Judge Andrew Napolitano is hosting Glenn’s ‘Crash Course’ Week as Glenn is on vacation. This week’s programs will be a recap of Beck programs that have outlined the history behind the events that have been occurring in our nation since the installation of Barack Obama.
Today’s program is all about the economy, Obamacare, the travesty of the Fin-Reg bill, cutting spending, unsustainable pension funds, and the insanity of bailing out GM. I only take issue with the movement of money in the buckets (you’ll understand when you see it), as all the money that GM collected in the first bailout should have been thrown on the floor or flushed down a toilet. Then GM should have refilled their bucket from TARP and then transferred that money to the Government Loan bucket. Glenn is correct though; the taxpayers’ bucket remains empty to this day.
GM is receiving the AYFKM? NOW Award for trying to sell America the lie that they are out of danger and are on their way to a total fiscal recovery. How many of you believe that they paid back their bailout five years ahead of time? How many? How many knew it was a lie when it came out of the CEO’s mouth?
THIS would be the reason why the government should not be allowed to bailout private companies and then tell them what to do, AND the reason we haven’t been able to trust the government and would be fools to continue to do so.
Government regulators threatened to remove top Bank of America executives if they backed out of a buyout of failing brokerage giant Merrill Lynch, and offered to provide taxpayer funds to compensate for Merrill’s poor performance, according to company records obtained by The Washington Times.
The documents – e-mails between bank executives and their outside attorneys as well as board meeting “talking points” prepared for then-Bank of America Chief Executive Ken Lewis – offer new insight into the hardball tactics that produced one of the biggest deals negotiated during the late 2008 global financial crisis, one that is still reverberating on Wall Street and in Washington.
They also underscore the fear shared by then-Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben S. Bernanke that allowing the deal to fall through would mean a sequel to the collapse of Lehman Brothers, whose failure months earlier sent the world economy into a tailspin.
“It’s highly unusual for a government agency – let alone a Treasury secretary and a Fed official – to virtually order a company to do something like this under threat of removal,”said Cornelius Hurley, director of the Morin Center for Banking and Financial Law at the Boston University School of Law. “It raises a fascinating question which is, if you’re Bank of America and you have a shareholder’s interests paramount in your mind, what is your liability if you go against those interests in the interests of the country?”
Oct. 21 (Bloomberg) — The Obama administration will order seven companies that received the most government assistance to cut salaries of top executives by 90 percent on average, a person familiar with the situation said.
The Treasury Department’s announcement will come this week, the person said on condition of anonymity. Total compensation, including bonuses and other benefits, for the 25 highest-paid executives must be reduced by about 50 percent, the person said.
So maybe this administration is tryingto destroy the big banks by helping them?
CHICAGO (Reuters) – General Motors Co’s bid to find an outsider to replace its chief financial officer is being complicated by pay restrictions imposed on companies that got big U.S. government bailouts, The Wall Street Journal said on Saturday.
GM executives met recently with U.S. Treasury pay czar Kenneth Feinberg and left with the understanding the automaker would be able to offer a significant amount of stock but no more than a $1 million annual salary, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter.
Sources have told Reuters that GM directors in September backed a plan for CFO Ray Young to leave the company.
GM emerged from bankruptcy in July after receiving $50 billion in emergency U.S. financing.
A spokesman for GM would not comment on whether the CFO search specifically was being hindered by the pay restrictions.
“We’ve consistently said that one challenge to filling any position from outside might be the pay restrictions,” GM spokesman Tom Wilkinson said.
We knew this was coming; the best and the brightest avoiding the government controlled companies for just this reason. I wonder how GM is going to pay us back when they go under for real?
The war to flip this country to socialism continues.
“GM borrows $4 billion more, prepares for bankruptcy”
I KNOW I am not the only one that sees the absolute insanity of that headline. If any of us, or any small business owner was in the position of Chrysler or GM trying to get funding, our banks and creditors would be laughing so hard, they would need to change their undies as they were slamming the door on our behinds. Instead, the secured creditors are being kicked to the curb so that the Feds and the UAW can own both these automakers, and if any of you think “we the people” are every going to be paid back, think again. I, for one, stopped buying American made cars a long time ago due to GM’s inability to honor their warranty on the vehicle that I had bought brand new, and because I am one of the working poor that cannot afford to fix a POS every couple of months, (which is what has been going on with the Big 3 for years).
