The U.S. Troubled Asset Relief Program, which risked up to $700 billion of government funds to bail out troubled banks and automakers, will cost taxpayers a mere $25 billion, according to an estimate released on Monday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Click on the following for more details: TARP bailout to cost taxpayers $25 billion: CBO | Reuters
According to the Labor Department, two million long-term unemployed will be dropped from the programs by the end of December if Congress does not act.
Congress allowed benefits to lapse twice for a brief time earlier this year, and once for a long time, when 2.5 million had their benefits interrupted for nearly two months over the summer
extended unemployment benefits prevented record poverty in 2009 and were used mostly by middle-class Americans. Households with total income more than twice the poverty threshold received 70 percent of the $120 billion the federal government spent on unemployment benefits last year.
Click on the following for more details: Food Banks Bracing For End Of Extended Unemployment Benefits
political pundits agree the redistricting issue was the main reason Madigan tossed nearly $1.4 million into the record-setting retention campaign of Illinois Supreme Court Justice Tom Kilbride of Rock Island. It was expense insurance to ensure judicial approval on the new redistricting map had Gov. Pat Quinn lost to Republican Bill Brady and, if the map matter (as it still might be) was thrown to the state's high court.
Click on the following for more details: Democrat-controlled redistricting process worries Republicans - My Web Times
Investors have been selling off state and local municipal bonds. Meredith Whitney, the financial expert who first spotted Citigroup’s overexposure to mortgage-backed securities, is now predicting a sell-off in the municipal bond market.
So it’s entirely possible that some state government — California and Illinois, facing $25 billion and $15 billion deficits, are likely suspects — will be coming to Washington some time in the next two years in search of a bailout.
How to avoid this scenario? University of Pennsylvania law professor David Skeel, writing in The Weekly Standard, suggests that Congress pass a law allowing states to go bankrupt.
Click on the following for more details: Michael Barone: Bankruptcy could help states avoid a crisis | The Columbus Dispatch
believe it was an accident.
Stuart Haverty, 23, had been at the Chicago Bears-Philadelphia Eagles game with co-workers, said Bruce Glass, his boss and co-owner of Fox Tool and Manufacturing in Woodstock. Haverty and Glass had been seated separately from four others in the group and went to meet up shortly before halftime.
Haverty's uncle, Tim, said his nephew might have gone for a cigarette but was told he couldn't smoke in that area. Haverty might have gone beyond a barrier to find a place to smoke, gone too far and lost his balance
Haverty was part of the Woodstock High School Class of 2006, but graduated early as part of the Career and Technical Education Program, according to Barb Banker, director of community services for District 200.
Haverty worked at Fox Tool for seven years, starting part-time in high school. He bought his own home at age 20 and was about a year away from finishing a precision toolmaking apprenticeship, Glass said.
He also attended McHenry County College from fall 2005 through spring 2009, school officials said.
Click on the following for more details: Northwest Herald | Woodstock man falls to his death at Soldier Field
Illinois, which shares Moody’s Investors Service’s worst state credit rating with California, has set a Dec. 1 sale for $1.5 billion of tobacco bonds to pay bills and balance its budget, said Kelly Kraft, spokeswoman for Governor Pat Quinn’s office of management and budget.
The bonds, being sold by the Railsplitter Tobacco Settlement Authority, will be backed by money from a 1998 settlement with tobacco companies. The state is raising the cash to help pay leftover fiscal 2010 bills by Dec. 31.
