April 2009
14 posts
The Auto Bailout Is Going Off the Road
GM just announced it was laying of 21,000 more of its workers, as a means of assurring the Treasury Department the company is worthy of more bailout money. A Treasury official was quoted as saying approvingly that the goal is a “slimmed-down” GM. What? Having General Motors or Chrysler cut tens of thousands of jobs in order to be eligible for a government bailout reminds me of...
Will Ken Lewis Get Canned, and Will Americans Have...
I don’t know whether Bank of America shareholders will oust Ken Lewis from his chairmanship this week. I don’t know if Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will eventually do it, either. What really worries me is I don’t know who would actually be responsible for doing the deed, or by what criteria. When it comes to keeping top corporate executives in line we usually entrust the...
How Obama Can Succeed in the Next Hundred Days and...
Before Inauguration Day, President-elect Barack Obama said he wanted to hit the ground running. Instead, he hit the ground sprinting and hasn’t stopped. Consider: A $787 billion stimulus package. A 10-year budget including universal health insurance and a cap-and-trade system to combat global warming. Subsidies to help distressed homeowners stay in their homes. Public-private partnerships...
The Great Credit Card Battle To Come
The next front in the banking wars will be over credit cards. Some of the nation’s biggest bankers — including representatives of Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, and other recipients of billions of taxpayer dollars — are meeting today with the President to ask him back off his move to reform credit-card lending practices. What’s happening to credit card...
A Report Card on Obamanomics, Approaching One...
The Administration is coming up to that magical 100-day mark, at which point measures are taken of how a new president is doing. As a university professor I’m accustomed to giving grades. So here’s my report card on Obamanomics so far: The 10-year budget gets an A. It’s an extraordinary vision of what America can and should become, including universal health insurance and...
Where Government Spending Should be Trimmed -- And...
It’s no accident that as Congress returns this week from its two-week recess and begins debate on the $3.5 trillion budget plans for the fiscal year starting in October — which may or may not include a provision that fast-tracks Obama’s health care proposal by allowing it to pass the Senate with a mere majority — the President has summoned his cabinet for a first meeting,...
A Short Citizen's Guide to Kooks, Demagogues, and...
No one likes to pay taxes, so tax day typically attracts a range of right-wing Republicans, kooks, and demagogues, all of whom tell us how awful we have it. Herewith a short citizen’s guide (that is, a citizen’s guide that’s short rather than a guide for short citizens) responding to the predictable charges: 1. “Americans pay too much in taxes.” Wrong: The United...
We Need More Stimulus, Not More Bailout
With only $110 billion remaining in the TARP bailout fund, all signs are that Tim Geithner is preparing to return to Congress seeking more bailout money. He’ll bring along the results of his bank “stress tests,” which will probably show many that big banks are still technically insolvent, along with bankruptcy scenarios for General Motors and Chrysler, and a couple of CEO scalps – he’s already got...
Why We're Not at the Beginning of the End, and...
Are we at the beginning of the end? Mortgage interests are now so low (the average rate on 30-year fixed mortgages was 4.87 percent Thursday, slightly higher than the 4.78 percent last week, but still the lowest level since 1971) that President Obama has begun urging Americans to refinance their homes so they can save money and start spending again. Presidential aide Larry Summers says the country...
Why It Makes No Sense for States to Cut Services...
With the real economy continuing to shrink, and unemployment or underemployment now claiming almost one out of six American workers, the economy will almost surely be more than $1 trillion short of its capacity this year, and another $1 trillion short next year. That means the $787 billion stimulus package covering 2009 and 2010 won’t nearly do the trick— even if every federal dollar...
Why You Should Work for a Hedge Fund
Just because I lost a big chunk of my total retirement savings over the last year doesn’t mean I should be upset that 25 hedge-fund managers reaped a total of $11.6 billion during the same interval, according to Institutional Investor’s Alpha Magazine — including $2.5 billion for James Simons of Renaissance Technologies and $2 billion for John Paulson. (To be included on the...
Will Geithner Fire Corporate America?
Tim Geithner said on Sunday’s Face the Nation that the Treasury might fire the heads of big banks that depend on financing from the federal government, just as it summarily deposed Rick Wagoner, the former CEO of General Motors — and before Wagoner, the heads of AIG, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac. “Where that requires a change in management and the board, then we will do...
It's a Depression
The March employment numbers, out this morning, are bleak: 8.5 percent of Americans officially unemployed, 663,000 more jobs lost. But if you include people who are out of work and have given up trying to find a job, the real unemployment rate is 9 percent. And if you include people working part time who’d rather be working full time, it’s now up to 15.6 percent. One in every six...
The Administration's proposed "Responsible Wall...
The Administration is about to launch a new plan designed both to stimulate the economy and clean up Wall Street at the same time. The “Responsible Wall Streeter Tax Credit” will provide Wall Street executives and traders a credit against their 2008 income taxes in an amount equal to their individual share of responsibility for the nation’s financial collapse. ...
