.S. population hit 200 million. We passed the 300 million mark in 2006, and by 2050, there will very likely be more than 400 million Americans. The lifestyle of the average American may change just as much from 2010 to 2050 as it did from 1967 to 2006. The economy will especially undergo change.

I believe that most Americans are already aware that the economy of the United States is slowly collapsing because of huge trade deficits, off shoring of manufacturing jobs, outsourcing of white collar jobs, the ballooning costs of Social Security and Medicare, the faltering housing market, the credit (subprime) crunch, the continuously unbalanced budget, and an exponentially rising national debt. Additionally, I believe that most Americans are aware that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are probably failing and adding even more financial pressures to the economy of the United States of America. Read more....

World's top 100 universities 2011

The US has topped a reputation ranking of worldwide universities taking nearly half of the top 100 places, but how do other countries compare?

Harvard University ranks highest in the world according to the Times Higher Education for reputation in teaching and research. See the list

10 Most Dangerous Jobs in America

Here's a list of the 10 most dangerous jobs in the US last year - according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Watch the video

What Percentage Lives in Poverty?

Do poor people represent the bottom 16 percent of the population or the bottom 15 percent? The answer matters more than you might think.

The difficulty of measuring economic well-being helps explain why it’s hard for people to figure out what economic percentile they belong to or which public policies would best serve their interests.

A difference of one percentage point in the overall poverty rate is no big deal. But the new Supplemental Poverty Measure, or S.P.M., developed by the Census Bureau, which yields the slightly higher overall estimate, shows lower rates of poverty among children and higher rates among the elderly than the traditional measure. An estimate based on a measure similar to the S.P.M. suggests that poverty has increased less over time.

The S.P.M. goes beyond consideration of money income to estimate the value of such in-kind transfers as food stamps, net taxes paid to government (taxes paid less the value of tax credits received), and medical and work-related expenses (such as child care and commuting costs). It also employs a new standard of need, linked to what low-income families actually spend.

Children are the beneficiaries of more of the in-kind transfers measured by the S.P.M. than people over age 65 and have fewer out-of-pocket medical expenses. As a result, they look less susceptible to poverty under the new measure than the traditional one, especially compared with older adults. Safety net programs such as food stamps expanded during the Great Recession. Read more....

Degrees That Employers Want

Find out which 6 degrees rank highest in terms of employment.

Come graduation time, the English major, history buff, computer whiz, and business student all look alike in their caps and gowns.

Their job prospects, on the other hand, look very different.

Corporate consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas polled 100 human resource professionals in 2010 to find out which degrees have the best odds of helping students find employment.

If you're contemplating a return to school and deciding what you want to study, read on for the six degrees that rank highest in terms of employment.

#1 - Health Care Degree

Graduates with recession-proof degrees in health care could find great success, according to Challenger. In fact, more than one in four (26.3 percent) HR professionals picked health care as the best bet for job security. Nurses are receiving the most employment offers in this category.

Desirable Degrees:
Nursing
Physical Therapy
Pharmacy
Medical Technician

Average Starting Pay:
Nursing: $52,178
Health & Related Sciences: $35,869

#2 - Business Administration Degree

It's no coincidence that business is booming for graduates with a business degree...it's the most popular bachelor's degree in the country.

Graduating with a degree in business administration puts job seekers in the second strongest position overall, just behind health care, according to the Challenger survey.

Desirable Degrees:
Business
Business Administration
Business Administrative Support

Average Starting Pay:
Business Administration: $44,171


#3 - Computer Science Degree

Computers are an indispensable part of the economy, and so are graduates who study computer science, which ranks as the third most valuable degree in today's employment market.

Desirable Degrees:
Computer Science
Technology Support
Information Technology and Systems

Average Starting Pay:
Computer Science: $61,783
Information Sciences & Systems: $49,318

Read more...

The stock market’s big lie revealed

BOSTON (MarketWatch) — Millions of people still put their faith in the stock market.

Even after the events of the past dozen years people still hold trillions of dollars in equities and equity mutual funds in their personal accounts and 401(k) plans.

They believe, as they’ve repeatedly been told, that “free” and public markets offer the best long-term deal for themselves and for the economy as a whole. They are told that the stock market is “efficient,” always setting the “right” prices for securities and always squeezing the best performance out of the economy. Our country, including our government, relies to a remarkable degree on the idea that if you let stocks trade publicly they will “find their level” and we will all gain. Even the Supreme Court has cited the verdict of the stock market in support of decisions.

