What a Greek default could mean for you

Greeks riot against austerity (Author Jesse Garcia)

 

The Greek government has been in a financial crisis for the past several years.  There have been several attempts to restructure Greek debts and pass “austerity budgets” with draconian cuts to government spending, but the nation is edging ever closer to a default on its national debts.  The situation has deteriorated to the point where Bloomberg estimates that there is a 98 percent chance that Greece will default within five years.

 

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http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-atlanta/what-a-greek-default-could-mean-for-you

Barack Obama’s awful, no good, very bad day

His bad day is worse for us. (Elizabeth Cromwell/Wikimedia)

Barack Obama has had a bad day.  His bad day actually started last Friday when the stock market dropped 500 points on news of Europe’s failure to deal with its own debt crisis.  After the close of markets that day, Standard and Poors, one of the rating agencies for financial bonds, made a long feared announcement that it was downgrading the credit rating of the United States.  To make matters worse, the U.S. federal debt was revealed to have reached 100 percent of GDP a few days earlier, a milestone not seen since 1947.

 

Over the weekend, investors and ordinary Americans (who are one and the same if they have a pension, an IRA, or a 401k) contemplated how the downgrade would affect Wall Street and Main Street.  To add to the somber mood, on Saturday, August 6, an Afghan insurgent shot down a U.S. Army CH-47 Chinook transport helicopter killing thirty Americans, including members of a U.S. Navy SEAL team.  Seven Afghan soldiers and a civilian interpreter were also killed.

Continue reading on Examiner.com Barack Obama’s awful, no good, very bad day – Atlanta Conservative | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-atlanta/barack-obama-s-awful-no-good-very-bad-day#ixzz1UV0X0Lg5

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What the downgrade of federal debt means to you

What happens on Wall St. and in Washington affects Main St. (Roland Weber)

When the world financial markets open today, it will be the first chance that they have had to react to the news of the downgraded U.S. debt.  The announcement of the downgrade by Standard and Poors came last Friday after the close of the markets on a day that had already seen a huge decline in stock markets around the world.

 

As Georgians learned in 2008, what happens on Wall Street and Washington affects lives in Georgia.  The financial crisis that began in New York’s banks and investment houses froze credit in Atlanta and caused the local real estate market to crash.  Next, new construction projects stalled and Georgia’s unemployment rate skyrocketed as the effects of the deepening recession spread throughout the state and the country.

 

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http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-atlanta/what-the-downgrade-of-federal-debt-means-to-you