A.M. Links: Debt End Story, White Babies a Minority, IMF Warns of "Expensive" Greece Euro Exit

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  • That debt end story's coming back this summer. President Obama invited Congressional leaders to lunch at the White House to start talking about the debt ceiling, which will need to be lifted again this year so that U.S debt can get grow past  $16.394 trillion. Jay Carney warned there won't be a recreation of the "debt ceiling debacle" last year, while John Boehner called for the problem to be tackled in an "adult-like fashion." Perhaps it's time for government actuaries to adopt the long scale?

  • And speaking of that massive debt, Mitt Romney acknowledged George W. Bush's contribution to it on the campaign trail this week, in a roundabout way."I find it incomprehensible that a president could come to office and call his predecessor's record irresponsible and unpatriotic, and then do almost nothing to fix it," Romney said.
  • New census data suggests that whites may become a minority; for the first time in U.S. history, a majority of babies under the age of one were non-white.
  • IMF Chief Christine Lagarde warned that Greece's exit from the euro "would be extremely expensive and hard, and not just for Greece." No country has yet left the European super-currency created at the turn of the century; the last explicit exit from the European project was Greenland's departure from the European Economic Community in 1985.
  • It appears Chen Guangcheng will be heading to the U.S. after all. The Chinese government has allowed him to study abroad and New York University has offered him a place to study.
  • Radioactive levels taken from sludge samples from Tokyo Bay have gone up by up to 1300%,according to researchers, though health officials say the seafood coming from the bay is still safe.

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