As we proceed into the tenth year in Afghanistan, it continues to look more and more like Vietnam. President Karzi’s administration looks more like Duong Van Minh’s, the last President of South Vietnam. Corruption to the extreme, and US feet on the ground daily risking their lives for someone who is so far from our [...]
Since a law change 1998, discharging student loans has been very difficult in bankruptcy proceedings. Two reasons:
The grounds for discharge for a student loan are very narrow — debtor must establish that failure to discharge would impose an “undue hardship” on debtor or his/her dependents; and
The bankruptcy court must make the finding of undue hardship [...]
Both parties are bragging these days about their cost-cutting moves. Unless something serious gets done, we could easily ring up a $12 Trillion deficit in the coming years. Read Robert J. Samuelson (one of the few economists I bother to read) take on the status quo at http://tinyurl.com/yjcvwu6.
Is a $12 Trillion deficit enough to bring [...]
Today’s copy of the UK Independent has an article implicating Goldman in complex financial transactions designed to allow Greece to avoid its debt ceiling.
“The euro membership rules place strict caps on the size of government deficits relative to a national economy, but Goldman Sachs and other banks helped Greece raise cash earlier in the decade [...]
The on-site commander has requested 40,000 additional troops. According to the Wall Street Journal, Obama will announce an increase of about 30,000 tomorrow at West Point. Notably, he seems ready to reject a second high priority of Gen. McChrystal: a doubling of the Afghan police and army over the next few years. The New York [...]
News from around the world
From the Guardian.co.uk: The Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange has finished the trading day for Monday, and it was not pretty
The Exchange was down 83%, losing 241.92 to close at 2668.23.
Royal Bank of Scotland is already down 4% today on concerns about its loans to Dubai World
The Washington Post reports that there [...]
Now I am not nor ever have been a Lou Dobbs fan. And the first three segments of his interview with John Daily were kind of uninspiring. But this last segment was pretty good; a rational setting of bounds that we need to set and keep if want to keep our way of life alive.
See [...]
The developing debt crisis in Dubai (yet another financial bubble about to break) has the UK Financial Services Authority “urgently seeking assurances that Britain’s major banks are protected…” reports the Guardian this morning. The Authority is demanding open disclosure of exposure while the Bank of England and the Treasury continue to monitor closely.
Banks mentioned with [...]
Happy Thanksgiving to all of you serving in the armed forces today, and to all of those who served in the past. I read the other day that there is only one living veteran of WWI in the U.S. – to him, as special thank you and best wishes for another year.
December is a tough [...]
Dubai World
Dubai World, the government owned enterprise for developing Dubai, shocked international markets yesterday by asking to delay some debt payments. http://preview.tinyurl.com/ydutgdm. According to the Guardian’s ariticle,
The FTSE 100 tumbled by 70 points, or nearly 1.4%, to 5123 when trading began. But with share prices volatile, it clawed back most of the losses by 10am, [...]