The Market Ticker – It may be “politics as usual” to never talk about how bad the economy really is – never talk about the budget deficit in honest terms – and never talk about how revenues are and have been cratering across the board for governments. But when you are facing a truly horrific situation in this regard, and you need everyone on board to make sacrifices – especially government positions where employees feel especially entitled - ”politics as usual” is particularly dangerous.

Seeking Alpha – Yes, we have a few green shoots in the economy. But all the stats coming out are based against the incredibly dismal year we had in 08. In other words, things are getting marginally better compared to the worst year in the last 200.

Bloomberg – Most Europeans believe the worst of the economic crisis has yet to feed through to the labor market, the European Union said, citing a Eurobarometer survey.

Bloomberg – Foreclosure filings in the U.S. will reach a record for the second consecutive year with 3.9 million notices sent to homeowners in default, RealtyTrac Inc. said.

Seeking Alpha – Commercial real estate downturn marches on.

Reuters – Germany to sell H1N1 vaccine due to weak demand.

Brussel’s Journal – The European Union, in order to save itself from the faults of its own legislation, has decided that Iceland and the Icelandic people are expendable. Realising its own failures the EU has decided, through the British and Dutch governments, that the Icelandic authorities have to shoulder the responsibility which is rightfully the EU regulators’. This is what the so-called Icesave dispute is mainly about.

The Market Ticker – Dubai – screwing everybody.

Brisbane Times – THE OPPOSITION finance spokesman, Barnaby Joyce, believes the United States government could default on its debt, triggering an ”economic Armageddon” which will make the recent global financial crisis pale into insignificance.

Business Insider – The 10 Countries Most Likely To Default

Bloomberg – A record 37.2 million people, or about one out of every eight Americans, received food stamps in September, as the recession drove a surging jobless rate, according to a government report. 

Rolling Stone- Obama’s big sellout (when the Rolling Stone starts to catch on, oh my…)

Politico - In a bold but risky year-end strategy, Democratsare preparing to raise the federal debt ceiling by as much as $1.8 trillion before New Year’s rather than have to face the issue again prior to the 2010 elections (done deal, I’m a day late on this one – but it’s worth reading to see the hypocrisy).

Global Economic Analysis – Stimulus Checkup – 100 ridiculous projects funded by the American Recovery Act

Politico – Perhaps the greatest measure of Obama’s declining support is that just 50% of voters now say they prefer having him as President to George W. Bush, with 44% saying they’d rather have his predecessor (haha).

Money And Markets – When you think about the government’s exploding debt burden, you probably don’t focus on interest payments. But those payments will likely total $4.8 trillion over the next 10 years, amounting to more than half the government’s $9 trillion in debt. Interest rates are near zero now, thanks to the Federal Reserve’s massive monetary stimulus. But at some point the Fed will have to reverse that easing.

Whiskey and Gunpowder – The world is not yet ready to give up its addiction to paper currency. Actually, the world may be getting a snoot-full of it, but governments are not. You see, paper currency has an unbelievably strong attraction for governments. Do you know what it is? Do you wanna know?

My Budget 360 – It is hard to justify the 1,100 mark for the S&P 500.  The 676 low of March, as disastrous as it may have felt, actually reflected a more accurate measure of earnings potential of the 500 S&P companies.  The S&P 500 is a good index because it measures 500 companies with a current collective market cap of $9.6 trillion.  The S&P 500 over a century of data has seen price to earnings ratios of between 5 and 10 after severe contractions.  It is safe to say that what we are experiencing is a strong contraction.

Money And Markets – Governments the world over have spent the past year bailing out, backstopping, insuring, and stimulating their financial sectors and economies. Trillions of dollars, euros, yen, and pounds have been thrown around like Halloween candy. Officials have assured us there’s little risk to that strategy. But we have warned consistently that the opposite is true. Our stance: If you borrow and spend too much, all you’re going to do is transform a Wall Street debt crisis into a Washington debt crisis.

A loophole in the Senate health care bill would let insurers place annual dollar limits on medical care for people struggling with costly illnesses such as cancer:

The legislation that originally passed the Senate health committee last summer would have banned such limits, but a tweak to that provision weakened it in the bill now moving toward a Senate vote.

As currently written, the Senate Democratic health care bill would permit insurance companies to place annual limits on the dollar value of medical care, as long as those limits are not “unreasonable.” The bill does not define what level of limits would be allowable, delegating that task to administration officials.

Adding to the puzzle, the new language was quietly tucked away in a clause in the bill still captioned “No lifetime or annual limits.”

 Just a few months ago, Barack Obama wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times where he had this to say about insurance companies and their policy of limiting coverage:

They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or in a lifetime. And we will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses. No one in America should go broke because they get sick.

