Too Big to Fail

Economic analysis from the Austin Lounge Lizards stock tank think tank (thesis written by Lindsey Eck).

 

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Sixty Percent Good for the Country?

1953: GM President Charles Erwin Wilson tells the Senate Armed Services Committee “for years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa.”

2009: The United States Government takes 60 percent ownership of General Motors.

 

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Running on Empty

The General Motors Corporation files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this morning.

There was some good news for Detroit, though. The Red Wings beat the Pittsburgh Penguins in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup finals last night.

Win some, lose some.

 

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Job Creation

Professor James Francis Durante explains the employment stimulus provisions of the National Recovery Act.  A classic of Keynesian cinema.

 

 

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.  All Talking, All Singing, All Dancing. Support the NRA. Buy War Bonds. Children’s Section, Matron On Duty. Smoking in Balcony Only. Come On In, It’s Cool Inside.

Economics Quote of the Day

“Wall Street is no longer, in any real sense, part of the private sector. It’s a ward of the state, every bit as dependent on government aid as recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, a k a ‘welfare.’ “

“In 2008, overpaid bankers taking big risks with other people’s money brought the world economy to its knees. The last thing we need is to give them a chance to do it all over again. “

 — Paul Krugman, professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University and winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics, in the New York Times.

 

Image (Corporate Socialism, after B. Lebedev) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Meltdown Limits Medical Resources

For the first time in years, hospital employment has declined. Medical facilities are laying off employees in New York City, Philadelphia, and Ohio; Milwaukee-area hospitals lost $45 million in the last five months; over 45 million Americans lack health insurance; public hospitals deny cancer patients chemotherapy; U.S. hospitals are going bankrupt and closing.

Troubled times call for great sacrifices. The School of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco has imposed drastic new financial limits. From this date forward, UCSF doctors and administrators will have to limit expense account wine purchases to $75 per bottle or less.

McCain Responds to the Budget Proposal

Senator John McCain, speaking for Republicans because Rush Linbaugh was busy, presented his party’s fiscal year 2010 federal budget counter-proposal in words of two letters, all of them spelled “N-O.”

Car Arrears Careers

Job seekers, especially those weighing over 200 pounds, will want to read this article by Phillip O’Connor in today’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Auto loans are more expensive, more people are unemployed and “upside-down” on their car loans, securities composed of toxic auto loans clog the financial system, and TALF benefits haven’t reached car loan companies.

What it all  means: more work for the Repo Man.

“It’s 4 A.M., do you know where your car is?”

No More Foreclosed Homes

What’s all this blather about falling real estate values and home foreclosures? Stuff and nonsense.

Just look around you. There are no more “Foreclosed Homes” —  just “Bank-Owned” houses and “Motivated Sales.”

Just ask any Realtor®.

 

Caution:There are many underperfoming assets on the Real Estate Euphemism Market today. Not all semantic shifts and short sales of logic are bank-approved. Demand documents written in a language actually understood by some living human population without third-party approval.

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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The Economy — Top 25 People to Blame

Time picked the “25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis” and invites you to rank-order the most culpable meltdown miscreants. Number one to date is – no surprise – Texas Republican and Swiss banker Phil Gramm, PhD.

Here are the current poll standings for these polecats, and Time’s rationale for the feature.

 

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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