But is that right? Or is it all a big lie?

Into my hands last week fell a confidential document that makes me wonder, once again.

It is the latest analysis of the private-equity industry by Cambridge Associates, a highly regarded investment advisory firm. Private-equity firms jealously guard their performance figures from the public and, to a lesser extent, from competitors. The person who gave me the document begged me not to disclose him as a source.

Why is the document so explosive?

Because it shows what a terrible deal the public stock markets have really been for ordinary investors. And it does that by showing how much better investors have done in the hands of small groups of private-equity managers.

The numbers, reported as of June 30, are simply staggering.

Over any decent stretch, private equity has trounced the Standard & Poor’s 500 index. Read more.....

Is America Facing Financial Ruin?

People and governments around the world are fast running out of money. This is common news today, the inability to meet payments and the building up of debt. Though many individuals, corporations, towns, cities, states and sovereign governments are in this situation no one has gotten into deeper hock than the United States Government. They have been able to borrow and spend without limit but now they have hit a wall.

Reality always has a way of rearing its' ugly head and this is going to be ugly beyond comparison. Inflation and depression, people are going to get an up close and personal look at why our Constitution was an important safeguard and what happens when people don't learn from history.

Since we ALL are paying the national debt, how about just sending a million dollars to every American to pay off their debt first and purchase what they need and want second. We'll call it a loan to ourselves. If we're stuck with the payments we might as well experience some direct benefit - even if it is fleeting.

Most of America isn’t even aware how close we came to a financial meltdown. No I’m not talking about the ’07-’08 crisis, but rather the very stealthy one that occurred in late 1998. So you thought that troubles were over for the banking system. Now, the Financial Times reports that the 35 largest US banks will come up $100 to $150 billion short of capital after the Basel III global banking regulations kick in, "with 90 per cent of the shortfall concentrated in the biggest six banks, according to Barclays Capital." To comply with the liquidity requirements of Basel, these banks will also need to come up with half a trillion in cash or "easy-to-sell" assets. Read more.....

Obama administration's attempt to "create jobs" didn't turn out so well

How President Obama Killed Thousands of Jobs


First, the good news: President Barack Obama has finally created some "green jobs." Now for the bad news: They are not in the United States, but in Finland.

Over the last several months, radical environmentalists along with Hollywood celebrity activists descended on the White House in protest, urging President Barack Obama to block the construction of the $7 billion pipeline that would bring in more than 700,000 barrels of oil per day from Alberta, Canada, to the Texas Gulf coast. Last week, they got their wish.

The creation of environmentally friendly jobs has been at the top of Barack Obama's policy agenda since coming into office. With the first of his now many jobs plans, the President set out to fulfill his campaign promise of spending $150 billion to create ten million green jobs. Alas, things didn't quite work out as planned.

Though the White House is loath to admit it, a recent analysis of the administration's stimulus program found that for each job created, taxpayers coughed up a stunning $278,000. Read more....

The collapse of health and the downfall of the U.S. economy (preview)

A new economic study by the U.S. government reveals that health care spending is rising so rapidly in the United States that in less than ten years, it will represent 20% of the domestic economy. That's an astonishing $1 out of every $5 in economic productivity, almost all of which is based on treating patients with fraudulently approved, dishonestly marketed and utterly harmful prescription drugs that do absolutely nothing to prevent or reverse chronic disease.

This leads us to the astounding (but true) conclusion that conventional medicine is draining the U.S. economy of its productivity and competitiveness. Today, over 16% of the U.S. economy is spent on health care (sick care, actually), making medicine look a lot like a 16% tax on the entire economy. The result, not surprisingly, is that many U.S. corporations can no longer compete in the global marketplace. General Motors, for example, was spending more money on health care than steel. The result? The company is now largely considered bankrupt.

But GM is just the tip of the iceberg on this issue. No country in the world spends anywhere close to 16% of its GDP on health care. Only the United States. But why does the U.S. spend so much in the first place?

