Archive for 'Budget Crisis' Category
U.S. BUDGET DEFICIT NOW PREDICTED $1.35 TRILLION
26 January 2010The U.S/ budget deficit is expected to reach $1.35 trillion (£837bn) in 2010, according to US Congress estimates.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO)had previously estimated that the deficit would hit $1.38tn but has revised down its forecast.
In 2009, the U.S/ deficit hit a record $1.4tn - equal to 9.9% of gross domestic product (GDP) - [...]
DEALING WITH A POST-CRISIS WORLD
21 January 2010BY JONATHAN LYNN and BEN HIRSCHLER
Reuters
GENEVA/LONDON - The world economy is back from the brink after a mammoth $5 trillion in fiscal and monetary stimulus but the list of things for the rich and powerful to worry about in Davos next week is longer than ever.
Perhaps the biggest unknown for 2010 is how smoothly the [...]
OBAMA REFORMS IN DOUBT AFTER CRUSHING ELECTION BLOW
19 January 2010BY GREG MILAM
Sky News Online
President Barack Obama has suffered a crushing blow after his Democratic Party lost control of the seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy.
Republican Scott Brown snatched the Senate seat for Massachusetts, a state which has been in Democrat hands for 50 years.
It came just hours before Obama marks the first anniversary of [...]
BALLOT MEASURES ATTEST TO ANGER IN CALIFORNIA
10 January 2010Proposed cuts to social services brought out demonstrators
in Sacramento Friday. Some voters are taking protests further.
BY JENNIFER STEINHAUER
The New York Times
From San Diego to Mount Shasta, voters are expressing mounting disgust over California’s fiscal meltdown and deteriorating services, and they are offering scores of voter initiatives that seek to change the way the state does [...]
JUDGE RULES SCHWARZENEGGER PUBLIC WORKER FURLOUGHS ILLEGAL
31 December 2009BY ANDREW McINTOSH
The Sacramento Bee
An Alameda Superior Court judge has ordered the Schwarzenegger administration to stop furloughing thousands of public servants who are members of three major public sector unions, including the Service Employees International Union, Local 1000, offering state workers a huge legal victory as 2010 begins.
In a ruling handed down late Thursday, Judge [...]
NEWSOM BUDGET CUTS: PUBLIC SAFETY, PUBLIC HEALTH, HUMAN SERVICES DEPARTMENTS
17 December 2009San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom Thursday proposed $45 million in mid-year cuts and new revenue generation to close a fiscal deficit for the current year, but warned much more serious cuts are still to come with the city’s projected $500 million deficit for the coming fiscal year.
The current cuts included $6 million from the Police [...]
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA STRUGGLES WITH CUTS
19 November 2009Budgets cuts have left a chemistry lab at the University of California, Berkeley,
in need of repairs.
BY TAMAR LEWIN
The New York Times
BERKELEY — As the University of California struggles to absorb its sharpest drop in state financing since the Great Depression, every professor, administrator and clerical worker has been put on furlough amounting to an average [...]
CALIFORNIA BRACES FOR NEW STATE BUDGET GAP
14 November 2009PIPER COMES CALLING
BY JIM CHRISTIE
Reuters
California’s fiscal watchdog will soon release a report pointing to yet another massive state budget deficit sure to trigger weeks if not months of angst in the state capital of Sacramento.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger expects as much as he has repeatedly been snared in heated debates with and among lawmakers over how [...]
UNITED STATES NEGLECT OF THE HOMELESS SHAMEFUL - UNITED NATIONS INVESTIGATOR
12 November 2009UN special rapporteur says wealthy US ignoring deepening homeless crisis
while pumping billions into bank rescues
A homeless man in the Golden State of California
BY CHRIS McGREAL
The London Guardian
A United Nations special investigator who was blocked from visiting the US by the Bush administration has accused the American government of pouring billions of dollars into rescuing banks [...]
BROADER MEASURE OF UNEMPLOYMENT STANDS AT 17.5%
6 November 2009BY DAVID LEONHARDT
The New York Times
For all the pain caused by the Great Recession, the job market still was not in as bad shape as it had been during the depths of the early 1980s recession — until now.
With the release of the jobs report on Friday, the broadest measure of unemployment and underemployment tracked [...]
SMALL BUSINESS FACES SHARP RISE IN COST OF HEALTH CARE
24 October 2009Rates for Walter Rowen’s company, Susquehanna Glass in Columbia, Pa.,
were to rise 160 percent.
BY REED ABELSON
The New York Times
As Congress nears votes on legislation that would overhaul the health care system, many small businesses say they are facing the steepest rise in insurance premiums they have seen in recent years.
Insurance brokers and benefits [...]
OBAMA OKAYS FEDERAL LOANS TO HOUSING FINANCE AGENCIES
19 October 2009A NACA loan counselor holds up a sign to call a home owner to his desk at the “Save the Dream” home loan modification event, coordinated by the non-profit advocacy group Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA), in Los Angeles.
BY DAVID LAWDER
Reuters
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration on Monday launched a program to help the depressed [...]
ECONOMY REBOUNDING BUT STATES BUDGETS STILL HURTING
18 October 2009All but one state (Vermont) saw tax collections and other funds fall for the second quarter in a row. Over the past year, they’ve lost more than they got
in federal stimulus money.
