Underwater secrets

Local governments'  have often stirred controversy with their use of eminent domain. While it's supposed to be used for the public good, too often it has been used to profit developers, while the public just feels ripped off.

Still, the idea of local governments using eminent domain as a tool to stabilize home prices in some of Southern California’s hardest hit communities is an intriguing one.

It’s the kind of bold action that’s been missing in the government’s limp response to the foreclosure crisis.

But the scheme that’s unfolding in Southern California’s Inland Empire, rated as the one of the most underwater in the nation, is a step in the wrong direction.

It smacks of politically-connected high-finance types, boasting of their access to politicians as their “secret formula,” wheeling and dealing in secret.

A san Francisco venture capital firm is cooking up a scheme in San Bernardino to use the government’s eminent domain power to seize some underwater mortgages from investors who own them and have been unwilling to offer borrowers principal reduction that would allow them to stay in their homes.

The firm’s idea, apparently, is to for San Bernardino County and other local government’s form a joint powers authority that would allow those government to act together to use eminent domain to seize mortgage loans, not the property, of underwater homeowners who were not behind on their payments at “market value.”

Then, according to the scheme, the firm would find investors to issue new mortgages to the homeowners at that lower, more affordable “market value.”]

The plan was hatched by San Francisco-based Mortgage Resolution Partners. That’s the firm originally headed by Phil Angelides, former state treasurer, real estate developer and venture capitalist best known recently for leading a congressionally-appointed investigation into the financial crisis.

After issuing a report highly critical of the banks, Angelides didn’t stump the country to put pressure on authorities to follow up on his report with prosecutions.

He went into the mortgage business himself, swaddling his efforts to make profits from distressed mortgages in good intentions of finding solutions to the foreclosure crisis.

It was Angelides who boasted in a letter to potential investors that his firms’ secret formula was its connections to public officials. Reuters reported that Angelides told potential investors they could generate 20 percent profits.

After Angelides’ involvement in the firm was publicized earlier this year, he stepped aside. Replacing him was Steven Gluckstern, a hedge fund veteran who was one of President Obama’s major bundlers in the 2008 election.

According to published reports, Mortgage Partners would make its profit charging a fee on every mortgage seized. How much will it be paid and how? That hasn’t been disclosed. But according to Naked Capitalism, its sources say that the firm expects to make a 5.5 percent fee on each mortgage ­– paid for by having the government seize the mortgages at a discount and sell them back to the homeowner for a profit.

The most serious general flaw in the scheme is that has unfolded behind the cloak of confidentiality agreements between government officials and Mortgage Resolution Partners, with no public disclosure or debate on the concept or details, giving the whole deal the stink of a sweetheart deal, not a solution.

When the Riverside Press-Enterprise sought written records of communication between county officials and the mortgage firm, they were told there were none.

The use of eminent domain is highly controversial because it has often been justified as benefiting the public when it ends up benefiting real estate developers. In this case, investors who own the mortgage loans have already weighed in opposing the plan. Though the plan’s backers say eminent domain has been used to seize intangible goods, they acknowledge it hasn’t been used to seize mortgage loans before. So investors are likely to challenge the process in court.

But I wouldn’t shed too many tears for the investors, who have stood in the way of principal reductions or any other means of helping homeowners.

Another question raised by the current plan: why is only Mortgage Resolutions Partners being considered as a partner for the joint powers authority? The idea should be put out for an open bid. Maybe other firms would have even better plans and offer a better deal.

And there are plenty of other issues surrounding the plan. Walter Hackett is a former banker who is now lead attorney in the Legal Aid Riverside’s branch near San Bernardino. While he likes the idea of using eminent domain as a tool to stabilize home prices,

he questions why eminent domain would be used to seize mortgage loans – which are more difficult to set a price on – rather than property itself. Seizing the property and paying the investor for the fair market value of the property, rather than the mortgage, would extinguish the old mortgage and the new investors could then issue a new one to the borrower at the market value.

Hackett also questions why eminent domain would be used only on mortgages deemed current, so-called performing loans, rather than including properties that have already fallen into foreclosure that are still owned by investors. “Former owners, or others might be able to afford reduced payments once the properties are priced at market value, rather than at the price of the underwater mortgage,” Hackett said.

Hackett’s unusual background, having been a banker and represented homeowners in foreclosure, would be invaluable in redesigning such a proposal. It should not be left only to the venture capitalists and the county politicians.

