Misery Index: The Obama Depression - "Private sector doing just Fine"

[Soul Crusher]

Obama and his disgusting pofs wife and nothing more than two Katrina/92 LA RIOTS/Crown Heights/ Watts looters and grifters. 

[Soul Crusher]

The end of the American era? Only another Reagan revolution can save the US superpower
By Nile Gardiner World Last updated: April 25th, 2011
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100084965/the-end-of-the-american-era-only-another-reagan-revolution-can-save-the-us-superpower



 

The Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch column this morning has attracted a great deal of attention in the United States, with its report on a bombshell forecast by the IMF (not yet publicly available) that “China’s economy will surpass that of America’s in real terms in 2016 – just five years from now.” The Journal’s Brett Arends notes:

For the first time, the international organization has set a date for the moment when the “Age of America” will end and the U.S. economy will be overtaken by that of China.

… It provides a painful context for the budget wrangling taking place in Washington, D.C., right now. It raises enormous questions about what the international security system is going to look like in just a handful of years. And it casts a deepening cloud over both the U.S. dollar and the giant Treasury market, which have been propped up for decades by their privileged status as the liabilities of the world’s hegemonic power.

According to the IMF forecast, whomever is elected U.S. president next year — Obama? Mitt Romney? Donald Trump? — will be the last to preside over the world’s largest economy.

Coming just a few days after the warning shot from Standard and Poor’s over America’s debt status, the IMF prediction will be deeply unsettling for many Americans who fear their country is about to be eclipsed in the near term by China, and later this century by India, with their combined population of 2.5 billion people, dwarfing the 300 million who live in the United States. And who can blame them, with the United States facing, as Liam Halligan notes in a terrific piece for The Telegraph today, a federal deficit close to 10 percent of gross domestic product, and entitlement liabilities (including Medicare and Medicaid) of $75,000 billion – five times annual GDP.

And while America’s towering federal debt reaches its highest level since World War Two, the White House appears to be stuck in a state of paralysis and denial, unwilling to confront the biggest economic crisis facing America in the post-war era. As a series of recent polls have shown, there is widespread disillusionment with the Obama administration’s handling of the economy, with a New York Times survey last week showing 70 percent of Americans believing the country is moving down the wrong track.

America has clearly lost its way in recent years, not because the government hasn’t done enough, but because there is too much government interference in the economy, with a significant decline in economic freedom. The big government mentality which has dominated the White House for the better part of the last two decades has acted as a huge brake on American economic growth and competitiveness, stifling job creation and frightening away foreign investment. The United States today has the highest corporate tax rates in the developed world, a surefire recipe for killing economic creativity. US businesses and entrepreneurs require lower taxes, less red tape, and greater freedom to kickstart a moribund economy, not the deadening hand of government.

The US needs a Reagan-style revolution to reverse a poisonous big government mentality that is literally killing a superpower. Fortunately, there are fortunately signs that another political revolution is on its way, with the rise of a new wave of lawmakers on Capitol Hill who are serious about dealing with the deficit, reining in government spending, and placing the vision of the Founding Fathers at the heart of policymaking, from Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin to Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. And the extraordinary success of the Tea Party movement in the past 18 months has helped ensure that America’s debt crisis has been placed at the centre of the political debate.

Ultimately, the prosperity and success of the United States as an exceptional nation over the past 230 years has rested upon an undying belief in individual liberty and economic freedom, both of which are denied to the people of China, whose current economic growth rests largely on foundations of sand. It is premature to write off America as the world’s dominant superpower, for this is a nation that possesses an extraordinary ability to rebuild itself after periods of decline. It remains a beacon of hope to billions across the world, a “shining city upon a hill” built on the ideals of liberty and freedom, as Reagan reminded the American people before he left office. In the words of the greatest US president of the 20th Century in his farewell address:

The past few days when I’ve been at that window upstairs, I’ve thought a bit of the “shining city upon a hill.” The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was important because he was an early Pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we’d call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free.

I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it, and see it still.

… After 200 years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm. And she’s still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.

[Soul Crusher]

Consumer Price Inflation On A Diet Of Gold And Wheaties
The Daily Reckoning ^ | 4-26-2011 | Bill Bonner




Consumer Price Inflation On A Diet Of Gold And Wheaties

By Bill Bonner


04/26/11 Baltimore, Maryland – We’ve always wondered why there is so much debate about the rate of inflation. It seems like such a simple thing to track. You go in the store. You buy a box of Wheaties. You write down the price. Next month, you do the same thing. What’s so hard about that?

But what if the box is smaller next month? What if the Wheaties are twice as good? What if you can get the same enjoyment from a box of Wheatie-Puffs at half the price?

What’s the real rate of inflation? It depends on how you figure it. The Labor Department shows consumer price inflation at barely over 2%. John Williams’ ShadowStats puts the figure close to 8%.

We say “close to” and “about” because the numbers are never more than approximations; no point in dressing them up with decimals as though they were precise and reliable.

But comes now MIT University with a project to track prices by monitoring them on the worldwide web. Instead of creating a small sample of prices and checking them periodically, the Billion Prices Project looks at a huge number of prices from all over the web, in real time.

The resulting numbers may not be perfect, but there sure are a lot of them. Using such a huge volume of price information, the Billion Prices Project is probably the most reliable measure of consumer price inflation developed so far.

So, you’re probably wondering… Well, what’s the story? How much consumer price inflation is there?

Over the last 12 months, prices have gone up 3.2%, say professors Alberto Cavallo and Roberto Rigobon, who developed the index.

But get this, the rate of consumer price inflation is speeding up. Annualize the data from the last 3 months and you get 7.4%.

We don’t need to tell you, Dear Reader. If that rate sticks, today’s financial world comes unglued.

By the most recent calculation by the Billion Prices Project, US government bond yields measure only half the rate of consumer price inflation. How could that be? Why would investors buy a bond yielding only half the inflation rate? Are they idiots?

Maybe they are betting that the latest inflation numbers are a fluke. Ben Bernanke said so himself.

“I think the increase in inflation will be transitory,” said the man more responsible for the price hikes than any other living human being.

Mr. Bernanke says gasoline at $4 a gallon…and a box of Wheaties at $5…are features of “global supply and demand conditions.”