Michigan lawmakers (at left) have struggled to deal with a nearly $3 billion shortfall.
Many states have seen tax revenues fall sharply this year.
BY [...]
‘DARK POOL’ TRADING REFORM ULTIMATELY COULD HURT TRADITIONAL INVESTERS, SAY TRADING EXECUTIVES
17 October 2009BY JONATHAN SPICER
Reuters
SCOTTSDALE - Sweeping rule changes meant to shed light on so-called dark pools, where stock-trading is done anonymously, could ultimately hurt the traditional investors that regulators are trying to empower, trading executives warned over the past few days.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission meets in the coming week to consider changes that the [...]
WALL STREET BEING ECLIPSED BY ‘DARK POOLS’ RIVALS
14 October 2009Trading at the BATS Exchange in Lenexa, Kan., is a world away from the shouting
on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange.
BY GRAHAM BOWLEY
The New York Times
For most of the 217 years since its founding under a buttonwood tree on Wall Street, the New York Stock Exchange was the high temple of American [...]
DOW CLOSES ABOVE 10,000
14 October 2009Traders Martin Durkin, left, and Jason Harper, watch on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange as the DJIA nears 10,000 Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2009.
BY SAPNA MAHESHWARI
Bloomberg
U.S. stocks rallied, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average above 10,000 for the first time in a year, on better-than-estimated earnings at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Intel [...]
SCHWARZENEGGER APPROVAL RATING LOWEST OF ANY CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR IN 50 YEARS - STATE LEGISLATURE RATING WORSE
13 October 2009BY MICHAEL B. FARRELL
The Christian Science Monitor
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been clobbered – yet again – in opinion polls.
The most recent Field Poll released Tuesday gives him 27 percent approval rating, the poorest of his tenure and the second lowest of any Golden State governor in 50 years.
But the low marks suggest more than [...]
GOLDMAN SACHS CEO: WE DIDN’T REALIZE HOW BAD THINGS WOULD GET
22 September 2009In a SPIEGEL interview, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, 55, discusses his astronomical bonuses, the mistakes and failures of his bank prior to the start of the global financial crisis and his proposals for better regulating financial markets.
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein: “We all know that greed can drive behavior,
but it tends to be short [...]
CALIFORNIA TARGETS BUDGET BUSTING TAX CODE
21 September 2009Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to call for a special legislative session to consider a new tax reform plan. But the overhaul faces skepticism.
BY DANIEL B. WOOD
The Christian Science Monitor
It was intended to help reform California’s tax system and avert the wild revenue swings that have caused the state’s crippling deficits. But the tax overhaul [...]
U.S. PRESIDENT FACES MAJOR FOREIGN-POLICY TESTS THIS WEEK
21 September 2009BY HOWARD LaFRANCHI
The Christian Science Monitor
President Obama enters the most intense foreign-policy week of his presidency – three days at the United Nations in New York, followed by the Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh – with a widely pro-Obama world wondering if he can move from compelling words to action.
Mr. Obama, who wowed [...]
GOING BROKE: CALIFORNIA IS A WRECK - CAN IT BE FIXED?
20 September 2009Richard Costigan, legislative aide to the governor, second from left, huddles
during a break in a legislative hearing with Finance Department officials,
from left, H.D. Palmer, Steve Kessler and Mike Genest.
BY STEVE WIEGAND and PHILLIP REESE
The Sacramento Bee
Three inarguable facts dominate California’s system of financing state government:
• It’s a mess.
• It’s currently a mess in large [...]
FED CONSIDERS SWEEPING RULES TO REGULATE PAY AT BANKS
18 September 2009BY EDMUND L. ANDREWS
The New York Times
WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve is preparing what would be the most sweeping rules yet to regulate the pay at banks across the country, people close to the discussions said on Friday.
The rules would apply not just to the compensation and bonuses of top executives but also to traders, [...]
NEW YORK FACES DRAMTIC CONSEQUENCES OF FINANCIAL CRISIS
12 September 2009The New York municipal government estimated 75,000 jobs would be lost in the financial industry and a further 300,000 elsewhere in New York.
So far, about 100,000 have been lost.
BY KLAUS BRINKBUMER
Der Spiegel
The global financial crisis began in Manhattan, and its effects are being felt far more strongly there than elsewhere. Mayor Michael Bloomberg says [...]
TALES FROM LEHMAN’S CRYPT - ONE YEAR AFTER THE COLLAPSE
12 September 2009Leslee Gelber has been at loose ends since losing her job. Ken Linton, center,
was ousted before the firm collapsed, and he began shorting its stock. Tom Ollquist,
right, sold packages of mortgages and other financial products for Lehman Brothers.
BY LOUISE STORY and LANDON THOMAS Jr.
The New York Times
Tom Ollquist remembers Sept. 9, 2008 — the [...]
THE CONSUMER ECONOMY IS DEAD - ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF FINANCIAL CRISIS
9 September 2009One year after the near collapse of the global financial system, this much is clear: The financial world as we knew it is over, and something new is rising from its ashes.
Historians will look to September 2008 as a watershed for the U.S. economy.
On Sept. 7, the government seized mortgage titans Fannie Mae and [...]