I’m not suggesting that local governments shouldn’t find a way to use eminent domain or find other creative solutions to help struggling homeowners. But we also need to stop assuming that when the financiers and politicians go into the back room, they come out with something that’s in our interest – even if they say it is.

We learned from the bailout and the government’s subsequent coddling of the financial industry how the secrecy and lack of transparency undermine trust in both our financial system and our government.

However inconvenient to the bankers and hedge fund honchos, such proposals must be hammered out with full public participation and debate. We don’t need any more secret formulas” brewed with corporate cash and political connections in back rooms with you and me kept out.

 

 

Foreclosures / Martin Column - 07/12/2012

Obama to Corporate Persons: And This is How You Thank Me?

Poor President Obama. Confronted with an economic catastrophe when he took office, he made a decision – well documented here and here, for example – to save the financial industry from its own misdeeds, foregoing the opportunity to obtain from the Wall Street CEOs any kind of quid pro quo for beleaguered taxpayers and homeowners. And what does he get in return?

Wall Street contributions to the President’s re-election campaign are down 68%, reports the New York Times.

There’s also been a drop in financial support from some of those who were all-in to elect him in 2008.  Some big-name progressive donors, dismayed by the President’s inability to hold the line on everything from foreclosures to a public health care option (which likely would have survived the Supreme Court’s widely expected invalidation of the health care reform law), are sitting this one out – at least for the moment.

Unfortunately, the worst is yet to come for the President, courtesy of the same Supreme Court. Freed from campaign spending restrictions by the court’s ruling in Citizens United, the highly-skilled right wing corporate apparatus is aiming to raise $500 million in “super PAC” money to beat Obama. Pro-Romney super PACs have already out-raised those supporting the President by a factor of eight.

This comes as no surprise to those familiar with the way big business behaves in public.

If corporations are people, as the Republican majority on the Supreme Court says, then the defining trait of the modern corporate personality is ingratitude. When all the federal bailout programs are totaled up (including indirect assistance like being able to borrow taxpayer money at super-low interest rates), Wall Street and many other firms got somewhere around $14 trillion in financial aid from Washington.

Had that money been put in the hands of the American people, it could have paid off every mortgage, credit card and car loan in the United States.

Like President Obama, we are still waiting for our thank you note from corporate America.

Instead, we get surging credit card interest rates, skyrocketing gas prices, outrageous health insurance premium increases and, adding insult to those injuries, the imposition of undisclosed inflated fees by cell phone, airline and other companies for the dishonest purpose of charging hapless consumers more than the advertised price.

Hence the need for parental supervision of corporate persons, also known as "regulation."

Corporate money had already eroded the democratic process under the patchwork of campaign finance laws that pre-dated Citizens United. Our report, “Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America” (PDF) gets right to the bottom line. Between 1998 and 2008, Wall Street invested $5 billion in Washington, a combination of money for lobbying and campaign contributions that won deregulation and other policy decisions that enabled the Money Industry to do as it pleased. The ensuing orgy of unbridled speculation came to a halt in 2008 when the big banks threatened to shut down the system unless they got trillions of dollars in loans, tax breaks and other taxpayer bailouts.

But by deregulating corporate money in Citizens United, the U.S. Supreme Court has empowered a crime wave of corporate influence peddling that will dwarf anything this country has ever seen.

Take, for example, Sacramento – California's integrity-free zone.

$ A half-decade-long battle to force health insurance companies to open their books and prove they need rate increases was crushed by industry lobbyists, forcing angry consumers to mount a ballot measure of their own.

$ A package of bills backed by the state’s Attorney General to prevent banks from abusing the home foreclosure process – dubbed the “Homeowners Bill of Rights” – has been blocked by the banking industry, which spent over $70 million on lobbyists and lawmakers in California between 2007 and 2011.

$ A bill that will deregulate telephone service, sponsored by the state’s two biggest phone companies, AT&T and Verizon, is sailing through the state legislature, much as electricity deregulation did in 1998 – to disastrous consequences for California taxpayers.

Once upon a time, average citizens might have had a voice in these policy debates.  Now that corporate America is locked and loaded, we don't stand a chance.

Citizens United / Harvey Column / President Barack Obama / Supreme Court - 04/23/2012

Etch-a-Sketch Politicians in a PAC Man world

Every once in a while a jaded political operative utters a profound truth, cutting through all the baloney and phony punditry.

