Where is the US economy headed?

The root is the problem is that you will say any ridiculous thing for the sake of argument.

Those fines levied on sales people at liquor stores are meant to protect the likes of you, even if you are ungrateful for the protection.

Consumers Help Drive U.S. Economy to 3.2% Growth Rate
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
Published: April 30, 2010

For the third quarter in a row, the United States economy showed strong economic growth in the first quarter, and increased consumer spending played a significant role, the Commerce Department reported Friday.
Enlarge This Image
Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters

A shopper at a Best Buy store in Queens last month. Consumer spending grew at an annual rate of 3.6 percent in the first part of the year.

The broadest measure of the overall economy grew at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.2 percent in the quarter, after gains of 5.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 and 2.2 percent in the third quarter.

While the expansion in output was welcome, it still has not brought the level of hiring growth needed to recover ground lost during the recession.

Speaking in the White House Rose Garden, President Obama acknowledged that many Americans may find little comfort in Friday’s numbers because “ ‘you’re hired’ is the only economic news they’re waiting to hear.”

The administration’s focus, he said, is “to create the conditions necessary for those businesses to open their doors, expand their operations and ultimately hire more workers.”

Economists are hopeful that the news of three straight quarters of growth may breed more confidence about the future.

“It’s been a case of, when will they stop worrying and learn to love the boom?” said Robert Barbera, chief economist at ITG, who said that many economists and businesses have been too pessimistic about the turnaround.

Things are looking better! One more quarter and we'll have had a solid year of growth.

I suspect that there will be pressure to renew it yet again, particularly if real estate activity drops off next month and foreclosure rates resume/continue upward.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) " Thousands of individuals claiming the first-time home buyer's $8,000 tax credit may have been trying to scam the system, including purported 4-year-olds and illegal immigrants, according to a watchdog report released Thursday.
Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George told a House panel that more than 19,000 people filed 2008 tax returns claiming the credit for homes they had not yet purchased. George said his office had identified another $500 million in claims, by some 74,000 taxpayers, where there were indications of prior home ownership

Thanks. I missed that. It should be pretty easy to catch, I hope.

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=19277&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD
CALLING ALL CON ARTISTS

Every year, thousands of crooks bilk taxpayers out of billions of dollars, says Tevi Troy, former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and a visiting senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

While statistics on fraud are somewhat hard to come by, the available numbers are truly frightening:
• A 2009 Government Accountability Office study found that 10.5 percent of Medicaid payments in fiscal year 2008 were improper.
• A Thompson Reuters study in October of 2009 found there to be somewhere between $600 billion and $850 billion annually in health care waste, which includes fraud but also inefficiency and medical errors.
• Nationwide estimates of fraud alone tend to estimate it between $60 billion and $100 billion.

Part of the reason for all of this waste is the way the government processes payments. It is under pressure to pay bills quickly so that providers and suppliers don't opt out of the system, and payments are investigated only if the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) or the Office of Inspector General (OIG) later discovers or is informed about some impropriety. By that point, the cash is hard to recover, says Troy.

During its effort to pass its health care bill, the Obama administration pressed the issue of waste, fraud and abuse. However, when it comes to ObamaCare's solutions, the program offers very little, says Troy:
• The new law achieves much of its "waste, fraud and abuse" savings not by cutting actual waste, fraud and abuse, but by scaling back the Medicare Advantage program.
• By spending a trillion taxpayer dollars in the current system, and specifically by putting 16 million more people on Medicaid, it actually increases the number of opportunities for fraud.
• And it does not take the bipartisan anti-fraud steps that President Obama appeared to embrace leading up to and following the February health care summit.

Ultimately, however, only the repeal of ObamaCare -- and a decisive move away from third-party payments -- will solve the problem that the president has just exacerbated, says Troy.

Source: Tevi Troy, "Calling All Con Artists," National Review, April 19, 2010.

No one is aware of the fraud. Hawkeye made it up as he sat in front of his keyboard.

No one is aware of the fraud. Hawkeye made it up as he sat in front of his keyboard.

ican711nm wrote:

According to the Senate's rules, 60 or more votes are required to cut off debate and bring a proposed bill to a Senate vote. In 2005 and thereafter the Republicans could not get at leat 5 Democrat votes to add to the 55 Republican votes to bring their bill to rectify Fannie & Freddie to a Senate vote.

Quote:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704671904575193910683111250.html
Fannie and Freddie Amnesia
Taxpayers are on the hook for about $400 billion, partly because Sen. Obama helped to block reform.Article Comments more in Opinion »Email
By PETER J. WALLISON

Now that nearly all the TARP funds used to bail out Wall Street banks have been repaid, the government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac stand out as the source of the greatest taxpayer losses.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that, in the wake of the housing bubble and the unprecedented deflation in housing values that resulted, the government's cost to bail out Fannie and Freddie will eventually reach $381 billion. That estimate may be too optimistic.
.........
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He should know. As a senator, he was the third largest recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, behind only Sens. Chris Dodd and John Kerry.

With hypocrisy like this at the top, is it any wonder that nearly 80% of Americans, according to new Pew polling, don't trust the federal government or its ability to solve the country's problems?

Mr. Wallison is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Great post, ican. I deleted some of your quotes, but kept most of what I thought was highly pertinent, that being this whole debacle falls squarely on the shoulders of people like Dodd, Frank, and other Democrats, and now Obama also protecting his pals.