thestatedtruth.com | September 5, 2010
So even though we have nearly 8,000 banks, the bulk of the assets sit with a small number of banks and the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF), the fund that backs the assets of the banks is actually in the red for $15 billion: www.mybudget360.com
thestatedtruth.com | September 4, 2010
Without tax incentives, this may all be for not……..John Mauldin explains the simple facts of job growth…..Want to increase productivity and jobs? The best way it seems, is to encourage private business, and especially startups. “So we can’t count on the Intels or Microsofts to create employment: we need the entrepreneurs.” Delta Force There are [...]
thestatedtruth.com | September 4, 2010
A must listen to interview with Jim Rickards about our economy and more. We all need to be aware of the direction of things to come. This interview from Jim Rickards will help in understanding these things better. Click on the following link or paste into your browser: http://www.kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast/Entries/2010/9/4_Jim_Rickards.html Biography of James G. Rickards…..James G. Rickards is [...]
thestatedtruth.com | September 3, 2010
Very interesting, but also a worst nightmare for tax payers……….Under Pennsylvania law, Ambac Assurance (which insures some of Harrisburg’s debt) can take Harrisburg to court to seek an order to raise property taxes to pay debt. This is the nature of “full faith and credit” of general-obligation bonds. So the tax payers are stuck for the [...]
thestatedtruth.com | September 3, 2010
Bond Vs. Stocks…..Pension Allocations. Looks like bonds are priced to perfection here, so if re allocations take place in the next year like this report says, then the results may not be pretty. If interest rates have any kind of a kick to the upside a broad under performance could be setting up for retirement accounts. Hmmm, isn’t [...]
thestatedtruth.com | September 2, 2010
Key message here is….. for liquidity ratios, equity fund portfolio managers are at an all-time record low of 3.4%, down from 3.8% in June. Tack on the fact that there are less shorts to be covered – being that the market peaked in April, and short interest is now 4.3% of the S&P 500 market cap (in August 2008 it [...]
thestatedtruth.com | September 1, 2010
A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned – this is the sum of good government. – Thomas Jefferson, Writings, 1743-1826 I predict future happiness for Americans if they [...]
thestatedtruth.com | September 1, 2010
This looks like the worst sales performance since the early 1980′s………If autos looked this bad then one would asume that housing should fare no better as consumers still have too much debt…..Here is a quote from Toyota, “We are bracing ourselves for the coming crisis.”. Toyota Motor Corp., General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co., [...]
thestatedtruth.com | September 1, 2010
Front Running the Fed September 1, 2010 “… the public is no longer investing in stocks, but rather in bonds. So far this year through July, bond mutual funds have attracted $224.4bn in net inflows including reinvested dividends. Equity funds have attracted only $17.2bn ytd, with $32.2bn going into International funds while $15.0bn flowed out [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 30, 2010
According to the Investment Company Institute (ICI), bond mutual funds have attracted more money than equity mutual funds for 30 consecutive months through June, the longest stretch in more than 23 years.
thestatedtruth.com | August 30, 2010
Another fraudulent entity, this time it’s a state……The state of New Jersey’s most recent report said that as of June 2009, its pension funds should have assets of $112 billion to meet their future obligations, but have only $66 billion now — This is one of the largest shortfalls of its kind, and is known as an unfunded liability! The state [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 29, 2010
Last week, the Liscio Report posted an interesting comment on their blog, Where we are?: Here’s an updated guide to “where we are”—how the U.S. economy is faring relative to the average of previous financial crises around the world. Though individual details vary, we’re following the script pretty well. In the graphs of four major [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 29, 2010
Yep, this is a true fact….Lawmakers have changed the tax code more than 15,000 times since the last major overhaul in 1986. Unbelievable! The current income tax forms (other than the 1040 short form) are so complicated that the average educated person still needs a tax preparer to do their taxes. This new report from Paul Volcker proposes a [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 29, 2010
By Todd Harrison of Minyanville Seeking Solutions In An Uncertain World We used to play for silver, now we play for life; ones for sport and one’s for blood at the point of a knife. –Grateful Dead We live in interesting times. During the last two years, a financial virus spawned and infected the economic [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 28, 2010
thestatedtruth.com | August 28, 2010
This continues to be a hot subject and the problems continue to get worse. Question: Why should communities have to support bloted state and government pension and benefit plans that are guaranteed no matter what the loses are, and totaly out of control while the rest of the country in the private sector has to live with less because of loses to IRA’s and [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 27, 2010
Here is a summary of parts of a Wall Street Journal article by California Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger on government pensions and employee benefit compensation. Roughly 80 cents of every government dollar in California goes to employee compensation and benefits. Spending on California’s state employees over the past decade rose at nearly three times the rate our [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 27, 2010
