Posted by
Bill Crawford on Saturday, December 19, 2009 1:14:10 PM
Here I am again, trying to catch up. I have a few major things to review, but I'll stick here with some of the things that, by comparison, fall into the news cracks:
GM pays back it's T.A.R.P. money- with what? They've lost more this year, and in the third quarter, than they paid back to the taxpayers. Which leaves the only remaining possibility: they paid us back with our money! I guess "too big to fail" means that your accounants can make up their rules as they go along.
Bernanke is Time magazine's "Man of the Year" for 2009. Last year, Obama got it for doing nothing yet, save running fr office (I guess he won for his campaign). This year, the winner's best work was in September, 2008. What Ben, Tim Geithner and Henry Paulson put together after Leman Brothers died, to keep the credit market from drying up for years is something every financial market should kiss their butts for, for decades. What has Ben done in 2009? I don't get it.
Sarah Palin signs books in Iowa, too. When it comes to Presidential politics, even the mainstream media can't ignore her. She is a player on the stage, and she sucks oxygen from everybody else around. At this point, I don't think she knows what to do with that.
New financial regulations: when the notion first came down the pike that the feds were thinking about abrogating contracts made by private sector parties in the banking industry, conservatives weren't the only ones out there saying that the notion was a "bill of attainder". Now, it's taken as a given in D.C. and the media. There is a concept that grew in the 20th century here that stepping outside of the Constitution was more or less OK, if there was a clear popular concensus behind it. That is why the White House was able to completely ignore the War Powers Act- there was a clear majority on both sides that agreed that the Exeutive branch needed more autonomy in that world than the founding fathers envisioned. Do we all want to run the banks? Do we want to turn them into the Post Office?
The federal government doesn't see any recession: they are hiring faster than ever, and are doing so with jobs that pay nearly twice as much as the private sector. That isn't quite accurate- the average is pushed up by the fact that $150k" jobs in the federal sectr have exploded since Obama took office. It's nice to see them doing well, and I do what I can to contribute. That is, as a taxpayer, I don't really have much of a choice.
The EPA has declared CO2 a toxic, regulatable substance. That was an attempt to tell Congress that they better pass cap & trade, and anther message to the Copenhagen summit that Obama was serious now. I'm happy that, even though they don't see the need to act right now, the government has the ability now to regulate and tax me, every time I exhale.