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FT.com / Comment - Is it back to the Fifties?
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That loss of faith spreads beyond retail investors. The crash has forced professional investors and academics to question the theoretical underpinnings of modern finance. The most basic assumptions of the investment industry, and the products they offer to the public, must be reconsidered from scratch. Indeed, the very reason for the industry to exist – a belief that experts make the smartest decisions on where people’s money will do best – is up for scrutiny as a result.
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US stocks have fallen more than 60 per cent in real terms since the market peaked in 2000. Anyone who started saving 40 years ago, when the postwar “baby boom” generation was just joining the workforce, has found that stocks have performed no better than 20-year government bonds since then, a forthcoming article by Robert Arnott for the Journal of Indexes shows. These people want to retire soon and the “cult of the equity” has let them down.
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FT.com / Markets / On Wall Street - Don't eat Wall Street's big fudge
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I will not repeat the lucid arguments made by Peyton Young of the Brookings Institution in this newspaper this week. Suffice to say his research proves the government’s willingness to offer substantial leverage and shoulder most of the losses will have a perverse effect. The higher investors bid for the assets, the worse off taxpayers will be and the better off banks will be.
Banks made the situation even more explosive by letting it be known they would love some of those cheap government loans to bid for toxic assets being sold by rivals.
But the government’s clumsy design of the PPIP and the banks’ financially-incestuous schemes pale in comparison with the U-turn by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). A few choice words from politicians was all it took for the fearless members of the accounting watchdog to turn from staunch defenders of “fair value” to advocates of the more “flexible” approach so beloved by banks.
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The Full Picture: Broader Unemployment Hits 15.6% - Real Time Economics - WSJ
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But the Labor Department’s most comprehensive gauge of unemployment surpassed even its early 1980s levels. The government’s broader measure, known as the “U-6″ for its data classification, hit 15.6% in March — a big leap from 14.8% in February.
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The 8.5% unemployment rate is calculated based on people who are without jobs, who are available to work and who have actively sought work in the prior four weeks.
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FT.com / US & Canada - Investment losses hit public sector pensions
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Unlike company pension plans, state and municipal retirement funds have no federal guarantee fund. This has led to predictions of benefit cuts and possible federal intervention.
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Editorial - Guarding the Family Fortune - NYTimes.com
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The provision would funnel an additional $91 billion over 10 years to the heirs of megafortunes, money that would otherwise have been paid in federal taxes or donated to charity.
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Under today’s estate tax, which is retained in both the House version of the budget and in President Obama’s version, 99.8 percent of estates will never owe any estate tax. That’s because the tax applies only to estates that exceed $7 million per couple or $3.5 million for individuals, and a vast majority of American families are not and never will be that wealthy.
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States Slashing Social Programs for Vulnerable - NYTimes.com
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But the money will offset only 40 percent of the losses in state revenues, and programs for vulnerable groups have been cut in at least 34 states
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