The Outstanding Public Debt as of 11 Aug 2007 at 07:53:25 AM GMT is:
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The estimated population of the United States is 302,674,890
so each citizen's share of this debt is $29,641.98.
By KIMBERLY HEFLING, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Need a down-payment for your home? Seed money to start a business? The Army wants to help — if you're willing to join up. Despite spending nearly $1 billion last year on recruiting bonuses and ads, Army leaders say an even bolder approach is needed to fill wartime ranks.
An Associated Press review of the increasingly aggressive recruiting offerings found the Army is not only dangling more sign-up rewards — it's loosening rules on age and weight limits, education and drug and criminal records.
It's all part of an Army effort to fill its ranks even as the percentage of young people who say they plan to join the military has hit a historic low — 16 percent by the Pentagon's own surveying — in the fifth year of the Iraq war.
Among the changes that have helped attract more recruits:
• Increasing to $20,000 the bonus for troops who join by Sept. 30 and leave for boot camp within a month.
• Raising the enlistment age to 42.
• Allowing recruits to come in with non-offensive tattoos on their hands and neck.
• Offering a $2,000 bonus to Army soldiers who refer a new recruit.
• Enlisting recruits who don't meet weight standards and must trim down their first year.
• Advertising that targets potential recruits' parents.
• Increasing the number of recruits with general education diplomas rather than regular high school diplomas.
• Creating a more pleasant boot camp environment.
• Sending "gung-ho" soldiers fresh from boot camp or war zones back to their hometowns to visit old friends and schoolmates to promote the Army.
• Increasing to more than 15 percent the number of Army and Army Reserve troops given waivers for medical and moral reasons or for positive drug and alcohol screen tests.
(AP)
AIG (Charts, Fortune 500) said total delinquencies in its $25.9 billion mortgage insurance portfolio were 2.5 percent.
It said 10.8 percent of subprime mortgages were 60 days overdue, compared with 4.6 percent in the category with credit scores just above subprime, indicating that the threat to the mortgage market may be spreading.
While maintaining that it is "comfortable" with its mortgage exposure, AIG gave a gloomy assessment of the market in a presentation to investors and analysts.
It said delinquency rates for first mortgages had risen to 3.98 percent in June from 3.56 in April and a low of 3.08 in July 2005. First mortgages represent 90 percent of AIG's domestic mortgage business.
AIG divided its mortgage portfolio into three categories: subprime, for borrowers with credit scores below 620; "non-prime," for borrowers with credit scores between 620 and 659; and prime, for borrowers with credit ratings above 660.
As of June 30, AIG's finance arm, which originates first and second mortgages, recorded delinquencies of 3.68 percent in subprime, 2.13 percent in non-prime, and 0.81 percent in prime.
More than 2 million hybrid adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) come up for reset this fall - peaking in October with more than $50 billion due.
Borrowers who took out hybrid ARMs in 2004 and 2005 to secure low "teaser" rates for the first two or three years of the loan may see their monthly mortgage payments climb by 35 percent or more.
Foreclosures could explode, which would hurt everyone on the food chain: Borrowers lose their homes; lenders lose their payments; local governments lose tax base; and neighborhoods lose resiliency.
The already poor performance of many mortgage loans will worsen substantially through the rest of the year, according to an analysis in late July by Moody's Economy.com.
The company predicts that 2.5 million first mortgages will default this year, with little chance for improvement soon - Economy.com expects delinquencies to peak in the summer of 2008 at 3.6 percent of all outstanding mortgage debt, up from 2.9 percent during the first three months of 2007.
The worst-hit loan category will be subprime adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs). Economy.com expects foreclosures for those loans to hit 10 percent of that group by mid-2008. The foreclosure rate for that group is currently 4 percent and was as low as 2.5 percent in 2005.
Subprime ARMs issued during the last three months of 2006 could fare worst of all, with a projected foreclosure rate of just under 20 percent during the fall of 2011. That would mean a full one in five owners still paying off subprime ARMs from late 2006 - about 12,000 in all - would lose their homes. Many others from that group would have already lost their homes to foreclosure in the previous years.
One-time, high-flying markets will suffer the most.
The delinquency increase will be sparked by two main factors: Falling home prices and rising interest rates on adjustable mortgages
The Chinese government has begun a concerted campaign of economic threats against the United States, hinting that it may liquidate its vast holding of US treasuries if Washington imposes trade sanctions to force a yuan revaluation.
Shifts in Chinese policy are often announced through key think tanks and academies.
Described as China's "nuclear option" in the state media, such action could trigger a dollar crash at a time when the US currency is already breaking down through historic support levels.
It would also cause a spike in US bond yields, hammering the US housing market and perhaps tipping the economy into recession. It is estimated that China holds over $900bn in a mix of US bonds.
Xia Bin, finance chief at the Development Research Centre (which has cabinet rank), kicked off what now appears to be government policy with a comment last week that Beijing's foreign reserves should be used as a "bargaining chip" in talks with the US.
"Of course, China doesn't want any undesirable phenomenon in the global financial order," he added.
He Fan, an official at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, went even further today, letting it be known that Beijing had the power to set off a dollar collapse if it choose to do so.
"China has accumulated a large sum of US dollars. Such a big sum, of which a considerable portion is in US treasury bonds, contributes a great deal to maintaining the position of the dollar as a reserve currency. Russia, Switzerland, and several other countries have reduced the their dollar holdings.
"China is unlikely to follow suit as long as the yuan's exchange rate is stable against the dollar. The Chinese central bank will be forced to sell dollars once the yuan appreciated dramatically, which might lead to a mass depreciation of the dollar," he told China Daily.
