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With new immigration proposals, state lawmakers hope to build By MELANIE MASON California lawmakers hope to keep momentum going with new immigration-related proposals Proposal would offer Medi-Cal to people who qualify regardless of immigration status. Democratic lawmakers will unveil a slew of new immigration-related proposals Tuesday, including measures that would extend state-paid health coverage to those in the country illegally and offer more protection against deportation. Legislators behind the 10-bill package aim to build on the landmark immigration laws passed in California in recent years, such as one that allows people without legal residency to obtain driver's licenses. By keeping...

California legislative leaders took a bold step Tuesday toward protecting immigrants living in the country without documentation by backing legislation to offer Medi-Cal and other public services to a population they said they want to help move out of the shadows. The leaders of the California Senate and Assembly joined lawmakers and advocates in announcing the “Immigrants Shape California” legislative package at a press conference in Sacramento, saying the federal government’s inaction on immigration reform forced them to act.

Greece has demanded nearly €279bn in reparations from Germany, more than the value of its current bail-out, as the cash-strapped country continues to pursue compensation for crimes carried out by the Third Reich. A parliamentary committee established by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras put an official number on the claim, which includes the cost of a forced Nazi loan made by the Bank of Greece and the return of archaeological treasures. Greece suffered a brutal occupation at the hands of the Third Reich in 1941, with over 40,000 people starving to death in Athens alone. SNIP--- Berlin moved to quickly to...

American businesses are borrowing at historic high levels, but the only thing growing as a result is how fast their equity capital is vanishing, according to David Stockman, White House budget chief during the Reagan administration. Stockman blamed the Fed and the Fed's Wall Street cheerleaders. He said the Fed’s balance sheet has ballooned by nine times since 2000, yet real net investment in the business sector has cratered by 33 percent during the same time period. “Once upon a time businesses borrowed long term money — if they borrowed at all — in order to fund plant, equipment and...

David Alan Stockman interviewed on CBS-TV 60 Minutes (October 2010) Highlights of recent interview by Harry Dent. David Stockman: People don't want to hear the reality and the truth that we're facing. But I think there is an enormous appetite out in the country to get a different perspective than what you have from the media day in and day out, so I say the fed is out of control. Its balance sheet is exploded. It's printing money like never before. Zero interest rates for 70 months have basically destroyed the pricing function in the financial markets. I said...

Greek ministers are spending this weekend, almost five grinding years since Athens was first bailed out, wrangling over the details of the spending cuts and economic reforms they have drawn up to appease their creditors. As the recriminations fly between Europe’s capitals, campaigners are warning that the global community has failed to learn the lessons of the Greek debt crisis – or even of Argentina’s default in 2001, the consequences of which are still being contested furiously in courts on both sides of the Atlantic. As Janet Yellen’s Federal Reserve prepares to raise interest rates, boosting the value of the...

Just asking, that's all.

It seemed to be a classic case of “firemen first,” a theory first put forth in 1976 by legendary Washington, D.C., journalist Charles Peters. Any bureaucrat, when asked to list what services or jobs would be cut because of a looming budget crisis, identifies the most painful losses in public services – firemen, police officers, EMTs, workers who fill potholes, etc. Bureaucrats use it to try and pressure elected officials, afraid of voter backlash, to soften the budget cuts. It played out in the Capitol on March 3, when state Transportation Secretary Mark Gottlieb was asked what major state highways...

A state legislative auditor’s report found that the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) failed to ensure the eligibility of participants in large public assistance programs and that it did not always perform timely inspections of child care centers. The findings mirror those of other recent auditor reports and could fuel calls to reform the way state administrators verify eligibility for programs that together cost nearly $7 billion a year in federal money. For more than a decade, the legislative auditor has reported flaws in the way the state determines who qualifies for Medical Assistance, which provides health insurance to...

You read that right: $210 trillion. A trillion here, a trillion there: pretty soon, we’re talking big money. Professor Lawrence Kotlikoff of Boston University testified before the Senate Budget Committee. As usual, his testimony is shocking The U.S. has a $210 trillion “fiscal gap” and “may well be in worse fiscal shape than any developed country, including Greece,” Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff told members of the Senate Budget Committee in written and oral testimony on Feb. 25. “The first point I want to get across is that our nation is broke,” Kotlikoff testified. “Our nation’s broke, and it’s not...

