Bruce Krasting's Contributions

It was just seven months ago that the strongest El Nino in recorded history was set. The weather folks and their computers were anticipating that the Pacific Ocean would revert to a neutral status (+/- 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit). Now it looks like a full bore La Nina is in the immediate future...

This morning NOAA released its data for the Pacific Ocean temperatures for the week of November 9th. We hit a record – the current El Nino is the strongest in recorded history. Before 2015 the largest recorded weekly reading of El Nino occurred during the week of November 26 in 1997. We passed...

Both NOAA and the Australian Meteorologists issued El Nino updates in the past 24 hours. The weekly numbers that were released confirm that an historic event is...

The 2014 Social Security report to Congress is finally out. The report was released four-months later than permitted by law; this is the sixth year in a row that the Report has been late. The word ‘sloppy’ comes to mind; Treasury Secretary Lew gets a ‘D’ for timeliness.

As a long time watcher of Social Security I was shocked (yes, shocked) at the recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report on America’s largest entitlement program. CBO concluded that the long term outlook for SS deteriorated substantially over the last twelve months.

Sometime in mid-October the debt ceiling will have been breached. I don’t expect that this will result in a showdown or a crisis. Washington will gloss this over. A new debt ceiling will be established to keep the music going.

Paul Krugman has been taken shots at Martin Feldstein. Feldstein made the case that the Fed is keeping interest rates artificially low – and sooner or later this will cause a problem.

Paul Krugman had another of his nasty moment on TV Sunday when he took on Senator Ron Johnson (R, WI). The topic was Social Security. I want to throw my two cents into this fray.

The CIA has some new 2011/2012 numbers for the world’s economy. These numbers are as “good” as the countries who post the individual data, so it’s safe to be suspect.

It’s hard to describe how happy I am to see Walmart facing a slump. I’m delighted to see that the cause of Walmart’s problem is the 2% increase in Social Security withholding taxes.

Well, you have to consider who is doing the talking. Follows is the list of G-20 countries. In my book, Canada and Australia have done a pretty good job of not manipulating their currencies (and they’ve paid a price).

Every politician in America knows that Social Security (SS) is a third rail. Any Pol who tries to mess with the country’s largest and most popular entitlement program is going to have the likes of the AARP coming after them. It’s not possible to win an election on a platform that advocates cutting back SS.

A few snippets of data from the Congressional Budget Office’s Budget and Economic Outlook 2003.

Lots of talk about “deficits” of late. I’m not sure what a deficit really means. Consider the Clinton years. The economy was good, there were no wars or disasters, the deficits were small, there were a few years where there was a budget surplus.

I grew up in no-tech. I watched the live tapes for price action, CRT screens came later. There were noisy screens that scrolled data on a wall. I would do work; phones, papers, talk to colleagues, etc, all the while the ‘thing’ would be clacking away. It only took a half sec to have a look. In “slow” markets, the tape went – click.. click…click.

Paul Krugman is one of the leading “names” in economics today. There are reasons for his stature. He’s got a Nobel Prize, he’s an academic at a leading University, he writes for the NY Times, and not a week goes by without him being on some TV show or another.

The policy choices that are being made today are running counter to the rules on transplants. They favor old over young. We are a long way from being balanced on this issue; longer still toward policies that actually tip the scales to the next few generations.

In my simple mind there is no reason not to consider attacking the problem by limiting deductions. Therefore, I conclude that politics is the problem. The President does not want to solve the cliff or the budget; he wants to punish Republicans.

So two days ago the WSJ runs the story that the FHA is soon to be in default due to a shortfall in its reserve fund.

The IRS of France, the National Directorate Of Tax Investigations (DNEF), has covertly sent agents into Switzerland to pursue tax evasion cases against French citizens. The Agents entered Switzerland claiming they were tourists.