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World food prices hit a new record high in January after rising for a seventh consecutive month, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said Thursday, warning the poor would be hit hardest.

The FAO Food Price Index, which monitors monthly price changes for a basket of commodities, averaged 231 points in January -- up 3.4 percent from December and its highest level since FAO started measuring food prices in 1990.

The fiscal 2011 funding bill roundly hailed for its "historic" spending cuts actually raised government spending by more than $3 billion, according to a new report.The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concluded Monday evening, "Total discretionary outlays in 2011 will be $3.2 billion higher as a result of the legislation, CBO estimates—an increase of $7.5 billion for defense programs, partially offset by a net reduction of $4.4 billion in other spending."

Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem 'Fear the Boom and Bust' Austrian Economics vs. Keynesian Rap. "Prepare to get skooled in my Austrian perspective!"

Why Monetary Expansion Must Stop

Introduction: The Illusion of Unlimited Resources

The current problems faced by all the world's economies stem, primarily, from one source: the demise of sound money, whose quantity could not be increased without significant cost, and its replacement with fiat money that can be inflated to infinite amounts at almost no cost to the producer.

Politicians in Washington hardly let a few minutes go by without mentioning how broke the government is. So, it's a little surprising that they've created a stash of more than $1 billion that almost no one wants.

Unused dollar coins have been quietly piling up in Federal Reserve vaults in breathtaking numbers, thanks to a government program that has required their production since 2007.

And even though the neglected mountain of money recently grew past the $1 billion mark, the U.S. Mint will keep making more and more of the coins under a congressional mandate.

Troubled U.S. government-backed mortgage giant Fannie Mae on Monday asked for 8.4 billion dollars in additional federal aid to cover its huge losses.

Fannie Mae reported earlier Monday that it lost 13.1 billion dollars in the first quarter, or 2.29 dollars a share. It lost 23. 2 billion dollars in the same period a year ago.

The new aid will bring the total bill for rescuing Fannie and its sister company Freddie Mac to 145 billion dollars. The Obama administration has pledged to provide an unlimited amount of funds to Fannie and Freddie to keep them solvent.

Nevadans Know How To Fix America

In the land of boom and bust, even the economic winners are looking for a change.

Federal workers owed more than $3 billion in income taxes in 2008, according to the Internal Revenue Service, a figure down slightly from the year before.

The agency reported that 276,300 current and retired federal employees owed $3,042,200,000 in 2008, down from $3,586,784,725 in unpaid taxes in 2007. The list includes White House and Congressional staffers and current and former active-duty and reserve members of the military.

In March, Kevin Brady (R-TX) introduced H.R.4180 (Sound Dollar Act) and Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced a companion bill (S.2247 Federal Reserve Modernization Act) in the Senate. These two bills are actually seven pieces of legislation, put into a single bill. There is nothing in this bill that would prevent the Federal Reserve from continuing to inflate the currency. Nothing to prevent future cycles of “boom and bust.” The “Sound Dollar Act” is another misnamed piece of legislation designed to trick the American people into supporting bad legislation.