That’s what Mitt Romney’s adviser did when he suggested that his boss could just hit “reset” and adopt more moderate positions once he locked up the Republican nomination and didn’t have to cater to the far right of his party. “It’s almost like an Etch-a-Sketch,” the aide, Eric Fehrnstrom, said. “You can kind of shake it up, and we start all over again.”

Sure, all of Romney’s foes will now clobber him with his aide’s comments and try to score political points off the “gaffe.”

But Fehrnstrom was offering a truth that rarely gets told in big media about how our politicians operate.

Romney and his fellow candidates count on voters not to pay attention, to leave them plenty of room to gloss over earlier statements.

Politicians count on the media’s cynicism and its craven need for access to power to blunt any remaining watchdog instincts. The media ignore commitments the candidates make and contradictions between what they do and what they said, shrugging it off because “everybody does it.”

Romney has had to shake the Etch-a-Sketch hard to erase the image of himself as the moderate Republican governor of Massachusetts whose own health care plan provided the template for President Obama’s health care plan, while candidate Romney now falls over himself to oppose the plan.

But the president has his own image shifts to answer for.

For example, candidate Obama portrayed himself as a strong advocate for the 99 percent, promising to change bankruptcy laws to help homeowners facing foreclosure keep their homes.

That shift, known as “judicial cram-downs,” would have provided a powerful incentive for banks to work out loan modifications with homeowners.

But when bankers fought cram-downs, President Obama quietly folded and judicial cram-downs died in Congress. Since then, the president and his administration have offered a series of limp anti-foreclosure measures that rely on voluntary bank cooperation, with paltry results.

But the Etch-a-Sketch is a pretty old toy. The current political season reminds me more of a slightly less retro game that gripped the public imagination – Pacman. In this wildly popular video game, a pizza-shaped icon gobbles up everything else on the screen.

The Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling unleashes unlimited, anonymous contributions to political action committees, or PACs, aligned, but not formally tied, to specific candidates.

Unfortunately, when it comes to using the PACs to bolster their campaigns, the Republicans and Democrats are on the same page.

Both are eager to gobble up the gazillions of dollars available through the PACs, thoroughly undermining the spirit and practice of democracy, in which the majority, not the super-rich minority, are supposed to win.

The best way for us to shake up the political establishment, and the billionaires and big corporations who control it, is to fight for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United.

Here’s our version of such an amendment, written in language that’s easy to understand and will withstand any legal challenge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Citizens United / Martin Column / President Barack Obama - 03/23/2012

“There Oughta Be A Law” – Want to Play?

I wrote last week that until we change the Constitution to permanently kick corporate money out of politics, we can forget about Congress protecting us from cell phone company contracts that strip consumers of their right to go to court.

I got a lot of interesting email on that post, because most people who read “Where’s Our Money” and other blogs think there “oughta be a law” of some kind. But no matter what you believe in or where you stand on the ideological spectrum, anybody who is trying to make America a better place for human beings is going to have a hard time overcoming the corrupting effect of corporate money on public officials and the democratic process.

Think I’m wrong? Here’s my challenge:

Name a policy issue that involves our power as voters, consumers, workers, taxpayers or even shareholders and I will show you how corporate money has derailed any serious progress on the matter.

If you don’t want to post it publicly, just ask that your comment remain private, or send me an email.

The same day I mused on our new status as second-class citizens courtesy of the US Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, President Obama’s re-election campaign endorsed a constitutional amendment to reverse that ruling. "The President favors action—by constitutional amendment, if necessary—to place reasonable limits on all such spending," the Obama campaign said. This came in the context of a another controversial move: the President had decided to encourage supporters to donate to one of the Super PACs supporting him. “Super PACs” are the shadowy groups that the Supreme Court freed of restraints on political spending in Citizens United. Tens of millions of dollars, most of it from unidentified corporations and wealthy donors, have poured into the Republican primaries. But that’s just a fraction of what Super PACs are expected to spend to unelect Barack Obama in November.

In a stark example of biting the hand that has fed it, Wall Street has made it clear that it is offended even by the timid financial reforms mustered by the Obama Administration over the last few years. Now that the taxpayers have resuscitated the Money Industry, it wants to go all the way back to the insane deregulatory policies that pushed the nation into a depression in 2008.

There was a lot of critical commentary about the announcement, not just by hypocrite Republicans like John Beohner, but also by commentators on the left who feel Obama betrayed his commitment to campaign finance reform.

