Nov

28

We write these people off. Look past them as if they do not exist. Did you know that many of the homeless work full time jobs? Many have to live on fixed income. How about we put our heads together and come up with some affordable housing for these people.

Nov

27

Repeat. This is not a recession.

I will change my mind when someone shares with me a prior recession that involved:

- Total collapse of the mortgage market requiring government takeover

- Collapse of our banking infrastruture requiring govenment bailout

- 40% drop of the DOW

 

Nov

26

Most of the current finanacial pundants are full of crap. Many are so clueless as to refer to the housing rise in the last ten years as a “bubble”. Give me a break. If you consider dim wit banks lending money to people without the means of paying it back, not checking their credit, then lending them more on the paper equity gains as a bubble then you are as daffy as they are.

Even the GAO, whose papers are enough to put anyone into a coma reported in October 2007, “Overall, the number and percentage of mortgages in default or foreclosure rose sharply from the second quarter of 2005 through the second quarter of 2007 to levels at or near historical highs” [Default and Foreclosure Trends: GAO-08-78R].

DO NOT equate this nonsense to capitalism, equate this to stupidity of our business leaders in reckless and unprecendented ways that when one examines the facts are almost unimaginable.

What we have been through are corporate boards and senior leadership that have run the American economy into the ground with the help of many still employed in our current government. Someone share with me how it became okay for business to…

- Pay dividends to shareholders when you are losing money (sometimes big money).
- Loan money without credit checks to people that have spotty credit
- Raise salaries and payout bonuses to executives that continue to lose money
- Make billions through derivative trading which are contracts that these days are abused to bet on real equities.
- Pay billions for contracts called “credit default swaps” that are backed by absolutely NOTHING!

BUT HERE IS THE REAL KICKER…

Nov. 18th  - Bank of America will pay about $7 billion to double its stake in China Construction Bank Corp. Didn’t we give these bastards bailout money? Where is the damn money we gave AIG? WHERE IS THE TRANSPARENCY???

Outrageous!

I for one cannot wait for the nightmare we have had to endure under the Bush administration to end.

Nov

25

We are hung up on terms. It is interesting to note that it is hard to find a common definition for these terms depression and recession.

Here is something to consider. Do you think in 1929 and the early thirties that the American public thought they were going through the “great depression?”

What they did understand was that times were hard, jobs were scarce, people were uncertain about the future.

Nov

22

Buy the Big Three

November 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment

The current value of GM is $1.73 billion dollars. Ford is currently worth $3 billion. I am serious. To buy 100% of their stock would cost less than $5 billion. We should not bail them out, we should buy the big three.

-government nationalize the big three (only until we retool)
-replace their senior leadership (including their board of directors)
-bring in a transition team, people like Romney, Icahn, Pickens
-retool, begin building natural gas cars
-aggresively pursue cars that…
  -reduce carbon emmissions
  -are more fuel efficient
-radical retooling
-radical change of makes and models
-begin creating national infrastructure for distribution of CNG at our gas stations
Nationalizing the auto industry is not unprecented.

On February 7th 1942, the federal government ordered passenger car production stopped and converted to wartime purposes.

Folks, this may not be a war, but it is pretty dire and letting these same fools that have run their companies into the ground and their inept board of directors and other leaders is just a bad investment. Time to buy them and clean house.

Let us not forget how Fannie and Freddie started. And, how they ended.

We do have to figure out how to deal with the other auto makers that are here employing Americans that have not run their businesses like a bunch of idiots.

Nov

19

First some facts

Fact-

CEO Pay 2007
General Motors Corp   
Rick Wagoner   
$15.7 million

Ford Motor Corp       
Alan Mulally   
$22 million

Fact-

Ford lost 2.7 billion in 2007

GM lost 39 billion in 2007

Now those numbers sure deserve a big bonus payout, huh? 

Fact-

When asked by Congress if they would be willing to accept $1 in salary, like Lee Iacocca did for the bailout in the 80’s, only Chrysler’s Nardelli said he would consider it.

Fact-

All three came to Congress on their private corporate jets asking for public money to run their private corporations.