There are definitive reasons why companies go under, and my suggestion to all would be to only buy Ford, (if they get their heads screwed on straight and fly right), or foreign, and tell Chrysler and GM to go take a hike if the feds are going to continue to repay political favors with our children’s and grandchildren’s money, and prop up companies that make sh*tty products. The money to keep GM and Chrysler is not going to the secured creditors who are being asked to take a bigger loss than if the companies actually filed a real bankruptcy and their assets were sold off to repay those same creditors.
At what point are we going to do a Washington DC intervention and inform our government that they can go home because their services are no longer needed? (As always, the bold emphasis that follows is mine.)
DETROIT (Reuters) – General Motors Corp on Friday borrowed another $4 billion from the U.S. Treasury and won a cost-cutting deal from Canadian auto workers as a showdown with bondholders set the stage for a bankruptcy filing by the end of the month.
The latest emergency funds extended by the Obama administration take the total government funding to keep GM afloat since the start of the year to $19.4 billion.
GM said it expected that total to rise to $27 billion after June 1, a government-imposed deadline for the embattled automaker to achieve a sweeping restructuring analysts say will require bankruptcy to complete.
The tentative agreement with the Canadian Auto Workers union, if ratified, would reduce hourly compensation costs by about 28 percent after including a round of concessions the union agreed to give in March.
A day earlier, GM won similar concessions from the United Auto Workers to reduce operating costs and pay the union in stock instead of cash to fund a retiree healthcare trust.
BONDHOLDERS NEXT IN LINE
GM faces a June 1 deadline to restructure its debt and operations and has said it could file for bankruptcy if it fails to get bondholders to agree to forgive some $24 billion — or 90 percent — of the amount they are owed.
Under Obama administration orders, GM has offered bondholders a 10 percent stake in a restructured company.
A spokesman for a committee representing GM bondholders said institutional investors solidly oppose that offer as insufficient.
Ya Think?
“It’s been a universal no from the get-go,” said Nevin Reilly, a committee spokesman. “Bondholders are being seen as speculative bad guys; but bondholders are investors, many of whom put their retirement money into GM.
Critics argue that the Obama administration has favored the position of unionized auto workers and has run roughshod over claims from other creditors in the process.
Four Republican lawmakers sent a letter of protest to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Friday saying that the Obama administration was undermining GM bondholders in order to favor the UAW, a political ally.
“We are extremely concerned that in the name of restructuring General Motors, the presidential task force on the auto industry has begun waging what some believe amounts to a war on capital,” the letter said.
“Bondholders must have a seat at the table during negotiations in how the company would be restructured,” said the letter to Geithner from Representatives Jeb Hensarling, Eric Cantor, Mike Pence and Pete Sessions.
Austan Goolsbee, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers and the autos task force, said GM bondholdersneed to recognize that they must sacrifice.
Have any of you actually spent time watching and listening to Austan Goolsbee? Austan has a running “Today’s AYFKM? Award” for attempting to stand up straight and talk at the same time.
A ray of hope though comes from three Indiana Pension funds that are not rolling over when it comes to the Chrysler Sham, since of course, they are secured debt holders and were knocked from first in line by Bambi and the UAW. Let’s see how long the “rule of law” stands with this administration.
May 20 (Bloomberg) — A group of Indiana pension funds that hold first-lien debt of Chrysler LLC objected to a plan to auction the company’s assets and said a U.S. District Court judge should rule on whether the sale is lawful.
The Indiana State Teachers Retirement Fund, Indiana State Police Pension Trust and Indiana Major Move Construction filed court papers late yesterday and today asking U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Arthur Gonzalez in New York to block the sale, claiming the plan is illegal and tramples their rights. A hearing to approve the sale to a group led by Fiat SpA, or a bidder that tops its $2 billion offer, is scheduled for May 27.
Gonzalez denied a motion by the funds to stay the sale process while they seek a review by the U.S. District Court of whether the sale is proper. The funds’ attorney, Thomas Lauria, said after today’s hearing that the group already had filed papers with the district court.
The funds also have asked for the appointment of a trustee to run Chrysler, saying the company has “ceded control over their business and their restructuring efforts to the United States Treasury Department,” which is using the bankruptcy to reward certain creditors that “the government deems politically important,” according to one of the filings.
“The Treasury Department has taken constructive possession of Chrysler and is requiring it to adopt a sale plan in bankruptcy that violates the most fundamental principles of creditor rights,” lawyers for the pension plans wrote.
There is your pesky rule of law thang, but then again this is coming from the department that is being run by a tax dodger.
President Barack Obama criticized the Non-TARP lenders for refusing to accept an offer that would have paid them about 30 cents on the dollar, saying they forced the automaker’s bankruptcy. The Non-TARP group abandoned its fight to block Chrysler’s sale plan earlier this month, citing political pressure.
