U.S. Housing Numbers - More Nonsense
Every month U.S. home-builders start construction on far more homes than they sell. Despite this huge gap, for over 18 months, the U.S. propaganda-machine has been pretending that the unsold inventories of new homes have been steadily declining. This is why you will never, ever see a U.S. media outlet provide both new home “starts” and new home “sales” in the same article.

Kentucky Budget Shortfall Could Exceed $1.5 Billion

Kentucky could be facing a budget shortfall of more than $1.5 billion over the next two years because of the economic recession, Gov. Steve Beshear said Tuesday. "We face a challenge much greater than many had anticipated," Beshear said at a Capitol news conference.

New York's DiNapoli says state's cash to hit all-time low

Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said in a statement that the state "is literally down to petty cash" as it faces a $1.3 billion Medicaid payment and $2.2 billion in property tax relief and school aid payments on Wednesday. Those payments could push the state's closing cash balance into negative territory for the first time in at least 15 years, depending on how much revenue the state takes in on Wednesday, according to Jennifer Freeman, a spokeswoman for DiNapoli. As of Tuesday, New York had only an estimated $3.2 billion of cash on hand.

US credit card charge-offs rise in November

Credit card charge-offs rose by about one-half percentage point in November to 10.56 percent, and is likely to continue to rise to a peak of between 12 percent and 13 percent in mid-2010, Moody's said in a statement. Delinquencies, which measure the proportion of accounts for which a monthly payment is more than 30 days late, also increased to 6.2 percent in November, though early-stage delinquencies fell to 1.6 percent for the month, Moody's said.

California Watch: Will California Default on Bond Debt in 2010?

"Lawmakers are looking for anything they can do as the recession has put a huge hole in their budget," Jack Kyser, chief economist with the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., told Market News International. "The economic recovery in California will be a slow next year before getting better in 2011 Kyser cautioned that the threat of the state defaulting on its billions of dollars in bond debut has become a distinct possibility. " "He also warned that if the state defaults it would "freeze the market immediately for any government debt coming out of California." Bill Watkins, executive director the Center for Economic Research and Forecasting at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, Calif., agreed and urged state officials to begin discussions with the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve in case California defaults on its debt. "In my opinion, California is now more likely to default than it is to not default," Watkins wrote in an economic forecast released Dec. 16. "

Pennsylvania tax revenue down more than $2 billion

Pennsylvania state tax revenue fell in comparison to last year, largely due to its residents earning and spending less, according to third-quarter data released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau. The Quarterly Summary of State and Local Tax Revenue reported Pennsylvania had third-quarter tax revenue of $6.64 billion, down 6 percent from $7.09 billion in the third quarter of 2008. Year-to-date, Pennsylvania tax revenue totaled $23.08 billion in 2009, down 9 percent from $25.24 billion in 2008.