Unless lawmakers make big changes, the interest Americans will have to pay to keep the country running over the next decade will reach unheard of levels.

The intriguing FT argument is the one regarding Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley etc. Now that they are financial holding companies, they will be closing their books in December, so in order to get ready to pay out the billions in bonuses, they are stockpiling the bonuses payouts in T-Bills. I mean, without an obvious crisis, who would accept a negative yield, other than someone ready to cash out in a few days and not wanting to take on any risk, and even willing to accept a negative interest rates for safety and security, before the big pay day comes.

This is big news in terms of finally getting somewhere on Auditing the Federal Reserve Bills that currently runs in the form of two bills: One of them is the House bill: RS 1207 with now 311 co-sponsors for the bill, and the other is the Senate bill: S604 in the Senate which now has 30 co-sponsors.

Both bills authorizes the Government Accountability Office to conduct a wide-ranging audit of the Fed's opaque deals with foreign central banks and major U.S. financial institutions. The Fed has never had a real audit in its history and little is known of what it does with the trillions of dollars at its disposal.

"[Obama] is being failed by his economic team ... We may have to sacrifice just two more jobs to get millions back for Americans.

1. 40% excise tax on health coverage in excess of $8,500/$23,000 ($149.1 billion)
2. Employer W-2 reporting of value of health (negligible revenue effect)
3. Conform definition of medical expenses ($5.0 billion)
4. Increase penalty for nonqualified health savings account distributions to 20% ($1.3 billion)
5. Limit health flexible spending arrangements in cafeteria plans to $2,500 ($14.6 billion)
6. Require information reporting on payments to corporations ($17.1 billion)
7. Additional requirements for section 501(c)(3) hospitals (negligible revenue effects)
8. Impose annual fee on manufacturers & importers of branded drugs ($22.2 billion)
9. Impose annual fee on manufacturers & importers of medical devices ($19.3 billion)

Congressman Michael Burgess scalded Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner during a fiery hearing on Capitol Hill this morning, telling the former New York Fed chief that he should never have been hired and demanding that the TARP program come to an abrupt end, shortly after GOP Rep. Kevin Brady had called on Geithner to resign.

“The public has lost all confidence in your ability to do the job,” Brady told Geithner during a heated Joint Economic Committee meeting, adding that he had failed to oversee an economic recovery before asking Geithner, “Will you step down from your post?”

Sooner or later, office buildings and other commercial real estate financed during the credit bubble will generate hurricane-scale losses for banks.

A rising proportion of fixed-rate home loans made to people with good credit are sinking into foreclosure, adding to concerns about the strength of the economic recovery.

The number of newly laid-off workers seeking unemployment insurance was unchanged last week, remaining above the level that would indicate the economy is adding jobs.

President Obama is very good at talking “the language of the deal.” He made a deal with the the drug cartel this summer, ostensibly to keep drug prices down to reduce the overall cost of health care. The drug companies promised they would cut the prices they planned to charge by about $8 billion a year for the next ten years. Now an analysis for AARP shows the drug profiteers have actually raised prices by more than $10 billion in the last year, an increase of more than 9 percent and the biggest price hike in 17 years.

One million people could lose unemployment benefits in January if Congress doesn't extend federal aid, according to a report released Wednesday.

The report is likely to turn up pressure on lawmakers and the president, who earlier this month enacted a record-long extension of federally paid benefits. But the law only helps those who exhaust their lifelines by year's end.

In a report entitled "Worst-case debt scenario", the bank's asset team said state rescue packages over the last year have merely transferred private liabilities onto sagging sovereign shoulders, creating a fresh set of problems.

Overall debt is still far too high in almost all rich economies as a share of GDP (350pc in the US), whether public or private. It must be reduced by the hard slog of "deleveraging", for years.

"As yet, nobody can say with any certainty whether we have in fact escaped the prospect of a global economic collapse," said the 68-page report, headed by asset chief Daniel Fermon. It is an exploration of the dangers, not a forecast.

On March 25, 2009, I requested, joined by 26 fellow members of Congress, that Mr. Barofsky investigate the events surrounding AIG’s payments to Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Societe Generale and other firms to settle certain open derivative transactions.

As a result of the findings in the report, there should be a comprehensive Congressional review of the Federal Reserve System and an exploration of possible changes in its governance model. More immediately, a complete and public audit of the system should be made part of the regulatory reform bills currently moving through your committees.

Apparently, there's a global oil scam making Bernie Madoff look like a petty thief.

If serial entrepreneur and Seeking Alpha columnist Philip Davis is to be believed, the world is being scammed out of $2.5 trillion, 50 times greater than the sum Madoff took from the duped investors.

In recent months, Goldman Sachs made a good run at becoming The Most Hated Company In The World.

How?

By nearly going bust last fall, getting a cash bailout from the taxpayer, immediately denying that it ever needed any help, and then minting so much money over the next twelve months that it will pay 2009 bonuses in excess of $20 billion.

A couple of weeks ago, Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein then compounded the problem by going on a PR offensive in which he said Goldman was doing "God's work."

Goldman does provide a lot of valuable services, but it's hard to imagine in what universe they would deserve that description.