Fair enough. Perhaps they are. But what about $1,500 gold? The supply of the yellow metal is barely any greater than it was when it was priced at $1,000 an ounce.

You may say that demand has increased by 50%…but that only introduces a string of other questions. Gold has no uses – other than ornament and money. What happened that would increase demand for it so suddenly? And if something has increased the demand for gold, perhaps that same thing might have affected oil and wheat too.

The feds are insincerely trying to figure it out. They’ve been asked by President Obama himself to look into price increases and report any funny business. Of course, the real funny business is right in plain sight. The Fed has tripled its holdings of private and public debt – and added nearly $2 trillion in extra cash to do it. Most of that money is still frozen in the banking system. But what will happen when things heat up…and it’s multiplied, maybe ten times over? Won’t that cause prices to rise even faster?

Maybe that’s what people are worried about. And to protect themselves, they’re buying tried and true money, traditional money. Because they’re afraid the more modern variety won’t hold up.

“Dollar’s Slide Accelerates,” reports The Wall Street Journal.

As predicted in this space, the feds have failed. Pouring more liquidity onto a saturated marketplace did not work. The economy already had more than enough debt; it didn’t need more.

More debt and dollars did not create a genuine recovery. Instead, they merely drowned millions of ordinary households…

The New York Times has the story:

WASHINGTON – The Federal Reserve ’s experimental effort to spur a recovery by purchasing vast quantities of federal debt has pumped up the stock market, reduced the cost of American exports and allowed companies to borrow money at lower interest rates.


But most Americans are not feeling the difference, in part because those benefits have been surprisingly small. The latest estimates from economists, in fact, suggest that the pace of recovery from the global financial crisis has flagged since November, when the Fed started buying $600 billion in Treasury securities to push private dollars into investments that create jobs.


Mr. Bernanke and his supporters say that the purchases have improved economic conditions, all but erasing fears of deflation, a pattern of falling prices that can delay purchases and stall growth. Inflation, which is beneficial in moderation, has climbed closer to healthy levels since the Fed started buying bonds.


“These actions had the expected effects on markets and are thereby providing significant support to job creation and the economy,” Mr. Bernanke said in a February speech, an argument he has repeated frequently.


But growth remains slow, jobs remain scarce, and with the debt purchases scheduled to end in June, the Fed must now decide what comes next.

And now, we’ll make another bold prediction. What happens when the QE2 program expires? Probably nothing…at first. But just wait. The Japanese, as usual, are setting the pace. In the two weeks following the tsunami/nuke crisis, they expanded their central bank balance sheet by two and a half times – adding huge new stockpiles of money for the banking system to draw upon.

The US feds won’t be left behind for long.

[Soul Crusher]

Obamaflation Arrives
the american spectator ^ | 4-26-11 | Jeffrey Lord

________________________ ________________________ ______________


President Obama will not be re-elected. Period.

Why?

Obamaflation has arrived, and this is what it looks like.

Milk. A gallon of skim. At the local Giant in Central Pennsylvania:

January 11, 2011: $3.20 February 28, 2011: $3.24 March 6, 2011: $3.34 April 23. 2011: $3.48

That would be a 28 cent rise in a mere 102 days, from January to April of this year. The third year of the Obama misadventure.

Then there's the celery. Same sized bag. Same store.

January 11, 2011: $1.99 a bag. March 6, 2011: $2.49 a bag.

A rise of 50 cents in 54 days.

And the gas price during the administration filled with those who think "drill baby drill" is so yesterday? As one Internet photo had it, the numbers for regular, premium. and diesel were replaced with "LOL," "OMG," and "WTF!" Thus be it to governments who seem not to understand that energy is what makes the economic engine -- and your car -- hum.

What does this mean? It means Barack Obama is not going to be re-elected president of the United States. Period.

[snip]

You can get away with a lot of things as president and blame them on other people. For Obama its George Bush or now the oil companies or also now those evil corporations or… well… yada yada yada. But when average Americans begin to understand that Obamanomics is directly responsible for a 28 cent rise in the price of milk (with over a year and a half to go to the 2012 elections), there is going to be political hell to pay. And the buck, so to speak, stops, as it always does, with the president of the United States.


(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...

[Soul Crusher]

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Wal-Mart: Our shoppers are 'running out of money'
CNNMoney ^ | 4/27/2011
Posted on April 27, 2011 9:58:06 PM EDT by Altura Ct.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Wal-Mart's core shoppers are running out of money much faster than a year ago due to rising gasoline prices, and the retail giant is worried, CEO Mike Duke said Wednesday.

"We're seeing core consumers under a lot of pressure," Duke said at an event in New York. "There's no doubt that rising fuel prices are having an impact."

Wal-Mart shoppers, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck, typically shop in bulk at the beginning of the month when their paychecks come in.

Lately, they're "running out of money" at a faster clip, he said.

Wal-Mart's ready to do battle on prices

"Purchases are really dropping off by the end of the month even more than last year," Duke said. "This end-of-month [purchases] cycle is growing to be a concern.

Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500), which averages 140 million shoppers weekly to its stores in the United States, is considered a barometer of the health of the consumer and the economy.

To that end, Duke said he's not seeing signs of a recovery yet.

With food prices rising, Duke said Wal-Mart is charging customers more for some fresh groceries while reducing prices on other merchandise such as electronics.

Wal-Mart has struggled with seven straight quarters of sales declines in its stores.

(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...

[Bindare_Dundat]

First-time unemployment filings head the wrong way



NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- First-time filings for unemployment claims jumped last week, coming in above the key 400,000 level for the third straight week, according to a government report Thursday.

The number of initial claims rose to to 429,000 in the week ended Apr. 23, up 25,000 from the week before. It was the highest level in three months, and surprised economists, who were expecting initial claims to drop to 390,000 in the latest report.




hahahaha surprise! 

[Bindare_Dundat]

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Wal-Mart: Our shoppers are 'running out of money'
CNNMoney ^ | 4/27/2011
Posted on April 27, 2011 9:58:06 PM EDT by Altura Ct.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Wal-Mart's core shoppers are running out of money much faster than a year ago due to rising gasoline prices, and the retail giant is worried, CEO Mike Duke said Wednesday.

"We're seeing core consumers under a lot of pressure," Duke said at an event in New York. "There's no doubt that rising fuel prices are having an impact."

