Day: June 12, 2009

2009 Anal-Ocity

My old friend is back…..Minnesota’s Rep. Michele Bachmann, you know she needs to fire the person who gives her her talking points.  Why?  She has been a wealth of anal-ocities this year.

She recently addressed the Congress on the economy and compared the US to the Titanic.  And then she said this:

We will always be a superpower. But one thing that has kept us a superpower
has been freedom, free market economists. We are in the process of watching the deconstruction of free market economists before our very eyes, something we have never seen.

Destruction of free market economists?  Is there an economic Appian Way I do not know about?  Are we sending them to Gitmo?  Is there random firing squads?  Just how are we destroying them?

Economists?  I believe the word she was laboring to use should be ….economics.

Maybe someone on her staff wants her to look like an idiot…if not she needs to shut up and educate herself on issues and such before she shoves a foot into her mouth.

GOP Plan For An Energy Policy

The conversation….well that is not quite accurate…the debate on an Energy policy has geared up….along with the debate on Health care.

Take a seat for their is a GOP plan for energy……surprise!

Let us begin…they, the GOP, do not like the Obama “cap and trade” deal…..why?  The main reason is they say it will cost the consumer more money for power.  I like it that their first concern is for the consumer….yeah right…and if you believe that then I have land in Florida I would like to sell by the gallon.

The NY Times has reported on the Repub plan.

The Republican proposal, drafted by a group led by Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, leans heavily on nuclear power, setting a goal of building 100 reactors over the next 20 years.

The bill also provides incentives for increased oil and gas production on public and private lands and offshore. It would also authorize oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

The Republican measure does not include any mandatory cap on emissions of heat-trapping gases, relying instead on nuclear energy, natural gas and renewable fuels like wind, solar and biomass power to reduce production of the gases, which have been linked to global warming.

Republican officials said they were intending to offer the proposal, known as the American Energy Act, as a substitute for the bill sponsored by Representatives Henry A. Waxman of California and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, both Democrats. The Waxman-Markey bill has been through hundreds of hours of public hearings and committee deliberations and passed the Energy and Commerce Committee last month on a 33-to-25 vote.

What part of this plan is not the same as it has been for 10 years?  Once again, the GOP has nothing new to offer the people of this country….just a rehash of tired old proposals from the past.

Time For Economic Good News?

Do not count on it.

The banks, some of them, will be allowed to repay about $68 billion and all is well…..only if you are on Wall Street.

The US Treasury Department on Tuesday approved the requests of 10 of the country’s biggest banks and financial firms to repay the bailout cash they received last year under the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

Press reports listed the firms as JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, American Express, Bank of New York Mellon, State Street, US Bancorp, Capitol One Financial, BB&T Corporation and Northern Trust.

So is this good news or not?  NOT!

Barry Grey has written:

The $68 billion being returned is more than double the administration’s initial projection of some $25 billion being paid back this year. The money is also being returned much earlier than the government originally intended.

The banks’ motives in repaying the TARP handouts are entirely self-serving. Their campaign to return the money began in earnest last February, when Congress attached a provision to the administration’s stimulus package limiting executive bonuses at firms holding TARP funds to one third of base salary. Wall Street was outraged, and getting out from under TARP became a central preoccupation of the banking elite.

Banks that repay their TARP cash also stand to save billions of dollars in dividend payments on preferred shares they were required to give the government in return for the taxpayer money.

In other news of the economy:

The US government is preparing to unveil rules on executive pay for firms that have been bailed out, reports the BBC.

President Barack Obama will also appoint a “pay czar” who can reject compensation plans at companies getting “exceptional assistance”.  Oh goody…yet another “czar”….there are more “czars” than reps in Washington.

The new rules on executive pay are expected to be announced by the end of the week.

But think about this…if the banks pay back the TARP cash…why will they listen to Washington on pay packages?  This is all so damn silly and ineffective….just like the Dems and Repubs in Congress…they are allowing Wall Street to make their own rules.

Barry Grey continues:

The stress tests allowed the government to declare the banking system “fundamentally sound,” despite the existence of at least a trillion dollars of bad debts on the banks’ balance sheets. They were designed to provide a further boost to the banks.

Since the results were announced on May 7, the banks have raised almost $90 billion through offerings of common stock and bond issuances. Bank stocks have continued to soar, with big-bank stocks rising 87 percent since their lows in early March.

By allowing most of the biggest banks to repay their TARP funds, entirely on the banks’ terms, the administration is essentially giving them a clean bill of health and providing a rationale for rejecting any serious regulation of their activities. Tuesday’s Treasury announcement sets the stage for the administration’s release of its financial regulatory proposals, set for next week.

Yes Irene…nothing is changing……and Wall Street will soon return to their speculative ways that bottomed out the economy and we can play this damn silly game all over again…because NO ONE has the balls to make Wall Street play fair.