wikistan

White House Economic Adviser: Jobs Picture is Still Terrible.

Economy

Politico digs deep -DEEP! – to find a quote praising the Obama Administration’s executive pay mandates for bailout corporations:

“We commend the pay czar and the administration for telling the people who crashed the economy that they need to make the same sacrifices main street and real America have been forced to take on as a result of the economic crisis,” said Dan Pedrotty, director of the AFL-CIO Office of Investment. “The American people are fed up with watching Wall Street play by a different set of rules and pretend like the economic crisis which they created is for everyone else to suffer through and not them.”

Could they have quoted a more obvious position?

Economy, Politics czar, executive pay, obama

Cannibalizing blighted real estate, that is.

Here’s a fun, revealing fact:  The cities of Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Detroit, Toledo, Flint, Dayton, Canton have had a total of fifty-seven mayors since 1970*.

All but nine have been Democrats.

Here’s to your future, Rust Belt!

* based on wildy inaccurate and biased Wikipedia information.

All Topics, Economy, Politics Economy, mayors, rust belt

A curious trend considering the legendary quality control institutionalized in non-union Japanese transplants couldn’t possibly have.  Just. Stopped. Working.

It’s like they just started cranking out the lemons.

Some recent examples:  Toyota’s Prius has crap headlights. Honda’s Insight sucks.   But Obama’s people’s car Chevy’s Volt?  It’s gonna kick both their asses.

Don’t think for a minute that the hard earned record of marketplace success enjoyed by Japanese automakers over the decades– witnessed by millions of objective consumers — is immune from the extraordinary influence of a political-media machine mostly concerned with propagating the worst kinds of marketplace manipulation in the name of “Change”.

Economy, Media, Politics, SocioFascism chrysler, gm, honda, obama, toyota, union

Let’s get this shit done before the mid-terms!

The Congress-critters are lining up right now to vote on this without reading it, just like TARP.

Economy, SocioFascism health care, obama

127,510.  Still down 29% or something from the year before but it’s not 12,751.  Or zero.

Economy chevy

I once gave a speech that this was the wrong nationalization at the wrong time.

Economy gmac, Iraq

The federal government is in the process of seizing ownership of two major American corporations with the sole intent of dividing its equity between the government and one of its largest political donors.

But it was Bush who trampled the Constitution with “illegal” wiretaps and, in other matters, fired his own employees for political reasons.

What constituency did Bush reward with wiretapping?

Where are the consitutional critics who not only blasted Bush’s “overreach” on legal (and congressionally-approved) warrantless wiretaps but went as far to call for his impeachment over the matter?

The silence is strange.  After all, the wiretapping program had received congressional support, and although parts of the program were rebuked by the courts as unconstitutional, the current administration not only supports the concept but employs it as deemed necessary in the global fight against terror.

How possibly can we view the Chrysler takeover as a constituional action?

Cliff Asness couldn’t have described the Chrysler annexation more clearly:

“The President’s attempted diktat takes money from bondholders and gives it to a labor union that delivers money and votes for him. Why is he not calling on his party to “sacrifice” some campaign contributions, and votes, for the greater good? Shaking down lenders for the benefit of political donors is recycled corruption and abuse of power.”

Of course, we’re told, it’s NOT socialism.  It’s NOT fascism.  So what the hell is happening here?

Economy, SocioFascism chrysler, hedge fund, obama

The scraps of a dead car company are being pulled apart by statist bullies and anxious creditors with legal standing.

In the end, it seems like there was more of an urge to save union jobs than to save a struggling company.

Economy, SocioFascism chrysler, uaw

Vodkapundit remarks on the curious, um, remarks from the New York Times regarding the massive economic stimulus in early 1930’s Germany, otherwise known as GigantArschficker.*

(The NYT link requires a user name and password, which I will most certainly not provide).

* best available German translation

Economy, SocioFascism nyt, obama

The budget alternative includes proposals for a (much) flatter income tax system, a tax holiday for capital gains and estate tax, and a lower corporate income tax rate.

Economy, Politics budget, Economy, gop

Shy, reclusive billionaire George Soros denies any wrongdoing after his pet project is fined after crashing Hungarian financial markets:

In a statement Friday, Hungarian-born Soros responded he had been informed of the fine but insisted that he was not involved in the transactions.

“I no longer control the Soros Fund Management’s operations, I retired last year and now only oversee the transactions to do with my private account,” he said in the statement, published by Hungarian news agency MTI.

He’s  just a peaceful, content old man tending to his tomato plants.  And by tomato plants I mean strategic financial and propaganda campaigns purposed with enshrining the international left.

Soros has expressed regret, but what was done was done.  It’s in the past now.  Shall we move on?

Economy, SocioFascism financial, hungary, markets, soros

Although, he  just “ran” GM by running its CEO out of office, the President . . is . . .just. . not . . that. . . into. . . running car companies. But that doesn’t mean he discards the idea of using the production of automobiles to remake America.   The ground work is getting laid here for something big. . .

Also from today’s speech:

Obama addressed industry workers, a crucial constituency, saying that while there may be more pain to come, “I will fight for you. You are the reason I am here today.  I will fight to bring the methods and resources of production under your control and, together, we will produce something so essential to our being it will elevate us.”

I might have added the last sentence but what I think he’s getting at is this is the time to rally around remaking a once great company (which, for all of its warts, would have been a sustainable organization if not for the worldwide credit crisis) into a visionary enterprise destined to lift unionized American workers out of their grim situation. It’s about the next ‘peoples car’, and who will control its production, consumption, and usage.

"Nice little Chevy Volt"

America will make the Chevy Volt in its own image, with its own sweat and blood.

