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So California is issuing IOUs? Why are the state’s creditors are letting them use IOUs instead of promissory notes? The state needs to declare bankruptcy already and get it over with. The longer Governor Schwarzenegger delays the inevitable, the messier it’s going to be.
Hubbard posted this at 10:05 AM EDT on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 as Bailoutistan
The Fed’s capping executive pay at $1,ooo,ooo through the tax code in the 1980s lead to current incentive based executive compensation via stock options. Now, Comrade Barry wants to further limit executive pay.
The last time they tried this feel good communist crap we got the system that is now, according to them, broken. Who wants to bet that whatever crazy scheme they come up with now will be just as bad, if not worse?
What happens when people can’t get what they think they are worth? They move to place where they can. If Barry and Barney want to destroy American business and decimate the job market they are on the right track.
Jamie posted this at 2:11 PM EDT on Thursday, June 11th, 2009 as Bailoutistan, That's Not Change!
There’s a Dodge Magnum that always parks near me at the school parking lot. I don’t much care for the car, but it’s somewhat distinctive, so I can understand why someone might like it.
With that in mind, I was blown away by these sales numbers from Chrysler. Last month, they sold 5 (five) Dodge Magnums. Nationwide. This is not an expensive or unknown car; it ranges from $23k-38k and has been featured in multiple nationwide advertising campaigns. Compare that to Dodge’s high end sports car, the Viper, which starts at $91k and is never, to my knowledge, advertised. Chrysler sold 29 of those last month. (Compare to 112 Bentleys and 116 Ferraris; hell, even the preposterously pretentious and overpriced Maybach sold 7.)
Obviously, all of those sales numbers from Chrysler suck, and they should really give second thoughts regarding the wisdom of saving this company through bailouts and by taking money from creditors and giving it to unions. But I was just blown away by the Magnum sales numbers. They’ve only sold 77 this year – that’s like 1.5 per state. And last year’s numbers were pretty crappy too, considering how much of an advertising push that car had behind it.
Apollo posted this at 2:20 PM EDT on Monday, May 4th, 2009 as Bailoutistan
President Obama wants to cut federal spending by $100 million. All well and good, but here’s a graphic that shows how big that cut really is (H/T).
Hubbard posted this at 11:54 AM EDT on Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 as Bailoutistan, CHANGE!, It's Economics - Stupid!
The Obama Administration is thinking of putting restrictions on bailout loan repayment.
Why would they do that? Well because repaying the loans would prevent them from converting said loans to equity as a backdoor to nationalization.
Instead of letting the banks fail the Federal Government saw this as a path to more power and control.
I’m shocked.
Jamie posted this at 1:44 PM EDT on Monday, April 20th, 2009 as Bailoutistan
Oh come on, you can’t tell me you all didn’t see this coming.
Jamie posted this at 9:27 AM EDT on Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 as Bailoutistan, The Democratic Congress
California is going bust, and the British are amused:
How did this happen? Sure, the economy is bad. But this is a state whose money comes from the most bankable economic assets on Earth – the Long Beach ports, the Central Valley agricultural region, the defence contractors out in the Mojave desert, Silicon Valley, Napa Valley… Hollywood. How do you tax all this and end up amassing debts at the present rate of $1.7 million per hour?
Perhaps it has something to do with the man running the place. And I am ashamed to say that, yes, when the actor most famous for playing a killer robot in a so-so B-movie ran for governor, I was behind him. I defended his fiscally conservative, socially moderate agenda and loveable tendency to work movie tag lines into important policy debates. I believed in Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the “governator”. And like the five million Californians who voted for him, I’m feeling a bit silly now.
A lack of appreciation of the past has been a hallmark of California politics for some time now. My co-blogger Apollo aptly quoted Ghân-buri-Ghân to this effect:
Many paths were made when Stonehouse-folk were stronger. They carved hills as hunters carve beast-flesh. Wild Men think they ate stone for food.
