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POPSAnother Bailout – GMAC To Get More Money GMAC says they want to prepare itself to repay the U.S. Government. Is taking more tax payer funds a necessary step before repaying the Government? I don’t know what kind of math GMAC is using to come up with an idiotic statement like that, but if it is the same math they use to balance the books at their retail bank (Ally Bank) then I would run as fast as I could away from that one. The mortgage-related write-downs to be announced as early as this week will affect assets held by ResCap and Ally Bank, GMAC’s online bank. Ally Bank was created after the company received approval in late 2008 to convert to a bank holding company and qualify for government money under TARP. The arrangement left the Federal Reserve with regulatory authority over the parent. From the Ally Bank web site: Who we are We are Ally Bank, built on the foundation of GMAC Financial Services. And with that experience we’ve learned that these times demand change .....
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POPSBush's Final Report Card: Biggest Spender Since LBJ Fair and balanced analysis from Cato Institute. Republicans need to confess this if they expect to have any credibility in criticizing Obama's liberal spending. The American people are sick of bi-partisan lying and hypocritical finger-pointing Obama's first report card, where all spending is under his watch, will not be available until next year, 2010 (which should be a doozy too). President George W. Bush’s last year was fiscal 2009. Outlays that year were $3.522 trillion, according to the CBO. However, $108 billion was spending for the 2009 economic stimulus package passed under President Obama. Bush was thus roughly responsible for $3.414 trillion of spending in 2009, which includes outlays for the financial bailouts enacted under his watch.
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POPS The Audacity of Debt 
Democrats ridiculed Mr. Bush as "the most fiscally irresponsible President in history," but then they saw him and raised. They took an $800 billion deficit and made it $1.4 trillion in 2009 and perhaps that high again in 2010. In 10 months they have approved more than $1 trillion in spending that has saved union public jobs but has done little to assist private job creation. Still to come is the multitrillion-dollar health bill and another $100 billion to $200 billion "jobs" bill. We've never obsessed over the budget deficit, because the true cost of government is the amount it spends, not the amount it borrows. Milton Friedman used to say that the nation would be far better off with a budget half the current size but with larger deficits. Mr. Obama and his allies in Congress have done the opposite: They have increased the budget by 50% and financed the spending with IOUs. The national debt held by the public reached its peak in the Reagan years at 40.9% and hit 49.2% in 1995.
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POPSNat'l Debt Now Tops $12 TRILLION!!!!! Deficits and debts that he multiplied...and now he thinks it's time to bring them under control. What a novice!! We have a dumb-bunny for a President and insane people in Congress. To think our own government is destroying us. Who owns us, baby? Everyone. :~(
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POPSReport: 237 millionaires in Congress
Senators’ estimated median reportable worth sunk to about $1.79 million from $2.27 million in 2007. The House’s median income was significantly lower and also sank, bottoming out at $622,254 from $724,258 in 2007. But CRP’s analysis suggests that some lawmakers did well for themselves between 2007 and 2008, even as many Americans lost jobs and saw their savings and their home values plummet. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) gained about $9.2 million. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) gained about $3 million, Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) had an estimated $2.6 million gain, and Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) gained about $2.8 million. Some lawmakers have profited from investments in companies that have received federal bailouts; dozens of lawmakers are invested in Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. Vice President Joe Biden has often tagged himself as an original blue collar man. The CRP backs him up, putting his net worth at just $27,000.
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POPSWall Street Gains, Main Street Pains We have to wonder, "Who's pulling the strings", Audit the fed! On Tuesday, Senators Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Bob Corker (R-TN) introduced "The Federal Reserve Accountability Act," an attempt to kill HR 1207/S 604 by passing a bill that prevents a full audit and full transparency from America's secretive central bank. While language in this bill would permit a limited audit of the Fed's actions in the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and similar high profile bailouts, it would not allow an audit to review the Fed's inflation of the money supply or its agreements with foreign central banks, among other shortcomings. Let your senators know you expect them to support the American people's demand for full transparency, not some watered down measure designed to stop a full audit! http://www.campaignforliberty.com/index.php#26719 Action needed now! Thanks.
