ZED

Good Morning BT,

Quiet at the lake this morning. Maybe stimulus exhaustion?

Nice work as always, BT.

BTW, sic Jane on CNBC — on Squawk Box, particularly.

That jackass Jack Welch, former CEO of GE, has been on the program frequently (is he now a regular??) and spewing his corrupt bullsh*t.

He says he supports BHO on a number of issues, but he thinks that concentrating on the stimulus package before fixing the banks is wrong.

But he NEVER mentions his exposure to financial industry losses as a GE shareholder and pensioner.

And he NEVER mentions his role in the ramp-up to this financial debacle with his use of long-term loans to prop up short-term gains at GE during his last years as CEO. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that GE was loading up with credit default swaps before he left, too.

Ugh. The banality of evil — none of them on the program dare shut down his soft-spoken and illegitimate cred.

Mornin’ BT, sadly.

Gee, I can’t understand why the Rethugs and their minions the Blue Dogs can’t get behind the neoliberal policies of Obama’s neoliberal economic advisors.

The millions of jobs created by Bush’s past tax cuts must be invisible…like part of the ‘invisible’ hand of capitalism.

Per Mother Jones (and Aunt Toby, too)”Food stamps, unemployment benefits, and infrastructure investment put the most money back into the economy for every dollar spent on them. Tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy do the least.”
And why is that? What do corporations use tax cuts for? The theory is that corporations will use tax cuts to retool, invest in new equipment, training for workers and so on and make more jobs. In 2004, American Progress said:
http://www.americanprogress.or…..45142.html
“..more than 60 percent of U.S. corporations failed to pay any federal taxes from 1996 through 2000 when corporate profits were soaring and that corporate tax receipts had fallen to just 7.4 percent of overall federal tax revenue in 2003 – the lowest since 1983 and the second-lowest rate since 1934 – is an outrage. But it should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to national tax policy over the past few years. The General Accounting Office (GAO) report also found that an astonishing 94 percent of corporations reported tax liability of less than 5 percent of their total income during the same time period. Corporate tax dodging has gone on for far too long. But the policies of the Bush administration have exacerbated the problem by furthering the culture of tax avoidance by big corporations and creating a pervasive unfairness in our tax code.”
They didn’t make jobs when profits were soaring and they paid practically no taxes – the federal budget was loaded right on the rest of us. Giving corporations more tax cuts will not change anything.
As for tax cuts for the wealthy – many of those people are performing the same ‘hide tax’ dance that corporations do and not paying their fair share of things either. And, as we know, more and more wealth in the US has been concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. The wealthy got and stay wealthy because they do NOT spend money. Giving them more incentive by not taxing wealth will only concentrate more wealth. They do not spend money; they do not make jobs. Tax cuts are a sham.

Prof Warren on right now..Paulsen did not describe what was to be done with the money: talked one thing, did another. How important oversight is.

When CNBC talks with financial industry analysts, they put up a “conflict of interest” sidebar about the analyst and the company for whom she/he works, describing whether they have investments or stakes in the stocks under discussion.

It’d be nice if they did that with folks like Jack.

Hey SoDrag.

Brrrrr.

that would be a conflict of their interests.

help me out here. who should I hate more? Repubs or Blue Dogs?

that is FRAUD………….. CLAW IT BACK

theyy are the same wolves

Is it summer yet? Met a couple yesterday who had spent the day biking all over St Pete. They were snowbirds and said this was like a summer day to them. Meanwhile, I’m freezin’ my ass off.

why choose?

Sure sounds like it…and remember from his original proposal he wanted NO accountability. Really wonder who he thinks he is or whose money we’re talking about.

sometimes i get the feeling they’re just a new generation of dixiecrat. not a racial thing. just that they call themselves dems but aren’t.

seems to be what everyone I ask says.

a few years ago i wouldn’t have minded. i’m spolit now. guess that makes me an almost-Floridian. hope the tangerines made it.

Hate’s a waste of good energy. Just give ‘em the evil eye.

Ditto that. I was going to say though, that might be too much hate for a body. Which group to scratch your head ’til it’s bald over might be a healthier way to go. And, don’t worry, some of the smartest people I have ever loved were bald.

it is a waste. that’s why I felt i should choose one group. i only have so much hate in me.

