Over at the TaxProf blog: IRS Says 114,000,334,000,724,000 Taxpayer Accounts Were Hacked
Items from Professor Preponomics:
US News
Puerto
Ricans Don’t Want a Bailout. They Want This… (CNN MONEY) Excerpt: “Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla claims the island is in a “death spiral” and there’s no way it will ever have enough money to pay all the debt back.”
Household Debt Increases to $12T (Washington Free Beacon) Excerpt:
“Household debt increased by $51 billion in the fourth quarter of 2015, and now totals $12.12 trillion, or more than $40,000 per household, according to a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.”
International News
Opinion: Government Debt is the New Subprime (Market Watch)
Excerpt: “In the 2008-2014 period, the largest growth has been in sovereign debt, up by 9.3% a year. This rate of growth far exceeds global GDP growth. Most forecasts have global GDP growth slowing this year and inflation levels for much of the world near zero. Together these factors mean that governments will have minimal tailwinds to help them service the increasing level of government debt.”
Greek President Pavlopoulos on the Economic Crisis and Monetary Suffocation (Greek Reporter) Excerpt: “He also stated that this syndrome of the deteriorating economic suffocation of the euro zone is, in large part, a result of the overexposure to the inherent risks of an austerity policy….”
Germany’s Demographic Cliff (Visual Capitalist) Excerpt: “For all of its economic power, Germany has a key weakness that could potentially be its Achilles heel: it’s projected that Germany’s population will decline significantly over the coming decades, and the
ratio of workers to dependents will become one of the worst in the world.”
Debt, Demographics and Disinflation: Japan’s 3-D Lessons for Asia (Bloomberg)
Excerpt: “The so called 3-D challenge — debt, demographics and disinflation — is most pronounced in China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand, according to Morgan Stanley analysts….”
Personal Economics and Household Finance
4 Sad Facts about Americans’ Savings and What You Can Do About It (Clark Howard) Excerpt: “A lot of people may understand the general idea that in order to save, you have to spend less than you make, but they’re still struggling to make it happen. In fact, a large portion of Americans aren’t saving anywhere near what they need to be saving for emergencies, retirement and major life events.
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