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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (458477)	2/22/2009 6:38:03 AM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573898

Official: Obama plans to slash deficit in half Story user rating: Published: 20 minutes ago President Barack Obama addresses mayors in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Friday, Feb. 20, 2009. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)WASHINGTON (AP) - Having committed hundreds of billions of taxpayers' dollars to revive the economy, President Barack Obama has another plan: to cut the federal deficit in half by the end of his first term. Obama will touch on his efforts to restore fiscal discipline at a White House fiscal policy summit on Monday and in an address to Congress on Tuesday. On Thursday he plans to send at least a summary of his first budget request to Capitol Hill. The bottom line, said an administration official Saturday, is to halve the federal deficit to $533 billion by the time his first term ends in 2013. He inherited a deficit of about $1.3 trillion from former President George W. Bush. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the president has not yet released his budget for the fiscal year 2010, which begins Oct. 1, said the deficit will be shrunk by scaling back Iraq war spending, ending the temporary tax breaks enacted by the Bush administration for those making $250,000 or more a year, and streamlining government. "We can't generate sustained growth without getting our deficits under control," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address that seemed to preview his intentions. He said his budget will be "sober in its assessments, honest in its accounting, and lays out in detail my strategy for investing in what we need, cutting what we don't, and restoring fiscal discipline." Obama's budget also is expected to take steps toward his campaign promises of establishing universal health care and lessening the country's reliance on foreign oil. Obama has pledged to make deficit reduction a priority both as a candidate and a president. But he also has said economic recovery must come first. Last week, he signed into law the $787 billion stimulus measure that is meant to create jobs but certainly will add to the nation's skyrocketing national debt. He also is implementing the $700 billion financial sector rescue passed on Bush's watch; about $75 billion of which is being used toward Obama's plan to help homeowners facing foreclosure. AP Mobile News Network. © 2008 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (458477)	2/22/2009 6:39:32 AM
From: Road Walker	1 Recommendation Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1573898

more from you friend... ____________ Soros Says Financial Crisis Marks End of a Free-Market Model Feb. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Billionaire investor George Soros said the current economic crisis has its roots in the financial deregulation of the 1980s and marks the end of a free-market model that has since dominated capitalist countries. Liberalization of the financial industry begun by the Reagan administration has led to a series of breakdowns forcing government intervention, Soros told economists and bankers last night at a private dinner at Columbia University in New York. The global recession, triggered by the collapse of the U.S. housing market, has “damaged the financial system itself,” he said. Regulators are in part to blame because they “abrogated” their responsibilities, Soros, 78, said. The philosophy of “market-fundamentalism” was now under question as financial markets have proved to be inefficient and affected by biases rather than driven by all the available information, he said. “We’re in a crisis I think that’s really the most serious since the 1930s and is different from all the other crises we have experienced in our lifetime,” Soros said. Soros, founder of New York-based hedge-fund firm Soros Fund Management LLC, said last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that the Obama administration’s plan to buy toxic assets from U.S. banks won’t be enough to get financial institutions to start lending again. A more effective approach for restarting the economy would be to inject capital directly into the banks and cut minimum capital requirements, Soros, whose firm oversees $21 billion, has said. Soros’s Quantum Endowment Fund returned 8 percent last year. That compared with an average loss of 18 percent by hedge funds, according to data compiled by Hedge Fund Research Inc. of Chicago. To contact the reporter on this story: Walid el-Gabry in New York at welgabry@bloomberg.net Find out more about Bloomberg for iPhone: bbiphone.bloomberg.com Sent from my iPhone - JF