Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in a blistering floor speech Friday accused Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) of lying to him over a deal to vote on reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank.
“Today is a sad day for this institution,” said Cruz, who is running for president. “What we just witnessed this morning is profoundly disappointing.”
The Texas Republican’s remarks come after McConnell set up a procedural vote on Sunday to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank, which saw its charter expire last month. Democrats have said McConnell agreed to allow a vote on attaching Ex-Im to “must-pass” legislation to win support from Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) for a trade package earlier this year.
On the floor, Cruz said McConnell in a private conversation denied to him that there was such a deal.
“The majority leader was visibly angry with me that I would ask him such a question,” Cruz said. “The majority looked at me and said ‘there is no deal, there is no deal, there is no deal.'”
The Texas Republican said his staff at the time told him that McConnell is “lying to you,” but Cruz suggested that he took the Republican leader at his word.
“What I told my staff that afternoon, I said, well I don’t know if that’s the case or not. But I don’t see how when the majority leader looks me in the eyes and makes an explicit promise,” he added. “I don’t see how I cannot take him at his word.”
This college student deserves an “F” in accounting after she blew through a $90,000 college fund on expensive clothes and a trip to Europe and now has no way to pay for her senior year, a predicament she blames on her parents.
The 22-year-old woman detailed her financial woes on an Atlanta FM-radio show whose wisecracking hosts derided her spendthrift ways and whose listeners belittled on Twitter as the millennial who was giving millennials a bad name. Kim, who did not mention her last name or her school, told “The Bert Show” that it was all her parents fault for not showing her how to manage her money.
“Maybe they should have taught me how to budget a little better, a little more carefully,” she told the show the other day. “They never sat me down and had a real serious talk about it. They said, ‘Here’s your college fund, it’s for classes only.’”
Dr. Keith Ablow, a psychiatrist and member of the Fox News Medical A-Team, told “Fox & Friends” Sunday that Kim’s parents do share part of the blame.
“Not necessarily for failing to teach their daughter financial regimens and accounting, but because they didn’t teach her character,” he said.
Kim said her grandparents set up the college fund for her years ago. She contacted “The Bert Show” after the school had just mailed her the tuition bill for her senior year, according to Yahoo’s financial news website. She explained that she was short about $20,000 for her final two semesters.
A&P has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in a move that could spell the end of the 156-year-old grocery chain.
The nearly 300-store chain, confirming The Post’s exclusive report last week that such news was imminent, made the filing late Sunday in Bankruptcy Court in New York.
A&P, which also owns the Waldbaums, Food Emporium and Pathmark stores, listed assets and liabilities of more than $1 billion.
It was the second trip to bankruptcy court in less than five years for the Montvale, NJ-based company, which has been outflanked by lower cost chains like Wal-Mart stealing business at one end and higher-priced chains like Whole Foods taking away customers at the other.
The company, which employs 34,000 people, according to its website, has secured $100 million in debtor-in-possession financing from Fortress Credit Corp, according to court documents.
The parent, with its stores stretched across the Northeast, has already struck preliminary agreements to sell or shutter about half of its nearly 300 locations, insiders said. Prospective acquirers aren’t likely to operate many locations under their previous banners, they said.
On June 17th, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew shocked many, including former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke, when he proclaimed that Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804) – the first and foremost Treasury Secretary – would be demoted and share the ten-dollar bill with a yet unnamed woman. Undaunted by wide-spread criticism, Secretary Lew continued to press his case at an event at the Brookings Institution on July 8th. Asked about the ten-dollar bill’s selection, Secretary Lew insipidly claimed that the ten-dollar bill was the “next up” for redesign to help combat forgery. The diminution of Hamilton, for whatever reason, is simply indefensible.
Just how great was Hamilton? A recent scholarly book by Robert E. Wright and David J. Cowen, Financial Founding Fathers: The Men Who Made America Rich, begins its pantheon of greats with a chapter on Alexander Hamilton. It is aptly titled “The Creator.”
