Saturday, March 3, 2012
Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., March 3 & 4, 2012
Well... nephew Dom is in Israel!
Follow his travels here and/or here.
The kid scored a Temple subsidized trip because he has Jewish roots on his mother's father's side.
(*SCRATCHING MY HEAD*)
Yeah... I know... Jewish bloodlines go through the mother...
(*CHUCKLE*)
Hey... what the hell?! Free is free, right?! (Or at least heavily subsidized!)
I only wish I could get the Temple to subsidize my yearly trip to Charleston... or to Key West... or Milan... Barcelona... Portland...
(*SIGH*)
Well... you get the idea.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SEVERE_WEATHER?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-03-03-09-12-27
A string of violent storms scratched away small towns in Indiana and cut off rural communities in Kentucky as an early season tornado outbreak killed more than 30 people, and the death toll rose as daylight broke on Saturday's search for survivors.
* YA KNOW, FOLKS... (*PAUSE*)... WITH ALL THAT'S HAPPENING I SOMETIMES CAN'T HELP BUT WONDER IF MY BROTHER-IN-LAW CRAIG ISN'T RIGHT AND IF GOD ISN'T SENDING US A MESSAGE THAT HE'S... er... DISPLEASED WITH THE DIRECTION AMERICA HAS BEEN MOVING IN.
(*SHRUG*)
http://cleveland.cbslocal.com/2012/03/03/baby-girl-found-alone-in-field-10-miles-from-familys-home-after-tornado/
A baby girl found alone in a field in Indiana after Friday’s massive, tornado-spawning storms is being treated in a Kentucky hospital.
A spokeswoman for the hospital in Salem, Ind., where the girl was first taken said Saturday that authorities were still trying to figure out how she ended up in the field alone. St. Vincent Salem Hospital spokeswoman Melissa Richardson says the child’s family is from New Pekin, Ind., about 10 miles south of where the child was found.
Richardson says the girl is in critical condition...
* AGAIN, FOLKS... I WONDER... ASSUMING THE CHILD LIVES IS THIS A SIGN FROM GOD?
* I'M NOT THE MOST RELIGIOUS MAN ON EARTH, BUT BY GOD, STRANGE THINGS ARE GOING...
(*SHRUG*)
http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120304/OPINION03/203040311/Column-UAW-troops-will-man-class-war?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE
Now we know how United Auto Workers President Bob King will repay Barack Obama for holding the union harmless from the Detroit automakers' bankruptcy: He'll provide the ground troops for the president's class war.
The Daily Caller blog says it found evidence that King and the UAW are behind the "99 Percent Spring," which aims to train and deploy 100,000 Americans for "non-violent direct action" in the months leading up to November's presidential election.
The Daily Caller says files on the group's website - which have since disappeared - indicate the UAW is providing the organizational support for protests designed to support the president's narrative that America is divided into two camps — the wealthy 1 percent and the struggling 99 percent.
"99 Percent Spring" will replace the Democrat's previous grassroots charade, the tainted Occupy movement, with its filthy camps and allegations of violence and rapes that gave it no chance of resonating with mainstream voters.
It's a perfect way for King to pay back Obama for tossing aside established bankruptcy law and moving the UAW to the top of the pecking order when Chrysler and General Motors filed for Chapter 11.
[N]ow that King has made the UAW an official adjunct of the Obama reelection team, it should have to follow the same campaign finance rules that corporations do. Obama's campaign should report the UAW's efforts as an in-kind contribution.
And the union's hard working members should know how much of their dues money is being spent on King's street gangs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/business/low-rates-for-savers-are-reason-for-complaint-fair-game.html?ref=business
Americans...today make almost nothing on the savings in their [FDIC insured] bank accounts.
* AND THAT'S THE GOVERNMENT'S DOING, FOLKS, NOT THE BANKS! BLAME THE FED!
[T]he Fed drove down interest rates to almost zero to shore up big banks and an economy that those banks helped drive off a cliff. Now savers, who did nothing to create the financial crisis, are being punished.
* NOT ONLY THAT, BUT WHEN THE BANKS TAKE ULTRA-LOW-INTEREST FED MONEY AND "INVEST" IT IN FEDERAL TREASURIES (WHICH OF COURSE YOU AND I HAVE TO MAKE GOOD ON IN THE FUTURE!) WHICH PAY SLIGHTLY HIGHER RETURNS THAN THE INTEREST RATE THE BANKS ARE PAYING THE FED... THE BANKS REAP THE PROFIT OF THE DIFFERENCE! (YEAH, FOLKS... THAT'S THE SCAM THAT ALLOWED THE BANKS TO "REPAY" THEIR TARP LOANS.)
(*SMIRK*)
So suck it up, America: If it’s good for the financial system, it’s good for you.
* FOLKS... I URGE YOU TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE. (QUERY ME WITH ANY QUESTIONS!)
