Washington, D.C. -- Internationally known philanthropist Santa Claus made a surprise appearance before Congress today to request a massive loan to keep his workshop open, asserting that, without an immediate infusion of cash, "This may be the year without a Christmas."
Mr. Claus, age unknown, offered no specifics about how he would use the government funds, asking only that the Congressmen simply "believe in" him.
The reclusive Claus has adamantly refused to divulge details of how he pays for his worldwide charitable activities. As CEO, Claus reportedly takes no salary, accepting only voluntary gratuities in the form of milk and cookies, which has raised concerns about his ties to the powerful dairy and sugar industries.
The proposal met a chilly reception on Capitol Hill, where members of both parties expressed skepticism about extending yet another multibillion-dollar bailout.
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-California) peppered the so-called "Jolly Old Elf" with blunt questions. "How are we to believe that you can know who is naughty and know who is nice," asked Waxman, "but you were unable to see this financial crisis coming?"
Waxman was further exasperated that, although Claus had come to the Capitol claiming poverty, he arrived in Washington via his own private sleigh.
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) objected to any handout, fearing the precedent it would set. "What is next? Will we be asked to subsidize the Tooth Fairy just because the market value of baby teeth has fallen? I mean, that is simple supply-and-demand!"
Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona), who has continued to hold weekly town-hall meetings since the election purely in order to keep griping that President-Elect Barack Obama will not join him, was cornered by Mrs. Mildred Mulheim, a feisty octogenarian who wondered why her tax money should go to someone "who is not even an American." McCain deflected her criticism by assuring her that Claus is a "decent family man," but indicated that he was worried about Claus's well-documented propensity for "spreading the wealth around."
Alaska governor Sarah Palin, in an impromptu exclusive interview between her previously scheduled exclusive interviews, voiced her own suspicions about the secretive gift-giver, wondering aloud, "Who is the real Santa Claus?"
Asserting that Alaska's proximity to the North Pole qualifies her as an expert on Christmas, Palin wanted to know more about Claus's "associations," insisting that more should be learned about Mr. Claus's history of pallin' around with elves.
Palin also took advantage of the presence of cameras and microphones to announce that she had legally changed her surname to Palin, divulging that her husband's real name was actually Paling. "It's somethin' we've been meanin' to do for a coon's age," stated the governor and future reality-show host. "We haven't been pronouncin' the "g" anyhoo."
64 comments:
Congress better say NO!!!
Santa as a metaphor...which is what he is...anyway, this is the last great fleecing of the american public before bush and his gang leave washington. it's interesting this began as a crisis during the presidential race and just months before bush leaves office. this is the last opportunity of the neocon republicans to screw the taxpayer and take as much money as they can. there is no oversight over how paulson is using this money but you can rest assured no executive will go without their bonuses. and this also prevents obama from using any of these funds for his economic recovery plan. they are trying to screw him as well as the american taxpayer.
why not give each household, say, $25,000 to use as an economic stimulus. i could pay off the majority of my bills with that and then have more discretionary income to spend each month. but then that would entail giving assistance to the taxpayer outright and would show that the trickle up affect does work and the republicans wouldn't want that now would they?
jan 20th can't get here soon enough.
STOP!!!!!
borrow and give to your cronies, till you
bankrupt the US government
So you can drown it in a bathtub.
That's what's happening, right in front of us, while
Bush Tap Dances to distract us.
Give those billions to the states, to the unemployed, to folks facing foreclosure. That money will go right back into the economy, unlike the waste on banks.
Pass anti Usury laws cap interest at 10%.
Order billions of dollars of offshore wind turbines.
give individuals and businesses huge tax credits for installing roof top solar.
Create an US Green Bank to help green companies with liquidity problems.
Well now don't you just love pure capitalism ?
Soon we can live like they do in Brazil !
Personal Security is the largest industry in Brazil.
Seems people like to get home alive.
If nobody knows exactly how much debt is out there, then how do you keep throwing money at that which you have no idea what it will take to restore confidence, IF, after you throw $700 billion at it (thinking that should settle Nervous Nellies) more Citibanks or AIGs or Big 3 automakers continue to show up almost daily on your doorstep on the verge of collapse?
