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The Biden administration quietly inserted itself into a private patent infringement lawsuit two biotech companies filed against COVID-19 vaccine maker Moderna, in a move experts said could establish a dangerous precedent. In a surprise filing last month, U.S. Attorney David Weiss issued a "statement of interest" in the case on behalf of the Department of Defense and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), invoking a rarely-used early 1900s law to argue that the federal government should take on any liability for patent infringement Moderna may be guilty of related to the development of its COVID-19 vaccine. "Where, as here,...

Illinois’ five statewide pensions system saw their debt increase by nearly $10 billion to a grand total of $140 billion in fiscal year 2022. Pensions will cost the state nearly $11 billion next year, but that’s still $4.4 billion too little. Illinois’ state pension debt now stands at $139.7 billion, according to a new report from the Illinois General Assembly’s Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability. That is up $9.8 billion from 2021, when state pensions were benefitting from healthy investment returns. After markets cooled substantially, state pension debt in the fiscal year that ended July 1 continued to grow,...

The new ‘minimum wage’ for government work is now $100,000+... So, just who is making all of this money? Meet the Illinois government employee $100,000 Club. It's comprised of 132,188 public employees and retirees who earned a new ‘minimum wage’ of $100,000 or more. While crime skyrockets in the neighborhoods, test scores plummet in the public schools, and inflation decimates private-sector paychecks, the Illinois public employee class is living the good life. Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com found nearly 500 educators in the public schools with salaries between $200,000 and $439,000. In small towns, city managers made up to $341,300. Three...

Unfunded state pension liabilities have climbed to $8.28 trillion, or nearly $25,000 for every person in the United States, according to a new report from the American Legislative Exchange Council.The American Legislative Exchange Council released the latest edition of its report on pensions in all 50 states Thursday. The report, "Unaccountable and Unaffordable 2021," shows just a handful of states with outsize pension liabilities account for a large share of overall pension debt in the U.S.The report looked at 290 state-administered government pension plans and their assets and liabilities from fiscal year 2012 to fiscal year 2020. An example of...

DoubleLine's Jeffrey Gundlach called the Fed's bluff late last month, telling investors during an interview that he suspected the central bank was merely "guessing" about the impact of inflation being "transitory".Since then, we have only received more signs that inflationary pressures are growing in the US economy, while a growing number of investors have been persuaded to agree with Gundlach. The other day, DoubleLine released a recording of another talk given by Gundlach where he elaborated on the inflation theme, while also discussing other issues like the outlook for the US dollar in the face of President Biden's tax-and-spend agenda.During...

The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome cor- onavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2/2019-nCoV) poses a serious threat to global public health and local economies. As of March 3, 2020, over 80,000 cases have been confirmed in China, including 2946 deaths as well as over 10,566 confirmed cases in 72 other countries. Such huge num- bers of infected and dead people call for an urgent demand of effective, available, and affordable drugs to control and diminish the epidemic. We have recently reported that two drugs, remdesivir (GS-5734) and chloroquine (CQ) phosphate, efficiently inhibited SARS-CoV-2 infection in...

Without pension reform, progressive income tax amendment guarantees tax hikes on Illinois’ middle class. ( Full title). The current progressive income tax proposal would fail to pay down the state's unfunded liability while damaging Illinois' economy. On May 20, Democrats in the Illinois House Revenue & Finance Committee approved Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s prized progressive tax constitutional amendment. While the Senate had previously passed a new income tax structure – already different from the governor’s original proposal – the House Committee also passed the amendment without putting in income tax rates. ... progressive tax proponents need to face that without pension...

When financial markets cratered in late 2007, state pension officials assured lawmakers and the public that the damage to government retirement funds was only temporary. Pension funds are long-term investors, their story went, and pension systems would recover as soon as the market did. When lawmakers in Montana, for instance, asked the state treasurer whether they should be worried about the government’s ability to meet its retirement obligations, he confidently advised them to “go fishing” instead. They should have ignored him and taken action to bolster the state’s pension system, which has never recovered from the market crash. Montana’s retirement...

Social Security's unfunded liabilities total $12.5 trillion in present-dollar terms over a 75-year timeframe, the administration's trustees reported Thursday, an increase of $1.2 trillion from last year's estimate. The trustees report showed that Social Security's combined trust fund can only pay scheduled benefits through 2034, a projected date that is unchanged from a year ago. Medicare's trust fund, though, is in better shape than previously estimated and will run out a year later than previously anticipated, in 2029. At those dates, beneficiaries would face the prospect of an immediate cut in benefits unless policy were changed in some way to...

