FCIC Website – If you did not see any of the FCIC Testimony on TV last week, you missed out on very interesting testimony and questioning. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission has a website. Hearings and Testimony is one of the pages with a video of days 1 & 2 and pdf files of testimony. Be sure and check out the testimony of Kyle Bass, partner at Hayman Advisors.
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on inflation – Bernanke and the Beast – By N. GREGORY MANKIW – IS galloping inflation around the corner? Without doubt, the United States is exhibiting some of the classic precursors to out-of-control inflation. But a deeper look suggests that the story is not so simple. – NY Times
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Bob McTeer – The War on Banks – Getting Curiouser and Curiouser – … Bank bashing in order to tap into the mob-rule psychology of the current populism undermines the ability of the administration’s tax policies to be taken seriously by serious people. … – Bob McTeer Blog
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California’s Crisis Is Still In Its Infancy – Joe Weisenthal – California’s own Department of Finance recently put out a presentation called “California at the Brink of Financial Disaster” (mentioned in a guest post by Jim Gobetz here) which is basically a quick rundown of how the state got into such a fiscal mess, and how it might go about fixing itself. – Money Game at Business Insider
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The ‘Responsibility’ Tax – Fannie and Freddie are exempt from the White House banker ‘fee.’ – … Mr. Obama’s new “Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee”—please don’t call it a tax—is being sold as a way to cover expected losses in the Troubled Asset Relief Program. That sounds reasonable, except that the banks designated to pay the fee aren’t those responsible for the losses. … – WSJ Opinion
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What Washington Post Story Did Not Say about Its Own Poll: Most Americans Say They Want a Smaller Government – … Fifty-eight percent said they favor a smaller government with fewer services, and only 38 percent said they favor a larger government with more services. … – By Terence P. Jeffrey – CNSNews