Foreclosure Nation

NEW YORK - The United States would immediately have its top-notch credit rating slashed to "selective default" if it misses a debt payment on August 4, Standard & Poor's managing director John Chambers told Reuters. Chambers, who is also the chairman of S&P's sovereign ratings committee, said on Tu...

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It's one of modern political life's strange ironies that defending Social Security and Medicare is considered an "old people's issue." Old people are doing just fine with these programs, thank you very much -- at least so far. Anti-government hawks like Alan Simpson and Pete Peterson also made a d...

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The Obama administration is hoping to revamp plans to sell off thousands of federal buildings by recruiting outside experts to determine which office towers, courthouses and warehouses the government no longer needs. Once established, a new independent commission would recommend potential savings t...

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On February 14, 2011, President Obama released his proposed Budget for FY 2012. The Budget includes cuts aimed at reducing the deficit, but does not project a balanced Budget even as far out as 2020. As is always the case, the President's Budget is the starting point for the work of Congress and wil...

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President Obama could not have been more clear, when outlining his budget proposal in Baltimore last week. "Now, some of the savings will come through less waste and more efficiency," he said. "To take just one example, by getting rid of 14,000 office buildings, lots and government-owned propertie...

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The Congressional Budget Office projects that America's 2011 deficit will be $1.5 trillion, or 9.8% of GDP, and debt held by the public in the 2011 fiscal year will approach 70% of GDP. How close is America to facing a bond market crisis? Should drastic cuts to the budget be made now? Over what hori...

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THE US has a fiscal gap—the present value of all its future spending (including servicing its official debt) less all its future taxes of $202 trillion—almost 14 times GDP. Greece, by comparison, has a fiscal gap of about 11 times GDP. To close the US fiscal gap would require raising all federal tax...

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IT IS clear that America cannot just "count on" growth going forward. While growth-enhancing strategies may work, and corporations may invest more as jobs and demand pick up, creating a virtual cycle, the scale of efforts and mixed results over the past two years suggest that any counting on growth ...

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IT'S a good thing the cacophony surrounding Ben Bernanke’s testimony to the Congressional budget committee last week passed largely unheard in the financial community. Congresswoman Schwartz, in a litany of “what-ifs”, asked Mr Bernanke if he thought it was morally correct for Congress to require Am...

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WASHINGTON -- A new federal budget proposal from House Republicans would dramatically restrict the budget of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau during its first year of operation. No House Republicans voted for the Wall Street reform bill that created the CFPB, which is currently being ...

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The Congressional Budget Office projects that America's 2011 deficit will be $1.5 trillion, or 9.8% of GDP, and debt held by the public in the 2011 fiscal year will approach 70% of GDP. How close is America to facing a bond market crisis? Should drastic cuts to the budget be made now? Over what hori...

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THE US has a fiscal gap—the present value of all its future spending (including servicing its official debt) less all its future taxes of $202 trillion—almost 14 times GDP. Greece, by comparison, has a fiscal gap of about 11 times GDP. To close the US fiscal gap would require raising all federal ...

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THE US fiscal position has deteriorated significantly over the past few years. Fiscal policymakers have so far opted to postpone fiscal consolidation with a view to getting the economy back on a firmer footing. But the US is walking a fine line. The costs of delaying consolidation in terms of risks...

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HOW close is America to fiscal crisis, The London Economist asks: "The Congressional Budget Office projects that America's 2011 deficit will be $15 trillion, or 9.8% of GDP, and debt held by the public in the 2011 fiscal year will approach 70% of GDP...". John Makin laments that "a a fiscal crisis—...

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BRAD DELONG clearly has faith in official projections to a much greater degree than I do. Perhaps I have a jaundiced UK perspective and don't fully understand what happens in the US. By way of example, however, I offer exhibit A, which shows medium term projections for the UK's fiscal position made ...

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Budget Reax Lori Montgomery summarizes: "President Obama submitted a budget blueprint for fiscal 2012 on Monday full of surgical cuts and cautious trade-offs to lawmakers clamoring for bold action to reduce government spending and control a budget deficit expected to rise to a record $1.6 trillio...

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As the United States national debt reaches parity with total annual GDP, President Barack Obama continues to preside over a record level of deficit spending by the federal government. He has just sent to Congress a proposed $3.73 trillion budget for FY 2012, while forecasting a record $1.65 trillion...

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The Federal Reserve's monetary stimulus plan can play a role in bringing down unemployment, even if the country's jobless rate is unlikely to fall below pre-crisis levels, a top Fed official said. The Fed in November announced a controversial plan to purchase an additional $600 billion in bonds to ...

