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Inflation is back. It’s official, and you can blame costlier gasoline and other fuels. The tab for common services like a hotel stay and garbage removal are jumping too, as is the sticker price on packaged foods and many other household items. Companies are finding that they can pass on part of their soaring raw-material costs. There is a general consensus among American economic circles that interest rates are on the rise. And this concern is beginning to spill across the border into Canadian economic circles as well.

Typically there is an inflation that the government measures and the ‘other’ inflation that we are all used to feel but cannot see. Inflation that we all feel but can’t see comes in many forms. For example, real estate prices have gone through the roof, so cash buyers are paying through the nose. Borrowers are increasingly resorting to floating-rate and interest-only loans, especially in the U.S., which all but guarantee that they will pay more over the life of their loans. But Canadians are poised to follow suit with the spread of the ever more popular ‘Powerlines’ and credit cards secured by real estate which, once again, have the deleterious effect of keeping you into debt for the rest of your life.

We all face notoriously soaring insurance premiums, deductibles and co-pays as employers shift more of the burden onto employees. Here in British Columbia, for example, Strata insurance premiums have more than doubled in the past year, with strata corporations - especially the financially weak - having no choice but to allot the extra cost to individual property owners.

Even Alan Greenspan, the once revered and now outgoing Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, is coming under fire. Once known as the ‘Maestro’ for his impeccable talent at predicting economic behavior, and after being treated like royalty for presiding over the longest economic boom in the nation’s history, Greenspan is now being accused by a small but vocal group of economists of presiding over the U.S.’s high consumer debt, low personal-savings rates, declining dollar and potential real estate bubble. And all this comes at a time when the U.S. is dependent more than ever on foreign money to sustain growth.

The dependence on foreign capital, Asian in the West and European in the East, is a great source of concern for Canada as well. As China is becoming a major economic player and is fueling its own economic growth, and as Europe is coming to grip with the reality of an oversold, overstrong, overvalued Euro compared with the relative weakness of many European economies, the worry is that this foreign injection into the Canadian economy will soon evaporate, thus leaving domestic growth without fuel …. the typical Mercedes without gas.

So where does all this leave mundane folks like you and I? All I can tell my readers and real estate aficionados of my blog is:

BEWARE OF YOUR MORTGAGES !!

Luigi Frascati

Luigi Frascati is a Real Estate Agent based in Vancouver, British Columbia. He holds a Bachelor Degree in Economics and maintains a weblog entitled the Real Estate Chronicle at http://wwwrealestatechronicle.blogspot.com where you can find the full collection of his articles. Luigi is associated with the Sutton Group, the largest real estate organization in Canada, and is based with Sutton-Centre Realty in Burnaby, BC.

Luigi is very proud to be an EzineArticles Platinum Expert Author. Your rating at the footer of this Article is very much appreciated. Thank you.

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Will a bus running across the borders bring cordial relations between the two south asian nuclear rivals India and Pakistan? Well this is a question that will look for its answer on it own and time can only find its answer.

The first bus from Srinagar to Muzaffarabad was flagged off in the an auspicious ceremony in the presence of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA president Sonia Gandhi. The April 7 trip to Muzaffarabad involves thirty passengers in a two 15 seater buses. Among the VIP travelers were People’s Democratic Party chief Mehbooba Mufti, National Conference Chief Omar Abdullah and state CPI-M secretary Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami.

Sonia Gandhi also unveiled a “peace wall” in Uri which is dedicated to the Indo-Pakistani friendship, looking forward to further work on building the relationship by introducing more Confidence building measures.(CBM’s).

The bus was rightly named as the Karwan-e-Aman (The Caravan of Peace) as it took a message between the two Kashmirs divided by destiny. The whole idea behind this bus service is to increase people to people contact between families living across the borders who had to sacrifice their beloved ones to the heartless borders marked by the two nations.

