Interactive Chart on Ryan Budget Vs. Obama Budget, Trailer for "Too Big to Fail," Silver at $45, and Greece Defaulting this Week?

Here is an interactive map of Ryan's Budget vs. Obama budget.  Ryan's budget looks a lot better fiscally than Obama's, but still doesn't go far enough (besides making many dubious assumptions).

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Big thanks to Mish for the chart.
Also out today is a trailer for HBO Films' "Too Big to Fail":

Fantastic choice on Paul Giamatti to play Bernanke (such an uncanny resemblance!) and use of CCR's "Fortunate Son" in the background.  It is easily the greatest political song of all time.

Silver's rapid rise still shows no signs of stopping:

Remember the University of Texas Investment Management Co. ordering $1 billion in gold?  CEO Bruce Zimmerman explains why:

"We began buying gold in September of '09 at about $950 an ounce. Our average price is at about $1,150. We've invested around $750 million in gold over that twelve months and it now has a value around $1 billion." On what Texas thinks of gold (no surprise here): "The role gold plays in our portfolio is as a hedge against currencies. The concern is that we have excess monetary and fiscal stimulus. I noted a couple of days ago, i think there was a story out about Bernanke mentioning that while they may not increase quantitative easing, they may not necessarily reduce their exposure either. So i think that may be a signal that will continue to have a good deal of monetary stimulus.

Maybe Texas University could help out the Texas Teacher Retirement System?  From Bloomberg:

The Teacher Retirement System of Texas needs an annual return of 21 percent in the year ending Aug. 31 to maintain an 80 percent funded ratio, the level actuaries consider adequate to cover liabilities, said its deputy director.

The fund’s investment return was 14.7 percent in 2010, the best among large public pension funds, Chief Investment Officer Britt Harris said at an April 7 board meeting. The fund had about $109 billion on April 1, up from $95.7 billion in September.
Even with the gains, the pension’s funded ratio -- the portion of promised benefits covered by current assets -- dropped to 81.3 percent as of Feb. 28 from 82.9 percent on Aug. 31, 2010, because of trading losses in 2008 and 2009 included through a process called smoothing, Executive Director Ronnie Jung said April 7.
Public pensions nationwide are grappling with about $3.6 trillion in unfunded liabilities, according to a 2010 study by Joshua Rauh of Northwestern University and Robert Novy-Marx of the University of Rochester.

I love how Zimmerman mispronounces Bernanke's name.

John Tamny is predicting that $1,500 gold is a huge sign of a recession in his RealClearMarkets column today:

Though it traded in the then nosebleed range of $800/ounce back in 2008, gold has since nearly doubled to $1500/ounce. Its spike to previously unseen levels is a signal that all the chatter about whether there will be a downturn is well too late. Gold at these levels IS the downturn, and an eventual "recession" that hopefully includes a revived dollar to undo all the misallocations occurring at present will be the cure.

Tamny is a bright dude who understands the Austrian Business Cycle Theory, he knows the Fed money printing is now creating misallocations of productive labor and capital and a downturn is soon to come.  Let's see how long McDonalds' 50,000 new employees last.

So apparently there are rumors spreading that Greece may default this week.  Here is one leading indicator (2-year yield hits record 22% and 10-year .59 on Euro):

And civil disobedience of course follows.  From the U.K. Independent:

As unemployment rises and austerity bites ever harder, tempers seem to fray faster in Greece, with citizens of all stripes thumbing their noses at authority. Some refuse to pay increased highway tolls and public transport tickets. There has been a rise in politicians being heckled and even assaulted. Yesterday, in Thessalonika, scores of activists were arrested after violent clashes with police.

Looks like Spain just skated by a potentially disastrous auction:

Faced with a large capital funding need in advance of a substantial bond redemption next week, Spain had no choice but to hike rates on today's auction of €3.37 billion in 10 and 13 Year bonds.  Spain auctioned off €2.49 billion in April 2021 bonds at a yield 5.472% vs. Prev. 5.162% (5.5% interest) at a 2.1 bid/cover Prev. 1.81. it also sold €0.885 billion in 2024 bonds yielding a whopping 5.667% vs. 4.26% previously.

Who in their right mind is buying this stuff?