You may have missed it in the mainstream news media, but statistical societal indicators are reading red across the board.

Please examine the bills above - notice the change of wording between the two bills: "Will pay to the bearer on demand" appears on the older bill, but not on the second bill. Then notice the dates the bills were printed. What is the significance?

What would be payed to the bearer on demand?

Nearly 35 years after taxpayers spent $55.7 million building the Pontiac Silverdome and a year after a $20 million sale fell through, city officials have sold the arena once called the most desirable property in Oakland County.

The price: $583,000.

The general campaign is on, independent voters are up for grabs, and Barack Obama is toning down his populist rhetoric - at least when it comes to free trade.

In an interview with Fortune to be featured in the magazine's upcoming issue, the presumptive Democratic nominee backed off his harshest attacks on the free trade agreement and indicated he didn't want to unilaterally reopen negotiations on NAFTA.

The volume of mortgage applications filed to purchase homes last week hit the lowest level in nearly nine years, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported Thursday.

Buyers are few despite interest rates dropping to their lowest point in five weeks, according to the Mortgage Bankers Assn.

A bipartisan effort to force transparency on the Federal Reserve is suddenly in jeopardy after a House Financial Services Committee member introduced an amendment that would let the multi-trillion dollar organization continue throwing tax dollars around in secret.

We often hear the complaint that America doesn’t make anything anymore: that is, our economy seems driven not by producing actual things, but utterly intangible creations such as credit default swaps and securitized sub-prime mortgages. Our once-bustling factories are rusted relics. Entire industries have collapsed. Ghost towns have sprung up where cities once thrived, like mushrooms sprouting in a cemetery. Baffled Americans, who – mistaking debt for wealth – thought they lived in the wealthiest country in the world, struggle to define what is happening. Old words like "correction," contraction," and "recession" give way to talk of a second Great Depression, and, in this context, the question "What does America make anymore?" is raised with renewed vigor.

The United States' climbing national debt could drag the country into a "double-dip recession," President Obama warned in an interview with Fox News Wednesday from China, though he said he's still considering additional tax incentives for businesses to reverse the rising unemployment rate.

By the time a gadget reaches Apple’s flagship store on Fifth Avenue in New York City or any other U.S. retailer, it may have passed through the hands of a heavily indebted Filipina migrant worker on the graveyard shift in Taiwan, a Taiwanese “quality control” worker who’ll soon be fired without warning, and a young Chinese worker clocking 80-hour weeks on a final assembly line, at less than a dollar an hour.

Construction of new homes unexpectedly plunged last month, as builders waited to see whether lawmakers would extend a tax credit for homebuyers.

A report from the Pew Center on the States shows that other parts of the country are now catching "California disease" in which the state budget spirals out of control, ends made to meet last fiscal year only with some newly printed/borrowed money from Washington D.C.

Efforts in Congress to cap credit-card interest rates are faltering because of opposition from Democrats and a lack of specific support from the White House, despite growing consumer outrage over a rush by banks to impose rates as high as 30 percent.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama vowed to back a strict limit on credit-card interest rates. But the White House is not yet behind any particular plan this year.

More than $98 billion in taxpayer dollars spent by government agencies was wasted, much of it on questionable claims for tax credits and Medicare benefits, representing an increase of $26 billion from the previous year.

Gold hit a fresh record high near $1,150 an ounce on Wednesday, boosting precious metals across the board, as a dip in the dollar index added to momentum buying as prices broke through key technical resistance levels.

The imperative of greater global currency stability means the world can no longer rely, as it has done since the end of the gold standard, on a currency issued by a single country, the head of the IMF said on Tuesday.

The difference in exchange rates would provide an enormous incentive for Chinese businesses and individuals to exchange their yuan at the Treasury rate rather than the official Chinese rate. While this may violate Chinese law, the enormous potential profits would make the law difficult to enforce. In a relatively short period of time, the US exchange rate is likely to become the effective market exchange rate.

Of course, this situation of warring exchange rates would lead to a period of instability and unnecessary hostility between the two countries. However, it would send an important signal that the US government is in control of its dollar destiny: Washington has the ability any time it chooses to push the dollar down to a more reasonable level against the yuan.

Securitization was intended as a way to transfer credit risk to those better able to absorb losses, but instead it increased the fragility of the entire financial system by allowing banks and other intermediaries to “leverage up” by buying one another’s securities.

Two things must get better before mortgage delinquency rates start reversing themselves, he said: home values and unemployment. "Until we see improvement in both of those areas, it's possible that it will take longer for delinquency to improve," Guarrera said.

Well, how interesting that finally at least one financial expert on FOX News Network put it out there last week: Suspend the income tax. He said these are desperate times that call for desperate measures. You could have knocked me over with a feather.

The Democratic chairman of the House Appropriations Committee is demanding greater accountability from the the Obama administration after gross inaccuracies were found on a government Web site that tracks jobs purportedly saved or created by the $787 billion stimulus plan.

In a statement late Monday, Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, chairman of the House committee, called the inaccuracies "outrageous" and said the administration owes the American public "a commitment to work night and day to correct the ludicrous mistakes."