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POPSWall Street celebrates bonuses, schools beg for supplies We see stories like “Recession Pinches Back-to-School Budgets” http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/03/eveningnews/main5361456.shtml and “School budgets dip, class sizes grow” http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32156424/ns/us_news-education/ along with reports of Wall Street reaping fat bonuses after being bailed out with taxpayer dollars. Sure, the bailouts were necessary to keep the economy afloat. Or so we are led to believe. And while the wisdom of a Wall Street bailout is being debated there is no debate about whether or not our schools need more money. Should public schools needs be ranked second to Wall Street because schools don’t turn a profit? Actually, if your head is on straight, you can clearly see how schools do turn a profit, but you need to value education above making money in order to see it. If you do, here’s an online charity that connects you to classrooms in need: http://www.donorschoose.org/
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POPSSocial Security Surplus Dwindling The treasury department has dipped into social security to pay off other programs since the Reagan years, in 1983, Reagan raised the social security tax to offset his deficits, taking more than $40 billion per year from the fund. Now with the all the unemployment, bailouts, and war spending, it may run out sooner than expected.
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POPSObama Taps Bernanke (too big to fail) For Second Term Bernanke said that if confirmed again by the Senate, he will pursue a “solid foundation for growth and stability” during a second four-year term and promised to work “to restore a more stable financial and economic environment in which opportunity can again flourish.” What’s unstated, of course, is the fact that in reappointing Bernanke, Obama is once again embracing the failed policies of his predecessor in the Oval Office: In re-appointing Bernanke to another four year term as Fed chairman, President Obama completes his embrace of bailouts, easy money and deficits as the defining characteristics of his economic agenda. Bernanke, along with Secretary Geithner (then New York Fed president) were the prime movers behind the bailouts of AIG and Bear Stearns. Rather than “saving capitalism,” these bailouts only spread panic at considerable cost to the taxpayer. As evidenced in his “financial reform” proposal, Obama does not see bailouts as the problem,
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POPSBrian Falati Taught Me About Bailouts Economics are hard. Sure I could read a book about it, but with so much great television who has time to read books? That’s why I love Brian Falati. He really simplifies the tough issues for me, the common man.
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POPSHappy Cost of Government Day As a result, taxpayers have to work 224 days out of the year just to meet the cost imposed by all levels of government. As in previous years, this year’s report seeks to shed light on the burden government imposes on taxpayers. A new feature of the report is a series of case studies taking a closer look at some of the more recent spending initiatives and other proposals that are currently threatening taxpayers. For a broader perspective, for the first time, we have included several narratives authored by lawmakers and think tank representatives analyzing the cost of government at the state level. The recent federal spending spree paints a bleak picture for taxpayers. It started with the passage of the financial market bailout and continued with the “stimulus,” the $410 billion earmark-stuffed “omnibus,” the $3.55 trillion budget, and more bailouts leading to current threats of a national energy tax and a government takeover of health care.
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POPSObama's "Read my lips. No more taxes." Then Obama's National Economic Council director Lawrence Summers likewise said when asked about the middle-class tax hike on "Meet the Press" that it was "never a good idea to absolutely rule things out, no matter what." That's because Geithner and Summers both know that Obama's health care proposal is not a stand-alone item. In addition to unfunded Social Security and Medicare entitlements, bailouts and stimulus spending have already pushed the national debt to $37,813 for every man, woman and child in America. According to the IRS, the top 5 percent - which includes households earning more than $160,041 - already pays 60 percent of all federal income taxes. Even former Clinton Treasury official Leonard Burman admitted in a New York Times oped that "this idea that everything new that government provides ought to be paid for by the top 5 percent, that's a basically unstable way of governing." White House spokesman Robert Gibbs furiously backpedaled Monday . . . . .
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POPSBankers Reaped Lavish Bonuses During Bailouts Mr. Cuomo, who for months has criticized the companies over pay, said the bonuses were particularly galling because the banks survived the crisis with the government’s support. “If the bank lost money, where do you get the money to pay the bonus?” he said. All the banks named in the report declined to comment.
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POPSWhat do you call an economic stimulus that isn’t?
The author calls it a ‘really expensive, depressing yawn’. In keeping with my reputation of not being quite so polite, I’ll call it a colossal rip-off of taxpayer dollars in keeping with business as usual. Tax payers earlier this year were given a promise of 3.5 million new jobs as a part of the pitch to support business and state government bailouts. According to the Heritage Foundation, that translates to a promise that June’s total US employment would climb to 135.9 million. Never happened. Total employment is currently around 131.7 million (and falling). The only thing DC politicians’ so-called stimulus has legitimately produced (besides those yawns) is a net jobs deficit of 4.2 million. At the rate that our do-nothing Democratically-controlled congress is ‘progressing’, Republicans won’t need to come up with a new strategy to get back into the White House, it will be gladly handed to them. Provided all parties involved manage to stay awake until next November.