Doesn't the time come when you say, "Everybody stop! Let's try to get on top of this by figuring out how much debt is out there (hungry mouths), and then we'll figure out exactly how much money we have on hand (or in this case, how much we would have to borrow from China, Japan, Saudi Arabia) and THEN make the decisions about who gets bailed out and who doesn't"?
'The Winter of Our Discontent'
The story revolves around New Englander Ethan Allen Hawley, who works as a clerk in a grocery store he used to own. His wife and kids resent their lowly social and economic position, and don't put any value in the high levels of honesty and integrity that Ethan struggles to maintain in a corrupt society. Under this constant pressure, Hawley will eventually manage to get back the store by renouncing his morals, but the new-found wealth will not bring happiness.
Sound Familiar?
Thanks for a very interesting post.
I'll be writing my Congress person and State Senator that I say "NO!" to anymore money until PE Obama takes office Jan 20. Especially since the current oink in the office acts like he doesn't have a clue! NO! No! no!
Allow the market to allocate capital, not the government by declaring a tax holiday as follows:
Tax Holiday on Social Security and Medicare taxes would put about $1.3 Trillion into the economy, providing about an 8 - 9% take home pay raise on the first 100,000 of income -- this would benfit about everyone employed. This would also provide businesses (especially small business with a like cut in the employer share of payroll taxes. (SS and Medicare are in surplus so this would not effect current beneficiaries).
A Tax holiday on Individual Income taxes would also add $1.3 trillion; corporate tax holiday would add another $350 billion or so. Of course this would be skewed to the higher income as they pay most of the taxes.
Either of these could be donw very easily and could be either retroactive to 2008 by having Treasury send checks, or throughout 2009 by merely stopping the withholdlng of payroll and or income taxes. In the later case the similar effect would be spread over the entire year and not a one time shot which dissipates and is useless. Consumers would allocate the funds as they saw fit -- allowing the market not the government to pick winners and losers.
In some ways, I would hope that Congress would say, "let's wait until Obama is President." I don't trust Paulson; I don't trust anybody that worked for Bush.
The federal reserve has spent 2 trillion under the title "superfund" last year bailing out the stock market when the sub-prime hit the fan.
Because the United States Rating companies in New York rated bundled sub-prime mortgages as the highest AAA bonds. If they rated them as the junk bonds they are, the other countries would have not purchased so many. They did, so our federal reserve had to go behind closed doors to give the countries some of their money to bail out their banks.
I am ready for a march on Washington before Bush leaves, to take his ass to jail.
Bloomberg: "Fed Pledges Exceed $7.7 Trillion in Rescue of Companies With Frozen Credit "
---------
Three times the federal budget and counting. Or, $27k for every soul in the US, including newborns and 90 year old ladies.
"Certainly no nation ever before abandoned to the avarice and jugglings of private individuals to regulate according to their own interests, the quantum of circulating medium for the nation -- to inflate, by deluges of paper, the nominal prices of property, and then to buy up that property at 1s. in the pound, having first withdrawn the floating medium which might endanger a competition in purchase. Yet this is what has been done, and will be done, unless stayed by the protecting hand of the legislature. The evil has been produced by the error of their sanction of this ruinous machinery of banks; and justice, wisdom, duty, all require that they should interpose and arrest it before the schemes of plunder and spoilation desolate the country." --Thomas Jefferson to William C. Rives, 1819
Big business cannot be trusted to regulate itself. They will always work in their own self-interest. And yet we forget to heed Jefferson and eventually we go back down the road of deregulation and so-called "free markets" -- so went the Depression and now here are -- Recession? Depression?
This is the "Event Horizon" of the black hole we are about to be sucked into. It's funny how nobody said "recession" three months ago, and what we are about fall into will be deeper and darker than anything this country has ever seen.
This is just the same old, same old, from this Administration: cripple the government while distributing citizens' assets to their friends. Someone had better investigate this crap.
We're headed into what must be the greatest period of fundamental reform since the Great Society, if not the New Deal. The crisis has already forced dramatic responses. Obama has the intelligence, and the leadership capacity to lead the response. Like Roosevelt, he needs a popular movement that supports him -- and pushes him to go much farther than his more cautious advisors might suggest. This isn't a time to jump off a bridge. It's time to start pulling an oar.