By Brian Pretti on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 The most important information in the Treasury International Capital flow stats concerns equities. Have a look at the chart below. To the point, the top clip of the chart is the twelve month moving average of foreign purchases of US equities. Clearly there is cyclical rhythm here. [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 26, 2010
We’re on the road to no where as things degenerate, Rome is burning and the President is on another vacation…..what’s the matter with this picture? By Wes Goodman Aug. 27 (Bloomberg) — The signals from U.S. economic data are “alarming” and the recovery has lost momentum, Mohamed A. El-Erian, Pacific Investment Management Co.’s chief executive officer, wrote in an [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 26, 2010
The Canary in the coal mine. Sounds like a bad situation is setting itself up here…… We went over some of this just a few days ago……It’s an unfolding disaster…. Illinois Teachers’ Retirement System, Springfield, plans to sell $3 billion in investments, or about 10% of its $33.1 billion in assets in the current fiscal year [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 25, 2010
The big players always knew that real estate loans were non-recourse loans. They walk-away voluntarily. Remember the commercial market is more professional than housing. As more of the big boys bite the dust, the huge bounce will crest, and down she comes. Pension funds, insurance companies, small banks, retirement accounts etc. get hammered. Commercial Property Owners Choose to Default By [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 24, 2010
Pension funds everywhere had better pay attention to what’s going on with the Illinois Teachers Retirement System. It’s a wake up call……Hello, anybody there! When the financial crisis erupted, it first hit banks, insurance companies, hedge funds, real estate/ private equity funds, asset managers, and then hit pension funds. But pensions remain very vulnerable because [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 23, 2010
Bill Gross reviewed demographics in his PIMCO August Investment Outlook, and he showed a graph, “Deep Demographic Doo-Doo”…..Now we can read David Rosenberg’s take on the matter. Today David Rosenberg begins to tackle the U.S. demographic issues from his own perspective, with his preliminary conclusions, not validating any current optimistic perspectives in the U.S. economy: “starting next [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 23, 2010
One more reason that the average person on main street has no chance, and that’s official! Interest rates continue to drop for the U.S. Treasury, large companies and home buyers, but for most of the 381 million U.S. credit-card accounts borrowing rates have been flying to the upside at an alarming pace. Amoung the reasons: [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 22, 2010
The Phillie Fed report was just awful. Buried in the details was the fact that the hours-worked index is collapsing, consistent with previews to past recessions. Very worrisome. (From my favorite slicer and dicer of data, Greg Weldon: www.weldononline.com) Bottom line? It is going to be a tough environment for the next 6-8 years. That [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 20, 2010
We’re sure that everyone has the best intentions to pay these hardship loans back, but……. A new study by Fidelity says record number of workers tapped their retirement funds and made hardship withdrawals from their accounts in the second quarter. According to the Fidelity study, “Among the 11 million workers whose 401(k) plans are run by Fidelity, [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 18, 2010
thestatedtruth.com | August 18, 2010
thestatedtruth.com | August 17, 2010
From Zerohedge.com 08/17/2010 The one must watch interview of the week (if not of the year) features Hayman Capital’s Kyle Bass. Bass, who correctly called the subprime implosion (and profited handsomely from it) as a iconoclast contrarian to conventional wisdom, tells David Faber that “given my outlook on the world, I don’t know how I [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 16, 2010
Debt unwind means deflation! The U.S. is facing a “painful period” in the next five years as homeowners and governments unwind debt built up during the housing boom, Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s David Sokol said today. “All of that just feeds into a slow-growth environment,”“It’s going to be a painful period” “People have been shocked into [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 15, 2010
Even after looking at the market’s rebound from the lows of 2009, nest eggs remain severely impaired. As of the first quarter of 2010, net household assets—homes, 401(k) plans, pension assets and other investments minus debts—stood at $54.6 trillion, down an average of 18% from the end of 2007. We actually think the losses are higher but we’ll [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 15, 2010
More at: www.wsj.com
thestatedtruth.com | August 15, 2010
A major class struggle lies dead ahead! The gap between the super-rich, the wealthy and “the rest of us” has widened, forming what is in essence two Americas. Economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty have reported that the top 10% of earners took home about half of all income. According to Moody’s Analytics research, the top 5% [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 14, 2010
This couldn’t be a worse investment for the average person, they call them Junk Bonds for a reason. Take a guess why! It will end in a very bad way. U.S. companies issued risky “junk” bonds at a record clip this week, taking advantage of keen investor (idiots) appetite for returns (fools gold) amid declining interest rates and [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 13, 2010
Source: Telegraph
thestatedtruth.com | August 13, 2010
Rosenberg Starts Off In Style: “If you don’t believe there’s going to be a double dip, it’s because the first recession never ended. If there is going to be a double dip, the odds are certainly higher than 50-50.”