Wal-Mart shoppers, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck, typically shop in bulk at the beginning of the month when their paychecks come in.

Lately, they're "running out of money" at a faster clip, he said.

Wal-Mart's ready to do battle on prices

"Purchases are really dropping off by the end of the month even more than last year," Duke said. "This end-of-month [purchases] cycle is growing to be a concern.

Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500), which averages 140 million shoppers weekly to its stores in the United States, is considered a barometer of the health of the consumer and the economy.

To that end, Duke said he's not seeing signs of a recovery yet.

With food prices rising, Duke said Wal-Mart is charging customers more for some fresh groceries while reducing prices on other merchandise such as electronics.

Wal-Mart has struggled with seven straight quarters of sales declines in its stores.

(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...

Don't worry, the Fed has it's finger on the pulse of the economy. They are on top of it.

[Soul Crusher]

April 28, 2011, 12:09 p.m. EDT

The 9 places where inflation is crushing us
Commentary: Meat, gas, even diapers are costing regular folks
By Jeff Reeves


This update corrects the city that has the nation’s highest gas prices, which is Chicago.

ROCKVILLE, Md. — Inflation is far from under control and it’s time that Americans demand our government officials do something about it.

The Federal Reserve would have you believe that everything is fine, focusing on core inflation rates and ignoring broader measures of inflation as they affect food and energy. These commodity-driven prices, as our central banking overlords would have you believe, are naturally more volatile and shouldn’t be overstated.


High gas prices could hurt ObamaNeil King looks at whether soaring gas prices will hurt President Obama's chances for reelection in 2012 and how Republicans in Congress are trying to put the blame on Obama for consumers' pain at the pump.
You would think after Fed bureaucrat William Dudley was castigated for talking up the affordability of iPads while ignoring real family expenses, our Federal Reserve officials would have woken up to reality. But after the publicity stunt by Chairman Ben Bernanke on Wednesday, it’s clear that the Fed — and perhaps many Americans as a result — is in denial when it comes to the inflationary trends crippling U.S. households. Read about how the Fed’s reckless policy has created a catastrophic bubble on InvestorPlace.com.

While it’s all well and good for investors to focus on surging precious metals and the profit opportunities there, let’s not overlook the dark side of inflation that is eating away at family budgets. Here are nine crushing costs of inflation that are breaking many American households:

1. Beef
In a revised forecast Monday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said consumers will see higher price tags on ground beef and steak, projecting 6% to 7% increases year over year. That’s up from a previous forecast of just 4.5% to 5.5% inflation for beef prices. Beef prices have surged in the last several months as supplies shrink, exports boom and grain costs soar.

2. Pork
Don’t think you can just switch from cow to pig to avoid this trend — pork could see retail price increases of as much as 7.5% over 2010 levels according to the USDA.

3. Grains
Even going vegetarian is more expensive than it was a year ago. Corn prices have doubled, from $3.49 a bushel in July to well over $7.70 currently. Wheat prices have rolled back a bit in recent weeks, but topped 2008 highs in February to set a new record and remain very high currently.

4. Gasoline
The average U.S. price of a gallon of gasoline has jumped about 12 cents over the last two weeks to $3.88, with the highest average price for gas tallying $4.27 in Chicago. This is with oil at $112 a barrel — if crude prices reach 2008 peak levels of $145, four bucks for gas may seem cheap.

5. Copper
The price of copper at the end of 2008 was just $1.30 per pound. Currently, copper is trading around $4.30 after setting a record of $4.60 in February. Unlike gold and silver, which are largely used in luxury goods or as investments, copper is used in a wide range of household items — from electrical wiring to air conditioners to water pipes. Read about how gold could hit $5,000 soon on InvestorPlace.com.

6. Diapers
Consumer-products company Procter & Gamble (NYSE:PG)  said this week that list prices for Pampers are up 7% on average over last year, with even Pampers wipes up 3%. To be clear, that’s not a retail price hike, just a cost increase to stores. Retailers will decide how much of those price increases to pass along to shoppers. Kimberly-Clark (NYSE:KMB) , maker of Huggies, said Monday it plans to raise prices for similar reasons — rising costs for the petroleum products and paper pulp that go into the diapers. It will be the third such announcement for Kimberly-Clark since the middle of March.

7. Paper towels and toilet paper
If you don’t have infants, you’re not off the hook. P&G also said that Charmin toilet paper and Bounty paper towels are both listing for 5% more now with retailers and distributors than they were a year ago. KMB’s diaper price update will also be accompanied by a boost for its flagship Kleenex tissues.

8. Shipping surcharges
Freight shipper United Parcel Service (NYSE:UPS)   will be hiking its fuel surcharges from 7.5% to 8.5% as of May 2 for ground freight and from 13% to 15% for air freight. That really hurts small businesses. If you are a storekeeper simply trying to keep your shelves stocked, you have no choice but to pay more and endure smaller margins — or hike prices yourself and add to this inflationary mess.

9. Wages
Perhaps the most insidious factor of our current inflationary spiral is the fact that while all these other items are costing more, household purchasing power is shrinking because wages and salaries aren’t keeping up. While the consumer price index rose 2.7% in March to clock the fastest 12-month pace since December 2009, a staggering 18.3% of personal income is now made up of food stamps while wages account for just 50.5%. That’s the lowest since the government started keeping records in 1929. Read about how inflation has helped doomed Obama to just one term on InvestorPlace.com.

Jeff Reeves is editor of InvestorPlace.com. As of this writing, he owned a long position in Bank of America stock. Follow him on Twitter via @JeffReevesIP and become a fan of InvestorPlace on Facebook.

[Soul Crusher]

Most Americans say U.S. in recession despite data: poll
By David Morgan
WASHINGTON | Thu Apr 28, 2011 9:47am EDT



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than half of Americans say the U.S. economy is in a recession or a depression despite official data that show a moderate recovery, according to a poll released on Thursday.

The April 20-23 Gallup survey of 1,013 U.S. adults found that only 27 percent said the economy is growing. Twenty-nine percent said the economy is in a depression and 26 percent said it is in a recession, with another 16 percent saying it is "slowing down," Gallup said.

The poll findings have a 4 percentage point margin of error, according to Gallup.

The health of the U.S. economy is expected to be a major issue as President Barack Obama, a Democrat, seeks re-election in 2012.