Perhaps we should see the glass half full? What are the positives? To reign in spending perhaps the US will shut down all overseas military bases, withdraw all US troops from Iraq, end the war on drugs, and in general mind our own business.
Sounds like a plan.
The Republican Government under Bush has, according to Bloomberg, "Pledged $7.7 Trillion to Ease Frozen Credit" and today added $800 Billion MORE!
Republican CRISIS EFFORTS = $8.5 Trillion
So that means Obama can use up to $8.5 Trillion without "ONE WORD OF CRITICISM" FROM THE REPUBLICANS!
So it is time for Republicans to be VERY QUIET! Shhhhh! Shhhhhh!
The reason endangered politicians of both parties start airing populist progressive themes around election time is because they know those themes are popular among rank-and-file voters (thus the definition of "populism") -... But once these politicians get into office and are far away from all of us, the unwashed masses, the pressures of money and media - ie. the Establishment - unleashes incredible pressure for them to actually write the details of policy in a way that preserves the conservative status quo.
If the last eight years has taught us anything it is to keep our leaders accountable, so before we declare victory and bestow sainthood on the President elect, we need to remind ourselves that this new administration and congress need to be watched with the same sense of healthy distrust that we've developed over the past eight years;
perhaps even more so BECAUSE they carry our standard..
I agree.
Trust, but verify -- to coin a phrase.
But we're not in distrustful opposition -- yet. We should be pushing hard for the changes we need, helping the new administration and Congress overcome the obstacles -- both internal and external -- in the way. For Obama to be successful, he has to be a transformational president. We should be acting not as distrustful scolds but as engaged activists pushing for that transformation.
Amen.
So far all I see is a Rubin team of Citigroup people replacing the Goldman Sachs people, and the history of the new team is as the diarist mentions: all about Wall Street and banking, and ZERO experience actually running a small business, a medium size business or a start up on Main Street. But plenty of support for NAFTA, deregulation, and outsourcing jobs with a FU to American workers.
I'm noticing 'today,' for the record: HALF America's GDP handed over with no strings to the same banks and Wall Street houses that brought us to our knees and ZERO, ZERO, for Main Street, for actual working people out in the cities and towns of America. THIS HAS TO CHANGE.
I don't think Obama's economic team has the courage or the experience to help the country, but they will ensure that bonuses and those nice vacations remain in place for their banking and WS cronies.
The looting of America continues, and will continue I'm afraid, while Americans go broke and end up living in the parks and the streets.
Lots of progressives share your perspective -- but I think there is a trap here.Obama comes to office with a mandate for change. The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression demands dramatic change. The Bush-Paulson response has failed miserably.
I think it is a bad mistake to prejudge Obama now, and write his administration off as hopeless since he's appointed experienced hands from the Clinton (and thus Rubin) bench. He's moved dramatically to a big recovery agenda. We should be urging him to move dramatically to a new initiative to reorganize the shattered banking sector.
His appointees raise concerns that might not happen. All the more reason to press the case. Big changes are imperative. And we have a president who understands that and is bold enough to lead. Let's not write him off; let's spur him on.
Could it not be that the financial system is totally insolvent, but no one cares to admit this, for fear of inducing panic? Who will be next on the bailout band wagon, Bank of America perhaps?
If a handy guy can refit his gas guzzler to run on electricity, why can't GM? Thirty years ago the Philippines exported rice. Now, the IMF and Monsanto rigged the system so they import rice the people can't afford. Global Warming drowns Polar Bears.
Ten millions Native Americans thrived before the white man came.
The USA won't be right until Wall Sreet brokers share a tent city complex with carpenters.
Because we continue to buy what they sell, of course with zero down and no interest, compounding our error. Electricity is made by coal fired plants anyway, at least they are our coal fired plants. Doha was a waste of time, reduce the subsidies, our foreign policy is:
Kenya has two apples
America wants two apples
America has two apples
simple as that.
What we did in the propagandist maifest destiny to the natives is an american disgrace!
There is a crisis of confidence at hand. Obama is doing the best he can to address that by appointing the least controversial figures he can find at this time. Unfortunately, this is not the time for radical alteration of recovery path started under Bernanke and Paulson. So Obama cannot post people into key positions that move too far off away from the Paulson stance.
