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This is unreal

The U.S. government currently spends $160 for every dollar it receives. 

Yep its official:  America is a banana republic with the deficit now exceeding anything ever seen both absolutely and relatively (Deficit prior peak was 120%).  The U.S. federal government borrows nearly 40% of its budget…

The ration of Insider Selling to Insider buying just hit infinity:

Last week there was absolutely no insider buying – not a single share was acquired by a company insider last week (Jan 9 to Jan 14).  Looking back at records this never happened before.  Insider selling has been much greater than insider buying for the past 12 months, but this is a new low (or a new high depending on your point of view -- in fact infinity marks an absolute record...).

GOP announces they will not raise the Federal government’s debt ceiling:

GOP operative continue to insist that the budget be cut as they will not allow America’s debt level to exceed $14.3 trillion.  This is due to pressures from the Tea party.  Only problem is that Medicare, Social Security and Defense are all off the table (according to John Boehner), which leaves nothing of consequence since these programs account for 77% of all Federal expenditure (with interest expenses).  Only problem is that the GOP is now in charge of the budget process – seriously the house of representative drafts budgets – and the GOP is in charge there.  If they are serious about this (they’re not by the way) they would have to cut expenses by nearly 45% to meet the target of no increase in the deficit…. This should be interesting

First shock of 2011, the Tunisian government falls

Rumsfled was famous for his “known unknown and unknown unknowns” well the world just got bitch slapped with an unknown unknown – the fall of the Tunisian government (Egypt and Oman are looking shaky) because of food riots.  If you are a fan of Chinese history you will know that virtually all violent changes in Chinese governments were caused by food riots.

Canada tightens mortgage rules

The Bank of Canada has been adamant for several months that Canadians borrowing are unsustainable.  The bank finally got new rules (from the Minister of Finance) that will reduce the mortgage term from 35 to 30 years, the maximum loan to value ration from 90% to 85% and removes CMHC guarantees from mortgage lines of credit..

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