January 2010

SIGTARP January 2010 Report

The January 2010 SIGTARP report is released and if anything it's a validation of this sites many observations to date on TARP.

Despite the fact that the explicit goal of the Capital Purchase Program (“CPP”) was to increase financing to U.S. businesses and consumers, lending continues to decrease, month after month, and the TARP program designed specifically to address small-business lending — announced in March 2009 — has still not been implemented by Treasury.

Notwithstanding the fact that preserving home ownership and promoting jobs were explicit purposes of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (“EESA”), the statute that created TARP, nearly 16 months later, home foreclosures remain at record levels, the TARP foreclosure prevention program has only permanently modified a small fraction of eligible mortgages, and unemployment is the highest it has been in a generation.

SIGTARP notes that we are nowhere with financial reforms.

  • To the extent that huge, interconnected, “too big to fail” institutions contributed to the crisis, those institutions are now even larger, in part because of the substantial subsidies provided by TARP and other bailout programs.

Tierra y Libertad

On January 29, 1911, a small band of 18 revolutionaries marched into Mexicali and seized the town, practically without firing a shot. Thus began one of the most unusual and controversial episodes in Mexican history.
These revolutionaries were not the typical warlords that Mexico was used to seeing. These revolutionaries had American volunteers, but not the sort of filibusters that Baja California was already very familiar with. In fact, this revolutionary movement had little in common with anything Mexico had experienced before or since.

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These revolutionaries weren't interested in just overthrowing the corrupt and repressive government, they wanted to overthrow society as well.

What is the State of Credit Availability for Small Business?

Contained within the Obama administration's Jobs Program Redux, we have a policy proposal to give $30 billion in TARP funds to community banks, on the premise they will lend to small businesses.

The questions become, what is the true state of credit for small business and is the premise that community banks would loan out these funds to small businesses valid?

There are two reports out on the state of credit availability for small businesses.

The first is this study from the NFIB.

First is this bit of bad news, where most economists agree, unemployment is not going to improve:

Friday Movie Night - The World According to Monsanto

hot buttered popcorn It's Friday Night! Party Time!   Time to relax, put your feet up on the couch, lay back, and watch some detailed videos on economic policy!

 

I was reminded of Monsanto again when I came across this this article putting Monsanto, once again, as one of the least ethical corporations of the world. (Oh yeah, ignore the list, any technical professional knows IBM has no ethics and either does Intel, so if that's the best....we're in big trouble!)

Obama's Employer Tax Break for Jobs does not require employers to hire U.S. workers

The Obama administration released details on their tax cut for businesses which hire and increase wages.

Get what is missing? Tying the tax cut to U.S. citizens, LPR. This means there are no restrictions on offshore outsourcing of jobs or displacing more Americans using guest worker Visas, a notorious practice using H-1B, L-1 and H-2B Visas.

GDP 5.7% in Q4 2009

This is the advanced Q4 GDP and it's a blow out. GDP increased 5.7% in Q4 2009.

Party on Garth! This is an advanced report, so there might be significant revisions. Recall Q3 2009 GDP originally came in at 3.5% and was revised down to 2.2%.

The acceleration in real GDP in the fourth quarter primarily reflected an acceleration in private inventory investment, a deceleration in imports, and an upturn in nonresidential fixed investment that were partly offset by decelerations in federal government spending and in PCE.

Just a little bit, investment is a blow out at 39.3% increase!

One must wonder how much of the business investment credit from the Stimulus, which was a 50% bonus depreciation, and allows a 50% write off on business investments in the first year, is the reason for this private inventory investment acceleration.

Bernanke Cloture & Confirmation Senate Votes

Well, no surprise, the Senate just got in line and confirmed Ben Bernanke as Fed Chair, despite the fact we cannot find out who received $2 trillion dollars in loans, the complete miss of the housing bubble, the ignoring of derivatives as systemic risk and the general stonewalling on getting some real reforms and answers on the Financial meltdown.

With that, the game being played is Senators want to claim they voted against Bernanke....but not really. So, below are the vote tallies. If a Senator voted for cloture yet against the actual confirmation, that move is pure politics. In truth they completely endorsed Ben and his subversion of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency and lack of transparency.

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