Washington DC political reporter Jamie Dupree released the current financials of the Untied States Government:
Budget deficit in August was $128.7 billion; total deficit so far this fiscal year is $589 billion
Current government debt is
$17,764,720,406,589.08
Obtained some pricing from a person involved with livestock being brought in and sold at a stockyard in eastern Indiana.
Last week top grade cattle were getting $1.50/lb when brought in for sale. Just six years ago same person said going price was around .50/lb.
Stocking up on meat this winter would not be a bad idea.
Saudi Arabia has recently announced a very aggressive plan to start introducing nuclear power plants and big solar farms into their power supply grid to replace hyrdrocarbons. I find it insane the U.S. does not pursue nuclear energy in all forms. It would stabilize the entire country and be a source of power for decades to come. Here is the entire article but will pass along the highlights.
The Saudi Royal Family hopes that nuclear will provide 15% of the Kingdom’s power (18 GWe) within 20 years, together with a similar 15% (40 GWe) from solar. They are planning to invest $80 billion to build over a dozen nuclear power plants as fast as possible, intending for the first reactor to come online in only eight years. Investment in solar for the same energy production will take about $240 billion in investment, although breakthrough technologies in the next decade should cut that cost in half.
Total electricity consumption in Saudi Arabia exceeds 200 billion kWhs per year and is expected to double by 2030
Two largest uses of power in the Middle East are for desalinating seawater and residential cooling. Saudi Arabia desalinates over 250 billion gallons of seawater each year, and that number will double in the next ten years as the population and industrialization increase.
Saudi Arabia burns almost a billion barrels of oil a year to produce electricity
Saudi’s neighbor, Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates started towards the solar/nuclear combination as well. Here is an interesting note to show how much solar it takes to equal nuclear power
Recently the UAE opened what was, at the time, the largest solar plant in the world, the 100 MW Shams 1 at a cost of about $600 million. But two hundred Shams 1 arrays will be needed to equal the output of the four Barakah nuclear reactors.
Month of August Interest on Debt payment was $27,093,517,258.24. Fiscal YTD payments now stand at $411,217,855,816.94. There is one fiscal month left for 2014.
Soure: Twitter page @USGovtInterest
H&R Block confirmed what many predicted would happen with the new health care law enacted 4 years ago: make taxes even more complicated.
Speaking on H&R Block’s quarterly earnings conference call, CEO William Cobb said that the company was already taking steps to train its tax preparers based on the draft forms that the Internal Revenue Service has released to comply with Obamacare.
“As expected, the forms are very detailed and can present significant complexity, depending on a filer’s coverage status during the year, income level, and household composition,” Cobb said. “Depending on their situation, there are instances where filers may need to file multiple new tax forms and complete additional worksheets.”
And he wasn’t he wasn’t finished…
“Depending on the type of exemption, the process to claim it could be quite cumbersome and time consuming,” Cobb said.
Colorado government tax revenue prediction was off for the first six months of legalized pot sales. They were only off by about 70%.
When voters approved recreational marijuana sales the state predicted it would pull in more than $33 million in new taxes in the first six months. The actual revenue came up more than $21 million short.
Illinois is a broke state and their teacher pension fund does not make things any easier on how it is contractually written. Yes, it is a contract and the state is honoring the pension as of right now. In the spirit of “States Rights” the voters of Illinois find their financial situation very pallable no matter the current conditions or what they will be facing as the physics of economics plays out. This blog is not making fun of Illinois but it also will not give pity to the residents when debt hell hits.
The Washington Times had a long article showing the ramifacations of this current penson plan that they operate on. I will post the key financial highlights of it while you can read the rest in the embedded link.
About 6,000 retired educators collecting more than $100,000
More than 100,000 retired Illinois educators had been paid back what they invested into the system just 20 months after leaving work
The pension is about $54 billion underfunded
The teacher pension’s 3 percent annual increases aren’t tied to inflation — meaning they cannot fluctuate up or down depending on the economy or budget pressures.
Illinois public sector workers will receive, on average, a $1,906 annual cost of living adjustment this year — nine times more than the average Social Security beneficiary
This story is from Reuters:
At least 10 Swiss banks have withdrawn from a U.S. program aimed at settling a tax dispute between them and the United States, Swiss newspaper NZZ am Sonntag said on Sunday, quoting unnamed sources. Around 100 Swiss banks came forward at the end of last year to work with U.S. authorities in a program brokered by the Swiss government to help the banks make amends for aiding tax evasion.
The newspaper said the banks were convinced they had not systematically broken U.S. law and lawyers of the U.S. Department of Justice had actually been surprised to see them take part in the program and did not object to the banks leaving the program.
Two things about the U.S. government, they are broke and their tax collection agency the IRS will do anything for revenue. This piece of legal news comes via TaxProf Blog:
The Tax Court yesterday required the taxpayer to include $668 in income as reported by Citibank on Form 1099-MISC as the value of an airline ticket received by the taxpayer upon redemption of 50,000 “Thank You Points” from opening a Citibank account. Shankar v. Commissioner, 143 T.C. No. 5 (Aug. 26, 2014).
I’ve been seeing some house sales numbers popping up as of late but haven’t really dug into them. This post I’m writing is because I stumbled upon a claim, looked it up and found a trend that maybe reversing……How long Americans stay in their homes they buy. While reading an article from Dave Ramsey on “Homebuyer Mistakes” he had this in the article:
Homeowners stay in their homes an average of just four years, according to the National Association of Realtors.
I found this to be very intriguing and wanted to dig more into this number. First article I found (Longtime Homeowners a Relative Rarity in U. S., Census Shows) dated November 21, 2003. Seems to back up the claim of short ownership of a home.
Although a relative rarity in the United States, where homeowners stay in their homes an average of six years, according to the National Association of Realtors
Now a more recent article I found (Downside of low US mortgage rates? Less selling) written in July of this year shows homeownership economic factors pertaining to the effects of low interest rates caused by in fashion by the Federal Reserve. Shows why the housing market will be very slow the next decade.
More than one-third of homes with a mortgage now have rates below 4 percent, real estate data provider CoreLogic estimates….. As a result, many homeowners with low rates are staying put. Others are moving and buying new homes, but keeping their old ones and renting them. The number of available homes last year was the equivalent of just 4.9 months’ worth of sales, according to the National Association of Realtors.
The big problem of people not being be able to sell is equity issues…..
Another factor is that almost 40 percent of homeowners still don’t have enough equity to enable them to sell. Some are “underwater,” with a mortgage higher than the home’s value. Others may have so little equity that they can’t afford to pay off the sales costs and put a down payment on their next property.
One final note on top of this, many investors and Americans expect interest rates to rise significantly over the next few years. This will be a big pressure on home sales along with the above mentioned.
Hoosier Econ 