The Congressional Oversight Panel (COP), the watchdog board created by Congress to oversee the TARP program, yesterday issued the equivalent of a severe weather warning for commercial real estate markets. Like the residential market before it, the markets for retail, apartment, and other business properties are facing a wave of defaults which, says the panel, “would trigger economic damage that could touch the lives of nearly every American.” The numbers are grim. According to the COP, over the next four years $1.4 trillion in commercial real estate loans will come …
Despite Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s gloating that Iran is a “nuclear state”, Iran reportedly has encountered problems in expanding its uranium enrichment program at an ambitious rate. According to an article in today’s Washington Post, the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz has experienced declining output levels due to possible technical problems with the centrifuges used to process the uranium. So many centrifuges at Natanz have broken down or been sidelined for unknown reasons that less than half of the 8,700 centrifuges were working in November – a little more than 3,900 …
Coverdell Education Savings Accounts were created in 2001 to empower parents with greater options for their children’s education, but unless Congress takes action, those accounts could change in 2011. Currently, parents who send their children to private schools because they’re not satisfied with the public school quality or culture have to pay twice: once in taxes for public schools, and a second time for their private school tuition. Coverdell accounts are one small way to help lift some of this burden by letting parents save for these education costs in …
Remember the promise of the 2008 Presidential election? No family making less than $250,000 will see their taxes increase Well, now, the option to tax the middle class is “on the table“. Of course, as we have pointed out, he has already broken that pledge. But now, Obama is ready to admit it. According to Bloomberg: President Barack Obama said he is “agnostic” about raising taxes on households making less than $250,000 as part of a broad effort to rein in the budget deficit. Instead of taxing everyone to try …
The White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) has released a projection of jobs created by the economic stimulus bill. However, the method they used to get these numbers falls short of basic scientific standards. The CEA modeled a potential outcome for the economy without the stimulus, basing it on historical data. They then compared this computer simulation with the actual data about what occurred with the stimulus – and have declared that the stimulus worked. This method would be met with a failing grade in any decent university economics …
While two brutal snowstorms pounded the Washington, DC, area, the government was busy wasting money to the tune of $100 million a day. Extreme weather conditions forced the government to close for four and a half days straight, costing tax payers $450 million in lost productivity, according to a Fox News report. Wondering how much $100 million really is for the government? Last spring, when President Barack Obama ordered his cabinet secretaries to cut $100 million in spending, Heritage’s Ken McIntyre took a look at what $100 million really means. …
At The Huffington Post Nelson Davis, Executive Producer of MAKING IT! Minority Success Stories, describes his recent discovery of The Heritage Foundation’s 2010 Index of Economic Freedom. He came across the Index for the first time this year and while surprised by the results—showing a decrease in economic freedom in the U.S.—he found himself agreeing with the analysis. Growing up along the Canadian border, he had always assumed that America was the world’s leader in economic freedom:
If ever there was a case for regime change, today’s Iran is it. Today on the anniversary of the revolution that brought the country’s authoritarian, theocratic government to power offers an opportunity to rectify the mistake made by the Obama administration last summer when it failed to lend material support to Iran’s burgeoning pro-democracy movement. The “don’t rock the boat” approach has not worked — as was amply clear at the time that it would not do. In fact, it was dangerously naive. The notion that the ayatollahs would somehow …
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today used the annual celebration of the anniversary of Iran’s Islamic revolution to announce that Iran has become a “nuclear state.” Although the bombastic dictator has made this claim before, his exultant announcement came shortly after Iran had announced that it would enrich uranium to the 20 percent level that it claims it needs to fuel a research reactor that is scheduled to run out of fuel later this year. Ahmadinejad proclaimed: “I want to announce with a loud voice here that the first package of …
Iran’s announcement today that it is a nuclear state makes the appointment of the spectacularly inexperienced Catherine Ashton as EU Foreign Minister even more ridiculous. Her speech at the Munich Security Conference last weekend was a snoozer of epic proportions – even by Brussels standards. However, it was her statements on Iran which beggar belief. At exactly the time when everyone’s patience has finally run out with Iran, Mrs. Ashton decides, not to side with French President Nicolas Sarkozy in calling for sanctions forthwith, but instead, publicly sides with the …
