Auditors for General Motors today said there is "substantial doubt" that the struggling automaker will remain financially viable and able to continue operating, raising doubts about whether the company will have to declare bankruptcy or can continue to qualify for Treasury Department loans.The auditors may be confused, but the customers seem to have already decided.
The investigators concluded that the Treasury under the federal bailout had invested $254 billion into companies but the preferred stock it got in return had a market value at the time of only $176 billion, or 69 percent of what the government paid, according to a congressional oversight panel report scheduled to be released today.And that doesn't include the overdraft/ATM/service fees. Face it, the gummint got ripped off no matter what they paid or else why would the bank sell them anything. All this bailout is doing is letting the banks rip us off at wholesale prices instead of retail.
The accelerating pattern of grim indicators has led up to a report scheduled for release this morning on U.S. economic performance in the final three months of last year. Many economists think the economy shrank by as much as a 6 percent annual rate -- that would be the worst quarter for the economy since 1982 -- and they see little potential for growth until later this year.But not all the toy boats are circling the drain. As CNN reports some companies seem counter-cyclical:
Exxon Mobil made history on Friday by reporting the highest quarterly and annual profits ever for a U.S. company, boosted in large part by soaring crude prices.Bring your pitchforks, tar, and feathers up to the refinery guard shack for the protest.
Timothy F. Geithner ... signaled a more confrontational approach toward China, bluntly stating that the new administration thinks Beijing is "manipulating" its currency and it will act "aggressively" using "all the diplomatic avenues" to change China's currency practices.You need an undervalued currency to keep all that poisoned pet food and all those lead-tainted toys affordable.
China's control of the value of its currency, the yuan, has been a friction point for years, with some economists saying Beijing has kept its currency artificially low to keep the prices of its goods cheap and generate trade surpluses
Circuit City, once a bellwether American retailer, is going out of business for good, stripping the nation of its second-largest consumer electronics chain.Did he look into getting a cash advance on his Bank of America or Citibank credit card? Seriously, I had forgotten they were still in business, which must have been part of the problem.
The company, which filed for bankruptcy protection in November, said Friday that it would liquidate its stores and other assets.
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“We are extremely disappointed by this outcome,” said James A. Marcum, vice chairman and acting president and chief executive of Circuit City Stores Inc. He called the liquidation “the only possible path for our company.”
The dismal results from Bank of America and Citigroup showed the depth of the recession during the last three months of 2008, and suggested that the economic situation is getting worse. Both companies reported that losses on products such as credit card loans were not just growing but accelerating.Since all their customers are broke, both banks have decided that extracting blood from turnips would make a better business strategy.
President Bush has presided over the weakest eight-year span for the U.S. economy in decades, according to an analysis of key data, and economists across the ideological spectrum increasingly view his two terms as a time of little progress on the nation's thorniest fiscal challenges.In the category of "Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?" a Bush economic adviser vainly looks for a silver lining anywhere.
"It does look like a great eight years, aside from the last quarter, unfortunately," Edward P. Lazear, chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, said in a recent interview. "In the long term, things look good."Well, the Titanic was making great time right up to the iceberg. And didn't some economist once say that in the long term we're all dead?
The steep annual drop in jobs marked the highest yearly job-loss total since 1945, the year in which World War II ended.We had Hitler, Tojo and the atomic bomb to blame for that labor slump. Who do we pin it on this time?
...the national debt is projected to jump by as much as $2 trillion this year, an unprecedented increase that could test the world's appetite for financing U.S. government spending.As they say, seven hundred billion here, seven hundred billion there, pretty soon you're talking real money.
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