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has called on Congress to raise the United States debt limit "at the first opportunity." In a letter to congressional leaders dated Wednesday, Mnuchin said the Treasury will stop issuing certain state and local securities on March 15, when the most recent suspension of the debt limit expires. Mnuchin said the Treasury will likely start taking "extraordinary measures" the next day, when the U.S. will be at its statutory limit, to prevent default. "As I said in my confirmation hearing, honoring the full faith and credit of our outstanding debt is a critical commitment. I encourage...

BP expects to take an after-tax non-operating charge of around $2.5 billion in its 2Q 2016 results, a total charge to the disaster of $61.6 billion.

Why Pensions Are A (Big) Black Swan – Chicago’s Unfunded Liabilities Are 10 Times Its Revenues, 50% Of Their Cash That Will Have Go To Pensions. [ Full title ]. ... When talk turns to what might derail today’s debt-driven “recovery,” the big names and easy stories get most of the attention: China with its soaring debt, volatile equities and heavy-handed intervention; Japan with its stratospheric debt and science fictiony demographics; Greece, which needs no explanation; the developing countries with their weak currencies and mountain of dollar-denominated debt. And of course America’s triple bubble of stocks, bonds and derivatives. Underfunded...

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...

(CNSNews.com) -- 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 broke in 75 years or 50 years or 25 years or 10 years. It’s broke today. "Indeed, it may well be in worse fiscal shape than any developed country, including Greece," he said. (See...

There are many ways to look at the United States government debt, obligations, and assets. Liabilities include Treasury debt held by the public or more broadly total Treasury debt outstanding. ThereÂ’s unfunded liabilities like Medicare and Social Security. And then the assets of all the real estate, all the equities, all the bonds, all the depositsÂ…all at todayÂ’s valuations. But letÂ’s cut straight to the bottom line and add it all upÂ…$89.5 trillion in liabilities and $82 trillion in assets. There. ItÂ’s not a secret anymoreÂ…and although these are all government numbers, for some strange reason the government never adds...

Wanna scare somebody about America's debt on the eve of the Fiscal Cliff? I mean, really scare somebody? Here's a trick. Don't talk about the debt. Talk about "unfunded liabilities." The U.S. national debt comes out to about $16 trillion today. That's something. But it's nothing compared to the extra $87 trillion in unfunded liabilities to Social Security, Medicare, and federal pensions. Here's how that works. If you add up all of the U.S. government's promises to pay retirement and health care benefits for the next 75 years and subtract the projected tax revenue dedicated to those programs over the...

Bill Gross: This Deal Does Nothing, And We Still Have An "Unfathomable" $66 Trillion In Liabilities To Deal With Joe Weisenthal Aug. 2, 2011, 7:42 AM Bill Gross's big bet against US Treasuries didn't work out well (latest yield on the 10-year is 2.70%), but nevertheless, as a gigantic bond investor his opinion on debt matters always matters... and obviously he's pretty underwhelmed by the latest "deal." Here's what scares him the most: $66 trillion in future liabilities: So, how might this be rectified? Gross sees four options: * Balance the budget/growth – The current Congressional compromise is but one...

A couple of days ago I posted this original article on my blog about the huge problem coming with the 'real' national debt. Several people wanted me to post it here so I hope you find it as interesting: We here at Surviving California have been asking our friends for the last several years a question…and “it” has surprised us that no one else seems to be asking “it”. Either “it” is a very dumb question (a real possibility consider our history) or people have been in a self-induced fog preventing them from realizing the immensity of “it”. When we...

(Reuters) - The U.S. government fell deeper into the red in fiscal 2010 with net liabilities swelling more than $2 trillion as commitments on government debt and federal benefits rose, a U.S. Treasury report showed on Tuesday. The Financial Report of the United States, which applies corporate-style accrual accounting methods to Washington, showed the government's liabilities exceeded assets by $13.473 trillion. That compared with a $11.456 trillion gap a year earlier. Unlike the normal measurement of government intake of receipts against cash outlays, accrual accounting measures costs such as interest on the debt and federal benefits payable when they are...

Republican Governors Association chairman Rick Perry (R-Texas) called Social Security a Ponzi scheme on Sunday and said young workers know they will never receive any of the money they currently pay into the fund. "What I'm saying is that between Social Security, Medicaid and Medicaid there's $106 trillion of unfunded liabilities and not one dime saved to pay for them," Perry said on Fox News Sunday. "My children who are in their 20s know that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme." When challenged by host Chris Wallace, who pointed out that when Social Security started there were seven or eight...