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A report in The New York Post suggests that Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase (JPM), could be the logical replacement for current U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. The paper's sources indicate that "a number of policy makers have begun mentioning Dimon as a successor to Geithner, whose standing in Washington has suffered because of the country's high unemployment rate, the weakness of the dollar, the slow pace of the recovery and the government's mounting deficit."

Meanwhile, reports the Post, Dimon has emerged as one of the heroes of the financial crisis, "having navigated JPMorgan through the recession and being a go-to guy when Uncle Sam last year needed Wall Street's help during the collapses of Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual."

The U.S. Senate voted along party lines, 60 to 39, to proceed with debate on health care reform.

The last two holdouts, Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana decided to finally vote with the majority.

Details of the bill are sketchy at this point. The Senate version would require most everyone to purchase health care. Coverage would be extended to an additional 30 million persons. Coverage could not be denied for preexisting conditions.

Here's a shocker! Over the next decade the U.S. government is expected to rack up $9 trillion in debt. More than half that amount, $4.8 trillion, will be in interest payments.

To further emphasize the depth of the problem, in 2015 interest due will be $533 billion, equal to 1/3 of the federal income taxes!

Right now, the Treasury is in a sweet spot with regards to interest payments. With interest rates at near zero, we are able to finance trillions of dollars of debt with practically no interest payments. That scenario is about to change. The change could be rather quick. If the economy heats up, interest rates will rise and so too will interest payments. Because the debt is so large, only a small rise in interest payments could increase the interest burden by a large amount.

U.S. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, says he expects the House to vote on legislation that would create more jobs by the year-end holiday recess.

"Clearly 10.2% unemployment is unacceptable and is causing great pain to literally millions of people around the country," U.S. Rep. Hoyer said, CNN.com reported Tuesday.

A minor caution flag for the Obama administration: President Obama's approval rating as surveyed by a major poll has fallen below 50% for the first time since his inauguration.

Obama's approval rating fell to 48% in polling done by Quinnipiac University. The Quinnipiac University Poll surveyed 2,518 registered voters November 9-16 and has a margin of error of +/- 2%. The 48% approval rating is down from a 59% approval rating in February/March.

Further, the percentage of registered voters who approve of Obama's handling of the economy also declined, to 43% in November from 47% in October. On the economy, the approval rating was split along party lines: 13% of Republicans approved, compared to 38% for Independents, and 77% for Democrats.

Although some members of his administration don't hold Fox News in too high of regard, President Barack Obama did sit down with the news outlet to discuss the economy. In the interview, President Obama offered what some are calling his "sternest warning" about containing deficits. President Obama believes that a further compilation of government debt could lead to a double-dip recession.

The president believes that his administration faces a "delicate balance of trying to boost the economy and spur job creation," but the administration has to set the economy on "a path toward long-term deficit reduction." He noted that it is important "to recognize ... that at some point, people could lose confidence in the U.S. economy in a way that could actually lead to a double-dip recession."

As America's debt continues to grow, is it causing foreigners to think twice about investing in America? The U.S. has been one of the most stable countries over the past century. It has remained stable through two world wars, numerous administration changes and economic and political crisis around the world.

But America has been borrowing more and more money and has a debt that is approaching $12.1 trillion. Countries do fail because they spend too much and ultimately try to print their way to success.

New York Times ( NYT) columnist Paul Krugman argues quite persuasively that China needs to reconsider its fixed/tight band currency policy, and soon.

Krugman argues that not only is China encouraging the continuance of a key structural imbalance in the global economy – one that helped cause the world's first global recession since the end of World War II – it's also increasing unemployment in other nations.

We've got to congratulate Britain's prime minister, Gordon Brown, for his tough stand on bank bonuses. He plans to make some bank bonuses illegal, according to a Bloomberg article.

Regulators will be given "powers if necessary to tear up contracts that would result in payments being made that would cause instability," according to the Sunday Telegraph. Not only that, but the paper reports that City Minister Paul Myners told Sky News that "if those contracts are written, they will be voided under law."

The federal budget year ended in October. The October deficit number set a record of $176.4 billion, which was higher than the $150 billion economists had predicted.

For the budget year 2009, the deficit reached $1.42 trillion. That too was an all-time record. This year's deficit was $958 billion above the 2008 deficit. October was the 13th straight month to show a deficit.

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada and Senate Majority Leader, is weighing increasing the Medicare payroll tax by 0.4 to 0.5 percentage point, as a way to help fund universal health care, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday (subscription required.)

The current employee share of the Medicare tax is 1.45%. Reid's proposal would apply to only those earning more than $250,000 per year, which would conform to President Obama's campaign promise to not raise taxes on individuals earning under $250,000 per year, CNN.com reported Thursday.

Treasury Secretary Geithner, speaking from Tokyo, said that he wants a strong dollar and that the United States is determined to bring budget deficits down.

Mr Geithner has made this statement several times in the past. Yet, this year the dollar has fallen 7.6% and hit a 15 month low of 74.889 on Wednesday.

You are probably wondering why his words are being discounted. The dollar keeps falling. Let's look at the underlying conditions in the US economy that are working against a strong dollar.

Geithner cited unemployment as one factor. He said: "Unemployment is really very, very high, exceptionally higher in the United States. It is still rising. It's probably going to rise for a bit longer, until you see a longer period of growth take hold."

US Senator Bernie Sanders, independent from Vermont, is known for his straightforward and unbiased positions.

His new legislative proposal is to break up big banks that are deemed "too big to fail." To quote Mr. Sanders: "if an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. We should break them up so they are no longer in a position to bring down our entire economy."

The U.S. dollar continues to weaken, which has led to commodity price increases, including a higher-than-fundamentals-dictate oil price of about $80 per barrel, and U.S. Treasury Department professionals are working long-and-hard to continue to refinance and rollover U.S. debt to finance the U.S. government's operations -- all because the budget deficit is high.

What could take pressure off all of the above? Well, in addition to letting the 2001 Bush income tax cut expire in 2011 as expected, Congress could pass a modest tax increase above the expiration amounts -- for example, increasing the top two income tax brackets by 2-4 percentage points.

After haggling since September the US Senate finally passed an extension for unemployed persons and extended the credit for first time home buyers.

The situation for unemployed persons is dire. Here are just a few facts about their current situation:

• We have 15 million unemployed vying for just three million available jobs.
• 200,000 persons lost their benefits since September
• 7000 persons a day are losing their benefits.
• More than 1/3 of the unemployed have been out or work for at least six months.