The Times Herald wrote up an article on Indiana’s immigrant population and found this piece of data:
The Indiana Business Research Center says a Latino population of 422,200 will double in the next two decades. The Pew Research Center estimates about 85,000 of the state’s Latino population may be here illegally.
Via CNSNEWS.COM –
Many people are living longer, but not to age 112 or beyond — except in the records of the Social Security Administration.
The SSA’s inspector general has identified 6.5 million number-holders age 112 — or older — for whom no death date has been entered in the main electronic file, called Numident.
The audit, dated March 4, 2015, concluded that SSA lacks the controls necessary to annote death information on the records of number-holders who exceed “maximum reasonable life expectancies.”
“We obtained Numident data that identified approximately 6.5 million numberholders born before June 16, 1901 who did not have a date of death on their record,” the report states.
Some of the numbers assigned to long-dead people were used fraudulently to open bank accounts.
Read the rest here
Tis the season where millions of Americans take a gamble in starting to fill out their NCAA tournament brackets. Men and women will take out their wallets and throw down some money to enter in a pool with other in the hope they make some easy money in applying their college basketball knowledge. How much money do Americans spend during this time of year? It’s very hard to estimate since 90% of all NCAA tournament gambling is off the books. But lets take a look at some history to guage this sports investing event.
In 1999 there was a report issued by then President Bill Clinton:
National Gambling Impact Study Commission, formed by President Clinton, released a 1999 report citing surveys showing that well over 90 percent of all sports betting nationwide takes place off the books. If accurate, that would push the total wagered on the NCAAs across the country closer to $1 billion.
Fast forward to 2014 where more data can be evaluated yet is still a rough estimate, one sports investing website gave this estimate:
The site Pregame.com estimates that wagering on this year’s March Madness tournament will exceed $12 billion, more money than was riding on the Super Bowl. Of that, $3 billion will be put into office pools of tournament brackets.
Comparing those two estimates, NCAA Tournament betting has exploded 1100% in America. Good luck with your tournament pools this year.
H/T The Fiscal Times and BetFirm.com
United States Government spends so much money these days that the debt is reaching its ceiling again. Do not expect Republicans put much of a fight up in stopping any raises as they usually join Democrats in governments spending addiction.
Via CNBC –
Unless Congress takes action, the U.S. will hit its debt limit on Mar. 16, but would begin taking “extraordinary measures” to finance the government on a temporary basis, according to the U.S. Treasury.
In a Friday morning letter to House Speaker John Boehner and other House and Senate leaders, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said that his office will be forced to suspend the issuance of State and Local Government Series securities on Mar. 13 unless the debt limit is raised.“Accordingly, I respectfully ask Congress to raise the debt limit as soon as possible,” Lew wrote in his letter.
The Congressional Budget Office said this week that if Congress does not raise the federal debt limit, the Treasury Department will exhaust all of its borrowing capacity and run out of cash in October or November, slightly later than a previous forecast.
In the mail I recently got an advertisement pack that contained various business coupons. Huntington Bank had this offer if you opened a checking account:
I then took a look at the back for the details. Get ready to get an IRS 1099-INT tax form if you accept the $150.
Dr. Ed Yardeni has put together a post showing the consumer has saved dollars YTD on gasoline prices, the savings is being eaten up by higher medical expenses.
Last week, I observed that while consumers are spending less of their budgets on gasoline, they are spending more on health care. The latest data through January show that the percentage of current-dollar consumption for gasoline plunged from last year’s high of 3.2% to 2.1% in January. Consumers saved $133 billion (saar) on gasoline over this period.
On the other hand, the percentage of their outlays for health care goods and services rose from last year’s low of 20.0% during March to 20.6% during January. I received lots of inquiries about this topic. Most readers want to know if this is attributable to Obamacare, which seems to have raised health insurance premiums, deductibles, and copays. I think so, but I don’t have the data to corroborate this conjecture.
Health care consumption includes spending paid for by both insurance and government programs, as well as out-of-pocket costs. Presumably and anecdotally, the latter have risen sharply. However, that wouldn’t necessarily bloat overall spending, though more out-of-pocket outlays would depress spending on other goods and services.
JustFactsDaily.com (link here) put out another question pertaining to crimes committed by non-U.S. residents in Texas. Here is the question and answer:
Over the course of their criminal careers, how many crimes have the 145,000 non-U.S. citizens booked into local Texas jails between June 1, 2011 and December 31, 2014 been convicted of thus far?
Correct Answer
More than 100,000
Just Facts obtained this information from the Texas Department of Public Safety (link here). Here is the breakdown of the criminal offenses and how serious of individuals law enforcement are dealing with.
According DHS status indicators, over 145,000 criminal aliens have been booked into local Texas jails between June 1, 2011 and December 31, 2014. During their criminal careers, these criminal aliens were charged with more than 389,000 criminal offenses. Those arrests include 795 homicide charges; 45,641 assault charges; 12,029 burglary charges; 45,608 drug charges; 496 kidnapping charges; 28,507 theft charges; 31,266 obstructing police charges; 2,648 robbery charges; 4,039 sexual assault charges; and 5,952 weapons charges. Of the total criminal aliens arrested in that timeframe, over 96,000 or 53% were identified by DHS status as being in the US illegally at the time of their last arrest.
According to DPS criminal history records, those criminal charges have thus far resulted in over 181,000 convictions including 336 homicide convictions; 17,382 assault convictions; 5,513 burglary convictions; 23,920 drug convictions; 172 kidnapping convictions; 13,097 theft convictions; 16,128 obstructing police convictions; 1,159 robbery convictions; 1,913 sexual assault convictions; and 2,638 weapons convictions.
Of the criminal aliens associated with these arrest and convictions, over 95,000 or 66% were identified by DHS status as being in the US illegally at the time of arrest.
The numbers are in and sports investing broke records in 2014 for betting revenue. ESPN supplied the breakdown:
The state’s 187 sportsbooks won $227.04 million off of the $3.9 billion wagered on sports in 2014. Both amounts are all-time records, according to Nevada Gaming Control.
Football, per usual, carried the load. The sportsbooks won $113.73 million on college and pro football in 2014, a giant 40.73 percent increase from 2013. Overall, $1.74 billion was bet on football in 2014, $12 million more than in 2013. Nevada Gaming Control does not track pro and college football separately, but sportsbook managers estimate the NFL accounts for around 55-60 percent of their annual football handle. From September through December, the books are up $98.16 million on football.
In comparison, the books won $54.2 million on basketball and $21.2 million on baseball in 2014. Both numbers were down, 8.36 percent and 26.88 percent, respectively, from 2013.
Baker Hughes is showing another 43 oil rigs taken out of production which means it now has passed the “500 Mark” of rigs out of production. The total count of rigs out of production compared to this time last year now stands at 502.
Hoosier Econ 