White House

Speculations surface media resources that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had discussions with the White House to leave her job next year to take the position of the World Bank President.

Earlier Clinton said she had no plans to stay at the State Department for more than 4 years. Rumors say Clinton expressed her interest in having the World Bank job if Robert Zoellick, current head of the bank, would leave his post in the middle of 2012.

"Hillary Clinton wants the job," said one source who knows the secretary well.

The Obama administration pressed the US Congress this week to pass a proper legislation to protect consumers’ data and safeguard the nation's financial system and electric power grid from potentially devastating cyber-attacks.

Over the past year Congress rejected several cybersecurity bills while big companies such as Nasdaq OMX Group and Sony Corp suffered high-profile hacker attacks.

The US Congress and Obama administration are under pressure of the largest US banks who call for a deal to increase the country’s debt limit, saying that even a short default could be devastating for the financial markets and economy. Congress and the White House face the need to raise the US debt ceiling, which stands at $14,300 billion.

The deadline for America comes on May 16 and the Treasury department has said that in the absence of congressional action, the world’s largest economy could default by early July.

Barack Obama and leaders from both parties in Congress face a new chain of disputes and fights over the US budget as the state has escaped a potential government shutdown.

As Obama is to offer a long-term plan for deficit reduction on Wednesday, the White House and Congress start fighting over the 2012 fiscal year budget and raising the $14.3 trillion limit on government borrowing authority.

The fights are expected to dominate the political agenda overshadowing Friday's 11th-hour deal to cut $38 billion in spending for the final six months of this fiscal year.

American people will soon be assigned special Internet passports to roam online. The White House is developing a "National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace" under which the Commerce Department becomes responsible for an "Identity Ecoystem".

White House economic adviser Larry Summers said that the US economy is about to come to self-sustaining growth while the employment outlook remains uncertain.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive reported Monday that they were settling the lawsuits they filed against the Executive Office of the President in 2007 as they have found 22 million missing White House e-mails from the administration of President George W. Bush.

Lawmakers are trying to extend and expand an $8,000 federal tax credit for first-time homebuyers, a stimulus-package tax break that many regard as a significant prop for the still-tottering economy.

 The latest Senate proposal would drop the requirement that the credit be available only to first-time buyers, broadening the reach of the program but also adding to its cost, estimated by congressional analysts at $16.7 billion.

Kenneth Feinberg, the US government's "pay czar", appointed by the White House to review and approve compensation for top executives at the seven companies receiving "exceptional" support from the government, suggested outgoing CEO Kenneth Lewis not to take any compensation for 2009.