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WASHINGTON - The United States will hit a $14.3 trillion statutory limit on its debt slightly later than previously estimated, the Treasury said on Wednesday as it unveiled a still-hefty debt auction schedule. Treasury officials said the limit would now be hit between April 5 and May 31, versus a p...

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The still-fragile economy and fresh tax cuts approved by Congress last month will drive the federal deficit to nearly $1.5 trillion this year, the biggest budget gap in U.S. history, congressional budget analysts said Wednesday. The grim forecast from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office ca...

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The still-fragile economy and fresh tax cuts approved by Congress last month will drive the federal deficit to nearly $1.5 trillion this year, the biggest budget gap in U.S. history, congressional budget analysts said Wednesday. The grim forecast from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office ...

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Rising federal debt could pose a negative outlook for the country’s AAA credit rating, Moody’s warned in a quarterly report on Thursday. The negative outlook would be dropped only if the U.S. imposed measures of fiscal austerity, such as curbing spending or raising taxes, according to the repor...

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Here's the question: Do tax cuts cause deficits? If not, then there's no reason to worry about the Congressional Budget Office's revised estimate that the deficit will reach $1.5 trillion this year, not $1 trillion, as they'd predicted in 2010. The bulk of the difference, as you can see in this ta...

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NEW YORK CITY-Confirming that this past October's one-month drop in the CMBS delinquency rate was an anomaly, the December 2010 percentage of loans at least 30 days past due climbed 27 basis points to reach an all-time high of 9.2%, with multifamily faring the worst, according to Trepp. Separately,...

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House Republicans have unveiled a proposed change in House rules that would create a “spending reduction” account to accompany each appropriations bill, the latest move by the GOP to show it’s serious about actually cutting spending next year. The new mechanism would set aside in a “lock box” any s...

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In yet another example of "innumeracy" when it comes to retirement adequacy, the Bipartisan Policy Center has proposed tackling the deficit by halving the amount that employers and employees can contribute to 401(k) accounts because they insist that affluent people will retire rich and we should sto...

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Two plans for reducing the federal deficit are now on the table. One of them, proposed by the chairmen of President Obama’s debt-reduction commission, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, was endorsed on Friday by 11 of the 18 panel members. The other comes from the nonprofit Bipartisan Policy Center. T...

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The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform ("Deficit Commission") was charged with coming up with a plan to reduce the budget deficits and accumulated debt caused by tax cuts for the rich and military spending increases. It was supposed to come up with a bipartisan package that, tak...

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The leaders of President Obama's fiscal commission released a final report Wednesday that is full of political dynamite, recommending sharp cuts in military spending, a higher retirement age and reforms that could cost the average taxpayer an extra $1,700 a year. But as commission co-chairmen Ersk...

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On Nov. 10, 2010 the chairmen of the bipartisan deficit-reduction commission, appointed by President Obama, introduced a preliminary draft proposal that included a suggestion to pare back the mortgage interest deduction. It is important to note that this initial report is thin on details and is expe...

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Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), one of the 18 members of the Deficit Commission, has offered her own plan in response to the Commission's proposals, which she has rejected. Rep. Schakowsky's major concern is that the Commission's recommendations to raise the age of enrollment in Social Security and cu...

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The chairmen of the White House's debt-reduction commission are making last-minute changes to their provocative early draft in an effort to broaden support before a crucial Wednesday vote, people familiar with the matter said. The co-chairmen, Democrat Erskine Bowles and former Republican Sen. Alan...

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Possibly the most amazing aspect of the Commission on Fiscal Responsibity's drive to reduce the federal "deficit" are proposals by its chairs and others to cut benefits payable by Social Security, although the program pays its own way and has generated robust annual surpluses, now totaling $2.4 tril...

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Washington is inundated with deficit commissions. The country has piled up a huge debt because we cut taxes for the wealthy and borrowed to make up the difference. But everyone says we can't fix the problem by raising taxes on the rich in a recession because taxes "take money out of the economy....

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Washington is inundated with deficit commissions. The country has piled up a huge debt because we cut taxes for the wealthy and borrowed to make up the difference. But everyone says we can't fix the problem by raising taxes on the rich in a recession because taxes "take money out of the economy." Is...

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The draft proposal by the chairmen of President Obama’s deficit-reduction commission was a welcome antidote to the low-minded debate that dominated the midterm elections, in which politicians all vowed to reduce the deficit but offered no credible plans. The proposal, released Wednesday, comes fro...

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