However it’s has to be watched and seen as to how much the two governments are successful in making this possible. Besides diplomatic promises of uniting the divided families things has to move in a transparent manner in the grassroots level when it comes to getting clearance for the journey and in other documentation matters concerning the journey. This is where the central and the state government have to play their role.

A process well started is like half done proves wrong here as this process is hypersensitive in nature and concerns the sentiments of scores of divided families suppressed for decades under territorial demarcations. It’s a commendable fact that the government has a taken a positive step forward in the betterment of Indo-Pak relations.

The two countries decided to implement another CBM by opening the rail link between Munnabao in Rajasthan and Khokhrapar in Sind near Karachi in December. There is also a proposal to extend the Munnabao-Khokhrapur train service up to Karachi The rail link will benefit thousands of families, living near Karachi, who had migrated from India, mainly from Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat and Delhi during Partition. The two countries have agreed upon plying trucks across the Line of Control in Kashmir. This move is going to be of immense help for Kashmiri apple growers in finding new markets in areas around Rawalpindi in turn boosting Kashmir’s economy.

On April 22, 2005 during the Asian African summit, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told press reporters the following “I really believe that if this process is allowed to go forward, it will create a climate conducive to the final settlement,” The prime minister also added that it was not possible to put a time frame for resolving the problem. “I really don”t know today. It is a process. I can’t lay down a timetable, where will it lead us or when will it”. “But I am convinced this is the way of looking at the problem which creates a situation where there are no losers, no winners.

“They only gainers are the people of Jammu and Kashmir and the prospects of reconciliation between the people of India and the people of Pakistan”
To conclude I would like to say that it is time to take advantage of the conducive atmosphere and take the process ahead and come up with more confidence building measures and introduce more trade links and introduce measures that will mutually benefit the two nations.

To read similar articles please visit http://www.himalayanaffairs.org

Lalith Ninan
A freelance journalist

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The Congressional Budget Office has lowered the estimated size of the US federal deficit for fiscal year 2006. The decrease in the expected deficit is largely a result of high tax revenues.

The Congressional Budget Office is a non-partisan arm of the US Congress. The office projects a $260 billion deficit for fiscal year 2006, a decrease of $111 billion from the March projection.

The deficit would be 2.0% of the gross domestic product — coming in as the smallest recorded deficit in the past three years.

Currently, the federal government is running a deficit of around $239 billion, according to the CBO estimates. That estimates puts the government $64 billion behind last year’s deficit at 10 months.

Spening in June was slightly lower than expected. The Treasury recorded a surplus of $20 billion in June, $1 billion lower than the CBO estimated for the month.

Total reciepts for the first 10 months of the fiscal year are around $223 billion higher, a gain of 12.8%. Individual income tax receipts grew by 14.5% and accounted for $110 billion of the increase. Social insurance tax receipts grew by $42 billion.

Corporate income tax receipts showed an increase of 27%, accounting for $56 billion of the gain. The growth rate of corporate receipts has slowed in recent months, indicating a slowdown in profit growths. However, corporate tax receipts have increased steadily for three consecutive years. The CBO predicts that in 2006, corporate tax receipts will be two and a half times the amount collected in 2003.

Total revenues are expected to be $99 billion higher this year than estimated in March.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn) says that the latest estimates show that President Bush’s tax and spending policies are working.

“The CBO deficit estimate, just released, highlights the efforts that have been taken to significantly reduce this year’s deficit,” he explained. “Strong revenue growth and spending restraint played a vital role in reduction of the deficit to $260 billion.”

“This new estimate, which is nearly $80 billion below the agency’s estimate last winter, highlights the combined benefits of a strong, resilient economy working in tandem with Republican policies to restrain both taxes and spending.”

Martin Lukac represents http://www.RateEmpire.com and http://www.1AmericanFinancial.com, a finance web-company specializing in real estate and mortgage rates. We specialize in daily updates, mortgage news, rate predictions, mortgage rates and more. Find low home loan mortgage interest rates from hundreds of mortgage companies!

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