"The blockbuster criminal trial of former Enron Corp. chiefs Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling is about lies, not numbers, a federal prosecutor told jurors Tuesday, launching the much-awaited case against the scandal-ridden company's former corporate titans." 01-06
"Mr. Lay's failing fortune underscores a recurrent — but often overlooked — theme in recent corporate collapses. Despite the public image of corporate chieftains at scandal-plagued companies escaping the debacles with their pockets stuffed with cash, several have been pushed far down the road toward insolvency long before a civil or criminal judgment is entered against them."
"In a number of cases, that is because the chief executives were as reckless with their personal finances as they were with the management of their companies. Bernard J. Ebbers at WorldCom and John J. Rigas at Adelphia Communications, both convicted of fraud, borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars from their businesses to purchase their own companies' stock."
"When the companies collapsed into bankruptcy, those shares were worthless, but the executives still owed the money." 02-06
"In short, the federal government seems to have much larger unfinanced liabilities than official data imply. If you compare the present value of all projected future government expenditures, including debt-service payments, with the present value of all projected future government receipts, the gap is about $66 trillion, according to calculations by the economists Jagadeesh Gokhale and Kent Smetters. That's almost eight times the size of the official gross federal debt." 06-06
"Three pillars of the economy — consumer confidence, orders for manufactured goods and home prices — showed surprising cracks on Tuesday, flashing signals that growth may slow more heading into the important holiday shopping season." 11-06
"For most of the past five and a half years, interest rates have been low, allowing the government to borrow more and more - to cut taxes while fighting two expensive wars - without having to shoulder higher interest payments."
"That's over now. For the first time during President George W. Bush's tenure, the U.S. government's interest bill is expected to rise in 2006, from $184 billion in 2005 to $220 billion this year, up nearly 20 percent."
"And that's not the worst of it. While foreign investors were putting up most of the $1.5 trillion the U.S. government has borrowed since 2001, they were also snapping up hundreds of billions of dollars in private sector securities, transactions that have been a big source of the easy money that allowed Americans to borrow heavily against their homes."
"The result, as The Wall Street Journal reported last week, is that for the first time in at least 90 years, America is now paying noticeably more to foreign creditors than it receives from its investments abroad. That is a momentous shift. It means that a growing share of America's future collective income will flow abroad, leading to a lower standard of living in the United States than would otherwise have been achieved. Americans deserve better than this financial mess." 10-06
"By definition, federal borrowing eventually results in a transfer of income from U.S. taxpayers, whose taxes go to pay the interest on the debt, to the investors who hold the Treasury bonds. As long as the bonds are owned by Americans, the transfer is simply from one group of citizens to another.""Today, however, 43 percent of the United States' publicly held debt of $4.8 trillion is held abroad, mainly by central banks in Japan, China and Britain and by offshore hedge funds. That's up from a 30 percent share in 2001, an extraordinary increase. Indeed, during the Bush years, 73 percent of new government borrowing has been from abroad."
"America is living beyond its means, and foreigners are increasingly supporting the excess - in exchange for a government guarantee that a chunk of America's future collective income will benefit them, not the Americans who earn it." 05-06
"President Bush yesterday returned after a holiday weekend and picked up where he left off, building a new second-term team by nominating Goldman Sachs Chairman Henry M. Paulson to replace Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, who resigned after more than a year of speculation about his departure." 05-06
"Home prices fell in at least 45 metropolitan areas in the third quarter as the real estate slowdown spread beyond industrial cities, where job losses have taking their toll on housing, to inflated markets in Florida, California and Arizona." 11-06
"The Social Security and Medicare Trustees, a majority of whom are members of the President’s cabinet, project that the Social Security shortfall will amount to 0.65 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (the basic measure of the size of the U.S. economy) over the next 75 years. In dollar terms, the Trustees project the shortfall over the 75 year period at $3.7 trillion."
"The Trustees also project the cost of the Medicare drug benefit at 1.4 percent of GDP — or $8.1 trillion — over the same period. This is at least double the size of the Social Security shortfall." 2-05