The answer is simpler than you think. It basically comes down to four factors:

Read more: http://www.naturalnews.com/019321_Disease_Economy_economic_news.html#ixzz1dkhjWupd

America's Top 10 Corporate Taxpayers

To determine the ten biggest payers, we looked at businesses that had the highest tax obligation for their most recent fiscal year. Below is the list of the tax obligations at ten companies that finished last year.

What we should be curious about is how we stack up against the rest of our countries’ citizens. If everybody earns $1 million a year, being a millionaire isn’t very special anymore. Everything is relative. Let’s learn about each others’ incomes shall we?

WHAT THE TOP 1%, 5%, 10%, 25% and 50% MAKE IN AMERICA

Based on the Internal Revenue Service’s 2010 database below, here’s how much the top Americans make: Read more....

Afterburner with Bill Whittle: Rich Man, Poor Man

Despite what you hear from the media and the Democrat party, the poor are getting richer. In fact, America’s poor are so rich, we should be celebrating it. Bill Whittle has the facts to back it...Watch the video

Google’s Lab of Wildest Dreams

In a top-secret lab in an undisclosed Bay Area location where robots run free, the future is being imagined.

It’s a place where your refrigerator could be connected to the Internet, so it could order groceries when they ran low. Your dinner plate could post to a social network what you’re eating. Your robot could go to the office while you stay home in your pajamas. And you could, perhaps, take an elevator to outer space.

These are just a few of the dreams being chased at Google X, the clandestine lab where Google is tackling a list of 100 shoot-for-the-stars ideas. In interviews, a dozen people discussed the list; some work at the lab or elsewhere at Google, and some have been briefed on the project. But none would speak for attribution because Google is so secretive about the effort that many employees do not even know the lab exists.

Although most of the ideas on the list are in the conceptual stage, nowhere near reality, two people briefed on the project said one product would be released by the end of the year, although they would not say what it was.

“They’re pretty far out in front right now,” said Rodney Brooks, a professor emeritus at M.I.T.’s computer science and artificial intelligence lab and founder of Heartland Robotics. “But Google’s not an ordinary company, so almost nothing applies.” Read more....

Occupy Wall Street Protesters Shifting to College Campuses

As city officials around the country move to disband Occupy Wall Street encampments amid growing concerns over health and public safety, protesters have begun to erect more tents on college campuses.

“We are trying to get mass numbers of students out,” said Natalia Abrams, 31, a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, and an organizer with Occupy Colleges, a national group coordinating college-based protesters.

Though only a handful of colleges have encampments, tents went up last week at Harvard in Cambridge, Mass., and here at the University of California, Berkeley. Additionally, protesters in California have vowed to occupy dozens of other campuses in the coming days.

Last Wednesday at Berkeley, about 3,000 people gathered on Sproul Plaza to protest tuition increases, and many then set up a camp. Demonstrators linked arms to protect their tents, but police officers broke through and took down more than a dozen tents, arresting about 40 protesters.

University officials said they had watched city governments struggle to deal with expanding campsites and decided to take a stricter line: no tents, no sleeping, period.

“The present struggles with entrenched encampments in Oakland, San Francisco and New York City led us to conclude that we must uphold our policy,” the university chancellor, Robert J. Birgeneau, said in a statement.

“Our experience with these encampments is that they are never temporary,” said Claire Holmes, a university spokeswoman. “We’ve had a long-term encampment at People’s Park for 43 years.”Read more....

Top 10 Highest Paying Careers in America

If you want to make several million dollars for a few months' work, then, yes, you probably should star in a Hollywood blockbuster. But if you're looking for careers to lead you to financial success, remember to put everything into perspective. The report, which examines nearly 800 jobs across America, finds that the annual mean wages for all occupations is $44,410, only a slight increase from last year. Average hourly wages are $16.27, up from $15.95.

If money's what you're after, then set your sights on more realistic goals by looking at the everyday occupations around you. The 20 highest-paying jobs in the U.S. are within your grasp. That's not to say they're easily attained -- they all require hard work and years of experience, and most of them require extensive education. Still, your odds of becoming a physicist are probably better than becoming quarterback for the New England Patriots.

Until then, look over this list of the 10 highest-paying jobs, according to CBSalary.com, and their projected employment in 2016. The education and experience for each of these jobs vary.

1. Anesthesiologist

Best Jobs rank: 68
Median pay: $290,000
Top pay: $393,000

Read more....