I know we all believe the housing bubble has already popped and all things real estate are over. One might think this post should be from 2006 from the title. But it's not, this post is from 2010 and below are the reasons for the question.
The president had some bold words for the American public earlier this week. He said things that some people didn't want to hear. He talked about responsibility and sacrifices.
"We simply cannot continue to spend as if deficits don't have consequences, as if waste doesn't matter, as if the hard-earned tax dollars of the American people can be treated like Monopoly money, as if we can ignore this challenge for another generation.
". . . It's time to save what we can, spend what we must and live within our means once again."
- President Obama, 2010
After saying these bold words he then presented Congress with a plan for the largest deficit in American history. I guess politicians are immune from irony.
Manufacturing employment dropped to 11.7 million in October 2009, a loss of 5.5 million or 32 percent of all manufacturing jobs since October 2000. The last time fewer than 12 million people worked in the manufacturing sector was in 1941. In October 2009, more people were officially unemployed (15.7 million) than were working in manufacturing.
See what bad trade deals and global labor arbitrage bring us?
The January 2010 SIGTARP report is released and if anything it's a validation of this sites many observations to date on TARP.
Despite the fact that the explicit goal of the Capital Purchase Program (“CPP”) was to increase financing to U.S. businesses and consumers, lending continues to decrease, month after month, and the TARP program designed specifically to address small-business lending — announced in March 2009 — has still not been implemented by Treasury.
Notwithstanding the fact that preserving home ownership and promoting jobs were explicit purposes of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (“EESA”), the statute that created TARP, nearly 16 months later, home foreclosures remain at record levels, the TARP foreclosure prevention program has only permanently modified a small fraction of eligible mortgages, and unemployment is the highest it has been in a generation.
SIGTARP notes that we are nowhere with financial reforms.
To the extent that huge, interconnected, “too big to fail” institutions contributed to the crisis, those institutions are now even larger, in part because of the substantial subsidies provided by TARP and other bailout programs.
On January 29, 1911, a small band of 18 revolutionaries marched into Mexicali and seized the town, practically without firing a shot. Thus began one of the most unusual and controversial episodes in Mexican history.
These revolutionaries were not the typical warlords that Mexico was used to seeing. These revolutionaries had American volunteers, but not the sort of filibusters that Baja California was already very familiar with. In fact, this revolutionary movement had little in common with anything Mexico had experienced before or since.
These revolutionaries weren't interested in just overthrowing the corrupt and repressive government, they wanted to overthrow society as well.
Contained within the Obama administration's Jobs Program Redux, we have a policy proposal to give $30 billion in TARP funds to community banks, on the premise they will lend to small businesses.
The questions become, what is the true state of credit for small business and is the premise that community banks would loan out these funds to small businesses valid?
There are two reports out on the state of credit availability for small businesses.
It's Friday Night! Party Time! Time to relax, put your feet up on the couch, lay back, and watch some detailed videos on economic policy!
I was reminded of Monsanto again when I came across this this article putting Monsanto, once again, as one of the least ethical corporations of the world. (Oh yeah, ignore the list, any technical professional knows IBM has no ethics and either does Intel, so if that's the best....we're in big trouble!)
Obama put forth some elements of a second jobs bill. With that, I strongly suggest all those who were disappointed, disgusted with the first Stimulus, start right now pushing for legislation we need.
Take $30 billion of the [TARP] money Wall Street banks have repaid and use it to help community banks give small businesses the credit [Subsidized Small Business Loans].
Small Business tax credit - one that will go to over one million small businesses who hire new workers or raise wages
Eliminate all capital gains taxes on small business investment
Tax incentive for all businesses, large and small, to invest in new plants and equipment
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is holding a hearing today, The Federal Bail Out of AIG.
All prepared statements are at the above link. The hearing has testimony from:
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner
Former Treasury Secretary Mr. Henry Paulson
SIGTARP Inspector General Mr. Neil Barofsky
Executive VP and NY Fed General Council Mr. Thomas Baxter
Senior VP and AIG CFO Mr. Elias Habayeb
Former NY Fed Chairman of Board of Governers Mr. Stephen Friedman
I'm still swimming through mountains of documents and tons of verbiage, but I will sum up what I do not know so far.
Firstly, it seems that when it comes to figuring out who precisely gave the go ahead for the 100% AIG counterparty payouts, magically top officials were not involved.
It's Friday Night! Party Time! Time to relax, put your feet up on the couch, lay back, and watch some detailed videos on economic policy!
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