After the Constitution was ratified and George Washington was elected President, the new federal government lacked credibility. Public finances hung like a threatening cloud over the government. Recall that paper money and debt were innovations of the colonial era, and that, once the Revolutionary War began, Americans used these innovations to the maximum. As a result, the United States was born in a sea of debt. A majority of the public favored a debt default. Alexander Hamilton, acting as Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury, was firmly against default. As a matter of principle, he argued that the sanctity of contracts was the foundation of all morality. And as a practical matter, Hamilton argued that good government depended on its ability to fulfill its promises.
Hamilton won the argument and set about digging the country out of its financial debacle. Among other things, Hamilton was – what would today be called – a first-class financial engineer. He established a federal sinking fund to finance the Revolutionary War debt. He also engineered a large debt swap in which the debts of individual states were assumed by the newly created federal government. By August 1791, federal bonds sold above par in Europe, and by 1795, all foreign debts had been paid off. Hamilton’s solution for America’s debt problem provided the country with a credibility and confidence shock.
Doesn’t the 76th Secretary of Treasury have better things to do than to diminish the presence of our 1st and most distinguished Secretary of Treasury
Greece Disaster Shows Unavoidable Consequences of Socialism
Stephen Moore / @StephenMoore / July 11, 2015
The Greek citizens have rolled the dice and voted overwhelmingly to reject the “austerity” referendum. This was a way for voters to stick a finger in the eye of their creditors. The left around the world has responded to the vote with thunderous applause—and is selling the results as a vote for “the little guy.”
The Greeks believed that voting against the debt restructuring plan would give them more leverage with the banks, the IMF and the EU. But what happens now in Greece? The banks are shutting down this week. Withdrawals from bank accounts are being tightly restricted.
Greece is formally in default on its loans and in the weeks ahead as more IMF and EU loans come due, Greece is about to slide into fiscal oblivion. This is the natural and unavoidable consequence of socialism everywhere it has been tried.
Financial collapse.
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There are no “good” options for now to end this Greek tragedy. A lot of people are going to get an involuntary financial haircut—pensioners, bond holders, welfare recipients, government workers, the IMF. By voting “no” on the latest referendum, the Greek voters rejected outside help, and the conditions that come with it. That means the responsibility for resolving the crisis now rests clearly with the Greeks themselves, as it should have all along.
Greece is now sitting on $350 billion of debt. It’s unpayable and the international monetary experts are deluding themselves if they believe that by some magic stroke this nation of 11 million citizens will sometime in the future come up with the funds to repay it.
Greece is already overtaxed, and adding more taxes on the few businesses that are still functioning is only going to ensure their eventual demise too. Meanwhile the Greek citizens have come to the conclusion that fat pensions and cradle to grave welfare benefits are a human right that can never be taken away. That is what they declared in the referendum. But those benefits are going to be lost. Socialism has radically reduced the standard of living of the citizens.
All of the conventional EU and IMF solutions have been designed to give Greeks time to adjust stop their profligate ways. That hasn’t happened. The Greek citizens are simply living way, way beyond their means. This is a nation with an average retirement age of 60. This is a nation that has one in four adults unemployed and half of its young people out of work. With such countrywide levels of idleness, who is there that is working to pay for these super-extravagant benefits? Are the hard-working German citizens going to pay more taxes to pay for lavish benefits to Greek retirees? Almost certainly not. And they would be fools to do so.
Default will force everyone to take a hit. Creditors may get 50 cents on the dollar owed depending on how bleak the finances really are in Athens. Welfare benefits will have to be slashed. Pensions for retirees will be cut based on the new reality of Greece’s finances. This may seem “unfair,” but how is it fair to require young Greek citizens to pay exorbitant taxes to pay for the sins of their fathers and grandfathers. And default, at least, may provide the opportunity for a fresh start.
When Detroit filed for bankruptcy, it allowed the Motor City to in effect start over economically. The city is financially cut off from much borrowing. Government workers have been laid off. Benefits have finally been trimmed. And guess what? Detroit is making a comeback. Real estate values are rising. Construction is beginning again. In a decade, Detroit could be a financially sound and desirable place to live and do business.
