Day: January 14, 2010

What Happened To The Shovel Ready Projects?

I recall at the beginning of the process, the stim plan would create jobs because of the state’s shovel ready projects that need funding….remember?…..almost all governor’s said there were many, many shovel ready projects in their state that could use funding and that the stim plan would get those projects up and working……..and especially putting Americans back to work……that was then….this is now…..

As reported on ABC:

Ten months into President Barack Obama’s first economic stimulus plan, a surge in spending on roads and bridges has had no effect on local unemployment and only barely helped the beleaguered construction industry, an Associated Press analysis has found.

Spend a lot or spend nothing at all, it didn’t matter, the AP analysis showed: Local unemployment rates rose and fell regardless of how much stimulus money Washington poured out for transportation, raising questions about Obama’s argument that more road money would address an “urgent need to accelerate job growth.”

Even within the construction industry, which stood to benefit most from transportation money, the AP’s analysis found there was nearly no connection between stimulus money and the number of construction workers hired or fired since Congress passed the recovery program. The effect was so small, one economist compared it to trying to move the Empire State Building by pushing against it.

So basically, there is NO change in the status quo of the projects and the promised employment has NOT changed in the least.  So if infrastructure projects would be a boom to the economy, why is it not helping?

Basically, because the bulk of the stim money is being spent saving the gamblers on Wall Street….which I have said many times is NOT creating what the economy needs…..DEMAND!

Will He Stay Or Will He Go?

The continuing saga of Uncle Timmy Geithner….

I recently wrote about the emails that were sent by Geithner to AIG telling them to hide pertinent ionfo about the derivatives that they were involved in….

A financial scandal has erupted that implicates Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in efforts to conceal the funneling of $62 billion in taxpayer funds to 16 large banks as part of the government bailout of the insurance giant American International Group (AIG).

The emails also show that the New York Fed, during Geithner’s tenure as president, pressed AIG to conceal some $10 billion in so-called “synthetic” CDOs it owned or insured. Synthetic CDOs are bundles of derivatives rather than bundles of loans—i.e., securities one dimension further removed from any real value—and are now considered among the most toxic of speculative assets.

Releasing the emails last week, Issa said: “Inadvertent reporting errors are one thing. Directing a bailed-out company to withhold crucial information from a government agency in order to keep the American public in the dark is another. Whether or not the United States treasury secretary was directly implicated in the scheme is a key question. Either he didn’t know and he was negligent or he did know and presided over a blatant attempt to withhold information from the American people.”

So I ask, should he go or should he stay?  IMO, he should resign and let someone else work the scams…why?

It is simple, at least for me……Geithner was head of the NY Fed attempted to scam the taxpayer….when ask about Wall St regulations, he said that he was not a regulator, but the truth is the NY Fed is a regulatory agency….strike 2….while he was head of the NY Fed some banks were overpaid with the original TARP funds….strike three…..Geithner has had too many meetings with certain banks…making him too cozy with Wall Street….strike 4……that is way too many strikes against him….time to do the right thing and get the hell out of Washington….

Watching Geithner twist in the wind will be interesting…will he live to scam another day?