The government reported on Thursday that U.S. economic growth slowed more than expected to 1.8 percent in the first quarter of the year, as soaring food and gasoline prices drained consumer spending power.

A slowdown in first-quarter growth was acknowledged on Wednesday by the Federal Reserve, which described the U.S. economic recovery as proceeding at a "moderate pace." That was a step back from the "firmer footing" that Fed officials cited for the recovery in March.

The Gallup poll found that Democrats are the most likely to say the economy is growing. Forty-three percent of Democrats said the economy is in a recession or depression, 13 percent said it is slowing down and 42 percent said it is growing.

Sixty-eight percent of Republicans and supporters of the conservative Tea Party movement said the economy is in a recession or a depression. Fourteen percent of Republicans and 13 percent of Tea Party supporters said the economy is growing.

Fifty-seven percent of independent voters -- a crucial segment of the electorate for Obama's re-election bid -- said the economy is in a recession or depression and 24 percent said it is growing

[Soul Crusher]

Economic growth slows, inflation surges
By Lucia Mutikani Lucia Mutikani – 1 hr 12 mins ago


WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Economic growth braked sharply in the first quarter as higher food and gasoline prices dampened consumer spending and sent inflation rising at its fastest pace in 2-1/2 years.

Another report on Thursday showed a surprise jump in the number of Americans claiming unemployment benefits last week, which could cast a shadow on expectations for a significant pick-up in output in the second quarter.

Growth in gross domestic product slowed to a 1.8 percent annual rate after a 3.1 percent fourth-quarter pace, the Commerce Department said. Economists had expected a 2 percent pace.

With much of the pull back traced back to sharp cuts in defense spending and harsh winter weather, analysts were hopeful the economy would regain speed in the second quarter. The drop in defense spending was seen as temporary.

"Growth was disappointing given the momentum of the economy heading into the year. We are still of the belief that the economy will improve out of the soft patch through this quarter into the second half of the year," said Brian Levitt, an economist at OppenheimerFunds in New York.

Economists were encouraged that details of the report, in particular consumer spending and business outlays on software and equipment, were not as weak as they had feared and said this suggested a foundation for stronger growth was in place.

Consumer spending accounts for about 70 percent of U.S. economic activity.

LABOR MARKET WEAKNESS?

While a 25,000 rise in claims for state jobless benefits to 429,000 last week hinted at some weakening in the labor market, analysts cautioned against reading too much into gain. They said severe weather in some parts of the country and the Easter holiday could have distorted the figure.

Still, the data suggested improvements in the labor market were still only coming grudgingly.

"The underlying downtrend in initial claims that had been in place since late last year has flattened out," said Omair Sharif, an economist at RBS in Stamford, Connecticut. But he added: "It seems a little too early to suggest that the underlying pace of layoffs has picked up."

Hiring accelerated in March and a report next week is expected to show job creation remained relatively robust in April.

MODERATE PACE

Prices for U.S. government debt rose after the data, while stocks edged lower. The weak GDP report and the Federal Reserve's stated commitment to a loose monetary policy stance after a two-day meeting on Wednesday kept the dollar near a three-year low against a basket of currencies.

The Fed on Wednesday trimmed its growth estimate for 2011 to between 3.1 and 3.3 percent from a 3.4 to 3.9 percent January projection.

Some economists felt the U.S. central bank's estimates might be a little optimistic, given the poor start to the year even though most agreed growth would soon strengthen.

Optimism the economy would find a firmer footing in the second quarter was bolstered by a report showing pending sales of previously owned homes rose 5.1 percent in March. Housing is struggling to recover and is one of the headwinds facing the economy.

Growth in the first quarter was curtailed by a sharp pull back in consumer spending, which expanded at a rate of 2.7 percent after a strong 4 percent rise in the fourth quarter.

Rising commodity prices meant consumers had less money to spend on other items. Gasoline prices remain a concern, even though they are expected to stabilize somewhat.

INFLATION RISING

The GDP report underscored the pain that strong food and gasoline prices are inflicting on households.

A inflation gauge contained in the report rose at a 3.8 percent rate -- the fastest pace since the third quarter of 2008 -- after increasing 1.7 percent in the fourth quarter.

A core price gauge, which excludes food and energy costs, accelerated to a 1.5 percent rate -- the fastest since the fourth quarter of 2009 -- from 0.4 percent in the fourth quarter. The core gauge is closely watched by Fed officials, who would like to see it closer to 2 percent.

In the first quarter, restocking by businesses picked up, with inventories increasing $43.8 billion after a $16.2 billion rise in the fourth quarter. However, the buildup was less than economists had expected and some said they looked for further inventory building to bolster growth in the second quarter.

Inventories added 0.93 percentage point to first-quarter GDP growth. Excluding inventories, the economy grew at a pedestrian 0.8 percent pace after a brisk 6.7 percent rate in the fourth quarter.

Business spending on equipment and software gained pace, but government spending suffered its deepest contraction since the fourth quarter of 1983.

Home building made no contribution, while investment in nonresidential structures dropped at its quickest pace since the fourth quarter of 2009, likely the result of bad weather.

(Additional reporting by Mark Felsenthal; Editing by Neil Stempleman)

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[MCWAY]

Hmmm....mmmm....mmmmmm!!!

[Soul Crusher]

Those poor idiot kids have no clue the damage being done to them with this crazy spenduing and WTF monetary/currency policy. 


FFFFUUUUBBBOOOOO, piss and shit be upon you!   

[Soul Crusher]

Obama Inflation OVER 15% Annual Rate, Gasoline On Way to $5/gallon: Wagging the Birth Certificate
Bloggers & Personal ^ | 28 Apr 11 | Xzins




If you think prices are rising all around you on everything, then you are correct.

Inflation rose in the first quarter at the fastest pace in over two years.

The personal consumption expenditure index rose 3.8% in the first quarter, the fastest pace since the third quarter of 2008. Over the past year, the index is up 1.6%.


The core personal consumption index, excluding volatile energy and food prices, rose 1.5% in the first quarter, the fastest since the fourth quarter of 2009. Wall Street Journal Market Watch, 28 Apr 11


Driving to, and walking through the aisles of the grocery store last week, I saw it everywhere. Meat, bread, milk, snacks...and definitely Gasoline…everything up higher.