thestatedtruth.com | August 12, 2010
14′th Sequential Week Of Equity Outflows We have now had over one quarter of non-stop redemptions by mutual funds, which means, by end-retail investors. The problem is that now everyone is starting to notice that the market is not supported by anything except momentum manipulation and primary dealer machinations. Per ICI, the week ended August [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 12, 2010
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary This is simply not going away. There is no practical means by which it can be drained ever! It is growing in a way that is unsustainable by any measure. Rather than being contained we are on the threshold of another round of unprecedented paper money creation. The reason it is happening [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 10, 2010
www.jsmineset.com
thestatedtruth.com | August 9, 2010
John Williams of Shadowstats.com uses m-3 velocity of money (or turnover of money) as an important barometer, here is what he is saying now, Williams’ assessment of the economy was spot on in 2008…….. A greater systemic solvency crisis is closer then ever . . . within the next six months to a year. What is happening [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 9, 2010
Aug 9, 2010 Since the recession started in the fourth quarter of 2007, the common theme has been about Americans cutting back on their spending. But the latest numbers from the BEA show aggregate personal consumption expenditures are up 2.9%, or $285 billion. So here are the numbers. So here is a table of winners: [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 6, 2010
Pacific Investment Management Co.’s Bill Gross said the Federal Reserve is unlikely to raise interest rates for two to three years as it seeks to keep the economy from slipping back into recession. Treasury two-year note yields dropped below 0.50 percent for the first time today after the Labor Department said the economy lost more [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 5, 2010
Thu Aug 5, 2010 * Postal Service concerned with future liquidity * Says regulatory changes necessary for fiscal stability By Jasmin Melvin WASHINGTON, Aug 5 (Reuters) – The U.S. Postal Service reported a quarterly net loss of $3.5 billion on Thursday and said it will likely have a cash shortfall going into 2011. The [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 3, 2010
thestatedtruth.com | August 1, 2010
Why this is the Titanic and the life boats have already been launched! The household debt/income ratio is (still) near record highs of 120% and one-quarter of the consumer universe has a sub-600 FICO score – which means they are ineligible for Fannie or Freddie mortgage financing. The banks have few opportunities to lend – households [...]
thestatedtruth.com | August 1, 2010
Here are some of the comments from Alan Greenspan on NBC’s “Meet The Press”. We should keep in mind that Alan Greenspan told congress a year or two back that his “model” was broken! Joshua Zumbrun August 1, 2010 “We’re in a pause in a recovery, a modest recovery, but a pause in the modest recovery [...]
thestatedtruth.com | July 30, 2010
Posted Friday July 30, 2010 By: David A. Patten Former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich warned Thursday that President Obama and congressional Democrats appear to be on the verge of repeating the same mistakes that aggravated the Great Depression, adding that letting the Bush tax cuts expire would prove “very dangerous” for the nation’s economy. Speaking [...]
thestatedtruth.com | July 29, 2010
Exerts from: Bill Gross Investment Outlook August 2010 Observers will point out, as shown in the following chart, that global population growth rates have been declining since 1970 with no apparent ill effects. True, until 2008, I suppose. The fact is that since the 1970s we have never really experienced a secular period during which [...]
thestatedtruth.com | July 27, 2010
This means each additional dollar of debt is now working its way into a negative muliplyer effect on our economy….not to long ago, it had just the opposite effect, the more debt, the more we would grow. Now at some point going forward, a hiccup in the trillions of dollars of derivatives will set off a domino effect of defaults, [...]