One implication of this solution is that investors may start to view sovereign debt as risky, not risk free. They will charge nations—especially those that have massive unfunded liabilities—higher interest rates on their debt. Making it harder for bloated governments to borrow would be a positive development. More money would flow to private sector borrowing, and less to governments.
The bigger chance of fiscal contagion is to accede to the Greek voters’ demands for better terms of its debt repayment. If that happens every nation that owes debts to the IMF or the European Union will demand more generous terms from its creditors. Nations like Argentina and Bolivia will stop making payments on international loans and claim the conditions are too tough to repay.
The big lie is that Greece has already lived through austerity. This is a nation that in 2013 was spending up to 59 percent of its GDP on government benefits and programs. Even today the government accounts for half of all spending. How is that austerity? The problem is as the private economy shrinks, the government’s role keeps expanding. Greece’s debt was 120 percent of GDP a decade ago, and now its 175 percent. This is the opposite of austerity. It is a spendfest.
In sum, Greece needs much less socialism, and much more privatization. Sell off government assets. Cut tax rates. Sell one of the islands to Disney. Oust the communists who ruined this nation. Get government spending down to 25 percent of GDP.
As this is being written, the Greek government, despite the referendum and its inflammatory rhetoric, has resumed negotiations with its creditors. They need to hold firm, insisting that Greece finally undertake the necessary reforms that they have promised over and over to implement. Clearly, the loans so far have not averted financial crises. They have enabled them through their lending policies that trust too much in the promises of an irresponsible government. That’s the equivalent of giving crack cocaine hits to drug addicts. That story never ends well, and, alas, Greece is a tragic example of that lesson.
JULY 8, 2015 LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, JULY 8, 2015, 1:21 AM
BY KATHLEEN LYNN
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
Private-equity firms poured more money into New Jersey companies last year, investing $16.7 billion in 104 companies, up $4.1 billion from the previous year.
New Jersey ranked ninth among the states for the amount of private equity invested, according to the Private Equity Growth Capital Council’s annual investment report.
“The rise in private equity investment in New Jersey and nationwide reflects a positive economic climate and the growth of private equity as an industry,” said James Maloney, a spokesman for the private equity council.
Among the most notable private-equity deals in New Jersey last year was a $90 million investment by Goldman Sachs in AvePoint, a Jersey City technology company. In addition, Onex Corp. became an equity partner in York Risk Services Group, a Parsippany-based risk management company, and General Atlantic Partners took a stake in CitiusTech Inc., a Princeton-based health care technology company.
In a more recent deal, Craftmaster Hardware of Northvale, which provides security hardware and locksmith supplies, was purchased this year for an undisclosed amount by Boston-based private-equity firm Capital Resource Partners.
Private-equity firms invested more than $486 billion in U.S.-based companies last year, increasing investment by $43 billion over the previous year. Nationally, private equity investors put more than half their money into two sectors, business services (29 percent) and consumer goods (22 percent). Information technology, energy, health and financial services accounted for most of the rest of the investments.
California ($56 billion), Texas ($52 billion), New York ($43 billion), Florida ($34 billion) and Illinois ($29 billion) led the states in the amount of private equity investments.
JULY 8, 2015 LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, JULY 8, 2015, 1:21 AM
FROM STAFF AND NEWS SERVICE REPORTS |
WIRE SERVICE
Ex-New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine and other former officials of failed brokerage MF Global Holdings Ltd., which Corzine headed, have agreed to pay $64.5 million to settle an investor lawsuit.
The proposed settlement, which requires a judge’s approval, apparently marks the first time Corzine has agreed to pay victims of MF Global’s spectacular collapse in 2011, which triggered a slew of lawsuits and an FBI investigation.
In agreeing to the settlement, Corzine and the other defendants denied any wrongdoing, according to a filing Tuesday in Manhattan federal court. Corzine’s lead attorney, Andrew J Levander, declined to comment on the settlement, which will be paid by MF Global’s insurance company.
MF Global filed for bankruptcy on Oct. 31, 2011, after a $6.3 billion bet on bonds of some of Europe’s most indebted nations, orchestrated by Corzine. Clients alleged in lawsuits against Corzine and other former executives that more than $1.6 billion that should have been segregated was transferred to other parts of the company during a liquidity crisis.