The threats play into the presidential electoral campaign of Hillary Clinton, who has called for restrictive legislation to prevent America being "held hostage to economic decicions being made in Beijing, Shanghai, or Tokyo".
She said foreign control over 44pc of the US national debt had left America acutely vulnerable.
Simon Derrick, a currency strategist at the Bank of New York Mellon, said the comments were a message to the US Senate as Capitol Hill prepares legislation for the Autumn session.
"The words are alarming and unambiguous. This carries a clear political threat and could have very serious consequences at a time when the credit markets are already afraid of contagion from the subprime troubles," he said.
A bill drafted by a group of US senators, and backed by the Senate Finance Committee, calls for trade tariffs against Chinese goods as retaliation for alleged currency manipulation.
The yuan has appreciated 9pc against the dollar over the last two years under a crawling peg but it has failed to halt the rise of China's trade surplus, which reached $26.9bn in June.
Henry Paulson, the US Tresury Secretary, said any such sanctions would undermine American authority and "could trigger a global cycle of protectionist legislation".
Mr Paulson is a China expert from his days as head of Goldman Sachs. He has opted for a softer form of diplomacy, but appeared to win few concession from Beijing on a unscheduled trip to China last week aimed at calming the waters.
By MIKE GLOVER, Associated Press Writer Tue Aug 7, 8:59 PM ET
The New Mexico governor said he could provide coverage to the 45 million uninsured without raising taxes. Instead, Richardson said preventive care would save the nation billions of dollars and additional money could be diverted from spending on the Iraq war.
Richardson estimated that his health care plan would cost between $104 billion to $110 billion a year.
Features of Richardson's health care plan include:
• Lowering the eligibility age for Medicare, which provides health coverage for the elderly, to 55. He would also expand government health programs for the poor and for children. Young people could stay on their parent's insurance plan until they turn 25, under his proposal.
• Giving veterans a card allowing them to get health benefits at the facility of their choice.
• Requiring that insurance companies not deny coverage due to pre-existing conditions, and mandating that they spend at least 85 percent of their premiums on health services.
• Increasing the use of technology to increase the efficiency of the health care system.
• Enacting new incentives for preventative health care programs.
• Allowing government health programs to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to get the best price on prescription drugs. His plan also would expand the use of generic drugs.
• Approving new tax breaks for individuals and businesses that pay for their own coverage.
For people with poor credit, the additional money they'll pay for things like mortgages, car loans and insurance, compared with what those with solid credit pay, can be in the mid-six figures over a 30-year period. Invest it wisely, and that number could soar to more than $1 million.
Here is how poor credit costs you in more ways than you imagined:
Mortgage: One obvious place that poor credit hurts you is the interest rate you must pay when you purchase a house. The average price for a home in June 2007 was $316,200.
According to MyFico, a 30-year, $300,000 loan for someone with a credit score of between 760 and 850 carried a 6.346% APR. Someone with a credit score of between 500 and 579 would have a 10.152% APR. That would mean that a person with a good score would have a monthly payment of $1,866, while the person with the poor credit score would pay $2,666 -- or $800 a month more for the same house. That adds up to $288,000 over the 30 years of the loan.Auto loan: Edmunds.com says that the average car loan is $24,864. According to MyFico, an auto loan for a person with good credit (defined as a score of between 720 and 850) would carry a 7.221% APR, while someone with poor credit (a score between 500 and 589) would have to pay a 14.909% APR. That works out to a difference of $88 a month, which comes to $3,168 over the three years of the loan. The average person keeps their car for 4.5 years.
That means if each person financed a new car every five years, it would cost the person with bad credit $19,008 more in car financing over 30 years than someone with good credit.
Credit cards: Let's assume, for our exercise, that both the people with good and bad credit both carry the median credit card debt of $2,200 over 30 years. If the person with good credit had an interest rate of 9% and the person with bad credit had an interest rate of 20%, the person with poor credit will pay an extra $7,260 over a 30-year period.
Lost interest: If the person with good credit took the difference and invested that money in an account that earned 8% compounded annually for 30 years, he or she would have well over $1 million saved. In fact, investing the $800 difference in the cost of the mortgage alone would be worth $1.2 million.
Insurance: All types of insurance (auto, health, homeowners) will likely cost more for a person with poor credit than one with good credit. Insurance companies know that people with poor credit make more claims than those with good credit -- and therefore are more of a risk to insure.
If your credit score is taken into account on any of your insurance rates, an individual with poor credit will pay more than a comparable individual with good credit.
Job: You may lose out on a better job due to poor credit. More and more employers pull your credit report when you apply for a job, because many see a risk in employing a person with poor credit. The same can be true with promotions. For example, people in the armed forces may not be able to get clearance for classified documents and areas due to poor credit, therefore blocking potential advancement.
Housing: Many apartment managers will run a credit check on prospective tenants. If your credit is poor, you may be denied a unit due to the risk that you may not be able to pay.
Deposits: If you have poor credit, you may need to leave a deposit -- or a larger deposit -- with certain companies than you would if you had good credit. Utility and cellular phone companies sometimes ask for deposits with people that have less-than-stellar credit.
Health: In addition to all the financial aspects where poor credit will hurt you, it could also adversely affect your health. It's not difficult to imagine that a person who has to pay a couple of hundred thousand dollars more for the same house as a neighbor down the street could have some financial stress in their life. This stress can affect a person both mentally and physically, if the poor credit is constantly a source of fighting in the house.
Poor credit is no longer a situation that can be isolated from other areas of your life. The trend is only growing stronger. Take the time to make the effort to keep your credit in good standing. It will pay off with more money in your pocket and less stress in your life.