And while Obamanomics tries to hide behind their "core" rate that excludes everything real people live on, even that was at a much higher rate of 6% annual inflation. So, the best face that can be placed on this is that everything else is soaring at 6% inflation, the everyday consumption of Americans is in the stratospheric Jimmy Carter level of 15%+.

That's why it seems that even the fewest of items placed in a shopping cart anymore total to $100+ dollars.

Who is the culprit?

1. The government is printing money faster than the NY Times produces newsprint. When playing Monopoly, if you bring in five extra games' worth of money to the board, then everyone starts bidding higher and higher on houses and hotels. Why? Because there's so much more cash and that makes each play money dollar worth less in purchasing power. America is playing with play money. Part of the price increase is caused by sellers not wanting to get stuck selling something for a dollar that’s been getting worth less and less for a couple years now.

2. Oil. Everything runs on oil and this administration refuses to let anyone drill for more. With the inflation mentioned at #1, the insistence that there be no drilling drives the price of fuel through the roof. Everyone has to account for this huge new expense. Who can fault truckers, chemical companies, and industry for passing on their costs? I can't. Already over $4 a gallon, Obama gas prices are being manipulated to $5+ by summer's end. (And manipulated back down by election time?)

3. Manipulation. Barack Obama has an incoherent foreign policy that encourages speculation. He has an incoherent economic policy that encourages financial hesitation, and thereby, joblessness. He has an incomprehensible drilling, mining, and manufacturing policy that discourages development.

One can only assume that there's some reason that Barack Obama's so-called incompetence, whether through a drilling moratorium or through a haphazard foreign policy, always benefits OPEC, China, internationalist interests, or the Muslim Brotherhood.

Obama might rail against speculators, but he has created a boom time for them with all the uncertainty he has brought about. It’s almost as if he has the interests of speculators (or just a certain group of them?) at heart. Even though he blames them, they, and their financial partners, or their handlers, keep laughing all the way to the bank.


The bottom line: if common folk can see this as crazy, that this manipulation tends to benefit certain entities and penalize others, then the pattern begins to look like the truth after a while. The statistical pattern says that OPEC, primarily Arab Oil, has benefitted tremendously. It’s almost as if he really did bow toward Abdullah.


Is Obama manipulating on purpose?


Does he really WANT higher prices?


The track record says YES.

[garebear]

Home sales fell 9.6 pct. in February (Median home price hit 9-year low)
AP via Yahoo Finance ^ | 3/21/2011 | Derek Kravitz



WASHINGTON (AP) -- Fewer Americans bought previously occupied homes in February and those who did purchased them at steep discounts. The weak sales and rise in foreclosures pushed home prices down to their lowest level in nearly 9 years.

The National Association of Realtors said Monday that sales of previously occupied homes fell last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.88 million. That's down 9.6 percent from 5.4 million in January. The pace is far below the 6 million homes a year that economists say represents a healthy market.

Nearly 40 percent of the sales last month were either foreclosures or short sales, when the seller accepts less than they owe on the mortgage.


(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...

Have you ever considered using your law expertise as a platform to run for office?

[Soul Crusher]

I live in the Bronx.   Unless you are a communist leftist maggot like obama - you dont get elected here.   

[Soul Crusher]

By David Lightman | McClatchy Newspapers


WASHINGTON — Public disapproval of President Barack Obama's handling of the economy reached a new high in mid-April, according to a new McClatchy-Marist poll, as gasoline prices neared $4 a gallon and Washington lawmakers fought a bitter battle over the federal budget.

Some 57 percent of registered voters said they disapproved of Obama's economic management, while only 40 percent approved. That's the lowest score of his presidency.

"These numbers spell political trouble," said Lee Miringoff, the director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion in New York, which conducted the survey. "To get re-elected with a 57 percent disapproval rating would be a very tall order."

Meanwhile, public pessimism is growing: Fifty-seven percent of U.S. adults said they thought the worst was yet to come for the U.S economy, up sharply from 39 percent in January. And 71 percent said the nation was still in a recession, even though the slump, which began in December 2007, officially ended in June 2009.

The survey asked 1,084 registered voters about Obama on April 10-14. The error margin is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

"Gasoline prices were taking off, and while people weren't blaming Obama or Congress for that, it certainly put people in a sour mood," Miringoff said.

Obama gave a major speech April 13 in which he laid out his economic and budget agenda in general terms. But his speech didn't change many voters' attitudes. Before the address, 58 percent disapproved of his handling of the economy; after the speech, the negative number dropped to 56 percent. Approval was 40 percent before the address, 41 percent after.

Political analysts generally regard economic conditions as a predictor of upcoming elections. Troubling signs abound. The nation's unemployment rate last month was 8.8 percent, down 1 percentage point from November but still high. The Consumer Price Index, which measures the prices of goods and services, climbed 0.5 percent last month, as gasoline prices rose for the ninth straight month.

Obama could take solace from one finding: Sixty-three percent of those surveyed said the current economic conditions were mostly something the president had inherited, while 30 percent said they were mostly the result of his policies.

Miringoff called that data "a silver lining," but added, "It's hard to paint a rosy picture" of the public's attitude toward Obama on the economy.

ON THE WEB


Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/04/27/112900/poll-obama-is-losing-publics-confidence.html#ixzz1KqfFpn7N

[Soul Crusher]

Dollar Loses More Ground [Don't look now, but.....Dollar Death Accelerating]
The Wall Street Journal ^ | 04/28/2011 | STEPHEN L. BERNARD



Dollar Loses More Ground. NEW YORK—The dollar dropped after economic indicators pointed to a dismal employment picture and slowing economic growth. The dollar has been hammered recently, losing out on interest-rate differentials and regularly hitting multiyear lows against other major currencies. Losses were especially bad Wednesday after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke indicated the central bank is far from tightening monetary policy as economic growth remains slow and unemployment remains high.


(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...

[Soul Crusher]

Pa.-based Acme to lay off 900 workers in 4 states
Lebanon (PA) Daily News ^ | April 28, 2011 | AP Staff



Acme Markets says it's laying off 900 workers at its stores in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland. The company, which has about 14,000 employees at its 117 stores, says the layoffs will take effect May 7 and affect part-time workers, mostly those who work 12 to 16 hours a week.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports the decision comes two weeks after Acme's parent company, Minnesota-based Supervalu, reported that sales in the last quarter fell once again at its supermarket chains in the Northeast.