The settlement follows an earlier accord reached with PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, which agreed in April to pay $65 million to rid itself of claims tied to botched audits. Underwriters, including Citigroup Global Markets Inc., Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. and Goldman Sachs & Co., separately agreed in May to pay investors $74 million. That settlement was approved by a judge on June 26.
The plaintiffs also reached a separate settlement last month with Commerz Markets LLC, a unit of Frankfurt-based Commerzbank AG, which agreed to pay $933,000.
Corzine, a former Wall Street broker who rose to become co-chairman of Goldman Sachs, had entered politics by winning a U.S. Senate seat as a Democrat, representing New Jersey for five years before winning election as governor in 2005.
Corzine took MF Global’s helm in March 2010, shortly after leaving the governor’s office following his defeat by Chris Christie in his bid for reelection.
China looks like it is heading for its version of the 1929 stock market crash
While all Western eyes remain firmly focused on Greece, a potentially much more significant financial crisis is developing on the other side of world. In some quarters, it’s already being called China’s 1929 – the year of the most infamous stock market crash in history and the start of the economic catastrophe of the Great Depression.
In any normal summer, a 30pc fall in the Chinese stock market – a loss of value roughly equivalent to the UK’s entire economic output last year – after an ascent which had seen share prices more than double within the space of a year would have been front page news across the globe.
The dramatic series of government interventions to stem the panic – hitherto unsuccessful, it should be added – would similarly have been up there at the top of the news agenda. Yet the pantomime of the Greek debt talks, together with the tragi-comedy of will they, won’t they leave the euro, has relegated the story to little more than a footnote – even though 940 companies, more than a third, have now suspended trading on China’s two main indices.
J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. is looking to move 2,150 jobs from New York City to Jersey City, the latest expansion of the financial institution across the Hudson River.
The New Jersey Economic Development Authority on Thursday is expected to consider an application by the New York City-based bank for a $19 million subsidy over 10 years, the second round of tax credits for the firm in about a year as the state seeks to create jobs in the Hudson County city.
New Jersey’s unemployment rate was 6.5% in May, compared with New York state’s 5.7% and 5.5% for the nation, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (Haddon/Wall Street Journal)
It’s not just disaffected pensioners: young Greeks have worked out that they don’t need the bloated EU
Despite the scaremongering and bullying from those in Brussels, we are waking today with Greece having delivered a resounding No.
That comes despite EU bosses saying that it would mean a Greek exit from the Euro, not to mention the heavy economic pressure placed on the Greek people to go along with the wishes of Brussels. It is a crushing defeat for those Eurocrats who believe that you can simply bulldoze public opinion.
Chief bully-boy Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament, and other supposed leaders of the European Union did their best to terrify the Greek people into submitting to the wishes of the European Union. But they utterly failed. The fear espoused by the Yes campaign was rejected. Opinion polls that put the Yes side ahead just days before were way out, as thousands upon thousands of Greek citizens lined the streets chanting “Oxi”.
Investors tend to respond to impending doom by selling risky stuff and hiding out in safer assets — namely, bonds in places such as Germany and the U.S.
There’s a problem with that formula this time around: Traders aren’t so sure they can find anything that’s truly safe right now. So, instead of piling into sovereign debt of developed nations, traders are pulling their money out of those places as the Greekeconomy teeters on the brink of collapse, Puerto Rico talks about delaying some debt payments and China’s stock market suffers its biggest selloff since 1992.
Investors yanked $2.9 billion from European government bond funds last week, more than ever before, and pulled $699 million from short-term investment-grade U.S. bond funds, Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. data show. While these assets have traditionally been havens during rocky periods, they look less appealing now after more than six years of unprecedented monetary stimulus that pushed yields to record lows.
Why is that a problem? Well, the European Central Bank’s bond-purchasing program this year sent yields so low (negative, in fact) that investors revolted, selling German debt in the face of some signs of economic growth and causing unprecedented volatility. In the U.S., the economy has improved enough that the Federal Reserve is planning to raise interest rates this year from virtually zero, where they’ve been since 2008.
