Bailouts

Investors Business Daily ("What the Government Can't Do"), whose editorials are must-reads for hard news the establishment media will either ignore or downplay, has tipped readers off to the poor reviews General/Government Motors and Chrysler cars are receiving. These would include the latest automaker report cards compiled by Consumer Reports magazine. Nearly one year into their new lives as…

Everyone is still looking for a scapegoat for the financial crisis that precipitated the current economic malaise. And one of the popular targets has been former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. Greenspan recently testified on Capitol Hill and was pressed about how he may have contributed to the financial crisis. According to Suze Orman, host of CNBC's "The Suze Orman Show," some of…

One would think that in a story about how a four-year move-up of higher fleet gas mileage requirements being imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency would at least look at which manufacturers might be more or less affected by them based on what they currently sell, and how those sales are trending. Well, most readers here don't think like writers at the Associated Press. Heck, in his…

Government/General Motors announced today that it lost $4.3 billion during the second half of 2009 (actually from July 10 through the end of the year). A further look at that result will come later after yours truly has time to digest GM's 10K Report to the Securities and Exchange Commission. What stood out even further for me about the announcement was GM's top line, i.e., global revenues. That…

Jesse Jackson, the civil rights leader, has moved on from the health care debate and found a new oppressed, downtrodden minority: student loan recipients. And naturally, the Huffington Post was happy to afford "the Reverend" a platform for his activism.   "A plan to earn debt forgiveness retroactively must be instituted at once as an acknowledgment that an entire generation is mired in tens of…

Democratic congressional efforts to steer the economy not working as advertised. The $787-billion stimulus passed back in early 2009 failed to curb unemployment as promised, and there are other risks of putting a blind trust in government to solve the nation's economic woes. And to give credit where credit is due, CNN's Christine Romans is pointing these risks out. On the April 5 broadcast of…

Invoking the name of objectivist/libertarian writer-philosopher Ayn Rand, hardly a common citation in television news, ABC’s Jake Tapper, on Sunday’s This Week, confronted former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan with how he recognized a “flaw” in his perspective as he had conceded “markets cannot necessarily be trusted to completely police themselves.” Tapper wondered:But isn't it more…

Is it possible to be so wrapped up in a media culture that one could minimize a sacred religious holiday in a shoddy attempt to write a clever headline? Mediaite's Tommy Christopher and his editors seemed to have pulled this feat off. Christopher, who has had a much-publicized run-in with Andrew Breitbart, has a new hero, former American Enterprise Institute scholar David Frum. Christopher…

Green jobs to save the American economy?  If you have listened to the various politicos on the left end of the spectrum, especially before and after the passage of the $787-billion stimulus package earlier, you would think that is the cure-all. But so far it isn't working and there are other fundamental problems that lie ahead according to some energy market analysts, like much higher oil…

Yesterday, Government/General Motors announced changes in its financial management team. Chris Liddell, who himself just started at GM in January, brought on a new VP to be involved with its pension investments. More interestingly, he hired a new VP and Treasurer with an interesting background (bold is mine): During his 11 years at Morgan Stanley (head of Industrials Investment Banking), (Daniel…

Did you know that the Obama administration owns stock in beleaguered financial giant Citigroup NOT the taxpayers?You might have gotten that impression from a Washington Post article published Saturday.Take a look at the second paragraph of David Cho's piece on speculation that there's an imminent stock transaction about to transpire involving Citigroup and the federal government (h/t NBer…

A March 25 article in the New York Times by Elizabeth Jensen announced the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is setting up seven regional reporting projects, called Local Journalism Centers. Each center will hire editors and reporters to work on local issues using federal funds from public broadcasting. The Centers represent the government’s first, small steps into the journalism business. A…

Left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore and CNBC's Rick Santelli couldn't be more philosophically opposite. Style of argument differs too: Michael Moore assumes the worst in people that oppose his view. In a March 12 appearance on WNYC 93.9 FM/820 AM's "The Brian Lehrer Show," Moore was asked to react to Rick Santelli's February 2009 call for action against the Obama administration proposal to offer a…

In a segment on the banking industry on CBS's Sunday Morning, fill-in anchor Anthony Mason cited the movie "It's A Wonderful Life" and wondered: "Who would you say is today's equivalent of the movie's villain, the dastardly Mister Potter?" His answer: "If you ask the Huffington Post's web mistress Arianna Huffington, it's these guys." Footage rolled of big bank CEOs. Mason touted Huffington's…