President Obama last week — his sixth in office — showed his hand on how he hopes to shape the government’s federal budget and the U.S. economy along the way.
U.S. bank regulators closed two more banks on Friday, the 15th and 16th banks to fail this year, as the worsening recession pulled more regional banks underwater.
During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama tempered his pledge to substantially raise taxes for high earners with an important proviso: He’d simply restore rates to their levels during the Clinton Administration. The implication was that families in the upper brackets would see their total tax bite go back to the levels of the 1990s, but no higher.
The Obama administration plans to tap the rich to help pay for its ambitious programs. Specifically, that will include slashing mortgage interest deductions for high-income taxpayers.
The nation’s economic slide during the last three months of 2008 was even sharper than previously estimated, with the broadest gauge of economic activity suffering its worst decline in 26 years, the government reported Thursday.
The recession has hit Framingham, Mass., like an earthquake, shaking local businesses and thinning their numbers. But the town’s merchants have found one silver lining in the economic calamity: It’s forcing them to tackle a festering problem.
There is much that is encouraging in President Obama’s first budget, but also items of concern for those of us who worry that our growing deficits and debts will imperil America’s future.
Read full story for latest details.
Read full story for latest details.