I for one can’t see how any candidate from either party can afford not to play by the deregulated rules of legalized bribery blessed by the Supreme Court. Like Obama’s campaign manager said, “unilateral disarmament” in the face of a massive attack of big money makes no sense. Our electoral system now assures the survival only of the financially fattest.

But will Obama really fight for the 28th Amendment? It’s one thing to endorse the concept and quite another to press for a change in the Constitution that would strip the corporate establishment of its power to elect candidates and dictate laws. The President has the bully pulpit and phenomenal power, but like the rest of us, he can't hope to pass any laws if corporations maintain a hammerlock over the legislative branch. No one knows better than he how the powerful insurance lobby turned health care reform into a corporate boondoggle. If President Obama thinks there oughta be a law, any meaningful law, in his second term, he's going to have confront Citizens United.

 

Citizens United / Congress / Harvey Column / Supreme Court / Uncategorized - 02/13/2012

Break of Day

Last August, right-wing television host Glenn Beck made a bizarre attempt to hijack the spirit of Martin Luther King’s 1963 Freedom March with his own manipulative March on Washington.

Millions of Americans wrung their hands in despair as Beck and his colleagues from Fox News and the Tea Party stood on what was deemed sacred ground and dominated the political discourse, while our own leaders failed to respond to the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression or to hold Wall Street accountable for causing it.

Then last fall, the Occupy Wall Street movement arrived.

Although the media tried to ignore them and then proceeded to belittle them, Occupiers tapped into a deep-seated longing, capturing the public imagination with their 21st century take on King’s message: overcome despair, shame and division; organize and dare to imagine; and fight nonviolently for a better society for everyone.

We don’t need a séance to know that for Martin Luther King, the notion that our government would dare to characterize the economy as “in recovery” while black unemployment remains nearly twice the national average would be an outrage, not a footnote.

Unlike the Tea Party, Occupy has avoided electoral politics, preferring to focus, as King did, on empowering the powerless through direct action on the streets. And while some have criticized Occupy for not delivering a more focused message, the Occupiers have clearly picked up the spiritual aspect of King’s call to action, posing profound questions about the kind of society we have become and what kind of society we want to be.

Occupy’s debt to King's non-violence is direct: In Los Angeles, activists are integrating techniques developed in the antinuclear and anti-globalization movements with the techniques taught at free monthly classes with the Reverend James Lawson, one of the men who guided King and taught him about Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolence strategy.

During the last year of King’s life, he expanded the focus of his actions and goals beyond African-American civil rights to building an all-encompassing movement to challenge U.S. militarism and poverty. His last appearance in Memphis was in support of a strike by sanitation workers, opening his arms wide to embrace the cause of what Occupy has forever branded “the 99 percent.”

Beck’s travesty in Washington hit rock bottom for those of us who have been observing and decrying a system that seems designed to benefit those whose values preclude equality and fairness. The assault on the middle class in our country has been brutal. There was—during those dark August days—no loud voice, outside the rarified world of blogs and op-ed pages, crying out in moral outrage.

In September, a small band set up camp in Zuccotti Square. Since that time, the Occupy Wall Street movement has ignited those cries, on the streets and from a growing number of pulpits nationwide.

These are the spirits that endure and the ties that bind.

For me and for many others, embracing the Occupy movement posed a challenge. As a long-time journalist, I’ve had to find a new kind of voice. Like so many friends and colleagues who had lost faith that we would ever be heard, I’ve had to overcome fear and cynicism, learn to act more boldly, engage more creatively.

The memory of the Reverend Martin Luther King reminds us that whatever our obstacles, we need to link arms and learn to put one foot in front of the other, keeping our eyes on the prize, a prize that belongs to all of us.

Martin Column / Occupy / Outrage / Tea Party - 01/17/2012

Synthetic Tea

If you were looking for leadership of a real grass-roots movement for social change, Dick Armey might not be your first choice.

After he rose to become House Republican majority leader, he quit to cash in on his political connections with the top lobbying shop DLA Piper law firm. He’s also on the payroll of the Koch Brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity, one of the main sources of organizational backing of the Tea Party.

I’ve been critical of the Obama campaign’s hypocritical promises of a new kind of fundraising campaign that relies only on small donors, not fat cats, while he seeks donations from Wall Street.

