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The Obama administration on Thursday will kick-off a program that allows people to experiment with a new job while still receiving unemployment benefits as part of an effort to help some 5.3 million Americans who have been out of work for six months or longer. Ten states will be able to apply to participate in the program, and the Labor Department will announce the application process Thursday, according to a White House official.
Obama spent at least $205,075 in 2010 to “translocate” a single bush in San Francisco that stood in the path of a $1.045-billion highway-renovation project that was partially funded by the economic stimulus legislation President Barack Obama signed in 2009.
Israel is increasingly concerned with the military build-up in Iraq amid intelligence reports that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps is solidifying its presence in the country, according to a senior Israeli Defense Forces officer. Of particular concern is the Pentagon’s approval in late 2011 of the sale of 36 F- 16 multi-role combat aircraft to Iraq. The planes will be built by Lockheed Martin in the US and are of the same configuration as Israeli F-16′s.
White House officials held talks with representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood in Washington this week, as the Islamist group threw itself into the fray in Egypt’s presidential election. The meeting on Tuesday with low-level National Security Council staff was part of a series of US efforts to broaden engagement with new and emerging political parties following Egypt’s revolution last year, a US official said.
Among all the factors pushing up prices at the gas pump, the weakness of the U.S. dollar is one of the most important and least discussed. Ultimately, supply and demand set the price of oil, gasoline and all other sources of energy. But the fact that oil is priced globally in dollars also has consequences for American consumers.
When the dollar buys less, Americans pay more for oil. And right now the dollar is weak, its buying power diluted by easy money and huge budget deficits.
In 1996 Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act by huge bipartisan votes — 342 to 67 in the House and 85 to 14 in the Senate. President Bill Clinton signed the measure into law.
Now, the Obama administration says DOMA, which permits states to refuse to recognize gay marriages from other states and also creates a federal definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman, is unconstitutional. In Boston on Wednesday, Stuart Delery, an attorney for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, urged the First Circuit Court of Appeals to find DOMA violates the Constitution by discriminating against gays and lesbians.
The conventional wisdom that nearly infinite demand exists for U.S. Treasury debt is flawed and especially dangerous at a time of record U.S. sovereign debt issuance.
The recently released Federal Reserve Flow of Funds report for all of 2011 reveals that Federal Reserve purchases of Treasury debt mask reduced demand for U.S. sovereign obligations. Last year the Fed purchased a stunning 61% of the total net Treasury issuance, up from negligible amounts prior to the 2008 financial crisis. This not only creates the false appearance of limitless demand for U.S. debt but also blunts any sense of urgency to reduce supersized budget deficits.
Still, the outdated notion of never-ending buyers for U.S. debt is perpetuated by many. For instance, in recent testimony before the Senate Budget Committee, former Federal Reserve Board Vice Chairman Alan Blinder said, “If you look at the markets, they’re practically falling over themselves to lend money to the federal government.” Sadly, that’s no longer accurate.