If the Democratic healthcare bill would permit insurance companies to place annual limits of the dollar value of medical care as long as those limits are not “unreasonable”, who then would decide what’s “unreasonable”? Senators? The insurance companies? Death Panels? Hmmmm, death panels.

To add to the intrigue, no one in the Democrat ranks knows who actually slipped this loophole into the healthcare bill. Seeing though that this is Harry Reid’s bill, I would think he’s the one that has to take responsibility for it.

There are a few reasons why this clause could have been inserted into the healthcare bill: 1) Insurance companies wouldn’t support this bill if the clause wasn’t there, 2) the healthcare bill is hundreds of billions higher than it should be and this is a stealth way of reducing the overall cost, 3) it’s all about the power. The power to decide who lives and who dies. The power to control the lives of the population.

Look at it this way: For example – Let’s say that it has been decided that a person with cancer is allowed to have $150,000 in coverage each year. And that works out well for a few years, everyone is covered sufficiently and everyone is happy. A few years go by, and is want to happen with every government plan and organization, healthcare becomes increasingly expensive and massively bloated. So the lawmakers go back and change the definition of “reasonable”. $150,000 was “reasonable” a few years ago, but considering how the economy is not performing up to expectations and healthcare is close to bankruptcy (see Medicade, Medicare, Social Security, Government sponsored pension funds, Postal service,  Amtrax, etc) $150,00 now considered “unreasonable”. So now a more reasonable amount is $93,000.

The government will say, “It’s for the greater good, we all have to make sacrifices. Think of the children…and their children…etc.” Most Americans don’t have cancer, so what do they care? Most Americans care more about their plasma TV’s or their PS3, cancer coverage isn’t even on their radar. Put another way: If most Americans aren’t concerned with an already bankrupt America and a government that has socialized banks, insurance companies, car companies, and is now socializing 1/6 of their economy, what makes you think Joe Six Pack will care about this?

But YOU care, and that’s what matters. You can still do something before it’s too late. Because once this is signed into law, it’s going to be there forever. It’s going to get bigger, more bloated, and you WILL lose the healthcare you have. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of WHEN.

Despite what the cheerleaders have been telling you at the various state-controlled media outlets, Black Friday wasn’t a smashing success. According to hard numbers released by The NPD Group,  sales of large ticket items were down by a massive amount,  while overall sales were down 1.2% compared to last year. Yes, compared to the worst Black Friday ever on record, sales were actually 1.2% lower. Green shoots & leaves, my brothers and sisters.

You know what this means, don’t you? Exactly – the stock market will go up 200 points today.

**Thanks to The Market Ticker

My Budget 360 – The New Economic Misery Index: Five Sectors that Show Financial Pain for Americans. Food Stamps, Bankruptcy, Credit Access, Employment, and Housing.

Breitbart- President Barack Obama outlined new multibillion-dollar stimulus and jobs proposals Tuesday, saying the nation must continue to “spend our way out of this recession” until more Americans are back at work. Without giving a price tag, Obama proposed a package of new spending for highway, bridge and other infrastructure projects, deeper tax breaks for small businesses and tax incentivesto encourage people to make their homes more energy efficient (notice how comrade Obama won’t give a “price tag” for his new stimulus proposals, but he was quick to give out a price tag when it came to Afghanistan).

Bloomberg – Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling imposed a 50 percent levy on banker bonuses and said he will increase income taxes after elections next year as the worst recession on record drives up U.K. government borrowing.

The Treasury expects to raise 550 million pounds ($896 million) targeting payouts at all banks operating in the U.K. from today and another 3 billion pounds from incomes earned after April 2011. Borrowing will rise by 4.6 billion pounds to 611 billion pounds in the four years through March 2013.

Whiskey & Gunpowder – Natural gas prices have plummeted. Natural gas storage is at a maximum. Producible gas reserves are up 35% in the United States. Demand for natural gas is down because of the economy. Then suddenly a new-found U.S. natural gas producible reserve is suggesting that the U.S. in fact will be self-sufficient or close to it as soon as 2030.

Why are all of these things happening?

Henry Makow – What happened in Dubai just over a week ago was the bright flash, and the media have used the intervening period before the shock wave hits to reassure everyone that everything is going to be just fine – “You just relax, nothing will come of it, it’s only $60 billion down the drain or whatever – have a cup of tea”. The trouble is that it’s not $60 billion at all – the reality is that this is a default on a massively larger scale.

The Pragmatic Capitalist  – The AAR is out with their latest railtime indicators for the month of November.

Bloomberg- U.S. homeowners have lost about $5.9 trillion in value since the housing market’s peak in March 2006 as mounting foreclosures and the recession weighed on prices, according to Zillow.com. Almost half a trillion dollars was wiped out this year through November as housing headed for a third straight annual decline.

Zero Hedge – Census Bureau Reports Collapse In State Tax Revenue, Liquor Stores Only Bright Spot.