Under the proposed rule, consumers must have at least five years to use the gift cards before they expire. The Fed also said service or inactivity fees can be imposed only under certain conditions.

The apparent bottom line in a paper published in the South African Journal of Science is that South Africa's gold industry is on final deathwatch, despite claims of massive existing below-ground reserves. Chris Hartnady, research and technical director of Cape Town earth sciences consultancy Umvoto Africa, has found that South Africa's Witwatersrand goldfields are around 95% exhausted, and anticipates that production rates should fall permanently below 100 tonnes a year within the coming decade.

Agency continues to lose money despite $6 billion in cost-cutting measures, and proposes that it drop Saturday delivery.

The nation's economic crisis has catapulted the number of Americans who lack enough food to the highest level since the government has been keeping track, according to a new federal report, which shows that nearly 50 million people -- including almost one child in four -- struggled last year to get enough to eat.

The Treasury Department—whose mission has ostensibly expanded to include management of government finances, the promotion of economic growth and stability, and the provision of safety, soundness, and security in financial systems—will hit its debt ceiling (yet again) by year’s end.

In the final chapter of The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith argued that once national debts have accumulated to a certain degree, they are rarely paid. Government officials, he argues, are both unwilling and unable to get serious about debt. They don’t want to lose popularity by raising taxes and they will never cut spending enough. Instead, they employ “juggling tricks” to push the debt problem into the future and hide the full costs.

The average American family must look at the current stock market rally as some kind of cruel joke. We have people anxiously waiting for government funds or paychecks to clear at the end of the month so they can wait outside of a Wal-Mart shopping center at midnight to buy food once their funds clear. We have nearly 36 million Americans on food stamps and another 27 million unemployed or underemployed. If this is the new recovery, many want very little to do with it.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Monday said the central bank is "attentive" to the falling dollar. But the greenback fell to 15-month lows after skeptical investors realized there's little the central bank would do to prop up the currency.

The leaders of a budget task force appointed by New Jersey Gov.-elect Chris Christie say they've learned the state's financial crisis is worse than they expected.

They say Christie is writing a letter to Gov. Jon Corzine to ask him to freeze spending in several areas until Christie takes office in January.

Task force co-chairman Bob Grady said Monday that if department budgets continue to grow at their current rate, there will be a shortfall of more than $8 billion in the state budget that takes effect July 1.

Here's a stimulus success story: In Arizona's 9th Congressional District, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that's what the website set up by the Obama Administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says.

There's one problem, though: There is no 9th Congressional District in Arizona; the state has only eight Congressional Districts.

There's no 86th Congressional District in Arizona either, but the government's recovery.gov Web site says $34 million in stimulus money has been spent there.

The number of Americans who lack dependable access to adequate food shot up last year to 49 million, the largest number since the government has been keeping track, according to a federal report released Monday that shows particularly steep increases in food scarcity among families with children.

The dollar fell on Monday as China accused the United States of increasing protectionism and following unexpectedly strong Japanese economic growth figures, pushing gold prices to a record high point.

US President Barack Obama is in China for a three-day mission aimed at convincing Beijing that Washington is its partner, not its rival.

As the dollar dropped against the euro and yen, gold struck an all-time peak of 1,133.20 dollars an ounce.

However, “military Keynesianism” – using military spending to stimulate the economy – has been U.S. policy for half a century. And the economist who coined that term said that such a policy always and “inexorably” leads to “an actual war” in order to justify all of the military spending.

The U.S. Postal Service reported a $3.8 billion loss in the 2009 fiscal year, despite $10 billion in cost-cutting measures.

There are now reports of fake 400 oz gold bars in Oct. of this year. The report from Hong Kong said that the bars were gutted and had tungsten inside instead. The finger was first pointed at the Chinese for making the fake bars. The Chinese have pointed the finger at the Clinton Administration for the problem. Saying that they gold plated tungsten blanks and sold them on the open market. Many of these fake bars might possible be in the GLD ETF holdings!

How come the Wall Street robber barons who brought on the financial crisis are still calling the shots and pillaging the economy?

Congress is bought and paid for, and the fox is guarding the chicken coop in the Executive Branch, with Summers and Geithner calling the shots.

The American people are furious at the giant banksters who have picked their pockets so they can make huge bonuses. But - so far - the American people have for the most part kept their volcanic anger to themselves.

As I have repeatedly written (see this and this), the new derivatives legislation is so bad that it probably increases - rather than decreases - the risk to the financial system.

China's top banking regulator issued a sharp critique of U.S. financial management only hours before President Barack Obama commenced his first visit to the Asian giant, highlighting economic and trade tensions that threaten to overshadow the trip.

The Federal Reserve — the quasi-autonomous body that controls the US’s money supply — is a “Ponzi scheme” that created “bubble after bubble” in the US economy and needs to be held accountable for its actions, says Eliot Spitzer, the former governor and attorney-general of New York.

In a wide-ranging discussion of the bank bailouts on MSNBC’s Morning Meeting, host Dylan Ratigan described the process by which the Federal Reserve exchanged $13.9 trillion of bad bank debt for cash that it gave to the struggling banks.