Archive for the ‘Bailout’ tag
When Will Hank Paulson Be Done Wrecking The Country?
He’s got less than two months to do it, but it’s possible that by the time Obama gets into the hot seat, America may be in a very nasty depression. Take Hank’s words of wisdom for example on NPR.
November 13th.
Nobody is asking themselves anymore is there some major institution that might fail…
November 23rd
Ten days later and Citigroup’s stock is trading at well below the level where many institutional investors have to sell. Citigroup and the Government meet over the weekend to create a “bad bank” backed by the Government to park all Citigroup’s ‘toxic’ junk, so the bank can rebuild at taxpayer expense
Please, Hank, just go away.
What’s Good for America is Good For GM
Is this the future of the Big Three?
David Brooks in today’s NYT suggests that bailing out the Big Three US car companies is a bad idea. While I have some doubts about his ideologically driven “creative destruction” thesis, the notion that some US Government Car Czar is going to be able to prevent these monoliths from going over the precipice is absurd. They are beyond recall in their current form. I come from the UK and back in the seventies we experimented with nationalizing the once glorious British car industry. British Leyland was the result and it was a national joke.
There are many well documented reasons that the Big Three can’t be saved; ranging from massive legacy costs, onerous union agreements, byzantine, slow moving management, being enslaved by short term stock prices, outmoded technology, and of course bad, boring cars. These companies as they are now are from another era. They are inherently dysfunctional, and need to go. Read the rest of this entry »
Paulson – The Man With The Plan
Man With Plan
After nationalizing Fannie and Freddie, then letting Lehman Brothers die for no apparent reason, then bailing out AIG to the tune of $85 billion (now around $150 billion but who’s counting), Hank Paulson sat back to watch the credit markets unfreeze. But instead they just froze up some more.
Hank was totally bummed. “This job totally sucks”.
“The credit freeze just keeps on freezing”, he said to his posse of former Goldman Sachs hacks. “What the frick do I do?”
“You need one big plan”, said Neel Cash and Carry, “not just a whole bunch of little plans stuck together”. Hank nodded furiously. “Yes, yes, that’s right”. After scribbling a few notes on the back of a dry cleaning bill he looked up. “I’ve got it”. Read the rest of this entry »