Dan Sanders, president of Malvern-based Acme, said in a statement that the company needed to take the action because it has more associates than it needs for the current level of sales.

[Soul Crusher]

Don't Mean To Be Rude, But The Economy Sucks
Henry Blodget | Apr. 28, 2011, 11:11 AM
www.businessinsider.com



The past couple of months, a disconnect has developed between the perception of the US economy and the reality.

The perception is that everything's just fine: The continuation of a solid if unspectacular recovery that began in the summer of 2009. Stocks continue to rise. Corporate profits continue to boom. The unemployment rate continues to tick down. Wall Street continues to coin money.

But the reality is that the recovery has never been strong and that many key metrics have recently turned south--despite the fact that the government still has its foot stomped on the stimulus gas.

What metrics have turned south?

Well, first and foremost, GDP growth.

We learned this morning that the economy grew at a pathetic 1.8% in Q1. That's way below the 3%-4% rate that most economists consider normal. And it's miles below the 5%-7% growth that normally follows a recession as sharp and severe as the one we just had.

Meanwhile, the Fed still has interest rates parked at zero, and is still conducting emergency stimulus measures like QE2. And the government's huge stimulus package from 2009 is still driving spending. And we're still spending an absolutely mind-boggling ~$1.5 trillion per year more than we take in (federal deficit)--and piling up humongous debts in the process. And, needless to say, none of this spending--"stimulus" or just normal spending we can't afford--has produced the desired private-sector growth.

1.8% GDP growth in the face of massive stimulus is the equivalent of your car sputtering down the highway at 45 miles per hour while you have the gas pedal floored. You might be glad that the car hasn't broken down completely, but you certainly won't conclude that all is well. And you also might conclude--wisely--that if 45 is the best you can do with the gas pedal floored, things may be about to get a whole lot worse.

And it's not just growth that blows.

In the past few weeks, initial jobless claims have ticked back above 400,000 per week, considerably higher than economists expected. Jobless claims above 400,000 are generally considered a sign of a contracting job market, not a growing one. If the recent jobless claims trends continue, the monthly jobs figures may soon go from "okay, not great" to downright lousy again.

And then there's the unemployment rate. It's still almost 9%! Imagine if, back in 2007, someone had told you that in 2011 the unemployment rate would be 9% and that some folks would consider that encouraging. You'd have dismissed them as a flat-earther or Armageddonist. But here we are.

What else?

House prices are falling again--so quickly that, in many parts of the country, they're now setting new post-bubble lows.  Remember all the hand-wringing two years ago about how the economy would never really recover until we got a floor in house prices--and, therefore, how the government had to do everything possible to put a floor under house prices? Well, now the government appears to have given up. (And that's actually a good thing, because there's no government price intervention in history that we know of that has permanently prevented prices from reverting to the level the market will support. Governments can delay the inevitable, but they can't prevent it. And house prices are still "expensive" on a historical basis.)

Inflation is taking hold. As anyone who actually buys things knows, things cost a lot more than they did a little while ago. Things like gas (double the price of a couple of years ago, up nearly 40% this year alone), food, rent, healthcare, insurance premiums, and so on.  (Yes, houses are getting cheaper, but most people don't have to buy houses.) Ben Bernanke can talk until he's blue in the face about how there's no inflation, or shouldn't be because of the "slack" in the system, but people who actually buy things know better.  A rise in inflation means that you'll start hearing the word "stagflation" quite frequently. The word "stagflation" is not a happy word. It's the word that characterized the 1970s: Crappy economic growth combined with wild inflation.  Stagflation destroys savers and those who lived on fixed incomes (many retirees). It also punishes anyone trying to run a business. And it's hell on stock prices.

Corporate profit margins are at near-record highs, but this party may finally be over.  This morning, Procter & Gamble said that their margins are getting slammed by rising commodity prices. Like most companies, P&G will presumably try to pass these costs through to the rest of us, but given high unemployment, huge debt burdens, and crappy wage growth, it's unlikely that consumers will swallow them. So corporate profit margins, which have helped levitate the stock market for the past two years, may finally begin to compress. (Which, by the way, they always do--despite all the great arguments about why it's "different this time.")

Anything else? Yes, there are other things, too.

But the bottom line is, the economic recovery is not going well. It's going badly. And the recent signs suggest that it may be about to get worse--just as the Fed's latest emergency stimulus measure (QE2) begins to run out.

See Also: 10 Signs The Economy Is Slowing >

[Soul Crusher]

IBD Editorials Sponsored by:
. Editorial: A Tale Of Two Recessions And Two Presidents
 
Posted 04/28/2011 07:10 PM ET
 



Growth: It's been nearly two full years since the recession officially ended, and the economy is still struggling to get off the ground. It didn't have to be this way.

When the Commerce Department released its estimate for first-quarter growth — a meager 1.8% — President Obama's chief economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee, at least conceded that "faster growth is needed to replace the jobs lost in the downturn."

And granted, the economy needs to expand by at least 2.5% just to keep up with growth in the labor force. So at 1.8%, we're essentially losing ground, a fact that last week's 429,000 initial jobless claims underscores. But what Goolsbee didn't acknowledge is that the economy could be growing at a much faster rate, and would be if it weren't saddled with Obama's reckless policies.

How do we know this? Compare the two worst post-World War II recessions. Both the 1981-82 and the 2007-09 downturns were long (16 months and 18 months, respectively) and painful (unemployment peaked at 10.8% in 1981-82 and 10.1% in the last one).

What's dramatically different, however, is how each president responded.

Obama massively increased spending, vastly expanded the regulatory state, and pushed through a government takeover of health care. What's more, he constantly browbeats industry leaders, talks about the failings of the marketplace and endlessly advocates higher taxes on the most productive parts of the economy.

In contrast, Reagan pushed spending restraint, deregulated entire industries, massively cut taxes and waxed poetic about the wonders of a free economy.

The result? While the Reagan recovery saw turbocharged growth and a tumbling unemployment rate, Obama's has produced neither. Consider:

• GDP. In the seven quarters after the 1981-82 recession ended, the economy cranked out quarterly growth rates that averaged 7.1%. Under Obama, GDP growth has averaged a mere 2.8%. (See chart at right.)

