Blog
Welcome to our blog – The Bottom Line, where you’ll find up-to-date commentary and analysis on the most important news in the fiscal world. Below is a list of our blog posts.
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$98 Billion Wasted
Government agencies misspent over $98 billion last year, $26 billion more than was wasted the previous year, the Associated Press reports. The White...
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Debt Hits $12 Trillion
This week, the gross national debt hit a record $12.031 trillion. Gross debt is a broad measure which includes both debt held by the public (currently...
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GM Outlook Improves Despite Q3 Losses
Early this week, General Motors stated that while it is still experiencing losses, it has stabilized itself enough so that the company can begin...
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Several Executives Predict Third Stimulus
Several executives from General Electric and Bank of America Merrill Lynch said early this week in a BofA Merrill Lynch webcast that they see Congress...
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CMS Analyzes House Health Care Bill
On Friday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released a report estimating the effects of the House health care reform bill. Looking...
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Weekend Editorial Roundup
Here are the highlights from this weekend’s editorials on fiscal and budget policy: The New York Times applauds the House and Senate Finance bills for...
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Three More FDIC Bank Closings
On Friday evening, the FDIC reported that it has taken over an additional three banks ( Pacific Coast National Bank, Orion Bank, Century Bank) for a...
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Freezing Discretionary Spending...
UPDATE: Stan Collender thinks we might be making ice mountains out of snow hills. According to a number of news reports, President Obama has begun...
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FDIC to Collect Three Years of Premiums in Advance
The FDIC has just adopted a rule to require banks to pay at the end of 2009 the amount they would owe the FDIC for insurance premiums over the next...
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Administration Claims Extra TARP Cash Is Deficit Reduction
This morning, a Wall Street Journal article reported that the White House intends to use some of the remaining TARP cash for deficit reduction, while...
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Monthly Treasury Statement Shows $1.417 trillion Final Deficit Number for FY 2009
The Monthly Treasury Statement is out, and states that Fiscal Year 2010 is off to a perilous start. The deficit for the month of October is ringing in...
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High Unemployment Numbers Displayed in Interactive Graphics
Last Friday, we blogged on new information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting the astonishingly high monthly unemployment rate for October...