Well how very fascist of The One.
And in the “his lips are moving, he must be lying” segment, Bambi on Saturday morning did a C-Span interview where he said the following:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama said in an interview released on Saturday he was confident General Motors would thrive after restructuring, but he made no mention whether the ailing automaker might have to enter bankruptcy to complete reorganization.
Obama, in an interview with the C-SPAN cable television network, said he wanted the government to get out of the auto business as soon as possible, and he said if some auto jobs never return, the government will work to ensure workers are effectively retrained.
“Ultimately, I think that GM is going to be a strong company and we are going to be pulling out as soon as the economy recovers and they’ve completed their restructuring,” Obama said.
The economy recovering will be when we all get a “dodge ball do-over”, or when the second coming actually arrives. But that being said, here are a couple of questions that come to mind…
First, how do “we” pull out of GM when the feds are going to be an owner, and secondly, if by some version of Godsmack, we are paid back, does that mean the UAW gets more of the pie?
Eight days ago I did something I have not done in months; I bought a bottle of wine and drank 3/4 of it in one evening in the hope that a little self-medication would relieve my angst. For 8 days, I have been suspended in that split second of motionless time when you see the train wreck about to occur and are trying to decide whether to watch in horror or turn away. That moment right before time catches up with itself and slams into “real time” and the horror unfolds. The only difference right now is that I do not know what the train is, just that something is coming, and that the usurper in charge is creating more and more instability in the world with his every word and action.
I have been watching the distract and deflect manuevers from the administration, reading the corporate owned newpapers, and digging for information on items that have been blacked out; i.e. David Kellerman, Mark I. Levy, and the swine flu infected pigs in Canada. Yet what we are being fed is the lies about the torture photographs, the lies about Pelosi’s knowledge or lack thereof concerning waterboarding, the Federal Reserve pleading stupid while ‘losing’ $9 Trillion dollars, and all I can think is “How Stupid Do They Think We Are?” The Fed didn’t lose $9 Trillion, they just don’t want to tell anybody where it went; it was Bambi’s idea to release the photographs in the first place, and Nazi Nancy knew about everything because ‘she is what she is’. Meanwhile, TurboTax Cheating Timmie and Bambi are flying the following fascist b*llsh*t right under the radar, and everybody wants to keep calling Barack Obama a socialist, when I believe he is a fascist who thinks he is something of a cross between Hitler and the Ottoman Empire. Read the following excerpt and remember that it gets even better after this. Can anybody identify the traitors to the United States?
Administration in Early Talks on Ways to Curb Compensation Across Finance
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has begun serious talks about how it can change compensation practices across the financial-services industry,including at companies that did not receive federal bailout money, according to people familiar with the matter.
The initiative, which is in its early stages, is part of an ambitious and likely controversial effort to broadly address the way financial companies pay employees and executives, including an attempt to more closely align pay with long-term performance.
Administration and regulatory officials are looking at various options, including using the Federal Reserve’s supervisory powers, the power of the Securities and Exchange Commission and moral suasion. Officials are also looking at what could be done legislatively.
Among ideas being discussed are Fed rules that would curb banks’ ability to pay employees in a way that would threaten the “safety and soundness” of the bank — such as paying loan officers for the volume of business they do, not the quality. The administration is also discussing issuing “best practices” to guide firms in structuring pay.
At the same time, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D., Mass.) is working on legislation that could strengthen the government’s ability both to monitor compensation and to curb incentives that threaten a company’s viability or pose a systemic risk to the economy.
It is unclear how such a bill would fit with what the Fed and others are already considering. But any legislation passed would make it harder for policy makers to dial back limits once the financial crisis subsides.
Any new compensation rules would likely be rolled out alongside a broader revamp of financial-markets regulation that the Treasury is pushing. The compensation effort is the latest example of the government’s increasing focus on aspects of the financial sector that once were untouched.
Say one thing and do another:
Government officials said their effort, which is just beginning, isn’t aimed at setting pay or establishing detailed rules. “This is not going to be about capping compensationor micro-management,” said an administration official. “It will be about understanding what is the best way to align compensation with sound risk management and long-term value creation.”
President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner have both blamed the way banks structured compensation plans for contributing to the financial mess. In February, Mr. Obama said executive pay helped lead to a “reckless culture and a quarter-by-quarter mentality that in turn helped to wreak havoc in our financial system.”
Mr. Geithner recently instructed his staff to begin discussions with the Fed, the SEC and others about ways to address compensation practices.
