The most important financial instruments on Earth — long-term bonds issued by sovereign governments are the next victims of too much government debt, including U.S. Treasury Bonds.
Greek government bond collapse the first victim and spreading
On October 8, 2009, Greece’s benchmark 10-year bond was selling for 112.295. Today, it has collapsed to 92.13.
And the drama of its yield surge is even more striking — from only 4.41 percent to 7.14 percent, a jump of more than 60 percent in less than four months.
Portugal’s 10-year government bond reached a peak …

As small business owners continue to struggle in this economy with the unavailability of credit to sustain and grow their business, here’s some dirty details on how Wall Street bankers gamed the system.
SEC investigating how Goldman Sachs and friends gamed the system
Goldman Sachs and others were trading in Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs), the credit default swaps that made Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and other smaller firms billions—much of it coming from the pockets of their own clients.
Immoral? Yes. Illegal? We may soon find out.
The New York Times reports this …

The unemployment report on Friday was simply a disaster.
Based on the government’s payroll survey, the economy shed 85,000 jobs in December, many more than analysts had expected.
Worse, based on its separate household survey, the government reported that the job losses in December were 589,000 — over SIX times more.
So which of the two figures is more accurate regarding the true number of jobs lost last month — 85,000 or 589,000 jobs?
According to John Williams’ Shadow Government Statistics, it’s clearly the latter. Strip out the faulty seasonal adjustments from the government …

Through the eyes of a small business owner in New York’s Upper East Side, she sees, first hand, the recession’s impact on an unlikely American neighborhood.
The video, produced by Frontline, is called Close To Home. The program aired on PBS October 28, 2009.
The cameras are set up in a hair salon that Deborah Boles, as the owner and sole hairdresser, started in 1985.
In such an intimate space Deborah has come to know well the surprisingly diverse clientele — from athletic trainers and housewives to high-end bankers, actors and opera …

A year has gone by since the economic calamity swept over the world
Washington promised to reform the banking system to prevent another financial calamity from happening.
Has Wall Street Really Changed?

This question is answered in an insightful and indepth interview with the former International Monetary Fund chief economist Simon Johnson and Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) on a recent episode of Bill Moyer’s Journal on PBS.
In a nutshell - nothing much has changed…
Wall Street still has Washington tucked neatly in their back pocket…
Johnson predicts a Depression has just been delayed by 5, 6, …