If the president wants bankers to accept the billions of taxpayer dollars they need, he's going to have to accept their outrageous demands, like bonuses forever. Wait, what?
Everyone's mad about banks spending bailout money! It's outrageous that anyone would take taxpayers cash and then actually use it. These whiffs of populism are like nitrous — a brief thrill that accomplishes nothing.
Where are insurance giant AIG's bailout billions really going? The White House doesn't want to tell us. But the Wall Street Journal, bless its Rupert Murdoch-owned heart, found out anyway: Foreign banks, lots of them!
Chris Matthews made some fabulously entertaining television in May when he schooled a right-wing pundit pretending to know who Neville Chamberlain was and why Barack Obama was just as awful. Then he did it again to Michele Bachmann when the Republican Congresswoman tried to slyly say all liberals and entire certain states were anti-American. Now he's just going all GOTCHA! on everyone, constantly, embarrassing himself in the process, like in the attached clip.
According to financially troubled magazine US News & World Report, the best college in the world is financially troubled Harvard, whose endowment has "suffered investment losses of at least 22% in the first four months of the school's fiscal year," according to the Wall Street Journal. Turns out all those colleges investing in real estate and private equity and commodities was only a brilliant idea for like ten years. This is a loss of $8 billion! So now the endowment is only like $29 billion. Is the Ivy League too big to fail?
The CEOs of Detroit's Big 3 got in a spot of trouble for taking their private jets to DC to beg for bailout money. So now, this time, they're carpooling! What a stupid publicity stunt to overcompensate for their stupid PR gaffe. The union leaders are flying commercial, because they care not what you think of them. (The price difference between flying coach and driving your FORD ESCAPE HYBRID 500 miles is like $100 a head, but they are probably flying business class on the backs of the worker.) [Jalopnik]
Did you happen to catch Barack Obama's weekly camboy YouTube this Thanksgiving? Earnest and adorable as ever, the Office of the President Elect was unsubtle in its marketing; the word "new" appeared seven times in its 600-word speech on the economy, including two prominent instances of what appears to be the Obama administration's new catchphrase: "New Beginning." It looks like we have the much-awaited replacement term for "stimulus," "bailout" and "recovery package," all of which are despised by voters.
America's failing auto companies continue to Get The Message Loud And Clear about Making Real Changes that will Make America Strong Again. They just really, really need that $25 billion government bailout first, okay? Seriously. GM has already promised to give up some of its corporate jets and order cheaper pencils. And now, a bunch of auto industry types are doing what GM's execs should have done in the first place: carpooling to Washington! Though it may be, objectively, the lamest car pool ever: 1. "As of now, the three executives — Rick Wagoner of General Motors, Alan R. Mulally of Ford Motor and Robert L. Nardelli of Chrysler — are not planning to join the carpool." 2. "Initially, organizers intended to assemble a convoy of numerous fuel-efficient, American-made vehicles to demonstrate the innovation coming from Detroit, but it might end up being more about the people involved than the products. 'From an efficiency standpoint, getting a bus or two would probably be the best way to go.'" 3. "The group is planning a quick trip, perhaps leaving Dec. 7 and heading back late the next day, with no stops for rallies or demonstrations." Two buses, full of auto dealers, on an 18-hour round trip from Detroit to Washington, with no public rallies. But they did get the New York Times to cover it, so hey. [NYT]
Hey, the government has agreed to bail out Citigroup. Surely we'll now be saved from worldwide insolvency! Right? Or is this a profligate waste of money? We have to level with you: this whole bailout thing has now exceeded the media's ability to critically analyze it. You've heard everyone throw around figures like $750 billion for the earlier bailout costs. This Citigroup thing includes a guarantee of $306 billion in assets. But think about this: according to Bloomberg, the US government has now pledged more than $7.4 trillion to rescue the financial system in the past 15 months. How much is 7.4 trillion?