Economy, SocioFascism chevy, Economy, gm, obama, uaw, volt, vw

I *might* have made that last part up, but it’s a real likelihood.  What are the chances that our government, with all of its good, green intentions, unwittingly stunts the growth of beauties like this?

Economy tesla

What?  They want to ban black cars?  That’s insane. .. .

When we first heard of this issue, an internal debate immediately began as to whether this might be an elaborate early April Fool’s joke, but it isn’t. Read through CARB’s complete Cool Cars Standards and Test Procedures here for more.

Rule #1. No matter what time of the year, assume anything coming from the California Air Resource Board is a joke.  Madness.

Well, it would make sense for California to adopt Florida’s white car with tinted windows approach.

Economy autoblog, carb

What a difference a couple of months make.  Who really controls the language anymore?

Economy, SocioFascism mccain, obama

Krauthammer nails Obama on his odiously hypocritical position against pursuing further scientific study of human cloning.

If additional research in embyronic stem cells is soooo necessary because it keeps the door open to usable results (and it very well may be), why shouldn’t we also pursue the potential benefits garnered by human cloning research?

Politics involved?  You don’t say.

All Topics, Economy, Politics clone, cloning, obama, stem cell

Ford leading the way with negotiating lower labor rates.

Economy ford, uaw

It is interesting to note that the chapter in Obama’s federal budget titled “Inheriting a Legacy of Misplaced Priorities” is actually a call for . . . misplacing priorities.  Only Mao could have said it better.

More to the point, Henninger notes an explicit vow of fiscal retribution against the upper echelon of taxpayers.

Economy, Politics budget, Economy, obama, porkulus, stimulus

Obama making “clarifications”.  Obama blames former President Bush—not for setting him up with a huge “socialist” deficit–but for making it necessary to enact much larger “socialist” deficit.

Economy, Politics, SocioFascism obama, socialist

Much is being made of Geithner’s inability to not only send the right messages to soothe America’s private sector, but to also staff his own department. Could it be that nobody wants to jump onboard his sinking ship?

Sure, the Treasury spins that it’s already filled more of its political appointees than previous administrations, but is that any measure of success?

Economy, Politics geithner, obama

German incentive leads to 21% jump in new car sales while other nations struggled in the fourth quarter.

What’s the secret? Germany has recently instituted a new set of incentives that pays motorists €2,500 to scrap their old car in exchange for a new, more fuel efficient model. Domestic manufacturers reaped the largest rewards, posting a 63% gain in February orders.

Should America try the same?  Sounds like a win-win:  we boost domestic auto sales, preserving hundreds of thousands of quasi-public servant union jobs, thus sustaining a huge failing sector of our economy.  Oh, and at the (nowadays) modest cost of billions of dollars. Yes we can!

Economy

Why does the Dow keep falling?

Let’s all play a little blame game.   What or who can we blame next for the continuing drop in the Dow. . .

Credit default swaps? Already done.

Phil Gramm? Already done.

Deregulation?  Bullshit, but check.

Wall Street bankers?  This one got us huge mileage.  Better lay off a little since we might need a few of them to “come to their senses” and help out next week if things don’t shape up.

Bush–we did inherit his deficit (which in turn contained our first TARP plan).   Let’s keep that one handy again.  Maybe release some unflattering memos or something. . . .Keep our left flank distracted for a while.

The WSJ has a better answer to this stupid madness. Let’s blame the guy in charge who’s actually talking down the economy and proposing strong medicine measures historically proven to further harm it:

So what has happened in the last two months? The economy has received no great new outside shock. Exchange rates and other prices have been stable, and there are no security crises of note. The reality of a sharp recession has been known and built into stock prices since last year’s fourth quarter.

What is new is the unveiling of Mr. Obama’s agenda and his approach to governance. Every new President has a finite stock of capital — financial and political — to deploy, and amid recession Mr. Obama has more than most. But one negative revelation has been the way he has chosen to spend his scarce resources on income transfers rather than growth promotion. Most of his “stimulus” spending was devoted to social programs, rather than public works, and nearly all of the tax cuts were devoted to income maintenance rather than to improving incentives to work or invest.

It’s on your watch now, dawg.  You’re a man.  Take-the-hit.

Economy, Politics, SocioFascism

via Samizdata

What did you do during the recession, Daddy?

I installed solar panels and wind turbines.

If only Franklin Roosevelt had thought to put millions of Americans to work during the Depression doing make-work jobs that were gee-whiz futuristic…. Oh, that’s right. He did. And it didn’t work then, either. But this time is different, you know.

- Nick Gillespie, at Reason’s Hit & Run blog.

Economy, Environment, Politics, SocioFascism green collar

Does Dionne let the official motive slip?

That any economic problem–however big–can be solved with a little bit of class warfare?   Last I checked, income inequality–however subjective–was not responsible for destroying one third of America’s wealth in only three months.  Surely he can’t be serious.

In October, Obama told Joe Wurzelbacher he’ll need to take a little from Joe at the top–Joe can afford it–and give it to his workers on the bottom so they can afford more of Joe’s services.

What possible outcome could you expect by turning Americans against each other in this manner?   I’d say more of the same.

Despite all of the dubious claims to the contrary by the President and his men of action, maybe this is all about the marxist redistribution of wealth.  And, according to elite Liberals who can eschew its  responsible-sounding rhetoric, it’s supposed to be.  They want to fix “it” before anything else at all cost, crisis notwithstanding.

So, E.J,  hats off to you for reminding us of our true priorities.

Economy, Politics, SocioFascism dionne, Economy, income, obama, taxes