FINANCE MINISTER RESIGNS AFTER DECISIVE ‘NO’ BAILOUT VOTE
BY ELENA BECATOROS AND DEMETRIS NELLAS
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis resigned Monday, saying he was told shortly after Greece’s decisive referendum result that some other eurozone finance ministers and the country’s other creditors would appreciate his not attending the ministers’ meetings.
Varoufakis said Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras had judged that his resignation “might help achieve a deal” and that he was leaving the finance ministry for that reason.
“I shall wear the creditors’ loathing with pride,” Varoufakis said in his announcement.
Greeks voted overwhelmingly to reject creditors’ proposal of more austerity measures in return for rescue loans, in the country’s first referendum in 41 years Sunday.
The referendum “will stay in history as a unique moment when a small European nation rose up against debt-bondage,” Varoufakis said.
With his brash style and fondness for frequent media appearances at the start of his tenure at the ministry when the new government was formed in January, Varoufakis had visibly annoyed many of the eurozone’s finance ministers during Greece’s debt negotiations.
There was no immediate announcement of his replacement.
Kim Hjelmgaard and Marco della Cava, USA TODAY8:18 p.m. EDT June 30, 2015
Greece’s midnight deadline passed Tuesday for repaying $1.8 billion to the International Monetary Fund and other international creditors, deepening a financial crisis that threatens the Mediterranean nation’s membership in the European Union.
Despite an eleventh-hour effort by Greek lawmakers Tuesday to secure a new two-year debt deal before the deadline, European finance ministers reviewing Greece’s proposal concluded their conference call without offering a bailout extension.
The ministers agreed to convene again Wednesday to further discuss the details of a new series of loans from the eurozone’s European Stability Mechanism, its $560 billion rescue fund.
After the deadline passed (at 6 pm ET), Greece joined Zimbabwe, Sudan and Somaliain being in arrears to the IMF. Fitch Ratings has downgraded Greece’s government debt further into junk territory.
The deteriorating situation in Greece—including long lines and a 60 euro ($67) limit at ATMs—could get much worse if voters there refuse to accept creditor-imposed reforms in a referendum this coming Sunday, said billionaire Wilbur Ross, who has a large interest in the country.
“Once there’s social unrest, which there will be before too long if this thing continues, no tourist is going to want to go to [Greece],” Ross told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Monday. “If the Greek people understand how limited those concessions that are requested are, and contemplate going into the abyss on other side, they’re never going to pick the abyss.”
Read MoreGrexit a tragedy, but ‘Apocalypse Not’: Strategist
Last year, the chairman and CEO of WL Ross & Co. and other international financiers invested $1.8 billion in Eurobank—becoming the biggest shareholder of Greece’s third-largest bank. He said Monday he made the bet thinking the current government would not be in power.
Ross said there are lines at Eurobank branches, but surprisingly they’re “not totally out of control yet.”
By George F. Will Opinion writer June 19 at 9:04 PM
Now come Greeks bearing the gift of confirmation that Margaret Thatcher was right about socialist governments: “They always run out of other people’s money.” Greece, from whose ancient playwrights Western drama descends, is in an absurdist melodrama about securing yet another cash infusion from international creditors. This would add another boulder to a mountain of debt almost twice the size of Greece’s gross domestic product. This protracted dispute will result in desirable carnage if Greece defaults, thereby becoming a constructively frightening example to all democracies doling out unsustainable, growth-suppressing entitlements.
In January, Greek voters gave power to the left-wing Syriza party, one third of which, the Economist reports, consists of “Maoists, Marxists and supporters of Che Guevara.” Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, 40, a retired student radical, immediately denounced a European Union declaration criticizing Russia’s dismemberment of Ukraine. He chose only one cabinet member with prior government experience — a former leader of Greece’s Stalinist Communist Party. Tsipras’s minister for culture and education says Greek education“should not be governed by the principle of excellence . . . it is a warped ambition.” Practicing what he preaches, he proposes abolishing university entrance exams.
