Earlier this month the Treasury Department found that all 19 banks subject to government “stress tests” passed. Now this past Sunday, White House Director of the Office of Management and Budget Peter Orszag announced that: “The freefall in the economy seems to have stopped.” Economic catastrophe was the only rational …
Harvard University professor Niall Ferguson writes in the New York Times: Human beings are as good at devising ex post facto explanations for big disasters as they are bad at anticipating those disasters. It is indeed impressive how rapidly the economists who failed to predict this crisis — or predicted …
“I don’t want to run auto companies.” – President Barack Obama, April 29, 2009. “Obama Halves Chrysler’s Planned Marketing Budget” – Advertising Age, May 11, 2009. Congress should help President Obama stop running auto companies. We must repeal TARP now.
The Obama Administration appears about to walk away from $7.5 billion in taxpayer money used to prop up Chrysler. This little information nugget was buried in Chrysler’s filing before the bankruptcy judge last week and confirmed by Administration sources. So much for responsible government and transparency! The Bush Administration pumped …
Commenting on the White House’s Chicago-style negotiations with Chrysler’s creditors, The Atlantic‘s Megan McArdle writes: [W]hen did it become the government’s job to intervene in the bankruptcy process to move junior creditors who belong to favored political constituencies to the front of the line? … these people lent money under …
Markets are weighed down by worries over the new swine flu and the ongoing stress flu; the former from Mexico, the latter from the Treasury Department. Recently, Treasury added markedly to market uncertainties by suggesting it would convert federal capital injections from preferred shares of banks to common shares. This …
