Tag Archives: bailouts

Marching Towards Another Depression

A fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle at New Deal 2.0 details the steps we are tak­ing towards a likely sec­ond Great Depres­sion. At a time when economies are tee­ter­ing on the edge of recov­ery and a sec­ond reces­sion, gov­ern­ments are start­ing to make noises, par­tic­u­larly in Europe, about reduc­ing deficits as a model for respon­si­ble finan­cial health. Unfor­tu­nately, …

June 8, 2010 – 9:18 am | By Brett Bim | Posted in Economics | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Can Civilization’s Birthplace Become Its Funeral Pyre?

Over­reach­ing head­lines aside, the Euro­zone is a bit of trou­ble. Greece has been bailed out in an attempt to avoid a sov­er­eign default. Those in the know think the Greeks are unlikely to be the last coun­try in the Euro­zone to require a bailout and the con­di­tions the IMF are expect­ing Greece to con­form with …

May 18, 2010 – 10:42 am | By Brett Bim | Posted in Economics | Tagged , , , | Comments (1)

And The Rich Get Richer…

There is cur­rently a move­ment under­foot in Con­gress to rec­om­pense investors in the Bernard Mad­off and R. Allen Stand­ford Ponzi scheme deba­cles. It is couched in the terms of peo­ple hav­ing lost their life’s sav­ings being fairly rep­re­sented and treated but is actu­ally a dis­gust­ing reminder of how those in power con­trol much of our …

March 10, 2010 – 10:17 pm | By Brett Bim | Posted in Economics | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Baby Steps

This week, Pres­i­dent Obama pro­posed reg­u­la­tory changes that would limit big banks, implic­itly those that received the guar­an­tee of a gov­ern­ment back­stop dur­ing the crash last year, from invest­ing for prof­its using their own hedge-funds or pro­pri­etary trad­ing desks. This would be an excel­lent first step in rein­ing in the power that the JP Mor­gans …

January 23, 2010 – 5:56 am | By Brett Bim | Posted in Economics, Politics | Tagged , | Comments (4)

Financial Calamity

Our finan­cial sys­tem is hor­ri­bly bro­ken, serv­ing only the well-connected and well-monied inter­ests of Wall Street. We, the Amer­i­can Tax­payer, gave bil­lions of our dol­lars to save peo­ple who made stu­pid bets on gam­bles designed to make them mil­lions and mil­lions of dol­lars. We haven’t flinched yet but if the repub­lic has a chance of …

January 12, 2010 – 8:58 am | By Brett Bim | Posted in Finances | Tagged , , | Comments (9)

Assorted Interesting Links

I tend to col­lect a vari­ety of inter­est­ing links through­out the week, at least to me. I always think that I’ll post them and write a lit­tle about them but in truth, I don’t have that much time and would rather write about things that are more impor­tant to me. So I’m going to just …

May 1, 2009 – 7:52 am | By Brett Bim | Posted in Random | Tagged , , , | Comments (5)

Richardson Tea Party

I went to the Richard­son Tea Party yes­ter­day and it was pretty inter­est­ing. The crowd looked like it was around 700 or so which is pretty good for a lunch day protest rally. We weren’t cen­tered in one place like in other tea par­ties around the coun­try. Most every­one was walk­ing around the park wav­ing …

April 16, 2009 – 6:42 am | By Brett Bim | Posted in Politics | Tagged , | Comments (8)

A New Tax Deduction

Quote of the Week Now that those of us who have been mak­ing steady, on-time pay­ments on our mort­gages for years will be pay­ing off oth­ers’ mort­gages through our taxes, can we claim a tax-deduction for our neigh­bors’ mort­gage inter­est too? Love it. Peo­ple are angry over this and they are only get­ting angrier. This is not …

February 20, 2009 – 12:33 pm | By Brett Bim | Posted in Economics, National Issues | Tagged | Comments (1)

Maybe America Will Be OK After All

There are some rea­son­ably seri­ous rum­blings about peo­ple get­ting sick of our new Pres­i­dent spend­ing all their money. And some of the rum­blings are get­ting loud. If a mod­ern day Boston Tea Party hap­pened to get orga­nized in Chicago, I’d be on the first plane to Chicago I could find. Here’s hop­ing we still have …

February 19, 2009 – 11:46 pm | By Brett Bim | Posted in Economics, National Issues | Tagged | Comments (0)

Advice We Don’t Need

There’s noth­ing like hav­ing the Euro­peans tell us how to han­dle our hous­ing cri­sis. “But as the hous­ing bub­ble deflates, it also drags inno­cent vic­tims into a wave of fore­clo­sures” they crow! Please. What inno­cent vic­tims are being dragged into a wave of fore­clo­sures? Either you can afford the house you live in or you …

February 19, 2009 – 5:03 pm | By Brett Bim | Posted in Economics, National Issues | Tagged , | Comments (0)