During a recent congressional hearing, Chairman Ben Bernanke said the Fed was working on rules that will “ask or tell banks to structure their compensation, not just at the very top level but down much further, in a way that is consistent with safety and soundness — which means that payments, bonuses and so on should be tied to performance and should not induce excessive risk.”
In an indication of how broad the effort may become, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair said regulators need to examine compensation practices in the mortgage industry,suggesting new limits could stretch beyond banks.
But Wait! There’s More!
Professor Roubini is not the only economist speaking the truth about the fall of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. After this little blurb, you will see why our dollar is more than likely going to crash, and reduce the once great United States to a third world country that is controlled by the United Nations and the world globalists.
Professor Roubini, of New York University’s Stern business school, believes that while such a major change is some way off, the Chinese government is laying the ground for the yuan’s ascendance.
Known as “Dr Doom” for his negative stance, Prof Roubini argues that China is better placed than the US to provide a reserve currency for the 21st century because it has a large current account surplus, focused government and few of the economic worries the US faces.
In a column in the New York Times, Prof Roubini warns that with the proposal for a new international reserve currency via the International Monetary Fund, Beijing has already begun to take steps to usurp the greenback.
China will soon want to see the yuan included in the International Monetary Fund’s special drawing rights “basket”, he warns, as well as seeing it “used as a means of payment in bilateral trade.”
From the dipshit-in-charge, and the person who will forever be etched in my mind as the perennial winner of the ‘Today’s Are You Freakin’ Kidding Me? Award’, his holiness, Barack Obama.
May 14 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama, calling current deficitspending “unsustainable,” warned of skyrocketing interest rates for consumers if the U.S. continues to finance government by borrowing from other countries.
“We can’t keep on just borrowing from China,” Obama said at a town-hall meeting in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, outside Albuquerque. “We have to pay interest on that debt, and that means we are mortgaging our children’s future with more and more debt.”
Holders of U.S. debt will eventually “get tired” of buying it, causing interest rates on everything from auto loans to home mortgages to increase, Obama said. “It will have a dampening effect on our economy.”
Earlier this week, the Obama administration revised its own budget estimates and raised the projected deficit for this year to a record $1.84 trillion, up 5 percent from the February estimate. The revision for the 2010 fiscal year estimated the deficit at $1.26 trillion, up 7.4 percent from the February figure. The White House Office of Management and Budget also projected next year’s budget will end up at $3.59 trillion, compared with the $3.55 trillion it estimated previously.
Two weeks ago, the president proposed $17 billion in budget cuts, with plans to eliminate or reduce 121 federal programs. Republicans ridiculed the amount, saying that it represented one-half of 1 percent of the entire budget. They noted that Obama is seeking an $81 billion increase in other spending.
This is $17 Billion in cuts after some $12 Trillion in spending. What few realize is that the U.S. is $1.24 QUADRILLION in debt when the Social Security balloon is added into the equation, yet this frakkin’ idiot and the brain dead congress are spending with no concern for us or future generations because it appears they definitely know something we don’t.
In his New Mexico appearance, the president pledged to work with Congress to shore up entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare. He also said he was confident that the House and Senate would pass health-care overhaul bills by August.
“Most of what is driving us into debt is health care, so we have to drive down costs,” he said.
NO! What is driving us into debt is the ponzi scheme of Social Security and BARACK OBAMA’S ADMINISTRATION AND DEMOCRAT DRIVEN CONGRESS who have now been empowered after 100 years of bad decisions and unconstitutional laws and mandates being passed by frakkin’ socialists. The Founding Fathers are way past turning in their graves now.
“We’ve got a long way to go before we put this recession behind us,” Obama said. “But we do know that the gears of our economy, our economic engine, are slowly beginning to turn.”
If that were true, Chrysler and GM would not be the situation they are in, credit would not still be frozen after the TARP money was dispersed, (the banks are waiting for the commercial real estate bubble to pop), and we would NOT be reading these headlines:
BOSTON (MarketWatch) — Fitch Ratings on Friday gave the markets notice that it may issue wholesale ratings downgrades on the U.S. banking sector if credit conditions and the economy continue to worsen.
Given all that information in one little string of facts over marketing, here is something everybody should be thinking about and considering; do you believe there are late night meetings at the WH that are attended by David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, and Michelle Obama while his holiness sleeps? Would this not explain:
His absolute need for a cheat-sheet called a teleprompter, and
His inability to make a decision and stick with it because it wasn’t his idea to begin with?
How far off do you think I am? Now excuse me, I have a train wreck to watch…
