Posts Tagged Barack Obama

New Ways to Visit Cuba — Legally

Posted by Oksana Grebenjuk in Budget on Июль 7th, 2011

Thanks to policy changes by President Obama earlier this year designed to encourage more contact between Americans and citizens of the Communist-ruled island, the Treasury Department is once again granting so-called “people-to-people” licenses, which greatly expand travel opportunities for Cuba-bound visitors.

The licenses, created under President Bill Clinton in 1999, stopped being issued in 2003 under travel restrictions imposed by President George W. Bush. Subsequently, the number of travelers from the United States visiting Cuba legally dropped from more than 200,000 in 2003 to less than 50,000 in 2004, according to estimates by Bob Guild, vice president of Marazul Charters in North Bergen, N.J., among the largest United States organizers of trips to Cuba. The new changes, which come on top of loosened restrictions for Cubans and Cuban-Americans visiting relatives in Cuba, are expected to push the number of travelers visiting Cuba this year to 450,000 this year. “We estimate 375,000 to 400,000 Cuban Americans will visit this year and another 50,000 in other categories of legal travel,” said Mr. Guild of Marazul.

To be clear, it is still illegal for ordinary American vacationers to hop on a plane bound for Cuba, which has been under a United States economic embargo for nearly 50 years. True, plenty have dodged the restrictions — and continue to do so — by flying there from another country like Mexico or Canada (for Americans, traveling to Cuba is technically not illegal, but it might as well be since the United States prohibits its citizens from spending money in Cuba, with exceptions for students, journalists, Cuban-Americans and others with legal reasons to travel there). And while Washington has also expanded licensing for educational groups traveling to Cuba by loosening requirements, travelers joining an educational trip must still receive credit toward a degree. Read the rest of this entry »

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Americans may hit gas again after reserve release

Posted by Oksana Grebenjuk in Favourites, Trading Markets on Июнь 29th, 2011

Going lightly on the gas pedal, getting a few dollars of gas rather than filling up, cutting out the cruising, and swapping the BMW for a Dodge Caliber — those are ways Americans are coping with gasoline prices well above $3 a gallon.

But people pumping gas on Friday from Miami to San Francisco saw prospects for lower prices thanks to President Barack Obama’s decision on Thursday to tap the country’s emergency petroleum stockpile as part of a global effort to bolster tight oil supplies.

The release of 30 million barrels from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve may not make people reschedule long summer road trips but could spell welcome relief for household budgets crimped by an anemic economic recovery.

While it might be a political move by Obama to help his re-election bid for 2012, as some speculate, most drivers seemed happy to get a break, even a small one. Jonathan Sifuentes, a 26-year-old power company employee, called the decision «the right thing to do» as he fueled up a Toyota Camry sedan on Miami’s outskirts.

«Everyone is hurting, with the economy, and unfortunately we do need gas to maintain our lifestyle, to go to work, to get groceries, to pick up our kids,» he said. Read the rest of this entry »

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Obama takes flak for tapping emergency oil reserves

Posted by Oksana Grebenjuk in Favourites, Trading Markets on Июнь 28th, 2011

President Barack Obama took withering fire from the oil industry and Republicans for agreeing to release the nation’s emergency oil supplies, a decision that senior officials said was prompted by the need to prop up the ailing economy.

Critics blasted the release of 30 million barrels of oil — half of a global injection coordinated by the International Energy Agency — as an ill-timed misuse of reserves at a time when U.S. supplies are relatively high, despite the loss of Libya’s exports for the past three months.

Some OPEC officials went further, calling it a political ploy that ignored Saudi Arabia’s promise to step up production and the fact that oil prices had already fallen sharply. But the move fueled questions about the timing and catalyst for releasing the stocks, which in the past have been reserved to address abrupt disruptions like natural disasters.

The Obama administration was also concerned about tight markets ahead of peak demand in the summer, when many Americans take to the roads for vacations. The jump in gasoline prices earlier this year was hurting Obama’s support as the White House was gearing up for its re-election campaign. Read the rest of this entry »

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White House Says Shutdown Would Harm the Economy

Posted by Oksana Grebenjuk in Trading Markets on Апрель 6th, 2011

The White House warned on Wednesday that a shutdown of the federal government would threaten the nation’s fragile economic recovery. But negotiations over the budget remained stalled amid increasingly sharp rhetoric from lawmakers in both political parties.

Administration officials said that nearly 800,000 federal workers would probably be told to stop working if a deal was not reached in the next two days. Small business loans would stop. Tax returns filed on paper would not be processed. Government Web sites would go dark. And federal loan guarantees for new mortgages would become unavailable.

Speaking to reporters on a morning conference call, a senior administration official said the cumulative impact of the shutdown “would have a significant impact on our economic momentum.”

There was little evidence of progress on Wednesday toward a compromise on the budget for the 2011 fiscal year, which is already more than half over. President Obama left Washington to hold a town-hall-style meeting on energy policy in Pennsylvania in the afternoon, and was scheduled to deliver a speech in New York City in the evening. Read the rest of this entry »

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USA budget proposal only a temporary fix

Posted by Oksana Grebenjuk in Budget on Февраль 16th, 2011

President Barack Obama’s budget proposal for 2012 is not a permanent fix for finances and chances are it will be watered down in Congress, Standard & Poor’s chief economist said on Monday.

David Wyss told Reuters the budget, which would allow the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio to stabilize by 2015, is a first «step in the right direction» but more needs to be done before massive numbers of baby boomers retire around 2025.

«That will get you through these next 10 years, and even with that you’re getting levels of debt which are high, too high for comfort,» Wyss said in a phone interview.