But Obama’s nemeses in the Tea Party are no better, portraying themselves as a grassroots populist movement while relying on members of the Republican permanent government like Armey for leadership.

Armey actually had to quit his lobbying job because of his DLA  Piper clients favored Obama’s health care reform, after the president cut a deal to secure support from drug companies. The Tea Party, meanwhile, has been dead set against the Obama plan.

It’s not that somebody like Armey, with his vast knowledge gained from slithering through the corridors of power all these years, might not have something to offer an authentic grassroots movement. But wouldn’t he have to offer a renunciation of his past connections before he participate? Wouldn’t he have to acknowledge that he had been part of the problem before he could be part of the solution?

Whatever minor disagreements Armey’s former clients might have with the Tea Party agenda, their interests dovetail neatly. Demonizing government and railing against strong regulations will only mean fewer watchdogs for the drug companies and bankers DLA Piper serves, and fewer tools to hold them accountable.

 

Martin Column - 06/28/2011

Culture of Greed 1, Crackdown 0

When President Obama appointed his new chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission, he promised she would “crack down on the culture of greed and scheming.”

But that culture seems to be getting the better of Mary Schapiro after the resignation of her agency’s top counsel, amid allegations of questionable ethics.

That former top counsel, David Becker, is among those whose family actually made money from the massive frauds of Bernard Madoff.

As SEC general counsel, Becker recently argued for a change in policy that would have allowed his family to keep more of the fortune they made from Madoff, rather than turning it over to pay those who lost money.

Becker might have been considered a curious choice for a new tougher SEC, considering that during an earlier stint as a top SEC lawyer earlier in the decade, Becker was among those who failed to crack down on Madoff, despite highly publicized warnings.

Now Becker has decamped back to the corporate firm from where he came, leaving Schaprio, his former boss, sputtering about what she can and can’t say about what she knew about Becker’s Madoff investments and when she knew it.

This is, of course, catnip to the Republicans looking for any opportunity to embarrass the Obama administration. Never mind that they oppose any kind of regulation of the financial industry at all.

What a great gift Schapiro and Becker have handed Republicans: proof that the Obama administration’s promises to protect us from the “culture of greed and scheming” were nothing more than a sham. Meanwhile, Becker slams the swinging door in our faces and goes back to his real job – representing the interests of big banks and financial interests.

 

 

 

 

Around the Web / Martin Column / Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) - 03/09/2011

From Prosecutions to Peanuts

It was only last December that the head of a 50-state attorney general investigation into foreclosure fraud boldly told homeowner advocates, “We will put people in jail.”

That was Tom Miller, Iowa attorney general, who added, “One of the main tools needs to be principal reductions, just like in the farm crisis in the 1980s…there should be some kind of compensation system for people who have been harmed…And the foreclosure process should stop while loan modifications begin.  To have a race between foreclosures and modifications to see which happens first is insane.”

That was then. Now Miller is backing off his tough talk, replacing it with a strategy of negotiating with the big banks and a bunch of federal agencies to come up with a settlement.

The amount of the potential settlement is $20 billion, according to press reports.

Gone is any notion of prosecutions.

There’s been a lot of discussion about whether this amount is too high or too low. The banks contend that they might have been sloppy about their paperwork but they foreclosed on only a few people who hadn’t been making their mortgage payments. No harm, no foul.

But homeowner advocates and critics are outraged, arguing that the banks are guilty of more than slovenliness, they violated laws intended to protect consumers. You can’t pass laws that require banks to follow certain procedures and then allow the banks to flout them. That reinforces one of the most corrosive aspects of the bailout and its aftermath – that the system is rigged so that the banks don’t have to follow the law.

Not to mention that $20 billion is pocket change to the big banks and won’t go far in modifying the mortgages that they refused to touch so far.

In addition, any fund that is controlled by the banks rather than a responsible government agency is a recipe for continued inaction by the banks.  See the disastrous Obama Administration HAMP program, which is somewhere between an abject failure and an actual scam that rips off homeowners.

Miller’s retreat is not the only distressing signal coming from the foreclosure front. Here in California the new state attorney general, Kamala Harris, made the strong protection of homeowners in foreclosure a key plank of her campaign. Yet her office recently signed off on a feeble $6.8 million settlement of a lawsuit against Angelo Mozilo and another top official of Countrywide Financial who presided over that company’s orgy of subprime lending before the financial collapse.