I’ll snatch one from the tree on the way out this mornin’ and let ya know. They should be alright. It didn’t get that cold. Found out heat pumps don’t work well in temps under 40. That sux.

epu’d
-598,000 7.6%, revisions downward, 3 million jobs lost during 2008, vs. 2.6 previously reported.

W has more than round-tripped on the unemployment rate. Started at 7.3%, ended at 7.6%, having dropped to a low of 4.4% in early 2007.

Hey SD! Yessir. Let’s limit the hating.
Pulling hair and the evil eye. Now, that’s a grand image we’re painting for an early Friday morning. *g*

what’s round-tripped? only heard that before in baseball context (Homerun)

oh by the by

The study said that inflation-adjusted “constant dollars” is probably only the second -best measure of the size of a tax increase. “The single best measure for most purposes is probably the revenue effect as a percentage of GDP.” That’s Gross Domestic Product, the way we gauge the size of the economy. Clinton’s tax increase isn’t the biggest by that “best” measure, either. In the period since 1968, the study said, “the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 was the biggest increase.” That was the tax increase signed by Ronald Reagan, rescinding some of the effects of his huge tax cut passed the year before.
That 1982 tax increase only slightly exceeded Clinton’s in inflation-adjusted dollars ($37 billion a year vs.. $32 billion) but it was much bigger in relation to the size of the economy. The ‘82 increase amounted to 0.8% of GDP (average for the first two years) while Clinton’s was 0.5%.
Footnote: The study’s author, Jerry Tempalski of the Office of Tax Analysis, put the following disclaimer

Unemployment rate, as I detailed in the rest of that sentence and the next one.

ok. but only if pulling hair is allowed.

I am really in a quiry about Mary Landrieu. The bill contains Gulf coast recovery and Levee money. Word had it that she & her family had $$ benefitted from earlier NO funds; don’t know. But seems like she would want to support all sorts of jobs/recovery/money. Nope, I don’t get it.

Not much into hair pulling. What I’ve got left is as fine as baby hair and a lot thinner than 40 years ago. Wind blows hair goes poof.

oh my this just sukks

still don’t get it. oh well.

I had the misfortune to work there when Neutron Jack came aboard. I can tell you that “Jackass” is one of the nicest things I have ever heard him called…

but i do understand the numbers and they ain’t good at all. not at all.

i have no running water,pipe burst………….dayuuuuuum

The unemployment rates started W prez at 7.3%. It dropped to a low of 4.4% in early 2007. The January number, the last under the W prez, is now 7.6%, more than a round trip from where it was when he took office. Heckuva job W.

anybody heard about where Joe The Biden is in all this stimulus stuff. During the campaion Obama said he wanted him to be the “point man” with Congress on important legislation. I like Joe alot and think he was kind of reluctant about being VP and only did it after being assured he would play a very important role. Hope he isn’t getting marginalized or frozen out.

oh no!

we dripped water all night to avoid that

Have you found your cutoff valve and closed it until you can get repairs?

shit.

Oh, man, that sux. Got a well?

Brrrrr

got it. thanks.

Well, getting older does have it’s drawbacks. The thinning hair, except in the places you didn’t used to have it…for women that would be the face, for men the nose and ears. Ha.
Still, getter older is a better alternative.
I guess we’ll just have to trim, tweezer, wax and meditate.

less on top for me but i’m getting more on and in my ears and nose. i don’t like the trade-off

It was 21 when I got up. All the way up to 26 now. Can’t handle this at all.

The only Dem I’ve noticed out with a bullhorn is Obama. I don’t have cable but I don’t see any mention of Dems on the toob in any of the threads. The Rethugs are all over the place but the Dems are cowering in the corner, I suppose. JHFC. I’d like to put Lightbrain Harry and Matron Nancy in a corner with dunce hats and get somebody who’s willing to kick ass and take names to run this show.

Probably handy at Halloween ;)

Heh. I orginally read your comment as saying that YOU were 21 when you got up, and were now up to 26, and I was going to ask you what aged you so quickly.

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of leadership among the Ds, she said in a mild respresentation of her usual comment about Ds.

I guess I am outta here…the next project should be more phone lines to Senate offices….I tried most of the day yesterday (busy) again this morning…Well, I am quite sure my Sen does not want to hear from me anyway.

yeah. i just let the nose stuff grow out and comb it so it looks like a mustache.

