Investors flee Spain as financial crisis spirals

Spain battled to contain fears of financial collapse Wednesday, scrambling to fund a major banking rescue as its debt risk premium rocketed to a euro-era record.

The interest rate on Spain's 10-year bonds shot to 6.703 percent -- unsustainable over the longer term -- as the nation fought to avoid being the next victim of the eurozone crisis.

When compared to safe German debt, investors in Spanish bonds were demanding an additional 5.41 percentage points, a premium that easily crashed through euro-era records set each day of this week.

CONTINUE:  http://ca.news.yahoo.com/spains-borrowing-risk-premium-hits-record-high-090831994.html

Are Investors Running Out of Safe Havens to Put Money?

Amid all the challenges facing the markets — Greece, Facebook, JPMorgan — investors face an even larger potential problem: They soon could be running out of traditional safe havens for their money.

CNBC/Getty Images

Much has been made recently of how gold no longer offers its traditional buffer against financial turmoil, with the yellow metal in a sharp pullback since early March.

But some strategists are beginning to worry that other places where investors are stowing their money — high-grade bonds, Treasurys and defensive stocks in particular — also could be losing their protective shields.

"The problem is we're seeing safe-haven flows with shrinking instruments into which you can run," says Kim Rupert, managing director of global fixed income analysis at Action Economics in San Francisco. "Once the run for the exits gets started it's going to be an absolute stampede."

CONTINUE:  http://www.cnbc.com/id/47539692

Escape From New York? High-Taxing Empire State Loses 3.4 Million Residents in 10 Years

New York State accounted for the biggest migration exodus of any state in the nation between 2000 and 2010, with 3.4 million residents leaving over that period, according to the Tax Foundation.

Over that decade the state gained 2.1 million, so net migration amounted to 1.3 million, representing a loss of $45.6 billion in income.

Where are they escaping to? The Tax Foundation found that more than 600,000 New York residents moved to Florida over the decade – opting perhaps for the Sunshine State’s more lenient tax system – taking nearly $20 billion in adjusted growth income with them.

Over that same time period, 208,794 Pennsylvanians moved to Florida, taking $8 billion in income.

“Many of these New York and Pennsylvania residents no doubt moved to Florida for the warm weather,” says the foundation, a nonpartisan research group. “[B]ut many more may have moved there because the state does not have an individual income tax, an estate tax, nor an inheritance tax.”

See entire article here:  http://cnsnews.com/news/article/escape-new-york-high-taxing-empire-state-loses-34-million-residents-10-years

If You Live In California Things Just Got A Whole Lot Worse

Why does the state of California seem to be so incredibly hopeless? These days California can't seem to do anything right, and if you live in California things just got a whole lot worse. Governor Brown has announced that the state budget deficit for this year is going to be much larger than projected, that more government services are going to be cut and that voters are going to vote on another round of tax increases in November. Meanwhile, unemployment is sitting at 11 percent and extended federal unemployment benefits for workers in the state are ending. Because California is one of the worst places in the nation to conduct business, there has been a steady flow of companies leaving the state. Those companies have taken a whole lot of good jobs with them. Due to the lack of jobs and a steady stream of impoverished immigrants coming in from Mexico and other countries, poverty in the state has exploded and crime is rapidly increasing. California may be the land of "endless sunshine", but for the California economy there are only dark clouds on the horizon. The state is coming apart at the seams and there is not much hope that things are going to turn around any time soon.
These days, California is very similar to Greece in many ways.

Just like Greece, California has had round after round austerity.....

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/if-you-live-in-california-things-just-got-a-whole-lot-worse

Manufacturing Contributed Less to U.S. Growth Last Year

BLOOMBERG
View Original Article HERE

Manufacturing added less to U.S. economic growth last year than in 2010, indicating a pickup in the expansion depends more on bigger gains in the services industry.
Factory production accounted for 0.5 percentage point of the 1.7 percent increase in gross domestic product in 2011, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. A year earlier, manufacturing added 1.2 percentage points to economic growth of 3 percent.  MORE...................

Europe faces Japan syndrome as credit demand implodes

The Telegraph by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
View Original Article HERE

Europe (minus Germany) looks more like post-bubble Japan each month.
The long-feared credit crunch has mutated instead into a collapse in DEMAND for loans. Households and firms are comatose, or scared stiff, in a string of countries.  MORE....................

Student Loans: The Next Bailout?

CNBC by Kelly Evans
View Original Article HERE

Here’s what we do know about student loan debt: it’s roughly $1 trillion in size, greater than either auto or credit-card debt and second only to mortgage debt in the U.S.
 Borrowers in their 30s today owe $28,500, on average. The debt burden has soared just as — and partly because — the recession hit, so younger graduates carrying the highest balances are hit with the double whammy of a weak job market (that still isn’t showing any sign of rapid improvement).

And this all comes as globalization and technological change have upended once-reliable career paths, wiped out many mid-level professional jobs and leave low-paying fields in health, food and beverage services, and retail as among the fastest growing job markets over the next decade. MORE.....................