I will end some more tidbits of news.  First is Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on U.S. Monetary policy via the Wall Street Journal:

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin slammed expansionary U.S. monetary policy, calling it “hooliganism”, in remarks that followed more veiled criticism from China after Standard & Poor’s Corp. cut the outlook on its U.S. debt rating this week. “We see that everything is not so good for our friends in the States,” Putin told lawmakers Wednesday.
“Look at their trade balance, their debt, and budget. They turn on the printing press and flood the entire dollar zone — in other words, the whole world — with government bonds. There is no way we will act this way anytime soon. We don’t have the luxury of such hooliganism,” he said.

Anyone hiding money in Swiss bank accounts better start reconsidering a new place to hide, via the New York Times:

The Swiss are hoping to improve relations with their neighbors by making it harder for other Europeans to hide money there from the tax collector back home. While the planned new rules should preserve Switzerland’s prized banking secrecy, they are likely nonetheless to accelerate a shift in the country’s banking industry away from relying on undeclared assets. That, analysts say, could result in more consolidation and downsizing among the private banks.

The desperate search for more tax revenue continues.

And kudos to the legislature of Oklahoma:

The Senate on Tuesday sent Gov. Mary Fallin a bill that would strip collective bargaining rights from city employees in Oklahoma's largest cities.

House Bill 1593 passed Tuesday on a 29-19 vote supported entirely by Senate Republicans.
The bill would repeal a state law granting collective bargaining rights to nonuniformed city employees in cities with populations of more than 35,000.

Where is the public outcry on this one?

Update- Matt Yglesias may be beginning to see the light on Lincoln's true intentions from a paper by Zachary Liskow:

Specifically, using voting patterns as representations of the Northern population’s preferences, this paper tests empirically whether the economic motivations of its manufacturing interests might have been important components of Northerners’ support of the decision to fight. The hypothesis that the North had economic motivations for keeping the South in the Union yields a specific prediction: counties with relatively large amounts of these manufacturing interests should shift their votes from Democrats to Republicans between 1860 and 1864. The reason is the following: the best way to keep the South in the Union before the Civil War was to vote for the Democrats, reducing the likelihood of secession by voting for the party more accommodating to Southern slavery interests. However, the best way to keep the South in the Union during the war was to vote for the Republicans, who were more likely to pursue the war until victory was achieved.
Using county-level census data and voting data from the 1860 and 1864 presidential elections, I find that there is a significant shift toward the Republicans associated with manufacturing employment. This shift toward the Republicans associated with manufacturing together amounts to 2.25% of voters in Northern states; that is, taking the results literally suggests that 2.25% of Northern voters shifted their votes to the Republicans out of a desire to protect their manufacturing interests by keeping the South in the Union.

If you were looking for more economic illiteracy from government officials, forget Jessie Jackson Jr., check out the Metropolitan City Council of Nashville:

Until 2010, sedan and independent limo services were an affordable alternative to taxicabs.  A trip to the airport only cost $25.  But in June 2010, the Metropolitan County Council passed a series of anti-competitive regulations requested by the Tennessee Livery Association—a trade group formed by expensive limousine companies.  These regulations force sedan and independent limo companies to increase their fares to $45 minimum.
The regulations also prohibit limo and sedan companies from using leased vehicles, require them to dispatch only from their place of business, require them to wait a minimum of 15 minutes before picking up a customer and forbid them from parking or waiting for customers at hotels or bars.  And, in January 2012, companies will have to take all vehicles off the road if they are more than seven years old for a sedan or SUV or more than ten years old for a limousine.

Nothing like government stepping in on behalf of a certain business.  It never ceases to amaze me how lawmakers think forcing all consumers to pay a higher price for a good or service is a "moral" thing to do.  This is mercantilism of the highest kind.

Richard Epstein has a pretty good article out in Defining Ideas which refutes a progressive tax system and advocates for letting the rich get richer.  I only have one major beef with the article:

Levy taxes in ways that mimic market transactions.

Impossible, the compulsory nature of taxation takes it completely out of the realm of a mutual market transaction.  Things such as national security and infrastructure are possible to do in a non-statist society, it just requires a change in the public thought process and a system completely built upon private property.

And if you are looking for another federal tax receipt website, check out http://www.wheredidmytaxdollarsgo.com/