U.S. National Debt projected to exceed GDP by 2019
on Nov 20, 2009 in U.S.; national debt; obama; bush; Gross Domestic Product; gdp The U.S. National Debt presently amounts to just under $40,000 for every man, woman and child in the States. It has increased about $1.6 trillion on Mr. Obama’s watch, after climbing $4.9 trillion during the presidency of George W. Bush. By 201...

Broader Measure of U.S. Unemployment at 17.5%
on Nov 9, 2009 in u.s.; economy; unemployment; recession; Great Depression; The New York Times indicates that unemployment is at its highest level since the Great Depression. In all, more than one out of every six workers — 17.5 percent — were unemployed or underemployed in October. This includes the officially unemploy...

More bank failures
on Nov 1, 2009 in FDIC; bank; failure; U.S.; economy; Sheila Bair Regulators on Friday closed 9 banks in California, Illinois, Texas and Arizona, boosting the number of failed U.S. banks this year to 115. Nine is the most in one day that the FDIC has shut since the financial crisis began taking down banks last yea...

Gold at $2,000 or more an ounce
on Oct 19, 2009 in dollar; devaluation; gold; Gold’s rally to record prices is still 53 percent below the 1980 inflation-adjusted peak. While gold rose this year to $1,072 an ounce (on Oct. 14), consumer prices almost tripled in the past three decades, eroding the metal’s value. Meaning bu...

The Richman, Poorman story continues
on Oct 18, 2009 in banks; economic crisis; global economy; Goldman Sachs; Timothy Geithner; bonuses; u.s.; Great Depression; Bloomberg reports that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s closest aides earned millions of dollars a year working for Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and other Wall Street firms. Yet, they are overseeing the handout of hundreds of billions of dollars o...

Arabs, China, Russia, Japan and France to end dollar dealings for oil
on Oct 7, 2009 in dollar; reserve; currency; robert fisk; oil; gold; Robert Fisk writing in The Independent asserts that Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the e...

UN calls for new reserve currency
on Oct 6, 2009 in united nations; dollar; reserve currency; deficit; The United Nations called on Tuesday for a new global reserve currency to end dollar supremacy which has allowed the United States the "privilege" of building a huge trade deficit. "Important progress in managing imbalances can be made by reduci...

IMF warns that banks have yet to reveal their losses
on Oct 2, 2009 in International Monetary Fund; IMF; economic crisis; global economy; Great Depression; financial meltdown The Financial Times quotes the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in announcing that banks around the world still have to reveal about half their likely losses resulting from the financial and economic crisis, warning there was still a "significant" r...

Head of World Bank sees Dollar’s role diminishing
on Oct 1, 2009 in world bank; dollar; euro; renminbi; global economy; global recession; The president of the World Bank, Robert B. Zoellick, announced that America’s days as an unchallenged economic superpower might be numbered and that the dollar was likely to lose its favored position as the euro and the Chinese renminbi assume bigg...

Stiglitz says banking problems are now bigger than pre-Lehman Brothers
on Sep 15, 2009 in Joseph Stiglitz; Paul Volcker; banks; wall street; bailout; emergency loans; us economy; Great Depression Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize- winning economist, said the U.S. has failed to fix the underlying problems of its banking system. “In the U.S. and many other countries …” Stiglitz said in an interview in Paris, “The problems are worse tha...