Money and Markets – 11 Startling Forecasts for 2010.

Reuters – The price tag for bailing out UK banks has hit 850 billion pounds ($1.4 trillion) but Britain’s spending watchdog says the final cost to taxpayers will not be known for years (that’s encouraging).

Times Online – Shops and markets in North Korea have been closed and all cash transactions frozen after the Government’s shock announcement of a devaluation of its currency in an effort to crack down on the country’s burgeoning free-market economy.

Telegraph – Companies in Western Europe are facing a $1.5 trillion funding shortfall next year.

Guardian - Japan’s recovery appears to be running out of steam, with figures today showing that spending by manufacturers recorded its biggest fall for seven years in the third quarter, as firms continued to struggle with poor earnings and the soaring yen.

Gallup – Barack Obama’s presidential job approval rating is 47% in the latest Gallup Poll Daily tracking update, a new low for his administration to date.

Market Watch – Cleveland-based AmTrust Bank, with 66 branches and roughly $8 billion in deposits, was closed by regulators Friday, as the ongoing credit crunch continued to claim victims. Three smaller banks in Georgia, an Illinois-based bank and a Virginia bank were also shuttered, bringing the 2009 total to 130.

MSNBC – Within the vast pool of 15.4 million unemployed workers, a split is emerging: The number of long-term jobless — those out of work six months or longer — is growing, while the number of short-term unemployed is declining.

FDIC – FDIC failed bank list.

Bloomberg - Kenneth Feinberg the U.S. paymaster for rescued companies, will exempt some executives at American International Group Inc. from a $500,000 salary cap after at least five employees threatened to quit because of the limits, people familiar with the matter said (everything old is new again).

Global Economic Analysis – 15 states have collectively borrowed more than $15 billion and another 9 states are in the red over unemployment benefits.

Bloomberg – Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama will probably unveil his first stimulus package today amid growing signs that the recovery in the world’s second-largest economy is losing momentum.

Financial Times – The value of UK commercial real estate debt in default or in breach of key lending agreements more than doubled to about £30bn in the first six months of the year, adding pressure on the banking sector, a survey has revealed. Banks have also extended or refinanced an extra £16bn in the first-half of the year. Remember Michievillian’s, we have turned the corner! Ya, right into a wall.

Whiskey & Gunpowder – Four Reasons Hyperinflation Hasn’t Hit the U.S. Economy Yet

Seeking Alpha – A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 21% of adults believe the president should reappoint Bernanke to another four-year term.

Yahoo Finance – More people were late with their auto loan payments in the third quarter as job losses continued, but amid rising delinquencies there are positive signs for the economy in certain states. You’ll get a kick out of what the idiot considers “positive signs”.

Seeking Alpha – In a sure sign of tepid recovery, we continue to see improvement off the lows, but a still very meager traffic trends. A recovering economy would have no problem overcoming the very low levels of last fall, but we actually continue to see declines. Total intermodal traffic was down 6.4% versus 2008 and down a staggering 32% versus 2007.

Guardian - The likelihood of Greece becoming the next Iceland and plunging into bankruptcy looms over a meeting of EU finance ministers in Brussels today as the Greeks prepare to take another pasting from their colleagues. It’s all Greek to me.

Times Online – There were reports of public outrage and confusion after the announcement of the measure, which requires North Koreans to swap existing won notes for new ones at an exchange rate of one to 100 — effectively knocking two zeroes off their value. Because of a cap of 100,000 won per family (£475 at the official exchange rate), anyone with significant holdings of cash will have their savings wiped out.

Money News - Prices at the pump were $2.629 a gallon on Monday, 80.4 cents more a gallon than a year ago, according to auto club AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Services. That is about $40 more a month for a typical motorist.

Seeking Alpha – Japan – Will it soon be the lost 20 years?

The Australian – KEVIN Rudd has lost his bid to deliver an emissions trading scheme in Australia before talks in Copenhagen but won an early election trigger after the Senate formally rejected the laws again today.

Just two Liberal senators broke ranks with a clear mandate among Coalition MPs to delay an ETS and voted with Labor on an emissions trading scheme

Deputy Senate leader Eric Abetz declared: “The CPRS is dead. And no amount of CPR can revive it”

Money & Markets – A healthy bull run for the stock market must come from rising prices and rising volume. This is an old and time-honored stock market analysis concept, and probably one of the most profound insights into market behavior.

Thus, a rally lacking volume is at least suspicious. And a rally with declining volume is a sign of a weak market and usually a harbinger of a correction if not an outright trend change.

Now go have a look at the S & P chart supplied.

Yahoo Finance- Howard Davidowitz of Davidowitz & Associates says the American economy is in worse shape that it was last year at this time – and he has some good points to back it up.

