Free Republic

Less than 10 days after the Federal Reserve announced a reprise of the “Operation Twist“ strategy it first used half a century ago, mortgage rates are at all-time lows. Operation Twist is the Fed’s plan to squeeze the long end of the yield curve by buying long-term Treasurys instead of short-term ones — in other words, increasing demand and lowering the rates for long-term borrowing.

Average rates on fixed-rate mortgages hit record lows this week, with the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaging 4.01%, according to Freddie Mac’s weekly survey of conforming mortgage rates. “Fixed mortgage rates fell to all-time record lows this week following the Federal Reserve’s announcement of its Maturity Extension Program and additional purchases of mortgage-backed securities,” said Frank Nothaft, vice president and chief economist of Freddie Mac, in a statement.

Worries about the European debt markets pushed U.S. Treasury bond yields lower — and that helped drive interest rates on fixed-rate mortgages to record lows this week, according to a weekly survey of conforming loan rates released Thursday by Freddie Mac. The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage dropped to 4.09% in the week ending Thursday, down from 4.12% a week ago and 4.37% a year ago.

The Palestinian Authority is once again angry with Israel, only not for political reasons this time, but rather for economic ones. The PA’s electric company announced Tuesday that electricity rates would go up by 7%, following the 12% increase in electricity rates in Israel. The Chairman of the Palestine Electric Company, Omar Katana, placed the blame on Israel, from which the PA acquires 95% of the electricity in Judea and Samaria and 75% of the electricity in Gaza. “Israel’s increase in electricity prices is due to the cessation of the supply of gas from Egypt and its use of expensive...

<p>SAN FRANCISCO — Netflix has provoked the ire of some of its 23 million subscribers by raising its prices by as much as 60 percent for those who want to rent DVDs by mail and watch video on the Internet.</p>

The intelligentsia of the Democratic Party is growing increasingly enthusiastic about raising the highest federal income tax rates to 70% or more. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich took the lead in February, proposing on his blog "a 70 percent marginal tax rate on the rich." After all, he noted, "between the late 1940s and 1980 America's highest marginal rate averaged above 70 percent. Under Republican President Dwight Eisenhower it was 91 percent. Not until the 1980s did Ronald Reagan slash it to 28 percent."

Since Obama is starting up the "tax the rich" dogma again, I thought it was time to discuss exactly how much taxes the "rich" are paying. The Congressional Budget Office publishes a great deal of information about how the federal tax burden is distributed, and compiles all of it at the cited link. It provides data from 1979 to 2007, adjusted to 2007 dollars so that you can compare how it has changed, without worrying about inflation. However, I discovered that someone has taken all this information and created a series of graphs that make it much easier to understand:...

Abortions Up Slightly After Previous Lows, Abortion Drug Used More Washington, DC -- New figures from the Guttmacher Institute reveal the number of abortions in the United States and the abortion rate has risen slightly after its last report showed historic lows. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/01/11/abortions-up-slightly-after-previous-lows-abortion-drug-used-more/

Fiscal Policy: President Calvin Coolidge famously said that the chief business of the American people is business. Now it seems that the chief business of Congress is to make sure American businesses are taxed at a punitive rate. Earlier this week, Japan quietly announced it was cutting its corporate tax rate by 5 percentage points next year. That will leave the U.S., where the average combined federal and state corporate rate is 40%, with the highest rate in the developed world (see chart). A high corporate tax rate is a drag on an economy. It affects a country's competitiveness as...

Republicans poring over a 1,924-page spending bill proposed by Democrats to cover the rest of the fiscal year are threatening to ground the legislation to a halt, citing hidden earmarks and massive spending that would be enacted into law without a review process.

In the heated battle over extending the expiring Bush-era tax cuts, a single number has emerged from the crossfire: $250,000. It's the annual income that President Obama and others have repeatedly used to define what it means to be "rich" in America today. And even though a tentative deal has been reached on the cuts, $250,000 is etched in the minds of policymakers and pundits as the number that separates the middle class from the wealthy. By most measures, a $250,000 household income is substantial. It is six times the national average household income, and just 2.9 percent of couples...

Obama says vote on tax deal crucial, has potential to create 'millions of jobs' WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama says a congressional vote on the tax-cut deal he negotiated with Republicans will determine whether the nation's economy "moves forward or backward." The president again pressed Congress to pass the agreement, saying it has the potential to create millions of jobs. He said if it fails, Americans would see smaller paychecks and it would result in fewer jobs.

(CNN) - Defying President Obama, House Democrats voted Thursday not to bring up the tax package that he negotiated with Republicans in its current form. "This message today is very simple: That in the form that it was negotiated, it is not acceptable to the House Democratic caucus. It's as simple as that," said Democratic Congressman Chris Van Hollen. "We will continue to try and work with the White House and our Republican colleagues to try and make sure we do something right for the economy and right for jobs, and a balanced package as we go forward," he said....

...We are told that the current debate is on whether or not to extend the Bush tax cuts. From the very start, this argument is deceptive. A tax cut – the act of cutting – is a one-time thing. Once in place, it’s just another part of tax policy. The portions of our tax policy currently being debated have stood, unchanged, for five, seven, even nine years now. You simply can’t call these things “cuts” anymore. The choice before us, honestly described, is between leaving the status quo alone or implementing an enormous tax hike the very second that lighted...

The UK has the fifth highest cancer death rate for women among the 27 European Union countries but spending on health is lower in Britain than other leading economies. Only Poland, Ireland, the Czech Republic and Hungary had worse records for deaths from cancer among women.[Snip] The ONS report said: “Breast cancer is the most common form of female cancer in England and Wales. It is also the second most common cause of cancer deaths in women, after lung cancer.” Death rates from breast cancer fell in the UK and the rest of Europe between 2000 and 2007.

Large employers in the Twin Cities are bracing for health care cost increases of nearly 9 percent next year, according to a new survey. And many employees soon will learn how much of that increase will come out of their pockets. The new survey from Hewitt Associates, a consulting firm based in suburban Chicago, finds that projected health cost increases next year in the Twin Cities will match the 8.8 percent rate of increase that's being forecast nationally. That's a departure from 2009 and 2010, when the rate of increase in the Twin Cities was below the national average, according...

The 2008 income tax data are now in, so we can assess the fulfillment of the Republican promise that tax cuts would produce widespread prosperity by looking at all the years of the George W. Bush presidency. Just as they did in 2000, the Republicans are running this year on an economic platform of tax cuts, especially making the tax cuts permanent for the richest among us. So how did the tax cuts work out? My analysis of the new data, with all figures in 2008 dollars: Total income was $2.74 trillion less during the eight Bush years than if...

Have you seen your health insurance rates rise lately? Or did your company just cut benefits? Brace yourself for your “October Surprise”. We heard hundreds of times from Dear Leader how we must have his Government run health system and how it will keep premium rates under control and punish those “wascally insuwance compwanies”. Well friends, it’s time to pull your head out of the ether and begin to live with the government plan that you didn’t want in the first place. Whether it be costs, quality of care, waiting lines, services availability, privacy issues or just the bureaucratic nightmare,...

Even before there was an Obama administration, there was the hue and cry for the government to "do something" to stimulate the economy reeling from the Chris Dodd Bear Market and Recession. But there also were voices warning that stimulating the economy the way Barack Obama and congressional Democrats intended — massive government borrowing to fund massive spending on government employees and infrastructure; government interference in commerce; microscopic interest rates — was failure waiting to happen. Those voices recalled how Japan stimulated its economy 10 times after the credit bubble burst in 1990. Each time, Japan ramped up government spending...

Title only. No links from USA allowed. Link posted in thread below.