Infrastructure didn’t just arise out of the desert. It took generations to build—and only a single generation to wreck. Will the state get a bailout?
Hubbard posted this at 9:42 AM EST on Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 as Bailoutistan, It's Economics - Stupid!
Obama’s unprecedented power derives from the astonishing events of the past four months that have made indistinct the line between public and private sectors. Neither the public as currently alarmed, nor Congress as currently constituted, nor the Constitution as currently construed is an impediment to hitherto unimagined executive discretion in allocating vast portions of the nation’s wealth.
Tom posted this at 12:16 PM EST on Wednesday, January 21st, 2009 as Bailoutistan
The levels of bad government involved in this story astound. Why does the White House insist that Congress “failed” to act? Rather, they succeeded in not acting, which is the toughest thing to do in these circumstances, and something to be lauded.
But, of course, Congress is to be blaimed for giving the administration $700 billion, no strings attached. Plainly this is not what was intended; we were all told that bailing out banks was a unique circumstance, if the banks fail we’d all fail. That can’t be true of GM.
I hope those who supported the original bailout are pleased with their handiwork. Some of us knew this was a path to unending government bailouts of anyone with a lobbyist who felt like whining. Now, money that was supposed to be used to keep credit flowing and small businesses open is instead being used to keep an oppressive labor union from bringing its practices into the 21st century, and multi-billion dollar corporations with idiotic management from harvesting what they’ve sowed. Now we’re propping them up, in an economic downturn where auto sales obviously won’t be picking up anytime soon.
This reliance on mega-corporations is very 1960s. What’s going on now is a futile and extraordinarily costly attempt to keep dinosaurs alive in an environment better suited to smaller, more versatile creatures. Why not let these three automakers flounder and a dozen pop up in their place? If there’s room in the market place for both GMC and Chevy trucks when both are owned by the same company and are identical (except for a mild variation in headlights), imagine how much better the market would be if we had a GMC and a Chevy that were competing against each other. It’s 2008 and some still think we’re dependent on three automakers and a union that’s a parody of Wagner Act stupidity? Talk about a failure of imagination.
And just as with the original dinosaurs, these guys are not savable. The only question is how much good money will we continue to throw after bad. The answer from the Bush administration, enabled by the nitwits in Congress and those who panicked back in September by supporting this chain of bailouts, is “untold trillions.” We’ve no reason to expect that the incoming administration is going to be better; indeed, we’ve every reason to believe that this impending bankruptcy was a once in a generation chance to give Detroit a chance at regaining competitiveness. Now the Bush administration has ruined it, and steered the government down the road to nationalization, a path that the next administration probably won’t object to very loudly.
This is going to take decades to unravel, if we’re lucky.
Apollo posted this at 12:22 PM EST on Saturday, December 13th, 2008 as Bailoutistan, It's Economics - Stupid!
Aside from the hilarity of the accusation itself, the fact that it’s an immigrant purporting to lecture Americans on what is and isn’t American is amusing in its own right. Is that why tens of millions of people from around the world have dreamed of coming to America: Because we bail out failing corporations? Life, liberty, and the pursuit of government handouts?
And I assume the deafening roar outside isn’t a strong Texas wind, but rather the cacophony caused all the people who have been griping for years that somehow Republicans are “questioning their patriotism” denouncing Granholm for calling these senators bad Americans.
Apollo posted this at 5:53 PM EST on Friday, December 12th, 2008 as Bailoutistan
It looks like Joe Barton (R-Bailoutistan) is on the “Why the hell not?” bandwagon:
“If we can give the AIG’s and the Wells Fargos and the JPMorgans of the world — each of those individual companies — between $40 and $45 billion,” then certainly the carmakers deserve a $15 billion bridge loan.
The key word there is “deserve.” I believe it was Aristotle who defined justice as “Giving each man the bailout he deserves.”
Apollo posted this at 10:01 PM EST on Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 as Bailoutistan, Philosophy