Tens of thousands march against budget cuts in Rome
Tens of thousands of people joined a union-organised march in Rome Saturday, protesting against the new coalition government’s austerity measures. The metal workers union FIOM said the rally was to demand “the right to jobs, training and health care”. “We cannot wait any longer,” said FIOM secretary Maurizio Landini as Italy is mired in recession. [...]
It hasn’t drawn much attention, but Facebook’s first annual earnings report contains an accounting gem: a multibillion-dollar tax deduction for the cost of executive stock options and share awards. Even though Facebook (FB) reported $1.1 billion in pre-tax profits from U.S. operations in 2012, it will probably pay zero federal and state taxes—and even receive [...]
Japan’s aggressive attempts to spur on its struggling economy were set to escape censure from the G20 nations today as bickering in Moscow kept alive fears of a “currency war”. Finance ministers at the G20 gathering are understood to have pulled back from explicit criticism of Japan, whose prime minister Shinzo Abe has embarked on [...]
6 Things You Won’t Believe That Are In The Fiscal Cliff Bill That The Senate Passed At 2 AM While Most Americans Were Drunk
January 2, 2013 No Comment
Last night just before 2 AM, the Senate overwhelmingly agreed to pass a bill that will avert the Fiscal Cliff once the House approves it. The bill is pretty straightforward. Income tax rates will only rise on those making over $400K (liberals wanted $250K, GOP wanted no taxes to rise). Spending cuts will be delayed [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — American consumers have shown about as much appetite for the $1 coin as kids do their spinach. They may not know what’s best for them either. Congressional auditors say doing away with dollar bills entirely and replacing them with dollar coins could save taxpayers some $4.4 billion over the next 30 years. [...]
Republicans and Democrats, like Romney and Obama are of one mind on many more things than they disagree about. From war and empire to their policies on Big Ag, Big Energy, “clean coal and safe nuclear power,” and the war on drugs their areas of agreement are vast and troubling, and perhaps far more important [...]
Congress’ Sequester Raids 9/11 Treatment And Compensation Funds To Cut Deficit
September 18, 2012 No Comment
WASHINGTON — Lawmakers vowed to “never forget” 9/11 again last week, but it appears many already had — in the budget sequester legislation Congress passed last summer to try and cut the deficit. The sequester set up automatic budget cuts of some $1.2 trillion over 10 years, and legislators were careful to spare veterans from [...]
The first ever GAO (Government Accountability Office) audit of the Federal Reserve was carried out in the past few months due to the Ron Paul, Alan Grayson Amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill, which passed last year. Jim DeMint, a Republican Senator, and Bernie Sanders, an independent Senator, led the charge for a Federal Reserve audit [...]
Initially, gold was the only form of currency. People found that they didn’t want to carry a lot of gold on them nor did they want to leave it in their homes for someone to steal so they stored their gold in the first banks in exchange for vouchers. People began trading for gold vouchers [...]
PAUL BUCHHEIT FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT The privatization of public goods and services turns basic human needs into products to buy and sell. That’s more than a joke, it’s an insult, it’s a perversion. It generally benefits only a privileged group of businesspeople and their companies while increasing inequality and undermining the common good. Various [...]
Republican presidential candidate Gov. Mitt Romney (MA) is trying to walk back remarks he made yesterday in Israel, according to Talking Points Memo. In an interview with Fox News’s Carl Cameron, Romney insisted that his remarks were misunderstood, that he “did not speak about the Palestinian culture or about the decisions made in their economy” [...]
WASHINGTON — In a rare moment of bipartisanship, the House overwhelmingly passed a bill by Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) to audit the Federal Reserve. The bill, which has 270 co-sponsors, passed 327 to 98. All but one Republican — Rep. Bob Turner of New York — voted for it, along with 89 Democrats. Paul teamed [...]
WASHINGTON, On Wednesday, July 18, Congressman Ron Paul will have his last chance to take apart Fed Chair Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, when Bernanke delivers his semi-annual report on the nation’s monetary policy. The Fed Chair will be testifying before the House Financial Services Committee, on which Paul sits. The last time [...]
There’s bad news out of Wall Street this week after JPMorgan Chase admits that a trading goof earlier this year has helped earn the country’s biggest bank $5.8 billion in losses — nearly triple the original estimate. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon tells reporters early Friday that the botched deal overseen by then-Chief Investment Officer [...]
The cost to the federal government of keeping all of its secrets was more than $11 billion last year, according to publicly available records. That total does not include costs incurred by the CIA and the NSA and other spy agencies, because those figures are classified. “The costs include investigations of people applying for security clearances, [...]
