WASHINGTON — The Senate voted overwhelmingly for a package of tax breaks for businesses and individuals that totals over $100 billion, setting up an end-of-session showdown with the House over whether to find new revenue or cut spending to offset the cost fully. The Senate voted 93-2 for the bill, which provides tax breaks for renewable energy, prevents the alternative-minimum tax from hitting millions more people this year and extends expiring tax provisions sought by businesses. Action now moves to the House, where Democrats strongly favor fully offsetting the cost of the legislation, as required by Congress’s pay-as-you-go budget rule. House leaders say they will bring their version of the legislation with the offsets to the floor in coming days. The legislation is just one of several items lawmakers are trying to complete before their planned adjournment at the end of the week. All are being overshadowed by top lawmakers’ work on a financial-rescue plan urged by the Treasury Department. David Obey House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D., Wis.) announced a deal on the $600 billion temporary plan that would fund the government until early March 2009. The so-called continuing resolution would allow a ban […]
WASHINGTON — By a 2-to-1 ratio, Americans blame Republicans over Democrats for the financial crisis that has swept across the country the past few weeks, a new national poll suggests. That may be contributing to better poll numbers for Sen. Barack Obama against Sen. John McCain in the race for the White House. In a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey out Monday afternoon, 47 percent of registered voters questioned said Republicans are more responsible for the problems currently facing financial institutions and the stock market; only 24 percent said Democrats are more responsible. Twenty percent blame both parties equally and 8 percent say neither party is to blame. The poll also indicates more Americans think Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, would do a better job handling an economic crisis than McCain, the Republican presidential nominee. Video Watch Obama blast McCain on the economy » Forty-nine percent of those questioned said Obama, D-Illinois, would display good judgment in an economic crisis, six points higher than McCain, R-Arizona. And Obama has a 10-point lead over McCain when it comes to who respondents think would better handle the economy overall. These numbers seem to be affecting […]
LONDON – It’s a rare day when finance officials, leftist intellectuals and ordinary salespeople can agree on something. But the economic meltdown that wrought its wrath from Rome to Madrid to Berlin this week brought Europeans together in a harsh chorus of condemnation of the excess and disarray on Wall Street. The finance minister of Italy’s conservative and pro-U.S. government warned of nothing less than a systemic breakdown. Giulio Tremonti excoriated the ‘voracious selfishness’ of speculators and ‘stupid sluggishness’ of regulators. And he singled out Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, with startling scorn. ‘Greenspan was considered a master,’ Tremonti declared. ‘Now we must ask ourselves whether he is not, after [Osama] bin Laden, the man who hurt America the most. . . . It is clear that what is happening is a disease. It is not the failure of a bank, but the failure of a system. Until a few days ago, very few were willing to realize the intensity and the dramatic nature of the crisis.’ In an interview Thursday in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Tremonti drew a comparison to corruption-ridden Albania in 1997, when a nationwide pyramid scheme […]
BEIJING — Threatened by a ‘financial tsunami,’ the world must consider building a financial order no longer dependent on the United States, a leading Chinese state newspaper said on Wednesday. The commentary in the overseas edition of the People’s Daily said the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc (LEH.P: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) ‘may augur an even larger impending global ‘financial tsunami’.’ The People’s Daily is the official newspaper of China’s ruling Communist Party, and the overseas edition is a smaller circulation offshoot of the main paper. Its pronouncements do not necessarily directly reflect leadership views, but this commentary by a professor at Shanghai’s Tongji University suggested considerable official alarm at the strains buckling world financial markets. China’s central bank earlier this week cut its lending rate for the first time in six years, a move analysts said was aimed at bolstering the economy and the battered stock market. ‘The eruption of the U.S. sub-prime crisis has exposed massive loopholes in the United States’ financial oversight and supervision,’ writes the commentator, Shi Jianxun. ‘The world urgently needs to create a diversified currency and financial system and fair and just financial order that is […]
For most of human history, we knew very little, and what we did know, was known by very few. Thomas Young (1773 -1829), an English scientist, researcher, physician and polymath is usually cited as ‘the last person to know everything,’ by which is usually meant the then contemporary academy of Western scholarship. He was popularly known as ‘Phenomenon Young,’ spoke a daunting number of languages, and made contributions to many fields of science, including translating the Rosetta Stone, and coining the term energy. Einstein praised him for his work on Newton and his physics in his 1931 foreword to an edition of Newton’s Optics. For most of modern history people took pride in being knowledgeable and the deep drive of Western cultures, particularly in America, was to expand knowledge, and make it more widely known. Benjamin Franklin who, more than any other Founder set in motion the processes that have become the American culture, had a very particular kind of culture in mind and open-minded education was a major part of it. His America was solidly middle-class. It encouraged upward mobility, and did not permit hereditary privilege. It absolutely separated church and state, yet was tolerant of individual […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