• Unemployment. Under Reagan, the unemployment rate had fallen to 7.5% by this point in the recovery. Under Obama, it's still stuck at 8.8%.

• Long-term unemployment. There were far fewer long-term unemployed by this point in the Reagan recovery; just 18% of the unemployed had been without a job 27 weeks or more. Under Obama, that figure is an astonishing 45%.

• Consumer confidence. By this point in the Reagan recovery, the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index had hit 100. Today, the index stands at just 65.4.

• Deficits. Under Reagan, the federal deficit was trimmed to 4.8% of GDP by 1984. Under Obama, the deficit is expected to climb to 10.9% of GDP this year.

Obama and his defenders like to say he inherited the worst downturn since the Great Depression and that things would have been worse still had he not acted. But the recession was almost over by the time he took office — and officially over just six months after that.

So while Obama's policies had little to do with bringing an end to the Great Recession, they've had everything to do with producing what is by far the worst economic recovery in the past 70 years.

[Soul Crusher]

 

[Soul Crusher]

Losing Faith (In The U.S. Economy)
TEC ^ | 4-29-2011



Losing Faith (In The U.S. Economy)

April 29,2011

Are the American people losing faith in the U.S. economy? The statistics that you are about to read might surprise you. Not everyone believes that the U.S. economy is dying (there are still millions out there that will swallow anything that the mainstream media tells them), but the reality is that there is a growing chunk of the population that has completely lost faith in our leaders and in our economic system.

A brand new Gallup poll has found that the number of Americans that believe that we are in a "depression" is actually larger than the number of Americans that believe that the economy is "growing". That is absolutely shocking because according to official government figures, the U.S. economy is growing right now and virtually nobody in the mainstream media or the government has used the term "depression" to describe the economic downturn that we went through recently.

In fact, according to Gallup a total of 55% of the American people believe that we are either in a recession or a depression right now. This is clear evidence that the American people are losing faith in U.S. government economic statistics and instead they are basing their opinions on what they see in their own communities.

Despite the pablum about an "economic recovery" constantly being spewed by Ben Bernanke and Barack Obama, faith in our economic system continues to decline. The truth is that the American people are not stupid. They can see what is happening to the economy.

Back when I was a teenager, one day I walked over to the local McDonald's and filled out an application and was immediately hired.

But that is not how it works today.

Recently, McDonald's made headlines when they held a National Hiring Day. Some commentators pointed to that event as evidence that the economy was recovering.

Well, you know what? McDonald's ended up receiving approximately one million applications.

So how many of those people did McDonald's hire?

They hired about 62,000 people.

That means that somewhere around 938,000 eager job applicants were turned away.

Just think about that.

Only about 6.2 percent of those that applied for a job at McDonald's were accepted.

As Joe Weisenthal of Business Insider recently pointed out, that means that Harvard now has a higher acceptance rate than McDonald's does.

Harvard accepts about 7% of those that apply to go to school there.

Who ever thought we would see the day when a higher percentage of applicants get accepted into Harvard than get hired at McDonald's?

Sadly, the number of jobs continues to shrink. The competition for good jobs has become absolutely crazy.

Only 66.8% of American men had a job last year. That was the lowest level that has ever been recorded in all of U.S. history.

So why is this happening? Well, there are a lot of reasons, but as I have written about previously, the fact that millions of our jobs are being shipped overseas is a huge factor.

Without good jobs, an increasing number of Americans are being forced to turn to government assistance in order to survive.

Today, more than 44 million Americans are on food stamps. In addition, government transfer payments now make up 18 percent of all personal income in the United States.

That is frightening.

Things have gotten so bad that now even Wal-Mart is warning that their customers are running out of money.

A large percentage of Wal-Mart customers are just surviving month to month and Wal-Mart has been noticing a huge drop off in sales towards the end of the month when their customers run out of cash. The following is what the CEO of Wal-Mart had to say about this phenomenon recently....

"Purchases are really dropping off by the end of the month even more than last year."

People are starting to get desperate. When economic times get tough, crime tends to increase. Sadly, as a report in USA Today recently noted, thefts of gasoline are increasing all over the nation.

We never had this kind of a problem back when a gallon of gas only was about a dollar a gallon.

Do you remember those days?

They weren't that long ago.

Now it takes some people over a hundred dollars to fill up their gas tanks.

Our leaders keep promising that they know what is happening and that they are going to fix things, but most Americans are not buying it. Many Americans are completely losing faith in the system altogether.

Our economic decline has been one of the things that has fueled the growth of the prepper movement. Millions of Americans have decided that they want to start becoming independent of the system. One recent article described what some residents of Colorado are doing to prepare, but the truth is that this phenomenon is happening all over the nation....

A Black Forest resident has erected a geodesic dome on her 5-acre spread to grow vegetables, keeps horses for emergency transportation, in case she can't get gasoline for her car, and plans to acquire chickens and goats as food sources.


A husband and wife who have a cabin on 100 acres of secluded land in Park County have weaned their property from the electric grid, acquired a three-year food supply and taken other measures to become self-sufficient.

Of course the mainstream media loves to portray preppers as "crazies", but as the U.S. economy continues to die it would be a bit crazy not to prepare.

No job is completely safe today. Millions of Americans that assumed that their "good jobs" would always be there have had their lives shattered over the past couple of years.

There is nothing wrong with trying to become more self-sufficient.

Everyone should be thinking about either starting up a business or developing alternative sources of income. Yes, it can be exhausting to work on a side business during evening and weekends, but the time for loafing is over. Those that are going to make it through the times ahead are those that are going to be willing to work really hard.

People need to start thinking about becoming less dependent on "the system" however they can. One way to insulate yourself against rising food prices is to learn how to grow your own food.

Even if you only have a very small amount of room you can still grow your own food. For example, there is one family that is actually producing 6000 pounds of produce on just 1/10th of an acre right in the middle of Pasadena, California.

Just because we have lost some of the basic skills that previous generations possessed doesn't mean that we can't get them back. Back during World War II, "victory gardens" enabled Americans to grow 40 percent of all the vegetables that they needed. Those gardens greatly contributed to the war effort and helped Americans get through some very difficult times.

There are a lot of preppers out there that are totally out of debt, that own their own land, that are entirely off the electrical grid and that grow most of their own food. Many Americans would look at such people as "crazies" but those preppers will be in a much better position than most people when the economy totally collapses.