«I think it’s a credible plan, whether it’s sufficient and whether it will ever go through Congress are two different matters.»

Ratings agencies have been issuing more frequent warnings about the mounting U.S. budget deficit, in an early sign of a possible downgrade of the country’s ratings that could negatively impact borrowing costs and economic growth. Read the rest of this entry »

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Mortgage Market Still Dysfunctional

Posted by Oksana Grebenjuk in Banks on Сентябрь 23rd, 2010

Paul Volcker, chairman of President Barack Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board and former Federal Reserve Chairman, said the U.S. mortgage market, money market funds and rating agencies are issues that still need to be addressed in the wake of the global economic crisis.

He was speaking at an International Economic Alliance event in New York.

The mortgage market is the «biggest single thing to work on now,» said Volcker, adding that it is dysfunctional due to its dependence on the government. He also discussed money market funds, whose place in the financial system ballooned in the lead-up to the crisis, but are free of capital requirements. Volcker added he is not pleased with how the rating agencies have been dealt with.
The reason the issue of what to do with Fannie and Freddie was not resolved is because no politically expedient solution exists. Either continue to spend hundreds of billions supporting these insolvent institutions or put them through bankruptcy/break them up into smaller institutions.

Most taxpayers do not want to continue propping up these institutions forever. But if you allow them to fail, it would surely hit the mortgage market hard because these two government wards buy or guarantee 90% of all mortgages right now. In effect Fannie and Freddie are the mortgage market. The only reason banks are making any loans at all right now is because they can always resell them to Fannie and Freddie. There will not be a sizable private mortgage market for a long time because insolvent financial institutions are continuing to delever their balance sheets.  Read the rest of this entry »

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Sizing Up the Latest Crack at Tax Reform

Posted by Oksana Grebenjuk in Budget on Сентябрь 17th, 2010

At the end of August, President Barack Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board delivered a 126-page report on federal income tax reform options. They include, among other things, reducing the corporate tax rate, dialing back the alternative minimum tax, and bundling individual and family tax breaks in the interest of simplification.

Although the president is not obliged to pay any attention to the proposals (and has not issued any reaction to them so far), they represent the latest official effort to find ways to to streamline the tax code.

I’ve boiled the report down to what I think are the key points.

Corporate Tax Reform

Most tax experts say the corporate tax system is unfair because income gets taxed once at the company level and again at the shareholder level when profits are paid out as dividends. The system is also extremely bloated. There are thousands of pages of rules that nobody fully understands, along with an unknowable number of “targeted” tax breaks that benefit only selected companies and industries. Read the rest of this entry »

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More on the Free Credit Score Amendment

Posted by Oksana Grebenjuk in Banks on Май 28th, 2010

The Senate approved an amendment to the financial regulatory bill that would provide free credit scores to some consumers in some circumstances.

Here’s how it would work if it survives the reconciliation process with the bill from the House and President Obama signs it, according to staff members from the office of Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, who introduced the amendment:

When any lender or insurance company rejects your loan application or gives you a worse rate or quote than it might have because of information in your credit report (or if an employer refuses to hire you based on that information), the lender must then give you a copy of the credit score that it used in its decision making. That would presumably be a FICO score, which is what most lenders use.

So, memo to cynics like me: The big credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian and TransUnion) would not be involved in distributing the free scores and thus won’t have an opportunity to pass off their proprietary or educational scores as real FICO scores. If you didn’t get a decent loan or a job because of your credit, you’ll get the actual FICO or other score that was used to judge you. Read the rest of this entry »

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Governments Will ‘Bankrupt Us’

Posted by Oksana Grebenjuk in Uncategorized on Май 7th, 2010

Current economic policies are not sustainable and the world faces doom because «the governments are taking over», said Marc Faber, editor & publisher of The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report.

«They will all bankrupt us and expropriate us, but it may not happen tomorrow. They’ll give us something to play with, until the whole system breaks down…they’ll just print money and print more money,» he said on CNBC Thursday.

«What I object to the current government intervention in so-called ‘solving the crisis’, (is that) they haven’t solved anything. They’ve just postponed it.»

Faber warned that the «ultimate armageddon» would be much worse the next time around, as «governments will go bust», which would lead them to print more money.

He also warned that China’s growth was «completely unsustainable in the long run,» highlighting the red-hot property sector.

Goldman Sachs an ‘Honest Firm’

Faber said the SEC’s charges against Goldman Sachs were merely an excuse to print more money. Read the rest of this entry »

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Home sales jump, jobless claims fall

Posted by Oksana Grebenjuk in Budget on Апрель 26th, 2010

The economy is improving, with home sales up, jobless claims down and inflation tame. Yet there are concerns the economic rebound won’t get much juice from the housing market, which is being fueled by government tax breaks.

Sales of previously occupied homes grew by nearly 7 percent last month, more than expected, the National Association of Realtors said Thursday. It was a welcome sign after three months of declines, and a solid kickoff to what’s expected to be a strong spring selling season.

Nevertheless, many analysts caution that the housing rebound could fade in the second half of the year. They predict a flood of low-priced foreclosures will hit the market and push down prices in a destabilizing «double dip.»

Another threat to the U.S. economic recovery is fallout from the Greek debt crisis. On Thursday, Europe’s statistics agency found that Greece’s budget deficit last year was larger than previously thought, which may push the country to seek emergency loans. Shares on Wall Street were down in the morning, but ended the day modestly higher.

So far,»the recovery looks like it will continue,»said Jay Feldman, senior economist with Credit Suisse.»We don’t see another recession.» Read the rest of this entry »

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