The good news, if one can find any, is that once this debacle is settled and it will no doubt, Obama has the mandate to move ahead with a full blown reform package of the Wall Street. We have many pensions and retirement accounts at stake so the main street is fully involved and will be demanding fundamental changes. We are looking at a lot more regulation within Wall Street that will require far greater levels of transparency than is in place now.
Bush's legacy has clearly dealt a massive blow to the supply-side economics that gained tremendous popularity in the Reagan era. It looks like Obama has the opportunity to bring back the demand-side economics similar to the way Roosevelt did in the 30s and make it the front and center of how we approach economic progress for some time to come.
Good description of Obama's challenge and opportunity. But I'd argue that a "radical alteration of the recovery path" of Bernanke and Paulson is part of what is needed in order to recover. Bernanke and Paulson aren't following a clear, well trodden path, they are blazing the trail as they go. So we shouldn't see their moves as defining the future. And -- as indicated in this weeks new initiatives -- ieven they understand that it will take bolder action to get us out of the debacle. If we wait until the economy is humming to reorganize the banking sector, we may be waiting for a very long time. The major banks are too big to fail and too big to save.
Bolder actions in due course. The public cannot stomach radical changes in one fell swoop. Obama will come under fire for doing too much too soon and not giving the incremental interventions enough opportunity to succeed. The more the crisis deepens, the more leeway Obama has for action. If what has been done so far does not restore confidence in the financial system and ease the liquidity crisis, then government will be forced to temporarily take over the failing banks and prop them up. The problem is that the depth and breadth of the toxic assets held by the financial institutions is unknown. Given this, we don't exactly know how far we have to go in terms of government intervention.
Did you ever think that being "The best and the Brightest" doesn't mean they are honest.
Their basic assumptions destroy the economy.
I'll list a few tried and true lies:
1. Tariffs are bad even when we are being tariffed to extinction by places like China. If we protect our markets that is always protectionist and reactionary even as a bargaining tool.
2. America can survive on a credit and debt based economy alone. We don't need to manufacture anything.
3. The average American is never is allowed a fair living wage. Only the very rich can benefit from the economy.
4. THE STOCK MARKET IS THE ECONOMY. A company should never remain private because then they can succeed only by making a profit. Making money is unimportant unless the company grows even if billions in profit exist it has to be a billion and one or the company is failing and the profit can't be spent.
4. Sending all paying jobs overseas will keep America a superpower. Consumers will spend money they don't have on a 400 dollar HD TV because the electronics firm needs a 70% profit margin per unit as opposed to a 30% profit margin. You can always bully broke people into spending money they don't have. American workers making money is bad for the economy.
6. A company that is too big to fail is good for America.
Welcome to the state of our nation
How is it that Paulson could hand Citibank 600 billion when TARP was only 700 Billion and 300 has already been spent. I guess we didn't need the bailout because they are handing the money out anyway.
The short sellers are making a career out of destroying american business and we do nothing.
Will there be any money left for a stimulus once Obama is in office. 2 or three more bailouts like CIti and forget America. Everyone needs to be saved, but what's the point if the same "Best and Brightest" stay in power. They were all taught in places like Harvard and Yale to be thieves and call it "just business". The world is on to our criminality and they are angry.
A perfect example is the idea that the pension of a company is money that the company is wasting as opposed to money earned by their employees. In other words anything unspent on the books is OK to steal and anything less is caving in to organized Labor.
The point is that all tried and true philosophy are based on the idea that money should constantly be moved from the poor to the rich with no consequences for anyone.
We should be urging Obama to keep a steady hand, lead from the center, trim the budget, enable new technologies, re-think the China cheap goods for allowing them to manipulate their currency, opening up the high tech visa program, funding the enforcement of regulations already on the books! All these things would go a long way to restoring a balance of debt to GDP so sorely missing since our spending spree post 911 with no equal leveraging of taxes.
I think as a favor to Mr. Obama, Paulson and his team should start asking for a PLAN each time one of these entities comes a-begging. All this money keeps going out into the vapor world of the "financial system" to "shore it up". None of these quick fixes seem to be entirely working. I am happy about the econ. team so far b/c they know "the business" which is very sophisticated and complex. But, Mr. Obama will need to bring all his leadership qualities to bear when dealing with this group and directing their activities.