Don't wait until it is too late to prepare. Millions of Americans are completely losing faith in our economic system. People are smart. They can see that we are living in the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world. They can see that the guts of our economic infrastructure are being ripped out and shredded. They can see that the number of people living in poverty continues to increase year after year. They can see the the number of good jobs continues to decrease year after year.

When you see a horrible storm coming the rational thing to do is to prepare. Just think about all of those tornadoes that ravaged the southeast U.S. the other day. Most of the people directly in the path of those tornadoes did whatever they could to survive when they realized the twisters were about to hit.

Well, a horrific economic storm is coming. Every American will be affected by this economic storm at least to some extent. We all need to prepare while we still can.

[Soul Crusher]

Remember Stagflation? Well, It’s Back.
CNBC Money and Politics ^ | 04/29/2011 | Larry Kudlow



Stagflation officially returned today with a nasty GDP report that showed only 1.8 percent real growth, but 3.8 percent for the consumer spending deflator. It’s a mini version of the 1970s: low growth, higher inflation.

Looked at another way, rising inflation is coexisting with high, near-9 percent unemployment. Keynesians argue this can’t happen. They believe strong growth and too many people working leads to high inflation. But they were blown out of the water way back in the ’70s. And their view is hitting another pothole right now.

Supply-siders know that inflation is a monetary problem. Growth is caused by low tax-rate incentives. And the combination of flat tax rates and sound money could produce strong growth with no inflation. Think 1980s and 1990s.

But that’s not what we have now.

The dollar is falling relentlessly and gold is soaring. These market indicators are correctly predicting higher inflation as the Fed creates more excess money than anybody knows what to do with.

Fed head Ben Bernanke yesterday told us that low Q1 growth and high inflation will be “transitory.” How does he know this? Gold has gone up $40 since he started talking at his Wednesday press conference. It’s now at $1,536 an ounce. And the greenback keeps falling. Transitory? Actually, it looks like the whole QE2 pump-priming hasn’t stimulated economic growth, but has stimulated inflation.

And while the Bush tax cuts were extended last December, the sharp dollar decline and the resulting inflation have neutralized the positive effects of continued lower tax rates.

Once again I note the supply-side model is low tax rates and a stable dollar (backed by gold). But low tax rates and collapsing dollar is no good. Neither is overspending and over-borrowing. Nor is the new round of Obama-based tax-hike threats.


(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...

[Soul Crusher]

U.S. Treasury: China Has Decreased Its Holdings of U.S. Debt
Friday, April 29, 2011
By Terence P. Jeffrey

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner testifying in the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in 2010. (AP photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

(CNSNews.com) - Mainland China has decreased its holdings of U.S. Treasury securities since last October, according to a report updated today by the U.S. Treasury Department.

Since September 2008, when they eclipsed Japan, entities in mainland China have been the largest foreign owners of U.S. government debt. But, as indicated by the Treasury Department chart linked here, Chinese ownership of U.S. Treasury securities peaked in October 2010 and has declined in each of the four most recent months reported by the Treasury Department.

At the end of October 2010, China owned 1.1753 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities. That dropped to $1.1641 trillion by the end of November, $1.1601 trillion by the end of December, $1.1547 trillion by the end of January, and $1.1541 trillion by the end of February 2011.

February is the latest month for which the Treasury has estimated foreign holdings of U.S. debt.

Back in February 2001, according to historical data reported by the Treasury, the mainland Chinese owned only $63.7 billion in U.S. debt. In the ensuing decade, the Chinese massively increased their holdings of U.S. Treasury securities, and especially in the past five years. In February 2006, China owned $318.4 billion in U.S. debt and Japan owned $656.4 billion.

In September 2008, the Chinese moved ahead of the Japanese in their U.S. debt holdings. At the end of that month, the mainland Chinese owned $618.2 billion in U.S. government debt and the Japanese owned $617.5 billion.

In the two years between September 2008 and September 2010, China increased its U.S. government debt holdings by $533.7 billion—from $618.2 billion to 1.1519 trillion. By the end of October 2010, China’s holdings of U.S. government debt had increased to their peak of 1.1753 trillion.

After that, mainland Chinese holding of U.S. government debt declined for four straight months.

Entities in Hong Kong have also been decreasing their ownership of U.S. government debt.  Hong Kong ownership of U.S. Treasury securities peaked at $152.4 billion in February 2010. By the end of February 2011, that had dropped to $124.6 billion.

In fiscal 2010—which ended on Sept. 30, 2010—the U.S. Treasury needed to redeem $7.206965 trillion in maturing U.S. Treasury securities. In order to cover the principle on those securities and borrow the money needed to cover government expenses that exceeded government revenues, the Treasury needed to turn around and sell $8.649171 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities during that fiscal year.

So far in fiscal 2011—which began on Oct. 1, 2010—the U.S. Treasury has needed to redeem $4.176308 trillion in maturing Treasury securities and sell $4.769522 in new Treasury securities.

At the end of February, according to the Treasury, the total U.S. debt was $14.194764 trillion of which $9.565541 trillion was publicly traded Treasury securities. Of those $9.565541 in public Treasury securities, foreigners owned $4.4743 trillion—or almost 47 percent.

The $1.1541 trillion in U.S. debt owned by the mainland Chinese as of the end of February equaled about 12 percent of the publicly held portion of the U.S. debt and almost 26 percent of the publicly held portion of the U.S. debt that was owned by foreign interests.

[Soul Crusher]

MARKETS
APRIL 29, 2011, 5:22 P.M. ET.
Dollar Hits Weakest Level Since July 2008

BY JAVIER E. DAVID

www.wsj.com


NEW YORK—Suffering its worst monthly performance since September 2010, the dollar weakened to a new 2½-year low Friday as investors turned increasingly pessimistic about the U.S. economy and the policy prescriptions designed to improve it.

Longstanding worries among market participants about the Federal Reserve's ultra-loose monetary policy have converged with growing concerns about the widening U.S. fiscal imbalance. Both are considered legacies of crisis-era stimulus policy that has kept U.S. interest rates at rock bottom, but sent the federal debt soaring to unsustainable levels.

As a result, the dollar is hunkered at multiyear lows against most of its major counterparts, ...