thestatedtruth.com | July 27, 2010
U.S. local governments may cut almost 500,000 jobs through next year to cope with sliding property taxes, a decline in state and federal aid and added need for social services, according to a report released today. The report, a result of a survey by the National League of Cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayors and [...]
thestatedtruth.com | July 20, 2010
Source: Institute for Policy Studies The above shows a solid plutocracy is already here. Wealth is the key issue. As many people are now finding out simply having a massive home with a jumbo mortgage and a leased foreign car is no sign of wealth. In fact, that can be taken from you quickly (and [...]
thestatedtruth.com | July 20, 2010
Write up from Byron Wein…………”The Smartest Man In Europe” Commentary courtesy of www.fmxconnect.com We recently came across an interesting piece from Blackstone on the European Stimulus and the road to recovery. Bryon Wein is a well known strategist. The most salient points are outlined below: No clear way out of the enormous debt burden [...]
thestatedtruth.com | July 14, 2010
Jim Grant, editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, appeared on Bloomberg TV to talk about the Fed’s three potential additions to the Board of Governors. Jul 14, 2010 Here are the key highlights from the interview, courtesy of Bloomberg Television: Grant’s thoughts on new Fed additions: “I think the first order of business will be [...]
thestatedtruth.com | July 5, 2010
California and Illinois, and more than 40 others states, are broke! By MICHAEL POWELL Posted July 5, 2010 CHICAGO — Even by the standards of this deficit-ridden state, Illinois’s comptroller, Daniel W. Hynes, faces an ugly balance sheet. Precisely how ugly becomes clear when he beckons you into his office to examine his daily briefing [...]
thestatedtruth.com | July 5, 2010
The U.S. workforce shrank by 652,000 in June, one of the sharpest contractions ever. The rate of hourly earnings fell 0.1pc. Wages are flirting with deflation. So, can things get much worse? Yes! By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Published: 9:33PM BST 04 Jul 2010 Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Comment “Home sales are down. Retail sales are down. Factory [...]
thestatedtruth.com | June 29, 2010
By: Richard Benson, SFGroup Living realistically is not something anyone wants to do in an election year, and it may be especially difficult for the Baby Boomer generation to grasp, along with their children. Over the last two decades as wages swelled, and job prospects were unlimited, the Baby Boomers became accustomed to living well [...]
thestatedtruth.com | June 28, 2010
This spells big big trouble for the world, it effects everyone every where……………..The ECRI leading indicator produced by the Economic Cycle Research Institute plummeted yet again last week to -6.9, pointing to contraction in the US by the end of the year. It is dropping faster that at any time in the post-War era. Andrew [...]
thestatedtruth.com | June 26, 2010
By Edward Robinson June 25,2010 Californians don’t see much evidence that the worst economic contraction since the Great Depression is coming to an end. Unemployment was 12.4 percent in May, 2.7 percentage points higher than the national rate. Lawmakers gridlocked over how to close a $19 billion budget gap are weighing the termination of the [...]
thestatedtruth.com | June 22, 2010
June 22, 2010 By Andrew Atkinson June 22 (Bloomberg) – British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne increased the value-added tax rate to 20 percent from 17.5 percent in the first permanent change to the levy on sales of goods and services in almost two decades. “The years of debt and spending make this unavoidable,” [...]
thestatedtruth.com | June 20, 2010
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH Posted June 20,2010 Many states are acknowledging this year that they have promised pensions they cannot afford and are cutting once-sacrosanct benefits, to appease taxpayers and attack budget deficits. Gov. Pat Quinn said an overhaul would save Illinois’s pension system $300 million in its first year. But the fund is weakened. [...]
thestatedtruth.com | June 14, 2010
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/14/2010 “If you were to have faxed me this balance sheet and asked me to guess who it belonged to, I would have guessed, Citadel, Magnetar or even a proprietary trading desk at a bank.” So begins a story by Alexandra Harris of the Medill Journalism school at Northwestern, which, [...]
thestatedtruth.com | June 13, 2010
The cat is clearly out of the bag concerning the forthcoming bankruptcy of 33 states of the USA. This moronic New York non-solution to borrow from state pension funds, which now cannot meet their pension requirements, screams bankruptcy. The Administration calling for $50 billion for states and cities would appear to be confirmation of [...]