Daily Mail – The first question everyone would like answered is whether the banking crisis is over. Technically, it probably is; in reality it is not.

The Crimson -  Harvard University’s law school will stop offering free third-year tuition to students who go into public service after graduation because of endowment losses. What, i thought a free University education was a right?

Bloomberg – GM’s CEO steps down…after 8 months!

The Telegraph – The trade deficit of the world’s biggest economy also remains huge. How much longer can the dollar defy gravity?

Gold Prices – “It must be accepted that the Witwatersrand goldfields are now 95 per cent exhausted … the glory days of South African mining appear to have arrived finally at an ignominious end,” Mr Hartnady wrote in his report.

Daily Finance – Video game console leader Nintendo says that U.S. sales of its Wii gaming system dropped 30% year-over-year to 550,000 for the week ending Nov. 28, according to numbers reported by Bloomberg. **30% is the number to always watch for.

Reuters – Consumers spent significantly less at the start of the holiday season this weekend, dimming hopes for a retail comeback that would help propel the economy early in 2010.

Market Oracle – “Even a small increase in interest rates has a big impact. An increase of one percentage point in the Treasury’s average cost of borrowing would cost American taxpayers an extra $80 billion this year.” If interest rates were at the same level as a few years ago, interest costs on the debt this year would be $221 billion more than they actually were.

Yahoo – It’s official, but only barely — Canada exited recession in the third quarter after three quarters of negative growth.

The Washington Post – The number of states reporting widespread activity of the H1N1 virus dropped to 43 from 46 in the past week, and activity fell in all 10 regions of the country, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Growth Stock Wire- I single-handedly crushed the dreams of the next generation.

BK&.com – Dubai bankruptcy is a sign of things to come.

Telegraph- Climate Change: thisis the worst scientific scandal of our generation (we needs to hoist the black flag and start slitting throats).

Bloomberg – Almost 651,000 loan revisions had been started through the Obama administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program as of last month, from about 487,080 as of September, according to the Treasury. None of the trial modifications through October had been converted to permanent repayment plans, the treasury data showed. You read that correctly – “None of the trial modifications through October had been converted to permanent repayment plans”. NONE. ZERO. ZILCH. NADA.

Market Oracle – Investors Buy Gold As Central Banks on Course to Crash World Economy.

In order to diversify its portfolio, Russia is preparing to invest in Canadian dollars.

Hotel owners, like home owners, behind on payments. Occupancy down 10%. Good times.

ABC news reports that five frontbenchers from Australia’s opposition Liberal party have resigned their portfoliosrather than follow their leader Malcolm Turnbull in voting with Kevin Rudd’s Government on a new Emissions Trading Scheme.

Climategate e-mails sweep America, may scuttle Barack Obama’s Cap and Trade laws.

The recession is proving even deeper than feared, Alistair Darling will admit in next month’s Pre-Budget report. The Chancellor will forecast the steepest annual slump since modern records began. Liberalism always ends the same no matter where you are.

Bill Bonner at 321Gold hits the nail on the head with, “Recession is over, welcome to the depression.”

Share prices in the City (Dubai) suffered their biggest fall since March today amid fears that a debt crisis in the millionaires’ playground of Dubai heralded a new phase in the global financial meltdown and a double-dip recession in 2010. Who among us doesn’t want to see Dubai fail, and fail miserably?

Dubai default fears push futures sharply lower.

The proportion of U.S. homeowners who owe more on their mortgages than the properties are worth has swelled to about 23%, threatening prospects for a sustained housing recovery.

Ahead of Black Friday – Has consumer confidence been restored?

Is the other oil shoe dropping?

‘Screaming Hot’ TVs Abound as Walmart, Kohl’s Push for Shoppers. Granted, this link is a few days old and you’ve probably already spent your Black Friday wad, but…

Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Co., Merbanco Inc. and Renco Group Inc.have made approaches about General Motors Co’s Saab unit after a sale to Koenigsegg Group collapsed, two people familiar with the situation said.

Britain has run out of money. Labour has completed what it set out to do – bankrupt Britain.

Banks around the world still haven’t recognized half of their losses according to the International Monetary Fund’s managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn.There have been 24 confirmed cases of a type of severe allergic reaction called anaphylaxis in Canadians who have received an H1N1 flu shot, including one person who died after getting vaccinated, the head of the Public Health Agency of Canada said Wednesday. The shot is safe, just close your eyes and let government take care of you.

There could be $1.5 trillion in bad debt remaining on their balance sheets, and losses on these bad loans still threaten the solvency of many institutions. Yet these effers are still alowed to kick the can down the road. Off with their heads, I say!

There have been 24 confirmed cases of a type of severe allergic reaction called anaphylaxis in Canadians who have received an H1N1 flu shot, including one person who died after getting vaccinated, the head of the Public Health Agency of Canada said Wednesday.