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Debt & Tax Clock
Slavery Clock
I started the debt clock some years ago and I still think it's a good reminder that the government shouldn't continue its spending spree. In the most recent update I added taxes with all figures projected forward to today based on 2007 Stats Canada numbers. Oh, and just to be clear, this clock measures the total of federal, provincial and municipal debt & tax.
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Debt, Government & Economic News
[More Stingy News: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | Send Us A Link]
| The end of the financial world | ||
| "This is one reason the collapse of our financial system has inspired not merely a national but a global crisis of confidence. Good God, the world seems to be saying, if they don.t know what they are doing with money, who does?" [01/04/09], Government | ||
| GMAC, the Fed, and moral hazard | ||
| "These are important questions, because this is not the last time that bondholders are going to be asked to give up money they're owed in order to save a company. In fact, a much bigger bond exchange is looming: one from GM itself. And nowhere are moral hazard considerations more important than when it comes to the tactics of distressed-debt exchanges. If a bailout is coming anyway, then a smart bondholder will always stay out of any exchange. And if most bondholders are smart, then no distressed company can effect a significant debt reduction without declaring bankruptcy." [12/30/08], Government | ||
| Capitalism is worst system except for the rest | ||
| "Fixing the price of any other commodity, including labor, has proven to be a failure, an affront to the inviolable invisible hand. Yet when it comes to setting the interest rate that will keep the economy on an even keel, we put our faith in a chosen few to get it right. All sorts of unintended consequences flow forth from central bankers' fixing of a short-term rate." [12/30/08], Government | ||
| Bailout of Long-Term Capital | ||
| "The financial crisis is a result of many bad decisions, but one of them hasn.t received enough attention: the 1998 bailout of the Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund. If regulators had been less concerned with protecting the fund.s creditors, our current problems might not be quite so bad." [12/29/08], Government | ||
| A mortgage bailout plan's paltry results | ||
| "Basically, the plan was to offer as much as $300 billion in government-guaranteed home loans to people whose current mortgages exceed the value of their houses; 400,000 people would benefit, it was said. Well, the early returns are in, and the program is, at this point, a flop. There have been only 312 applications, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. At that rate, the three-year program would help only about 5,400 borrowers." [12/26/08], Government | ||
| Obama's program flunks basic math | ||
| "O'Neill did the math so you don't have to. Each job 'will cost $250,000, which doesn't suggest much labor intensity for the dollars spent,' he said. 'It makes me wonder if any of the planners or commentators are good at arithmetic.' They're not good at arithmetic. And one wonders about their facility with economics." [12/26/08], Government | ||
| California will run out of money in February | ||
| "Property taxes, the mainstay of any state's income, have been frozen for many homeowners since a proposition was passed in the late 1970s. A separate measure, introduced in the 1980s, means that income taxes cannot be raised without the agreement of two-thirds of the state's lawmakers. Meanwhile, a raft of other ballot measures control spending, meaning that only 25 per cent of California's spending is considered "discretionary". The rest has been "earmarked" for a particular cause or project." [12/26/08], Government | ||
| Solar meets polar | ||
| "Old Man Winter, it turns out, is no friend of renewable energy. This time of year, wind turbine blades ice up, biodiesel congeals in tanks and solar panels produce less power because there is not as much sun. And perhaps most irritating to the people who own them, the panels become covered with snow, rendering them useless even in bright winter sunshine." [12/26/08], Government | ||
| U.S. holiday sales tumble | ||
| "Consumers spent at least 20 percent less on women.s clothing, electronics and jewelry during November and December, resulting in what may be the biggest holiday-shopping sales decline in four decades." [12/26/08], Economy | ||
| Get ready for a lost decade | ||
| "How many times have you heard that we've learned the lessons of the Great Depression and won't repeat the same mistakes? That statement is a bit of a false promise, since there was only one Great Depression, and many, many steps were taken and not taken, with no chance to rerun the experiment over and over to figure out what worked, or would have worked, and what didn't." [12/24/08], Government | ||
| California crisis may crunch jobs | ||
| "Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Democratic-controlled Legislature are deadlocked on how to close a two-year budget gap that grew to $42 billion as job losses and stalled consumer spending reduced income and sales taxes. Schwarzenegger and Democratic leaders met yesterday without a resolution and are scheduled to continue talks through the holidays. " [12/24/08], Government | ||
| Daddy, where do bailouts come from? | ||
| "I know it must sound strange, Junior. Many of the companies getting government money did bad things. They took risks with other people.s money. They padded their own pockets instead of watching out for their customers. And they lost a lot of money in the process." [12/22/08], Government | ||
| All the regulations money can buy | ||
| "When congress and two presidents get tired of shoveling our unborn grandchildren's money into the bad debt inferno, sure as night follows day our public servants will embark on an orgy of regulatory rule making intended to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again. How'd that work out last time?" [12/22/08], Government | ||
| Nanny State 2008 | ||
| "Do you really want to live in a world where giant inflatable apes are banned? Reason.tv takes a short, depressing look at nanny state bans that were passed or proposed in 2008." [12/19/08], Government | ||
| GM and Chrysler will get $13.4 Billion | ||
| "General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC will get $13.4 billion in emergency government loans in exchange for substantially restructuring their businesses, President George W. Bush announced. Another $4 billion will be available to GM in February providing Congress releases the second half of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program fund originally set up to bail out financial institutions. The automakers have until March 31 to meet the conditions of the loans, including demonstrating they have a plan to become profitable, or be forced to repay." [12/19/08], Government | ||
| The age of obligation | ||
| "Excessive debt is the key to this crisis; it is the reason we are confronting no ordinary recession, curable by a simple downward adjustment of interest rates. It is the reason we still have to fear, if not a second Great Depression, then very likely the biggest recession since the 1930s. We are living through the painful end of an age of leverage which saw total private and public debt in the US rise from about 155 per cent of gross domestic product in the early 1980s to something like 342 per cent by the middle of this year." [12/19/08], Debt | ||
| Deleveraging can save jobs | ||
| "One part of the solution to the current crisis is for Congress and the Treasury to restore, temporarily, the option for companies to deleverage by retiring debt at a discount without incurring tax liability. Tax-code and regulatory changes in the 1980s limited this option by treating the difference between the original issue price of debt and the lower amount for which it's repurchased as taxable income. The resulting tax liability on this "phantom income" decreases liquidity and blocks necessary restructuring of distressed corporate balance sheets. It also creates a perverse preference for bankruptcy that destroys asset values, jobs and customer relations. Finally, it puts American companies at a disadvantage relative to their competitors in nations with more accommodating tax structures, such as Germany and France. We believe American enterprises should be encouraged to deleverage, whether by exchanging newly issued or existing stock for debt, or using cash from asset sales. This is the worst possible time to impose a tax liability on companies trying to avoid layoffs by reducing their interest payments on debt. Freed from a tax on phantom income, thousands of companies will become stronger through deleveraging." [12/18/08], Government |
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