Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, July 19, 2011


Something for everyone!
Posted by at

5 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303661904576454353768550280.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

Borders Group Inc. (which employs about 10,700 people) said it would liquidate after the second-largest U.S. bookstore chain failed to receive any offers to save it.

(*SIGH*)

The company said liquidation of its remaining 399 stores could start as soon as Friday, and it is expected to go out of business for good by the end of September.

The chain's demise could speed the decline in sales of hardcover and paperback books as consumers increasingly turn to downloading electronic books or having physical books mailed to their doorsteps.

The loss of Borders may also make it more difficult for new writers to be discovered. "The liquidation of Borders is an irreplaceable loss of a big part of the book-discovery ecosystem," said Michael Norris, a senior analyst at Simba Information, a unit of MarketResearch.com "Thousands of people whose job consisted of talking up and selling books will eventually being doing something else, and that's bad for authors, agents, and everyone associated with the value chain in books."

* AND THE DECLINE OF A ONCE GREAT NATION CONTINUES APACE...

July 19, 2011 at 2:40 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.dailytech.com/Cisco+Confirms+Rumored+Layoffs/article22191.htm

Cisco has announced that it will cut 6,500 workers and of that number, 2,100 will take voluntary early-retirement packages. This confirms the rumored layoffs from early this month. Out of the workers losing jobs, 15% are vice president and above employees. The total reduction of workers works out to 9% of the global workers Cisco has. Workers that will be laid off will be contacted the first week of August according to Cisco.

* OH, YEAH, FOLKS... THE ECONOMY IS JUST GOING GANGBUSTERS!

July 19, 2011 at 2:44 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=CLQ11.NYM

* OIL PRICES...

(*SIGH*)

* I DO NOT LIKE THE OBAMA ECONOMY; I DO NOT LIKE IT AT ALL.

July 19, 2011 at 2:46 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303661904576456072630104778.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion

One of President Obama's advantages in the debt-limit talks has been his ability to sound like a born-again spending cutter in public while the details of what he's willing to accept remain secret.

The reality is that the White House offer on spending reforms was much less than publicly advertised, and by the end it even included $136 billion in new spending proposals over 10 years.

(*LITERALLY FIGHTING BACK TEARS AS I CONTEMPLATE THE FUTURE WE'RE LEAVING OUR CHILDREN*)

A source in the talks laid out for us on Monday the increases that were part of the final White House offer before the talks led by Vice President Joe Biden broke down:

$15 billion in new general spending that would come from the $30 billion expected to be raised from spectrum auctions;

$8 billion to bail out the Post Office;

$33 billion to extend Pell grants for college, as the money for the expanded grants under the stimulus runs out;

$43 billion to extend unemployment benefits for another 99 weeks;

$10 billion more for research at the National Institutes of Health;

And $27 billion over two years for the Medicare "doc fix," to avoid a reduction in payments to doctors that is scheduled to take effect under current law.

None of this is surprising as the spending items fit with longstanding administration priorities. But they do contradict the public pose that Mr. Obama is taking as he tries to break his reputation as a spendthrift and dodge responsibility if the U.S. credit rating is downgraded.

Mr. Obama is so insistent on tax increases because he wants to keep financing the spending he's increased so much in his first two and a half years.

* FOLKS... HAVE YOU HEARD THIS ANYWHERE ELSE? ANYWHERE IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA? NO... OF COURSE NOT. WELL... YOU'RE READING IT HERE.

July 19, 2011 at 7:17 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2011/07/19/the-gang-of-six-is-back-from-the-dead-contemplating-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-in-their-budget-plan/

* SOUNDS LIKE TOM COBURN HAS CHOSEN TO ONCE AGAIN PUT HIS FRIENDSHIP WITH THAT SCOUNDRAL MCCONNELL ABOVE HIS DUTY TO THE NATION.

* KEY EXCERPTS:

The Ugly --

The entire package is based on dishonest Washington budget math. Spending increases under the plan, but the politicians claim to be cutting spending because the budget didn’t grow even faster.

Speaking of spending, why is there no information, anywhere in the summary document, showing how big government will be five years from now? Ten years from now? The perhaps-all-too-convenient absence of this critical information should set off alarm bells.

There’s a back-door scheme to change the consumer price index in such a way as to reduce expenditures (i.e., smaller cost-of-living-adjustments) and increase tax revenue (i.e., smaller adjustments in tax brackets and personal exemptions). The current CPI may be flawed, but it would be far better to give the Bureau of Labor Statistics further authority, if necessary, to make changes. A politically imposed change seems like nothing more than a ruse to impose a hidden tax hike.

A requirement that the internal revenue code maintain the existing bias against investors, entrepreneurs, small business owners, and other upper-income taxpayers. This “progressivity” mandate implies very bad things for the double taxation of dividends and capital gains.

This quick analysis leaves many questions unanswered.

1. How fast will discretionary spending rise or fall under the caps? Will this be like the caps following the 1990 tax-hike deal, which were akin to 60-mph speed limits in a school zone? Or will the caps actually reduce spending, erasing the massive increase in discretionary spending of the Bush-Obama years?

2. What does it mean to promise Social Security reform “if and only if the comprehensive deficit reduction bill has already received 60 votes.” Who defines reform? And why does the reform have to focus on “75-year” solvency, apparently to the exclusion of giving younger workers access to a better and more stable system ?

3. Will federal spending under the plan shrink back down to the historical average of 20 percent of GDP? And why aren’t those numbers in the summary? The document contains information of deficits and debt, but those figures are just the symptoms of excessive spending. Why aren’t we being shown the data that really matters?

Over the next few days, we’ll find out what’s really in this package, but my advice is to keep a tight hold on your wallet.

July 19, 2011 at 7:50 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)