By Brian Faler

Since the U.S. recession began in December 2007, Congress has extended the length of unemployment benefits for the jobless three times. Now, the lawmakers may have reached their limit.

They are quietly drawing the line at 99 weeks of aid, a mark that hundreds of thousands of Americans have already reached. In coming months, the number of those who will receive their final government check is projected to top 1 million.

It’s a deadline that has rarely been mentioned in recent debates over jobless benefits, in which Republicans have delayed aid because of cost concerns. The deadline hasn’t been lost on Teauna Stephney, a 39-year-old single mother from Bothell, Washington, who said she could become homeless once her $407 weekly checks stop in June.

Continue reading More Than A Million In U.S. May Lose Jobless Benefits

By Jim Harper

The financial regulation the Senate is debating may undo your financial privacy.

If someone asked you what’s wrong with a planned economy, your first answer might not be “privacy.” But it should be. For proof, look no further than the financial regulation bill the Senate is debating. Its 1,400 pages contain strong prescriptions for a government-micromanaged economy—and the undoing of your financial privacy. Here’s a look at some of the personal data collection this revamp of financial services regulation will produce.

The “Office of Financial Research” (sec. 152) will have a “Data Center” (sec. 154) that requires submission of data on any financial activity that poses a threat to financial stability.

Use your noggin, now: Will government researchers know in advance what might cause financial instability? Will they home in on precisely that? No.

This is government entrée into any financial activities federal bureaucrats suspect might cause instability. It’s carte blanche to examine all financial transactions—including yours. (Confidentiality rules? The better view is that privacy is lost when the government takes data from your control, but we’ll come back to confidentiality.)

Continue reading Planned Economy, Privacy Problems

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Continue reading The Horse Boy Movie - Trailer

By Richard Teitelbaum

Neil Barofsky was unpacking boxes in December 2008 when the stench of sewage wafted through the hallways at the 168-year-old Main Treasury Building. The space assigned to him as head of the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or SIGTARP, was shoehorned into the basement, three floors below U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson ’s offices.

“They eventually discovered a broken sewer main beneath the floor,” says Barofsky, 40, adding that he doesn’t think any slight was intended by relegating him to the malodorous quarters. Still, he says with a smile, “I wasn’t given the prime real estate in Treasury.”

The incident was noted by Beltway insiders, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its June issue. “It became an apt metaphor for the foul relations between Treasury and SIGTARP,” says Michael Smallberg, an investigator at the Project on Government Oversight , a Washington watchdog group. That tense relationship has grown out of Barofsky’s mandate to monitor and root out fraud and waste in the management of TARP , the $700 billion program passed in October 2008 to remove toxic debt from the banks. The special inspector general, in a series of reports, interviews and congressional hearings, has heaped criticism on the Treasury Department’s operation of the program.

Continue reading Barofsky Says Criminal Charges Possible in Alleged AIG Coverup