Yesterday afternoon, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg issued an order delaying the sale of Chrysler’s assets to a new firm controlled by Fiat, in order to more fully consider claims by a group of Indiana pension funds that the process violated federal law. A key argument made by the Hoosier funds is that the federal government can’t use the Troubled Asset Relief Program, TARP, to bail out Chrysler (or General Motors for that matter). As explained here last December, the question comes down to whether a car maker is …
The talk shows last night were all atwitter over Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s grant of a temporary stay for the Supreme Court to consider the application for an emergency stay of the sale of Chrysler to a government-backed shell corporation. What do we know this morning? A few thoughts: The only thing we know for sure is…the Court needs more time. A temporary stay does not provide any direct indication as to how the Court will rule on the application. That said, this is an unusual move. Temporary stays are …
MOSCOW – In conjunction with the St Petersburg Economic International Forum, speculations over Russia’s accession to WTO have picked up steam. On the sidelines of the Forum, Economic Development Minister Elvira Nabiullina said Moscow stands a good chance of joining WTO by year end. The negotiations with the European Union seemed to help settle some problems over export tariffs imposed by Russia on raw timber and technical barriers to foreign trade. United States Trade Representative Ronald Kirk, following his talks with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov and Nabiullina, announced …
Last Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly job report showing that the economy lost 345,000 jobs in May. This brings the total number of jobs lost in the first full three months since the economic stimulus package was passed to 1.5 million jobs. Countering these inconvenient truths, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden unveiled a new “accelerated” “roadmap to recovery”, which the AP dryly notes “is neither new nor accelerated.” Officially, the Obama administration claims their stimulus plan has already “saved or created” 150,000 jobs, …
The polls said it would be bad for Labour. But no one expected it to be this bad. On Thursday, Britons voted in local county elections and elections for the European Parliament. The result was a devastating repudiation of Gordon Brown’s tottering government, and of the cause of European integration. First, the local numbers. England’s divided up into 34 counties. After the elections, the Conservatives control 30 of them. The Liberal Democrats run one county council. The remaining three are not controlled by any one party. There are 2,362 council …
According to the Associated Press, the U.S. Supreme Court has taken the extremely rare step of issuing a stay on the sale of Chrysler to Fiat, after three Indiana state pension and construction funds petitioned for the delay pending an appeal of a lower court decision. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that the sale is “stayed pending further order.” The Obama administration had urged the court to reject the request. This is a reasonable delay to protect fundamental rights. Time for consideration: Though the Court’s action to temporarily delay the sale …
Not even D-Day, June 6th, went by without an international apology from President Obama, despite it being one of the most heroic days in American history and ultimately one of the most successful. If Mr. Obama cannot celebrate the sacrifices of American G.I. in the hellish environment of the Normandy Invasion 65 years without diminishing it, there is little hope he will ever find anything American to be 100 percent in favor of. After visiting the Buchenwald concentration camp and Dresden (presumably for a so-called balanced perspective), Mr. Obama arrived …
For decades, the Cuban government has waged a secretive war on the U.S. With no legislative oversight, freedom of information, or independent judiciary, Cuba’s clandestine services operate freely without check or challenge. Cases like those of Defense Intelligence Agency analyst Ana Belen Montes, convicted in 2002 of spying for Cuba, or the five Cubans convicted in Miami in 2001 on 26 counts of spying for the regime, demonstrate the ability of the Cuban operatives to work in the U.S. to the detriment of U.S. national security and interests.
Obama administration Council of Economic Advisers member Austan Goolsbee was on Fox News Sunday yesterday defending Obama’s intervention in the economy. In the clip below, he is actually defending the White House’s new pay czar, but his logic applies equally well to any of Obama’s new companies, from AIG to Citibank to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to General Motors: It is totally clear that if the government is saving your bacon and giving you money, that they have some input on whether you are wasting the money or what …
Move over, Bill Ayers, you’ve got company. The arrest of retired State Department intelligence analyst Walter Kendall Myers has apparently uncovered yet another overweened Social Register Rebel in our midst. Myers and his wife, Gwendolyn, were arrested on June 5 and charged with being espionage agents for Fidel Castro for 30 years. Total damage to U.S. National Security from the disloyal Myers, who passed Top Secret info to the Castros (who, in turn, very likely sold it to other U.S. enemies) and his wife (who was in a position to …
