One Utah

Conservatives, as David Sirota noted, have a new favorite talking point: FDR and the New Deal made the great depression worse. Conservatives are arguing fervently in a desperate attempt to derail a major economic stimulus plan from the incoming Obama administration. A number of writers - UC Davis Professor Eric Rauchway and UC [...]

Oh yeah, this just keeps gettin’ better ‘n better.
Eugene Robinson:
To recap: We’re in the midst of a global financial crisis. The housing bubble has burst and prices have collapsed. The economy has been in recession for a year. Unemployment has risen to 6.7 percent, and if “marginally attached” workers are included — those who have [...]

Think again.
It turns out that George Bush, determined to the end to do as much damage as possible before leaving office, created a giant loophole for executive compensation for companies receiving bailout funds.
From the Washington Post:
Congress wanted to guarantee that the $700 billion financial bailout would limit the eye-popping pay of Wall Street executives, so [...]

I’ve not yet taken a firm position on the ‘auto bailout’.  I am sympathetic to Mark Nickolas ‘ position.
I realize that I’m going to get a ton of grief for this from my friends and colleagues, and I really hate it when I find myself siding with the Republican Party on policy — because they’re [...]

Not an actual photo of the U.S. Senate
Reckless driving by lame duck Senate Republicans resulted in a massive multi-car pileup on Capitol Hill last night.
From a TPM source “who works in that big building with the dome”:
I do think it’ll be hard for Senate Republicans to explain themselves.
They were invited, repeatedly, to participate [...]

Now if this story doesn’t make you utterly lose it, then you must indeed have achieved perfect Zen. You will recall that we, the taxpayers, just gave AIG $152 Billion in bailout money with no strings attached.
So they’ve decided not to give out bonuses this year. That’s sounds right; after all, bonuses are [...]

With reports this morning of 553,000 jobs lost in November and that one in ten American mortgages in trouble :’
A record one in 10 American homeowners with a mortgage were either at least a month behind on their payments or in foreclosure at the end of September as the source of housing market pressure shifted [...]

Love them or hate them, US automakers directly and indirectly account for millions of jobs. They may deserve to fail, they may be able to save themselves by at long last adopting exactly the kinds of corporate policies they should have adopted years ago - making better, more fuel efficient, more reliable, more commercially [...]

What do you do when your demand driven economy is saddled with a demand side that is under-performing?
The reality we face is summed up by Robert Reich:
. . . when the economy has as much underutilized capacity as we have now, and are likely to have more of in 2009 and 2010 (in all likelihood, [...]

The new “Bailout” talk is all about the auto industry. Should they be bailed out? Shouldn’t they? How much? What method? Why?
Here is the first question that pops into my head on the issue: When was the last time you heard good news about the American auto industry? If [...]

I’m sorry this video isn’t embedded - CNBC didn’t offer that option; maybe I’ll figure it out later. Click on the graphic to link.

CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo discusses the future of Citigroup with the company’s largest shareholder, one of the wealthiest people in the world Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal of Saudi Arabia.
Is our Citigroup [...]

Pure free-marketers argue that the automakers should be allowed to fail and go bankrupt without any taxpayer aid. I’m predicting this lame duck congress will do nothing, but that as soon as the new president and congress are seated in January, help for the industry will be forthcoming.
As I listen to various [...]