Social Issues

The phony assumptions that go into calculating public pension underfundings in the United States are a frequent topic for us.  As our readers are aware, state pension administrators are given fairly wide leeway to simply pick a discount rate out of thin air.  Of course, since pensions are nothing but a massive stream of future liabilities that stretch out into perpetuity, every 100 bps increase can substantially, and artificially, lower the fund's reported underfunded level. 

Will you be paying US taxes in 2018? If so, this interactive model created by JPM is for you.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), which was signed into law by Donald Trump this week, is projected to reduce individual tax payments by over $1 trillion over the next 10 years, more than triple the tax cut impact on businesses and corporations.

However, the impact on individual taxpayers will differ, and depends on their income and deduction characteristics.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has released its findings on the immigration status of federal prison inmates, as mandated in a controversial Executive Order signed during the President Trump's first week in the White House.  The report reveals that of the 37,557 confirmed immigrants in the federal prison system, 35,334 (94%) of them are in the United States illegally - which means out of a total of 185,507, federally incarcerated individuals, over 19% are confirmed illegal immigrants - which, in 2014, cost U.S.

Following today's crypto-rout which saw bitcoin plunge as low as $10,000, down over 30% on the day, and nearly 50% from its Sunday high of just below $20,000, the HODLers and no longer HODLing and instead are rushing to get out. So, in taking a page from the futures markets, the largest US crypto-exchange, Coinbase, said on Friday that buying and selling was temporarily disabled due to high traffic.

A very interesting chart has crossed our feed this morning via Teddy Vallee, a consumer analyst, who we pay attention to on occasion...

The first half of the chart shows the bottom 50% of Western European’s national income, which has stayed relatively the same for the past 30-years.

Meanwhile, in the United States, the bottom 50% of Americans have been royally screwed of the course of 30-years.