It was people who "know the business" who created the mess in the first place, including both parties in Congress. Those who raised the alarm bells about the amount of debt were scoffed at and derided. I would be happy to see a bipartisan solution to these issues, but I also fear that throwing good money after bad does not seem to bode well as a long term solution.
The situation is dire and fluid. Obama has mandate for change and capacity to lead. He has every good reason to select experienced hands in the crisis. We shouldn't write him off for doing so. At the same time, some like Geithner don't simply have "proven executive experience," they've been deeply involved in the bailout that hasn't worked. So it makes every good sense in the world to question what they've learned from the failure, and to push Obama to lay out a new direction.
One thing seems clear. Progressives should be embracing the audacity of hope. Obama will have a hard time succeeding unless there is an independent progressive movement pushing hard for dramatic change, and going after those who stand in the way.
President-elect Obama has gathered a group of very intelligent people with various perspectives on economic policy with whom (one must hope) he can consult and reach consensus. We're all learning as we go along at this point in the game, so the best thing any of us can do is to stay alert and stay vocal on the situation in the coming weeks and months, and make sure that our leaders and legislators can hear our voice.
Obama has already stated that he will be pursuing a new direction. Why is it that people assume all of a sudden that Obama will be incapable of making his own decisions based on the people he appoints? Clearly the man is not afraid of a challenge.
These folks will be taking marching orders from the president...let's not lose sight of that obvious fact.
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Wall Street is like Humpty Dumpty. All the Fed's horses and all the Fed's men just can't put Humpty together again.
The bailouts have been bad from the start, and polls show the majority of Americans have been against them. Congress voted against the bailouts, too...until $140 billion in demanded "sweeteners" were added. It's a bipartisan agreement which leaves taxpayers with no voice in the matter. My senators and rep. (both parties) said it had to be done to save the economy from disaster. I disagreed but said, if you still plan on passing the $700 billion [extortion], then at least make the terms transparent so that we taxpayers can see EXACTLY what we're paying for. I was assured by one senator that safeguards were in place--NOT. Middle class and poor people will now subsidize the financial mistakes and irresponsibility of mismanaged wall street firms and big banks and now automobile companies. And the number of corporations in the bailout application line just keeps growing.
As a human being, President Obama will err. Choices will be made that many of us will think imperfectly calculated. The big pro is that Barack Obama is a hardworking and intelligent man. His campaign showed that he studied and learned some of the best methods of previous campaigns. His Presidency should be similar, and we can hope it is similarly successful. I know that I have written how he was lucky, but i never doubted that he was the better man, and we were lucky, too, when he won. We can hope that when he goes down the wrong path, he will come back out of any dead end or find the way through even if it is a little further than ideal.
Is this going to be Carter all over again?
I hope so. Let us hope Obama has Carter's vision and is not hobbled by Rightwing opposition to the extent he can't enact his agenda.
Carter had absolutely no corruption. He was replaced by the most corrupt administration in history - until that is the Bush Administration.
Like Gore's defeat, Reagan and his economic philosophy taking root for 25 years were the two biggest disasters ever to befall this country because it set us on a course of inevitable self-destruction and the demise of The Middle Class and social justice begun by FDR.
It is good to see somebody praise Jimmy Carter's Presidency. I think he overdid the anti inflation thing when he supported Paul Volcker, but he saw a problem and he took care of it. We are all concerned whether Henry Paulson is actually taking care of our solvency problem or just blowing resources that could be better extended elsewhere.
Obama seems ready to confront inflation the way that Carter's Volcker confronted unemployment; that is, let it happen and bull on. I think that was Carter's mistake.
I really wax nostalgic about carter. how naive we were then. well its taken 30 years of brutal republican economic sodomy but I think we understand a bit more now than we did then. Like gas prices. I dont think opec wil impose any embargoes soon, but we need to move away from oil anyway. we should have back in 76, but if carter had tried it then, he probably would have been assasinated. Inflation?? we're gonna wish inflation was our biggest worry real soon. yeah those of us old enough to remeber carter are wishing we could have the chance to do 1980 all over again i can tell you, and send ronald reagan back to santa barbara permanently.