The sheer arrogance of their behavior.
On GM’s website their is a link “Corporate Responsibility”. Now there is an oxymoron. GM’s web site is nothing more than Madison avenue marketing spin. But back to these three goons.

Do you really think the American people want to fund you while you cut jobs, close plants while you keep your $22 million dollar salary? I DON’T THINK SO!!!.

I don’t even want you to keep being the CEO for a dollar. I we are going to bail these companies out I want to do so with new leadership. If I failed to the degree you three have failed on my job I would be fired. Rightly so. Why should these three be any different? What are their board of directors doing as well?
 
These people are not capitalists, they are socialists not much different than the likes of Marie Antoinette

Some final facts.
According to our govenment (http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/h09ar.html) the mean household income in America in 2006 was $48,201. This is household income. But, for the sake of argument let’s equate this income to one worker. Let’s further add 3% increase for two years and another 30% to cover benefits. That brings us to $66,477.

Now dividing this number into Mullaly’s $22 million salary we come up with 331 jobs. If we are going to have socialism I would rather employee 330 than you Alan.
 

Nov

19

Memo to Federal Government:

-Bail them out

But, under following conditions

* CEOs are fired immediately

* New CEO pay structure, capped and based on performance incentives

* Money only comes after they submit a business plan that is approved by the fed

* Fed will hire independent experts to evaluate the business plan.

 

Nov

18

…from the boadroom on down! Especially in the boardroom!

…Are you a company taking a bailout from the American people?

The last thing you want to do is have us catch you spending our money on foolish expenditures. A bonus would be the most foolish of them all. We will catch you.  

It is time your leadership gets a clue and goes back to the days when bonuses were doled out when the business MADE A PROFIT!!!

This is yet another glowing example of business gone mad. Greed, stupidity, a lack of sound business principles that are grounded in common sense and fairness.

For certain we need to regulate large businesses. The fact that GM is marketing and spending MONEY on advertising, lobbying for a bailout is reason enough. Companies should not be able to get so large that they can flex their muscle and try to hold us and our government hostage.

Are these not the same Captains of business that rallied when times were good for free market enterprise and less regulation?

Hmmmmm. Well my vote is that if we must bail them out we get as part of bailout to put voting seats on their board so we can start efforts to replace the current leadership in these companies as they are clearly not getting the job done. Sorry, the current demands our govenment is making are not nearly enough.

Nov

15

Sunset is an angel weeping
Holding out a bloody sword
No matter how I squint I cannot
Make out what it’s pointing toward
Sometimes you feel like you live too long
Days drip slowly on the page
You catch yourself
Pacing the cage

I’ve proven who I am so many times
The magnetic strip’s worn thin
And each time I was someone else
And every one was taken in
Powers chatter in high places
Stir up eddies in the dust of rage
Set me to pacing the cage

I never knew what you all wanted
So I gave you everything
All that I could pillage
All the spells that I could sing
It’s as if the thing were written
In the constitution of the age
Sooner or later you’ll wind up
Pacing the cage

Sometimes the best map will not guide you
You can’t see what’s round the bend
Sometimes the road leads through dark places
Sometimes the darkness is your friend
Today these eyes scan bleached-out land
For the coming of the outbound stage
Pacing the cage

By Bruce Cockburn

This is one those songs that just seems to resonate to our own life. The words stand on their own but when accompanied by the music are something quite profound. Listen to Bruce Cockburns “Pacing the Cage”

 

Nov

15

The big three automakers clearly have their heads up their rear ends. Even the airlines (not much brighter) had the sense to renegotiate their labor contracts when they were going in the tank.

The three stooges need to do three strategic things:

1) Renegotiate with the labor unions. What choice do they have? The alternative is you go bankrupt and it happens this way anyway.

2) Contract your business to the current demand. If the labor unions do not like this as well… tough! The alternative is you go bankrupt and it happens this way anyway.

3) Start building fuel efficient cars people want to buy. Get off your ego and follow the lead of Toyota.

In order to accomplish 1-3 you will need to fire yourselves as you are clearly too clueless to accomplish 1-3.

Unless the Czar can do something akin to parting the Red sea I think we could spend the bailout money in better ways than giving it to three businesses with leadership too clueless to put it to good use.

 

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