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POPSTo Reward the Top 5 to 10% of Top Sellers AIG Spent US$440,000 on Spa and Resort after Bailout. The group booked the resort's 3,100-square-foot Presidential Suite for US$1,600 a night for five nights, a discount from the standard rate of US$3,200 a night, a hotel document released by the committee showed. It also paid US$1,075 in "no-show fees." "Have you heard of anything more outrageous?" said Representative Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat, who plans to seek an investigation of the spending. "They were getting their manicures, their facials, pedicures, massages while the American people were footing the bill." The group occupied more than 60 rooms. Receipts provided by Mr. Waxman were dated Sept. 22 through Sept. 30. AIG was bailed out on Sept. 16. (*sigh* Clipmarks needs to make the character limit for clips bigger -.-)
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POPS Oil Outlook Clouds Russia’s Economic Future That could trigger a vicious circle of falling income and investment, as production gets more expensive in Russia's aging fields. The era of record profits from oil and gas is over - that's according to Russia's Finance Minister Alexey Kudrin. 2008 is likely to be the year of peak oil and gas production in the country. The big oil companies are cutting investment in new projects. Russia has received up to $1 Billion a day in oil revenues in recent years, and the country's budget and economy remain highly dependent on hydrocarbon earnings. The world financial crisis and recession has triggered big falls in the world's oil price. That will significantly affect the Russian budget, according to Mikhail Kroutikhin, partner at Rusenergy.
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POPSU.S.Treasury's Kashkari to Lead Bank Bailout Office (Update1) ``We need to think through what's the best for securities, for loans, to help strengthen the balance sheet of the institutions.'' Anthony Ryan, the Treasury's acting undersecretary for domestic finance, said in an interview today on CNBC. ``We are focusing on the broader issues, the mortgage- related assets.'' Senate confirmation is required to fill the position for which Kashkari will be nominated. The Treasury hasn't specified the length of Kashkari's tenure, or whether the White House would nominate him officially. The Bush administration remains in office until January. Ben Dover, "Dewey Screwem and Howe" via tom mcguire
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POPSThe Love of Money is the root of all Evil The old saying goes that if it appears to be too good to be true it is. Easy credit has been the ruin of our financial houses. People have overextended in many areas and housing was just the next obvious liberal pursuit. Conservatives teach that less is more and learning to live responsibly in all areas of life is the best approach. Liberals would have us believe that you can have it all and at someone else's expense. The bible teaches that the love of money is the root of all that is evil.
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POPSCommentary from a Central Banker "And what better way to ensure the corporate largesse is returned to the GOP to win back the White House and Congress in 2012 as the depression fuels public anger?"
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POPSBailout plan fails to strengthen markets The revised bailout plan to help out from the economic crisis of the United States failed to lift up the indexes in spite of the hopes. The House of Representatives probably will meet on Friday to analyze and to revise again the plan.
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POPSBailout Marks Karl Marx's Comeback Marx’s Proposal Number Five seems to be the leading motivation for those backing the Wall Street bailout. If he were to rise from the dead today, Marx might be delighted to discover that most economists and financial commentators, including many who claim to favour the free market, agree with him. At first glance, anyone who understands economics can see that there is something wrong with this picture. The taxes that will need to be levied to finance this package may keep some firms alive, but they will siphon off capital, kill jobs and make businesses less productive elsewhere. Increasing the money supply is no different. It is an invisible tax that redistributes resources to debtors and those who made unwise investments. So why throw this sound free-market analysis overboard as soon as there is some downturn in the markets? The rationale for intervening always seems to centre on the fear of reliving the Great Depression.
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POPSBailing... I honestly do not know if this is a good plan. My inclination is to "reap what you sew" -- and we've had more than 15 years of republican (endorsed by dems) deregulation polices that have bred this crisis...
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POPSWhy Would Warren Buffett Stoop So Low?
The market still works! With all due respect to Buffett, nobody has yet made a compelling case to me that there is, in fact, a crisis that extends much beyond overleveraged banks with bad business practices. There's a simple fact lost among all of this fearmongering and jawboning about how bad things could get if the government doesn't throw $700 billion (or more) at failing financial institutions. The stock and vulture-capital markets are still generally working, in spite of the cries from politicians and failing speculators to the contrary. The market also has a really good mechanism to help struggling financial companies get money. It's called "price," and it's still functioning. You can see it in action by looking at the one-year CD rates that various banks are offering to entice people to deposit money with them. When the people lobbying the hardest for a bailout are those who stand to benefit from it, you have to ask whether their motives are altruistic or self-serving.
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POPSwhen banks fail hard to say what they actualy will do- but by the same token don't be taken in by horror stories from scammers seeking to exploit you through dis-information
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POPSwhat is going on After the deluge Bush continues to feed, is now asking the candidates to suspend the campaign and help him to deal with the US and the world's mess neoliberalism lead us into. To the democrats I would like to ask if the should not be thinking about an alternative instead of helping republicans. Obama said: change is possible -- can he clarify his position
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POPSUS Financial System -- What comes next? *sigh* Naturally, I'm one of those guys described in that last paragraph.... _However_, I do not go along with the statements that this is as bad as 1929. I think we're looking at the mid-late 70s again -- and a bunch of lovely new government regulations intended to clean up the mess left from the last round of government regulations....
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POPSHistory Is Repeating, When Will the Masses Wake Up? "At the present time, behind the scenes there is a night-and-day movement of collateral. A visiting Englishman leaving the United States a few weeks ago said things would look better here after "they cleaned up the mess at Washington." Cleaning up the mess consists of fooling the people and making them pay a second time for the bad foreign investments of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks. It consists of moving that heavy load of dubious and worthless foreign paper — the bills of wig makers, brewers, distillers, narcotic drug vendors, munition makers, illegal finance drafts, and worthless foreign securities — out of the banks, and putting it on the back of American labor. That is what the Reconstruction Finance Corporation is doing now. They talk about loans to banks and railroads." ...
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POPSSocialism Coming to America? Senator Jim DeMint said: “This plan does nothing to address the misguided government policies that created this mess and it could make matters much worse by socializing an entire sector of the U.S. economy. This plan fails to oversee or regulate the government failures that led to this crisis. Instead it greatly increases the role for Secretary Paulson whose market predictions have been consistently wrong in the last year…” So far, there has been no discussion about what got us into this mess and the only solution being talked about is more of the same failed monetary policies. If passed by Congress, Paulson would assume the dictatorial power and authority to designate financial institutions “as financial agents of the Government” and order them to perform “all such reasonable duties related to this Act as financial agents of the Government as may be required of them…” Having so much control over a so called 'free market' negates the very idea of "free".
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POPSThe September Financial Terrorism Attack Puts some perspective on who is to blame. Very sobering. Americans have far more to fear from those within American government and business than outside of it. Corruption rules and brought the financial house down. Those involved should not be immune from prosecution, penalty, and financial accountability.
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POPSPresidential Shackles Good, if depressing assessment, of the next President's options. Over the next two months, it will be important for the media and the public to remember the handcuffs that this economic crisis and the ensuing bailouts have placed on the US government and judge the Presidential proposals accordingly.
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