Heh, You’re on it, Ian! ;-)

“Congressional Dems”

Let’s hope that’s enough.

“Apocalypse delayed”

Bah hahahahaha! Cute, Ian.

Barney did say that the TARP funds will be fair game for the Big Three when the new congress is sworn in…!

this is the right solution I think. Effectively, a congressional bridge loan until the Obama team is in place, leaving the new president to craft a viable term solution to the underlying problems of the automaking industry. I like.

What makes anyone think this is a done deal instead of Barney Frank trying an end run around spineless Pelosi & Reid?

Thank God. Now if we can only get congress to make firing the execs a condition…

Well, in this case, hopefully their spines will flop for Barney instead of Bush.

OT
Blogwhoring for the day
http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/2249

Paragraphination got lost in translation, but y’all luv table 3.

Although, actually, there are words from both Pelosi and Reid that make it sound like they’ve come around.

Time will tell.

Well, they may not have enough votes, even if they do want to push it through.

Good piece, needs paragraph breaks though.

Poor Shrub. He can’t even beat his daddy in suckiness.

As I said, paragraphs got lost in translation (were fine in preview) and I have no idea how to fix it. No more diaries for me.

OT – Border official charged with harboring illegal immigrant.

You can’t make this stuff up.

“GM is hemorrhaging too much money for this to be enough, and despite their happy talk, while Ford’s immediate position is better their long term position is worse. I really doubt they’ll make it through a long deep recession without help”.
Who is going to “help” the American tax payer?

Which is a good thing, since I am too lazy to do it anyhow. As I said, any excuse is good enuf.

but.. but.. but.. don’t we get the continued services of these three stinkers for $1 a year?

Would this be a bridge loan to nowhere? Watch for the Drilla from Wasilla to start asking for some sugar.

The paragraph fairy came by. All is well.

Aaaw…! It was excellent in spite of the looooong paragraphs…! ;-)

losing 3 million jobs will not help the taxpayer, trust me on this. You’re in for 8 trillion already, another 100 billion or so is not going to make the difference.

That said, there are responsible ways to do these things and irresponsible ones. Bush/Paulson will not do them responsibly (see Citigroup). We’ll see if Obama will.

the last 8 years has been one long parable of unspeakables… an AG that champions lawlessness and injustice, an EPA that promotes pollution rather than fighting to reduce it, an FDA that actively facilites the poisoning of our food and drugs, a FEMA run by an Arabian horsetrader, a Dept of Energy charged with enriching the Texas-Saudi Oil Cabal, a National Science Foundation charged with suppressing scientific research when such research conflicts with interests of the same cabal, and a Vice Presidency shorn from any branch of government.. why not a Border Patrol head who harbors illegals?

Is it possible that George W. Bush has people making up the unemployment rate numbers & job losses under him? He’s only created 3 million jobs (according to your chart), but yet his unemployment high number was 7.1%, whereas, Clinton created 25 million jobs and had high unemployment rate of 7.3%. Something seems off, but then again, numbers make my brain explode and by the looks of the economy right now, makes sense that the numbers under him would be higher than they are.

Holy shit – the wonders of the toobz

Nah, it’s simple. It’s how all computer things work – PFM.

Pixie Dust! Industrial grade…! ;-)

hard to say from this level of granularity.. need to look at the quarterly time series data and a bunch of demographic and employment indicators at that. I think one overall explanation may be the vast number of frustrated job seekers that’ve materialized over the last few years (under shrub).

This being said, I’m reasonably sure shrubco has been manipulating energy efficiency and greenhouse emissions numbers for years (the apparent fall in US emissions in 2006 followed by the massive rise in 2007 is a case in point). I’m sure they manipulate other figures as well (although unemployment is one of the harder ones to manipulate). This bunch of thugs are as Orwellian as they come.

A ‘holding’ operation that gives us time to try to help to organize an ESOP – or an LLC with autoworker, rich-blogger investors, and progressive customers buying ‘em out. Of course, we’d have to come up with operating expenses – maybe Obama would front us on that part? Whadayathink? Everybody up for a frontal assault on the system?

Thru 2007 and into 2008 I felt that inflation nos. bore no relation to reality.

I think they’ll have the votes, since it only amounts to kicking the can down the road… and not very far down the road at that.

If it goes down we need to name names and immortalize them

The same psycho who promised an “humble” foreign policy….is there any reason it took so long to see? The pro-life death machine.

Does this mean the tax payer is only helping gm and not gmac and it’s child?
I think ford will make in the end and the c people are gone. I only want to save the workers of ws and auto roll and then rebuild another industry something the planet might need down the road.
jo6pac

Corkhead and Shelby will do their best to sabotage any bailout for the industry. They smell union blood and they’re gonna fight it tooth and nail. Fuck ‘em.

Actual footage of Republican caucus working on the bridge loan.

OT Happy repeal day everyone

Honestly, when was the last time the BLS didn’t revise a previous month’s projection downward? Quite the dry spell since they revised one upwards…! This month’s revision of -233K is abysmal…! 8-(

Try John Williams’ site http://www.shadowstats.com for corroboration.

oh I absolutely agree… and inflation, unlike BLS unemployment claims data, is actually fairly easy to manipulate, since only a very few people keep track of index weight changes and nobody really seems to know how they chain weight with hedonics anyway. This being said, I’m not a GDP macroeconomics expert and I know only just enough of the math and data collection/processing procedures to be thoroughly confused by them.

Pretty high-stakes game of chicken they’re playing.

inflation stats are manipulated pretty much all the time.

The reason NBER used GNI (gross national income) instead of GDP to declare the recession is that GNI uses a different inflation index and is thus not nearly as manipulated as GDP, which is a BS stat.

eCAHN,

Don’t let HTML beat you up. The paragraph tag is a P enclosed in angle brackets, it takes an optional alignment parameter, as:

[P align=left] or
[P align=right] or
[P align=center].

Of course the angle brackets are used in lieu of the square ones I used.

Good article, by the way.

yeah, but fortunately inaccuracy (due to essentially random delays in reporting and data collection, particularly around the holiday season, does not necessarily mean that its easier to systematically manipulate.

The mystery black box stuff like inflation, energy efficiency, etc., I’m not sure about. I think some 26 year old Regent U grad just makes half of these numbers up. I was at a lecture a while ago where a Harvard economist of some prominence noted that some aspects of US economic, health, welfare and environmental reporting have, since 2004, gotten as questionable as those of Communist China.

A great deal of the expenditures / payments are reliant on the the inflation figures. Last year SS went up 2.8% this did not even cover meds.

which makes it all the more interesting for our ruling thugs to systematically manipulate ;-P. ohhhh, in about 20 years, the down elevators outside the pearly gates are gonna be real busy, indeed…

Ian, I guess you’ve seen this ?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..id=topnews

Since the workers will get at most 10% of the money, why not pay them not to work and save the remaining 90% and the endless support of another group pf corrupt corporations?