thestatedtruth.com | June 13, 2010
The State and local governments are broke. This will amount to an endless amount of state aid. It will end when, not if…..foreigners flee our bonds and then interest rates explode because of it! Obama Pushes for $50 Billion in State Aid by CalculatedRisk on 6/13/2010 From Jackie Calmes and Sheryl Gay Stolberg at the NY Times: Obama [...]
thestatedtruth.com | June 10, 2010
These rule changes will just be blowing in the wind……If you get our drift. We will explain in an upcoming essay……… By editor Jun 10, 2010 The Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC] said on Thursday it approved rules that will require the exchanges and FINRA to pause trading in certain stocks if the price moves 10% [...]
thestatedtruth.com | June 10, 2010
Arizona Sells Supreme Court Building in $300 Million Bond Deal By Allison Bennett and Brendan A. McGrail June 8 (Bloomberg) — Arizona, which sold state prisons and offices to raise cash six months ago, plans to borrow $300 million by marketing its Supreme Court building and about a dozen more properties through leaseback bonds [...]
thestatedtruth.com | June 8, 2010
The Daily Reckoning Presents The Housing Non-Recovery Whitney Tilson Ed. Note: This is an excerpt from Whitney Tilson’s presentation to the Value Investing Congress in Pasadena, California on May 5, 2010. Whitney Tilson is the founder and Managing Partner of T2 Partners LLC and the Tilson Mutual Funds. Two years ago, we stood up [...]
thestatedtruth.com | June 8, 2010
From Art Cashin on the floor of The New York Stock Exchange today! Fedspeak – Chairman Bernanke gave a speech last night. It wasn’t exactly a barn burner but he did suggest that while the recovery will be slow and joyless, it will not produce a double dip. Janet Yellen, in her Monday speech did [...]
thestatedtruth.com | June 8, 2010
Remember this was done in 1948, that’s 62 years ago!! The formula for success hasn’t changed. Keep in mind as you watch this that it was done in ‘1948‘. Keep that in mind as you view it. Click on 1948 Cartoon below – this cartoon is timeless and is just as true today as it [...]
thestatedtruth.com | June 7, 2010
This is what we have to look forward to……………….John Williams of www.shadowstats.com, speaks. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - 5.9% M3 Annual Decline Deepest Since Early-1930s Banking Crisis – Post-World War II Record Drop in Inflation-Adjusted M3 Signals Intensifying Business Contraction – Renewed Recession Will Set Stage for U.S. Solvency Crisis and Severe Inflation Threat
thestatedtruth.com | June 4, 2010
By Jonathan Stempel NEW YORK, June 3 (Reuters) The pace of U.S. bankruptcy filings edged up in May to the second-highest daily level since 2005, reflecting the difficulty Americans have in working off excess debt even as the economy improves. There were 133,459 U.S. bankruptcy petitions filed in May, 10 percent more than a year [...]
thestatedtruth.com | June 2, 2010
By Andrew Frye and William Selway June 2 (Bloomberg) — Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has been trimming its investment in municipal debt, predicted a “terrible problem” for the bonds in coming years. “There will be a terrible problem and then the question becomes will the federal government help,” Buffett, 79, said today at [...]
thestatedtruth.com | June 1, 2010
State Pensions: I’ll Buy Your Bonds if You Buy Mine by John Rubino June 1, 2010 Here’s a study from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management that ties in nicely with the muni bond collapse qnd federal bailout of the states. State pension funds headed for crisis of national proportion According to new research from the [...]
thestatedtruth.com | May 31, 2010
The great American debt purge – Americans more stressed out about debt. Mortgage, credit card, student loan, and auto loan debt up to $13.5 trillion. Average debt per household at over $120,000. Sun, 30 May 2010 Every man, woman, and child would owe an average of $43,000 if we divided up mortgage, credit card, student, [...]
thestatedtruth.com | May 24, 2010
Updated May 24, 2010 The Next Bailout: $165B For Unions By Erik Berte - FOXBusiness Taxpayers could be on the hook for another $165 billion if a bill to bail out private union pension funds makes it through Congress. A Democratic senator is introducing legislation for a bailout of troubled union pension funds. If passed, the [...]
thestatedtruth.com | May 24, 2010
Unfortunately, our woeful tale of unfunded liabilities does not end in Washington. Several state governments are also racking up large annual deficits and even larger unfunded pension liabilities. Right here at home, in the Golden State, government finances have rapidly slipped from “okay” to “abysmal.” And once again, the official debt numbers tell only a [...]