Tag Archives: United States

MSN Money: US default seen as disaster dwarfing Lehman’s fall

Anyone who remembers the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. little more than five years ago knows what a global financial disaster is. A U.S. government default, just weeks away if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling as it now threatens to do, will be an economic calamity like none the world has ever seen.

Failure by the world’s largest borrower to pay its debt — unprecedented in modern history — will devastate stock markets from Brazil to Zurich, halt a $5 trillion lending mechanism for investors who rely on Treasuries, blow up borrowing costs for billions of people and companies, ravage the dollar and throw the U.S. and world economies into a recession that probably would become a depression. Among the dozens of money managers, economists, bankers, traders and former government officials interviewed for this story, few view a U.S. default as anything but a financial apocalypse.

The $12 trillion of outstanding government debt is 23 times the $517 billion Lehman owed when it filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 15, 2008. As politicians butt heads over raising the debt ceiling, executives from Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s Warren Buffett to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s Lloyd C. Blankfein have warned that going over the edge would be catastrophic.

Source: MSN Money – MSN Money: US default seen as disaster dwarfing Lehman’s fall

Veterans Storm Two More Memorials; Police Chase Them Out Of One

More Veterans refused to let the White House’s Office of Management and Budget stop them from honoring their comrades at war memorials.

Veterans moved barricades to approach both the Vietnam Veterans memorial and the Iwo Jima memorial on Saturday.

NBC’s Mark Segraves reported Vietnam Veterans overran the black granite wall that lists the name of all those who paid the ultimate price for their country in the war in Vietnam.

National Park Service Rangers asked the group of veterans to respect the government shutdown but moved aside to allow the vets access to the site.

However, when members of the general public flooded into the site along with the veterans, U.S. Park Police showed up and chased the entire group out of the site. The police then put barricades back into place.

At the Iwo Jima Memorial, water-filled barricades blocked the only road allowing car access to the site.

So the World War II veterans who arrived via an Honor Flight from Syracuse, New York used the same attitude they used against the Axis: they let nothing stop them from accomplishing their goal. They simply joined together to move the barricades.

The Honor Flight crew then took dozens of veterans who need to use wheelchairs to the memorial site.

The Iwo Jima memorial is usually unguarded and unmanned by the National Park Service.

Lawmakers Call Reinforced Barrier At WWII Memorial “Chicago Thuggery”

A group of World War II veterans wanted to pay honor to their fallen brothers-in-arms at the WWII memorial but discovered that the barriers had been connected to each other using wire.  So Texas Republican lawmakers grabbed their wire-cutters and marched to the memorial to let those American heroes who wanted to honor their brothers in to the site.

The open-air memorial usually is not guarded by Park Service staff and there are no barricades to direct traffic flow or impede approach to the monument.

“This is Chicago thuggery,” Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) told Todd Starnes of Fox News. “The president is trying to inflict the most amount of pain and suffering. This is not some bureaucratic mistake. This is Chicago thuggery. You try to make people hurt so they don’t resist what you tell them to do in the future.”

Texas Representative Ralph Hall, 90 years old and himself a World War II veteran, said he was ready for anything the National Park Service would do to him when they showed up to let the veterans in.

“I was ready to go to jail,” said Rep. Hall. “If they got the handcuffs out, I’d have gone right with them.  These veterans made great sacrifice for their country a long time ago and they traveled a lot of miles to get here.  It’s our memorial.”

The Republican lawmakers ended up not needing their wire cutters as someone had already done the job before they arrived with the veterans.

IMF Director Says U.S. Debt Ceiling More Concerning Than Shutdown

Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said that a failure to raise the United States’ debt ceiling could have much more significant worldwide impact than the current government shutdown.

Legarde said it was “mission critical” for the U.S. to raise the debt ceiling.

Legarde said that she predicted growth in the U.S. economy and that it was “picking up steam” before the shutdown and the potential debt ceiling problems. She said that worldwide the economy is starting to pick up and that even the Eurozone could see 1% growth in 2014.

The U.S. Treasury has also been warning about the country hitting the debt ceiling and being unable to pay bills.

“A default would be unprecedented and has the potential to be catastrophic,” the Treasury stated in a report. “Credit markets could freeze, the value of the dollar could plummet, US interest rates could skyrocket, the negative spillovers could reverberate around the world, and there might be a financial crisis and recession that could echo the events of 2008 or worse.”

Tropical Storm Karen Aims For Gulf Coast

Tropical Storm Karen is bearing down on the Gulf Coast with winds near 65 m.p.h. and should make landfall this weekend.

Heavy rain, damaging winds and high tides are being predicted as the storm is likely to make landfall near the Mississippi/Alabama borderline and move northeast through Alabama and the Florida panhandle.

Hurricane forecasters say the storm is trying to build an eye by wrapping a heavy thunderstorm band around the storm center. If the storm can completely wrap around the center forecasters think Karen could reach Category 1 Hurricane status before making landfall.

The White House and FEMA have recalled some employees laid off during the government shutdown because of the impending storm. Hurricane forecasters are exempt from the shutdown because their work is deemed “vital to protecting life and property.”

World Markets React Wednesday To Shutdown

The U.S. government shutdown had an impact on world markets causing concerns the country’s fragile economic condition could be severely impacted by a prolonged closure.

Stock markets in Britain, Germany and France all fell in Wednesday’s trading. U.S. markets fell as well with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling 0.6% and the S&P 500 falling 0.8%.

Investors are paying lip service to the U.S. shutdown but have expressed more serious concerns the shutdown will result in a delay of raising the U.S. debt ceiling that would have impact on the world markets.

The dollar also continued to fall across the world. The dollar took a hit from 98.62 yen to the dollar before the shutdown to a current level of 97.74. The dollar also fell further against all other Asian currencies.

House Passes Targeted Stop Gap Spending Bills

After a meeting at the White House that failed to produce a resolution on the government shutdown, the House of Representatives passed a series of bills that would provide funding to parts of the government.

The debate proved heated as Rep. George Miller, D-California, repeatedly said that Republicans were waging “jihad” on Americans by not passing a “clean” continuing resolution to fund the government.

The House then passed bills funding the National Park Service, 252-173 and a second bill to fund the National Institutes of Health, 254-171. House members will consider a bill Thursday to fund the Department of Veterans Affairs and National Guard.

Democrats in the Senate have vowed to vote down any bill sent from the House that would partially fund parts of the government.