By Robert Romano Absolutely no connection whatsoever. That is what one must conclude from a recent Americans for Limited Government (ALG) study asking the questions: Does increased government spending spur private sector growth, and do spending cuts cause private sector recessions? The study, based on data compiled by the Bureau of Economic Analysis from 1945 to 2012, separates government spending [...]

By Robert Romano Appearing recently on Fox News’ On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, House Budget Committee Ranking Member Chris Van Hollen wanted to know where the House Republicans were on budget negotiations. “The House has passed a budget, the Senate has a budget,” he said. “The next step as you know is to have a budget negotiation in [...]

By Robert Romano Today the House Ways and Means Committee is considering a version of the “Full Faith and Credit Act” that addresses the threat of default when the statutory debt ceiling is reached by prioritizing payments of principal and interest to the nation’s creditors. Readers will recall in July 2011, in order to force House Republicans to vote in [...]

By Bill Wilson — It has been four years and two months since the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,” the so-called “stimulus,” was signed into law on Feb. 17, 2009. That day, Barack Obama told the American people he was keeping his campaign promise that he would “do all that I could to give every American the chance to make [...]

By Bill Wilson and Robert Romano It can be said that the present day financial crisis and the broad and sweeping powers the U.S. Federal Reserve has assumed in its wake all share their origins in the very first debates Congress had over the creation of the national debt, the Fed’s precursor, the Bank of the United States, and over [...]

By Robert Romano — How can deposits in Cyprus be unavailable for withdrawal, and yet somehow available for taxation? This has been a burning question for me as I have observed the banking crisis in the Mediterranean island nation — where banks have faced heavy losses on Greek sovereign debt, European officials proposed a levy on Cypriot bank deposits, and [...]

By Bill Wilson — “We do not have an immediate debt crisis.” That was House Speaker John Boehner’s take on the rapidly growing $16.75 trillion national debt, speaking on ABC’s This Week. He went on to suggest that “we all know that we have one looming. And we have one looming because we have entitlement programs that are not sustainable [...]

By Rick Manning — Thursday’s headlines from Washington, D.C. will likely read that the House of Representatives passed a ten year path to a balanced budget proposed by Representative Paul Ryan. While the Ryan budget is a gigantic step in the right direction, a proposal by the House Republican Study Committee that brings the budget into balance in four years [...]

By Robert Romano The past 3 years the $16.7 trillion national debt has grown at an average rate of 10.5 percent, while nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has averaged just 3.85 percent. This is one of the primary reasons why the debt has soared to 103.8 percent of GDP at the beginning of this year and will continue rising. The [...]

By Robert Romano – Another debt limit shocker. Apparently under current federal law, if the debt ceiling — now suspended until May 19 — is reached, the U.S. Treasury gets to decide for itself whether or not it feels like defaulting. In other words, it would be a political decision. Such are the findings of a then-Government Accounting Office (GAO) [...]