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-03-02/when-a-falling-jobless-rate-is-bad-news
When is good news bad news? When we’re talking jobs.
In the upside-down logic of the labor market, a falling unemployment rate can sometimes be a worrisome sign...
If you’ve quit looking for work you’re no longer considered part of the labor force.
And if you’re not in the labor force, you’re technically not unemployed.
So... the jobless rate, now at 8.3%, falls for the worst of reasons.
* FOLKS... I KNOW WE GO OVER THIS HERE AT USUALLY RIGHT OVER AND OVER AGAIN AND I UNDERSTAND THAT I'M NOT TELLING MY SOPHISTICATED, EDUCATED, KNOWLEDGEABLE READERS ANYTHING YOU DON'T ALREADY KNOW... BUT, FOLKS... YOU NEED TO SPREAD THE WORD! MOST FOLKS DON'T KNOW THIS! THEY WERE NEVER TAUGHT IT IN SCHOOL! THEY'RE NOT EXPOSED TO IT VIA THE MEDIA THEY TUNE IN TO!
Many economists have been arguing that as the U.S. economy recovers, a flood of people who had left the labor force will become encouraged to start seeking work again, so the unemployment rate will start rising even as the economy adds jobs at a good clip. But a new report by economists at Barclays Capital argues that that will not happen–most people who left the labor force aren’t coming back. The notion that they are, says Barclays, “is something of an urban legend.”
The Barclays conclusion may be good news for people who are hunting jobs–less competition! But it’s bad news for society as a whole, because it means that a smaller corps of workers will be supporting a bigger army of non-workers, including retirees, the disabled, children, prisoners, etc.
* AGAIN... THE GROWTH OF THE WELFARE STATE... THE GROWTH OF THE DEPENDENCY CULTURE... THE "MANAGED" DECLINE AND FALL OF THE AMERICA I KNOW - OR AT LEAST THE AMERICA I USED TO KNOW.
(*SIGH*)
The Barclays’ bottom line: ”We expect the unemployment rate to continue falling.” In fact, they expect it to fall to about 7% by the end of 2013. But the employment-to-population ratio will still be about 4 percentage points below its pre-[Obama] peak, they say.
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2012/03/04/Why-the-Fed-Let-Banks-Pay-Billions-to-Shareholders.aspx#page1
* THIS IS AN EXTREMELY LONG ARTICLE... I'LL PROVIDE HIGHLIGHTS BUT IT'S TOO LONG AND COMPLICATED TO BE "NEWSBITED." ("NEWSBIT?")
In early November 2010, as the Federal Reserve began to weigh whether the nation’s biggest financial firms were healthy enough to return money to their shareholders, a top regulator bluntly warned: Don’t let them.
“We remain concerned over their ability to withstand stress in an uncertain economic environment,” wrote Sheila Bair, the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., in a previously unreported letter obtained by ProPublica.
* PREVIOUSLY UNREPORTED... (*SMIRK*)
“We strongly encourage” that the Fed “delay any dividends or compensation increases until they can show” that their earnings are strong and their assets sound, Blair wrote. Given the continued uncertainty in the markets, “we do not believe it is the right time to allow transactions that will weaken their capital and liquidity positions.”
Four months later, the Federal Reserve rejected Bair’s appeal.
In March 2011, the Federal Reserve green-lighted most of the top 19 financial institutions to deliver tens of billions of dollars to shareholders, including many of their own top executives.
* CRUCIAL POINT, FOLKS! "...INCLUDING MANY OF THEIR OWN EXECUTIVES!"
The 19 paid out $33 billion in the first nine months of 2011 in dividends and stock buy-backs.
[T]he Fed’s stress-test decision was lucrative for shareholders and bank executives, who are increasingly paid in stock.
(*NOD*)
Dividend payments are taxed at lower rates than ordinary income. Merely allowing the banks to pay dividends, buy back stock and pay back the government helped boost shares...
* WHICH BRINGS UP BACK TO, "...BANK EXECUTIVES, WHO ARE INCREASINGLY PAID IN STOCK."
(*PURSED LIPS*) (*SHRUG*)
“Taxpayers should be concerned when banks pay dividends and remain thinly capitalized,” warned Anat Admati, a finance professor at Stanford in a February 2011 letter to The Financial Times signed by 15 other economists from across the political spectrum. “Taxpayers are the ones who are likely to end up covering the banks' liabilities in a crisis.”
* YEP...
The Fed’s decision cannot be understood in isolation. It continued a series of actions — by the central bank and other arms of government — that were generous to the banks. When the government invested hundreds of billions in the banks through TARP, banks didn’t even have to lend out the money, and bankers could pay themselves bonuses.
* YEP...
(*SIGH*)
* FOLKS... AS I WROTE UP TOP, THIS IS A LONG, LONG ARTICLE. BOTTOM LINE... THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE BEING SUCKERED.
Post a Comment