Bailout

This Sucker Could Go Down

Crises seem to awaken the inner poet of the commentariat, and the Crash of 2008 is no exception.

In the effort to wrap the mind around a phenomenon as expansive and convoluted as this one, literal description falls short. And so the metaphor mills have been grinding at full capacity.

'It's like living through an extended earthquake,' explained television commentator David Brancaccio, 'only we don't know yet if it's the big one or a foreshock of a big one to come.'

Posted in Politics, Bailout

Lawmakers Lash Wall Street Execs at Hearings

WASHINGTON - If Wall Street executives are hoping to forestall a wave of new regulations of the finance industry next year, they'd better hope the public isn't watching the hearings in Congress this week.

The top executives of Lehman Bros., which has filed for bankruptcy, and AIG, which has been propped up by an $85 billion federal bailout, are taking a public whipping for their role in the financial crisis - and they're quickly becoming the poster children for greed and mismanagement on Wall Street.

Posted in Bailout

Latin Leftists Gloating Over 'Comrade' Bush's Bailout

CARACAS, Venezuela - They don't call him President Bush in Venezuela anymore.

Now he's known as "Comrade."

With the Bush administration's Treasury Department resorting to government bailout after government bailout to keep the U.S. economy afloat, leftist governments and their political allies in Latin America are having a field day, gloating one day and taunting Bush the next for adopting the types of interventionist government policies that he's long condemned.

Posted in Economy/Trade, Bailout, Latin America

Bailing Out a Boat Full of Holes

BOSTON - The U.S. Treasury's bonanza from Congress to hand out 700 billion dollars to Wall Street is not what the country needs to right its shaky economy, many independent experts say.

"Despite the bailout, it's clear the economy is going into a deep recession," Robert E. Scott, senior international economist at the Economic Policy Institute, told IPS.

Posted in Bailout

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 7, 2008
1:37 PM

CONTACT: Congressman Dennis Kucinich
Nathan White (202) 225-5871

Kucinich: Wall Street Insider Cannot Be an Unbiased Broker

Secretary Paulson Appoints Fox to Guard Hen House

WASHINGTON - October 7 - Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today spoke out against Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's decision to name Neel Kashkari as interim assistant secretary for financial stability who will head up the bailout program within the Treasury.

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Posted in Economy/Trade, Politics, Bailout

Wall St. Implodes, but Bad Ideas Survive

The largest savings and loan and the largest insurance company go belly up. One trillion dollars lost in the stock market in one day. Two trillion dollars lost in housing values. Congress hands the Treasury secretary $700 billion in a panicked vote and heads out of town. This isn't the failure of one firm, or one industry. We are witnessing the collapse of a failed ideology -- what the famed investor George Soros calls "market fundamentalism," the belief that markets are always perfect and government should deregulate, cut taxes and get out of the way.

Posted in Economy/Trade, Bailout

Lehman Chief on Hot Seat

WASHINGTON - The now-bankrupt investment bank Lehman Bros. arranged millions in bonuses for fired executives as it pleaded for a federal lifeline, lawmakers learned Monday, as Congress began investigating what went so wrong on Wall Street to prompt a $700 billion government bailout.

Posted in Activism, Bailout

Environment: Twisted As Unnaturally as the Banks

BARCELONA - The financial meltdown in most of the industrialised world presents an opportunity for a new economic model that would end short-sighted search for high returns, according to leading economists attending the IUCN World Conservation Congress here.

"Right now, the most conservative leaders in the industrialised world, such as George W. Bush of the U.S. and Angela Merkel of Germany are allocating public money to save the banks from bankruptcy," Alejandro Nadal, a Mexican economist attending the congress told IPS.

Posted in Economy/Trade, Bailout

This Green Subsidy for Car Makers Is Just a Disguised Corporate Bailout

While all eyes were fixed on the banking bail-out, a bucketload of public money was quietly sloshed into the pockets of another undeserving cause. Last week, George Bush agreed to lend $25bn to US car manufacturers. It's a soft loan, which will cost the government $7.5bn. Few people noticed; fewer fought it. The House of Representatives approved the measure by 370 votes to 58. The great corporate bail-out is spreading like the plague.

Posted in Economy/Trade, Environment, Politics, Bailout, Climate Change

Bailout Dish Has Heaping Side of Pork

Here we are, in the midst of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, and the members of the U.S. Senate are busy dispensing pork in a shameless fashion.

In their vote on the $700 billion Wall Street bailout Wednesday night, senators packed the bill with scores of lavish goodies to please favored groups and win support from opponents in today's House vote.

Take, for instance, Section 305 of the 450-page bill, "Modifications of Energy Efficient Appliance Credit."

Posted in Economy/Trade, Politics, Bailout