By Robert Romano — Do you like interacting with your friends on social networking sites like Facebook, or looking at user-created videos on YouTube? Or simply surfing on Google to find the most up to date news and information? Well, the Internet could get a lot more […]

By Robert Romano –The situation in Europe is constantly evolving, with a new proposal seemingly on the table every day.  Let’s take a look at which proposals are still under consideration, and which ones have been torpedoed. Off the table: 1)      ECB direct monetization (Draghi just said […]

By Robert Romano — Europe has absolutely no idea how it is going to get itself out of its current predicament, as evidenced by a wide range of proposals now under consideration to bail out banks that bet poorly on the debts of Greece, Italy, and other […]

By Robert Romano — On Nov. 16, the national debt surpassed $15 trillion for the first time in U.S. history to $15.026 trillion .  And at its current trajectory, it will pass 100 percent of the $15.198 trillion Gross Domestic Product by the end of the year, if not early in 2012. That’s problematic, because […]

By Robert Romano — “If a monetary deal’s going to work, the central bank has to have unlimited powers to intervene to support economies, and indeed banks, to prevent collapse.” That was how the UK’s Business Secretary Vince Cable, a Liberal Democrat, put it on the BBC , speaking on the European Central Bank (ECB).  He was basically complaining that Article 123 of the Lisbon Treaty , which created the […]

By Robert Romano –The ascendancy of new Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, along with the European Union’s latest efforts to overthrow the Greek government will not necessarily fix the fundamental underlying problems of the European debt crisis. For example, increasing the retirement age of women from now 60 years old to begin rising in 2014 to only reach 65, and then only in 2026 , or overall raising the retirement age for men to 67 in 2026 and 70 in 2050 , will hardly move […]

By Robert Romano — When Jefferson County, Alabama took out $5.8 billion of interest rate swaps in 2003 through JP Morgan with no competitive bidding to help pay for a $3.2 billion bond to finance a sewer project, it was supposed to save the county money on […]

By Robert Romano — Moody’s recently announced that the quality of credit in the state and local municipal bond markets is deteriorating, which credit downgrades outpacing upgrades by 5.3 to 1.  This led BigGovernment.com writer Chriss W. Street to proclaim that “The Municipal Bond Market is Imploding” . A more accurate headline might […]

By Robert Romano — “The fact is, we are already bailing out Europe.” That was Americans for Limited Government (ALG) President Bill Wilson ’s take on a recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) report published in September that showed the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has already dispensed €78.5 billion to the creditors of Greece, Portugal, and Ireland, or about $112 […]

By Robert Romano — Responding to criticism that the Federal Housing Finance Administration (FHFA) is not doing enough to deal with the ongoing economic downturn in housing, the Obama Administration is firing back that it is working within the limits set forward by Congress. Democrat members of […]