The latest policy is a regulatory change by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that says employers can reduce benefits when retirees reach age 65 and become eligible for Social Security and Medicare.
Another instance of the Bush Administration, while having come into office claiming to be a compassionate conservative and anti-large-scale government, being anything but that. This allows corporations to shift their obligations on to taxpayers, and will make it politically more difficult to implement changes in Medicare and Social Security.
From Calculated Risk….
According to the Fed, the discount rate spread is 145 bps. This graph was released this morning.
The depth of the housing crisis was underscored by the head of one of America’s largest banks, Bank of America, the straight-speaking Kenneth Lewis, who warned of a completely new attitude by Americans to their homes amid fears that as many as 20 million householders may “walk” from them, further deepening the crisis.
Lewis’ comments came as a new expression – “jingle mail” – referring to the growing trend where Americans mail the keys to their homes to the lenders before vacating, entered the US lexicon. Figures for November revealed more than 200,000 US homes were foreclosed, a 68% increase on November 2006.