Carter did try to move away from oil - as did Ford (I was a summer contractor in Ford's energy department while I was a college student). That is a big part of why both Ford and Carter were defeated. The lesson learned in Washington was that an "Energy Policy" is a recipe for defeat at the polls - that is why Reagan took the solar panels off the White House roof. Since then the policy has been to talk down prices via the Saudis, until Bush/Cheney changed it to taking over Iraqi and Iranian oil fields (which worked a lot less well than the Ford/Carter policies). Even Gore, who probably would have brought back many of the Carter energy programs, didn't run on that issue.
Military and Healthcare spending are in pressing need of reform more than anything; perhaps if sound fiscal policy is to be achieved.
However, the issue of lobbyists is on par with these needed reforms.
Under Bush, the number of lobbyists tripled. This decisively corrupted the political process hand-in-hand with the toxic Republican anti-government deregulatory climate.
Why not do away with lobbyists? If private companies or industries have agendas, why can't they present them PUBLICLY in front of congressional committees?
Do other countries have lobbyists?
Until this is addressed our entire system will continue to be hobbled.
How about for starters all the abandoned malls and big box complexes be bulldozed, then jackhammered, then plowed and all the manure from farms all over the US be plowed back into that packed clay and all of those abandoned, plowed, jackhammered newly fertile parking lots be turned into botanical aad organic vegetable gardens? Hows that for an outta the box solution?
You've got my vote.
Why don’t they just contractually obligate these guys to lend if they want help, instead of just donating hundreds of billions. Maybe if they go out of business another better run company will step in and loan money. I assume these guys will wiggle out of having to pay back this money. I’m no genius but I think they will figure out a way to not pay back the loans, by filing bankruptcy, devaluing stock by printing a bunch more shares, or some other means. I’m just happy I’ve stopped getting 5 credit card offers a day in the mail.
Capitalism is rooted in competition, Democracy is rooted in a system of government based on equal rights and equal opportunities, but that was all lost when the Rothschilds took over the country through the manipulations of the currency through JP Morgan before the creation of the FED. That was the beginning of the end, the eventual downfall of our sovereignty, when we turned control of our money over to the few families that have controlled banking since the Dutch started manipulating the world economies.
It's worth noting what Dick Cheney said to Paul O'Neill when he was pushing the second round of tax cuts.
"We won the midterms. This is our due."
Not: "This will stimulate the economy"
Not: "This is what's best for the country"
He said: "This is our due." That pretty well sums it up.
Great point!!!
The trampling to death of a Walmart clerk by "self interested" shoppers is consumerism turned deadly.
I always thought working at Walmart was a dangerous job.
Ironically, Bush likes to claim he does not pay attention to the polls. Yet his whole presidency was constructed around controlling the media message and the efficacy of sound bites, rather than any real policy concerns. Even Paul O'Neill, the president's first Tresury Secretary, was amazed at the complete absense of a policy apparatus int he Bush White House. He famously said Bush never asked him a single question during his many economic policy tutorials with the president. Bush took no interest.
The economic collapse is a reflection of the Bush persona. Bush can never get beyond himself. A woman who tearfully told him on the campaign trail that she was working three jobs to make ends meet was responded to by Bush saying "good for you." He actually thought she wanted to work three jobs.
Bush was raised the son of a rich and influential person and never grew up in the slightest. He still gives frat house nicknames to everyone he meets. There is always a certain condescension when he speaks to the press. Bush never had to worry about money and the result is his wild spending and profligate borrowing. His success was not dependent on hard work or learning so he disdains experts and knowledgeable people.
Bush has been a disaster for this country. What is scary is that if he could run again he probably would not lose by much. How can a great country like ours twice elect a fraud like George Bush?
WTF?? Why do I need a friggin microscope to read the comment section now?
Yeah, and it took me several tries to even post a comment...there's a glitch in the matrix, Neo...
I can't even read what I posted without my bifocals.
sucks - i;m outta here cya
I'm sorry it comes out so small, and I don't know why it does or how to fix it.
The blog page started cutting my pics in half too, which is why I switched to the plain white format, the only one that shows whole pics.
Weird...
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