$5.2 million of the money goes into a restitution fund for victims. Mozilo and his president, David Sambol, admitted no wrongdoing. They’re not on the hook for the money- Bank of America, which bought Countrywide will pay it for them.
As David Dayen points out on Firedoglake, the settlement was probably inherited from her predecessor, the present governor, Jerry Brown. But that doesn’t mean she has to tout such a pittance as some great victory for the state.

It’s just a very small drop in a bucket with a very big leak in it.

If you live in California, you can call Harris’ office and suggest she stop caving into predatory lenders and start living up to her campaign promises.

Wherever you live, please contact your attorney general and remind them they are, after all, not the bankers’ buddies, but the people’s prosecutors.

Here are numbers where you can reach your state attorney general.

 

Around the Web / Foreclosures / Martin Column / Outrage - 03/04/2011

Bailout Fuels Bitter Race to the Bottom

Maybe I just missed Harley Davidson’s thank you note to me and other taxpayers for bailing them out during the height of the financial crisis.

Perhaps the iconic motorcycle maker  didn’t think it would have to send a thank you note.

After all, they had every reason to think that the Federal Reserve’s emergency, low interest, $2.3 billion loans in the wake of the financial crisis would remain their little secret.

But the financial reform legislation spoiled all that, forcing the Fed to disclose details of  trillions of dollars worth of confidential loans they made, which amounted to a giant subsidy because of the low interest charged.

Beneficiaries included not just the country’s largest banks and foreign banks, but corporate giants such as General Electric, Verizon, Toyota and Harley Davidson.

It turns out that these companies borrow millions every day to pay their expenses. When the credit market froze up in the meltdown, Harley Davidson and the others turned to the Fed, which stepped in with loans at low rates and no questions asked.

Maybe the thank you note is still on Harley Davidson’s to-do list.

The company has been awfully busy, what with opening a new plant – in India, closing plants in this country and bullying its remaining U.S. workers to give back wages and benefits or face more plant closures.

It’s not that the company is incapable of showing gratitude. In 2009, a year in which the company suffered steep sales declines and more than 2,000 workers had been laid off, they paid their CEO $6.3 million – including a $780,000 bonus. Since January, 2009, the company has laid off more than a fifth of its work force, and closed two factories. By the end of next year, another 1,400 to 1,600 face layoffs.

In 2009, the average Harley Davidson worker who still had a job  was paid $32,000.

After threatening to close its York, Pa. plant and move production to Shelbyville, Ky., the company and the workers reached an agreement to keep the plant open – with 600 fewer employees and wage concessions. But not before the Pennsylvania governor, Ed Rendell, offered $15 million in tax incentives to the company.

All the cuts are paying off – at least for the company’s shareholders. In July, the company reported a $71 million profit, more than triple what it earned a year ago.

Maybe sending taxpayers thank you notes slipped their minds while company officials were busy hiring lobbyists to fight financial reform last year, to the tune of $115,000 – about $100,000 less than they spent the year before.

Harley Davidson is using the lift it got from its bailout subsidy to join the latest trend – companies make more profit with fewer workers, and wringing concessions from those that remain. As if the bailout wasn’t enough of a gift, the company squeezes even more from state taxpayers just for the privilege of keeping their plants open. For the company’s executives, the bailout fueled their escape from financial ruin and their race to the top. But workers and taxpayers are left standing on the sidelines.

Imagine if Harley Davidson had just split its $2.3 billion low-interest loans with its individual workers. Imagine if the taxpayers, who actually funded corporate America’s bailout, were  the recipients of anywhere near that kind of generosity. Imagine if we had a government with  as ferocious a commitment to shovel trillions into taxpayers and workers'  hands with no conditions of any kind.

We’ll never know what kind of creative energy, not to mention how much economic stimulus, would have been unleashed.

But that’s not the kind of bailout we got.

Harley Davidson, you're welcome.

Federal Reserve / Martin Column / Outrage - 12/11/2010

Happy Thanksgiving to You from California First LLC, the New Owner of Your State

This isn’t a tale about turkeys. It’s about pigs.

With America’s economy smashed, and American consumers no longer consuming, these are tough times for everybody, and that includes Wall Street investors and hedge funds. What are they supposed to do with the billions of dollars they have amassed courtesy of the US taxpayers?  Wouldn’t it be great if they could figure out a way to help us while helping themselves?

Harvey Column / Outrage / Uncategorized - 11/23/2010