Energy-sector deals have been a bright spot at a time when once-lucrative businesses, such as fixed-income trading and consumer lending, are flagging thanks to tighter rules, low interest rates and uneven economic growth, analysts said. Investment banks helped fuel the oil-and-gas exploration boom of the past decade by making loans valued at about $1 trillion to companies in the energy industry, most of which they sold to investors. The banks sold much of the debt to loan mutual funds, which grew rapidly from 2011 to 2013, but that demand dwindled as individual investors yanked $35 billion from the funds over...

The California teachers' pension fund still hasn't shaken off its investment in gun maker Bushmaster, more than two years after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. And now the teachers are mad. California teachers are planning a protest at the fund's annual meeting on April 2.

Citigroup Inc.,Goldman Sachs Group Inc.,UBS AG and other large banks face tens of millions of dollars in losses on loans they made to energy companies last year, a sign of investor jitters in a sector battered by the oil slump. The banks intended to sell the loans to investors but have struggled to unload them even after cutting prices, thanks to a nine-month-long plunge that has taken Nymex crude futures to their lowest level since 2009. The losses mark a setback for Wall Street, after global banks earned $31 billion in fees over the past five years by financing energy-company...

Interest rates will skyrocket, instability will roil the financial markets, the federal deficit will soar and the resulting "catastrophic" harm will last years. That is how Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew describes a debt-ceiling breach certain to cause a government default. Uncle Sam will be bankrupt. All national government operations will seize-up. All checks for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans, contractors and vendors will bounce. At the stroke of midnight, March 16, 2015, the debt ceiling was again breached. The Treasury Department has begun "extraordinary measures" to forestall the certain default. Jack Lew must rob Peter to pay Paul. He...

The southern California city of San Bernardino has defaulted on nearly $10 million in payments on its privately placed pension bond debt since it declared bankruptcy in 2012, according to documents seen by Reuters. In addition, the city has not negotiated with its bondholders since September, according to a person familiar with the stalled negotiations. The missed payments illustrate the trend among cities in bankruptcy to favor payments to pension funds over bondholder obligations, which has increased the hostility between creditors and municipalities.

Dear Greek readers: the writing is now on the wall, and it is in very clear 48-point, double bold, and underlined font: when the ECB "leaks" that it is modelling a Grexit, something Draghi lied about over and over in 2012 and directly in our face too, take it seriously, because it is time to start planning about what happens on "the day after." And incidentally to all those curious what the fair value of peripheral European bonds is excluding ECB backstops, the ECB has a handy back of the envelope calculation: a 95% loss. Which also is the...

While you were sleeping... The final debt figure for today will come out later this week, it’s expected to be a limit of about $18.2 trillion. But the government has some wiggle room for handling its debt situation while Congress considers whether and how to raise the debt ceiling, a process that could still take months to sort out. Most importantly, the Treasury Department can use “extraordinary measures” to cope with the debt, which are several tools the government has used before when up against its borrowing limit. For example, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew told Congress on Friday that as...

WASHINGTON — The congressional push this week to secure the first Republican budget plan in nearly a decade is revealing a chasm between fiscal hawks determined to maintain strict spending caps and defense hawks who are threatening to derail any budget that does not ensure an increase for the military. “This is a war within the Republican Party,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who has vowed to oppose a final budget that does not ensure more military spending. “You can shade it any way you want, but this is war.” The divisions will be laid bare Tuesday...

I don't know too much about Jim Rickards, just found this to be an interesting video about the overall economy and some tidbits about what our government agencies are up to. The video is a 45 minutes long interview of sorts and discussion. Just posting in the event other are interested.

With global moral hazard having long ago become institutionalized, and codified as "monetary policy", catering almost exclusively to the TBTF entities in the financial sector, we were surprised it took as long as it did for Obama to announce (as he did last week), that the administration is now studying "new bankruptcy options" for student loan borrowers: code word for an across the board student debt moratorium, or forgiveness. To wit from "Student Aid Bill of Rights: Taking Action to Ensure Strong Consumer Protections for Student Loan Borrowers":The President is directing his Cabinet and White House advisers, working with the...