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POPSThe Economic 9/11: September 11th 2008 "Changed Everything" The Big Secret: The Economic Terrorist Attack Sept. 11, 2008 in New York City. An "electronic run on the banks" that almost led to total American and global financial collapse. Who was the "someone" behind the "electronic bank run" that almost collapsed America's economy, in the New York City financial district, center of international trade as well, on Sept. 11, 2008, between the hours of 9am and 11am, on the very anniversary of the 9/11 attack in the same city, and at the very same time? The Bailouts have received all the attention without giving due attention to this "catalyzing event" on 9/11/08 that precipitated the Economic Crisis and subsequent government response. It is an unspoken, but fully documented event, that receives no attention. Why not?
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POPSHow Much Does It Cost Taxpayers To Hire a New Federal Employee? Click through for how they calculated it. It's amazing that people still think that Obama's "created jobs" will help stimulate the economy. Why doesn't the pay Czar focus on Federal employees who cost taxpayers money and let private businesses decide how they spend their own money. I know, I know, Bailouts. Maybe Bailouts were a BAD idea to begin with!
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POPSCould We Be Near the Big Collapse? The U.S. Treasury must sell a record net $2 trillion in new debt in 2009 to fund a $1.8 trillion projected fiscal deficit, resulting from falling tax revenues, an economic stimulus package and sundry bank bailouts.
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POPSBernanke warns on deficit Interpretation: The Fed passes the toxic debt ball back to the government, and washes its hands. The interesting thing is that if government is stuck with all the debt, the only way it can do this is to radically curtail its own activities. Libertarians and anarchists (and other advocates of local self-govenment) could, ironically, be the winners. On the other hand, it could be the banks and the multinationals.
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POPSObama Offers Security at the Expense of Liberty of paying federal income tax and eligible for occasional rebates. As CNN reporter Susan Roesgen said, "Don't you realize that you're eligible for a $400 tax cut?" In other words, take the money and shut up. Which brings to mind Tocqueville's warning: "Every measure which establishes legal charity on a permanent basis and gives to it an administrative form creates thereby a class unproductive and idle, living at the expense of the class which is industrious and given to work." The Obama administration is assiduous in the protection of this administrative class. It offers $6,800,000,000 to the state of California on one hand, and then threatens to take it back because the state cut the pay of public employee union members by $74,000,000. The government gives JPMorgan Chase $25,000,000,000, and then insists that it give up in the Chrysler deal what it would ordinarily receive in bankruptcy proceedings and turn it over to fund the health care benefits of United Auto Worker retirees.
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POPSOklahoma Claims Sovereignty: House Bypasses Governor’s Veto and the Democratic-controlled Congress, would not jeopardize federal funds but would tell Congress to "get back into their proper constitutional role.” The resolution states the federal government should "cease and desist” mandates that are beyond the scope of its powers. Key said many federal laws violate the 10th Amendment, which says powers not delegated to the U.S. government "are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” The Constitution lists about 20 duties required of the U.S. government, he said. Congress should not be providing bailouts to financial institutions and automakers, he said. "We give all this money to all these different entities, including automakers, and now they’re talking about, ‘Well maybe it’s better to let them go bankrupt,’” Key said. "Well, maybe we should have let them go bankrupt before we gave them the money.” To view video click on link: (1:00) http://feeds.newsok.tv/services/player/bcpid4659235001?bctid=22316113001
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POPSThe Real Culture War Is Over Capitalism 
, small business owners who don't want corporate welfare and bankers who kept their heads during the frenzy and don't need bailouts. They were the people who were doing the important things right -- and who are nowwatching elected politicians reward those who did the important things wrong. Voices in the media, academia, and the government will dismiss this ethical populism as a fringe movement -- maybe even dangerous extremism. In truth, free markets, limited government, and entrepreneurship are still a majoritarian taste. In March 2009, the Pew Research Center asked people if we are better off "in a free market economy even though there may be severe ups and downs from time to time." Fully 70% agreed, versus 20% who disagreed. The government has been abetting this trend for years by exempting an increasing number of Americans from federal taxation. My colleague Adam Lerrick showed in these pages last year that the percentage of American adults who have no federal income-tax liabi
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