G’Morning ECAHN
I read his comment that way the first time too.
Regarding the unemployment stats, I used them yesterday to talk a fellow worker into staying one more day on the job. It’s a temp gig, making cold calls off of lead sheets. Not easy work, but it’s for a fund raiser for Muscular Dystrophy Association, so it’s for a good cause. By the way, the argument worked.

ok. i don’t do that.

Everyone who has any kind of a job should stay where they are unless something else becomes a sure thing. Not an economy to quit and then look for another job.

Yes, but that’s probably why they have Jack on the program — as a retiree, he can be seen as free of conflict, which we we know is a play from the Dick Cheney school of management.

And even if they did say more than “Jack’s the retired CEO of GE,” CNBC would conveniently neglect to go in any detail about Jack’s actual performance. That long-term debt to shore up short-term profits is exactly the kind of thinking that got us into this mess; it just wasn’t as egregiously bad as Enron/Worldcom/Tyco kind of badness.

You know, these guys appeared to be heading towards a new kind of sanity on CNBC, but it’s as if they were checked short and reversed direction. They just had Dr. Mohamed A. El-Erian, CEO of PIMCO on Squawk Box, advocating “shock-and-awe” recapitalization of the banks (yes, that’s a quote) to improve the public’s trust and improve lending.

Jeebus. There are banks sitting on money they’ve been given under TARP that they are investing in the market and NOT lending. One small bank in Michigan got $300 million and they are not making loans.

Whatever happened to the good old days, when bankers and financial managers jumped out of the windows on Wall Street?

Oh Funny Boy, did you see my #45?
I believe you owe me a coffee.

I know That’s right.

Today’s NYT’s editoral say Obama needs tp kick some asses:

…

Mr. Obama needs to remind Republicans that he won the election on those terms. And he is going to have to get tough with Democrats. So will House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who have been too timorous about wielding their power.

In the Senate, Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, spent the day working with Republicans to dangerously strip down the Senate’s version of the economic measure. What noxious programs were they so eager to dump? Money for the Amtrak passenger rail system, the shortchanging of which has been a damaging annual ritual that has put America decades behind most of the world.

…

That works out really well.

LOL..thanks. Must scare lots of kids. They will see what they can grow up to be…

lol!

Same time Newt is telling him to be nice and act more like Reagan. Why is it we ask Newt?

beats me.

btw Christy’s got some smackdowns upstairs

I just love that shot. But, where’s the one of Tuxedo Dragon?

I stopped at a service area yesterday morning while traveling. The waitresses were very vocal about the economic mess and how screwed the working people have been over the past 8 years. It was kind of slow so they had a lot of time to talk.

They were really pissed at the Repubs for trying to block the stimulus bill, and they were mocking their tax cuts in a big way.

as long as it’s not Slutbucks or something flavored. or iced coffee.

Like it.

Here is a few of the jobs.
**********

” Wall Street CEOs, lawyers, bankers and media executives chalked up thousands of dollars in prostitution charges on their corporate credit cards — swiping their cards for $2,000 an hour prostitutes, according to a New York madam who plead guilty last year. “

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/….._0206.html

Yeah, I saw that on ABC this morning…sounds like the documentation is public as the journo covering the story had quite a bundle of paper.

One of the clients he mentioned gleefully was an NBC vice president (as RawStory notes).

Sure hope Kristin Davis doesn’t end up doing a Deborah Jeane Palfrey…

This one?

Off to swim in the great capitalist cesspool.

Be good to yourselves, and all other living things.

Namaste

omg i need another cuppa. i was sitting here trying to figure out why you were sad. D’OH!

Howdy BT. Another sterling offering. I now go to you for my 1st morning news source, gaaaah. Yes, you’re that good. Whoooot!

And Dragon and all you Puppies. Mornin! It’s sunny here for the 3rd day in a row. shhhhhhhhh. mebbe it’ll stay out till the ice is gone.

Wow! I’m awake now! Where’s one-a those neoconfusicated scoundrels who keeps referring to the Lake as being populated by a bunch-a feministas!?!

oh dear. no one else said it? ooh alright. That’s one %@$# of a stimulus package. Let’s refuse to pay that particular bill, shall we? All in favor, say aye. remember. yes means NO on this vote.

I thought of her instantly when I read that article.

A list of 9,800…she obviously had a lot of ‘renters’ of stimulating packages..’g’. The first bailout funds probably paid for the cost of many of these $2,000 hr. charges. So, not vote for you; the bills are paid, already.