Most everyone probably knows who Paul Krugman is. If you’re one that does, you probably know he is a top-rated economist. But you may know him as being of the Democrat persuasion. That’s why he questions whether or not he should be writing about the Republican Party. But in this Op-Ed column he points out that although Republicans have become an embarrassment to watch, we should take them serious. He tells us they looked just as crazy 10 to 15 years ago as they do today, but they still took over Congress and eventually the White House. What inspired Krugman to write this article was the “infamous” tea party held on Wednesday. (The tea party financed by Richard Melon Scaife of the Arkansas Project fame and promoted by Fox Fools.) Anyway, Krugman says that the Republican Party is one of America’s great parties and they could still put the party back in power. He, Krugman (along with the rest of us), only hopes the party has moved forward rather than backwards by the time that happens.
“The shareholders who own the Washington region’s big public companies didn’t do very well last year, as most stocks swooned in the downturn. But most of the men and women who run those companies did not suffer proportionately, according to regulatory filings“, so says this article by the Washington Post. We already knew most of this and we already knew that these executives “recession proofed” themselves just as the article says. And we already knew that these compensations are defended on the basis that it was an “agreement” with them. Finally, we already know that “agreements” with executives and other high-ranking employees of these companies are too be protected at all cost while “agreements” with the investor and working class aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. But at least one executive, Richard Fairbank, founder and chairman of Capital One Financial, doesn’t seem to be as greedy. All his pay and compensation is tied directly to the performance of the company stock. As the same article points out “Rich Fairbank’s compensation remains all-equity, all at-risk and all-deferred [bold added], as it has for the past 11 years, and as long as he is CEO, he will not get paid [even] under this plan until taxpayers get their money back”. What a novel idea — paying someone for their performance instead of just occupying an office!!
A report heard on CNBC Tuesday April 15th: “World demand for oil is shrinking faster than previously thought”. Imagine them allowing that to be announced on their network! Before you know it, there’re going to run out of excuses for artificially high oil prices.
The Republican neo-Nazis — oops — I mean neoconservatives are still manning their guillotine. With his support of President Obama’s stimulus package, Republican Senator Arlen Specter is the target this time with the extremist right “setting up what could be a divisive rematch between one of the GOP’s leading moderates and a powerful conservative activist” [bold added], the latter being backed now by those “out of control” Republicans. Although Specter seems to have voted on the stimulus bill the way the majority of his Pennsylvanians wanted him to vote, the extremist Republicans has once again decided that it’s not what the people want that’s important, but what the party wants. The Republicans should take more seriously the fact that “tens of thousands of Pennsylvania Republicans switch there registration to Democrat last year”. But they won’t. They decided long ago that they would either dominate the party or destroy it in the process of trying.
If you paid any attention at all to the Presidential campaigning last year, and/or since President Obama has taken office, you have heard many references by the Republicans to “the Reagan years”, and how well that worked. Regardless of which side you come down on, there is no denying what the past 30 years has brought us. Just take a look around you, but mostly in your retirement/bank account (you may need to take a look at your credit “statement” too). Then ask how the top 10% incomers are doing today compared to pre-Reagan years. As Ron Chusid points out in Liberal Values, David Brooks, a Republican (by historical definitions) has abandon Goldwater and Reagan. But as most of us know, not many others have. However, in defense of the Republicans, I suppose one has only their memories left once their eyes have blinded, hearing has failed, and all sensitivity in your body has eroded away.
An article by The New York Times questions how it was that Goldman Sachs faired so well while so many others did not with the collapse of the financial markets. The writer, William Cohan, speculates if it could have had anything to do with the fact that so many “government” people were ex-Goldman Sachs boys. No S–t! You think!! With the likes of Henry Paulson, former treasury secretary (ex-Goldman Sachs), Robert Rubin, former treasury secretary and many other powerful positions (ex-Goldman Sachs), Edward Liddy, installed by Paulson as AIG’s chief executive who then handed Goldman Sachs taxpayer money AIG borrowed (ex-Goldman Sachs board member), Neel Kashkari, Paulson’s right hand man (ex-Goldman Sachs), and a couple of other insiders, there’s no way Goldman Sachs was treated any different. We’d have to be crazy to think otherwise, in spite of the fact that Cohan’s book, “House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street”, has proven to be virtually all true.
Kenneth Langone, co-founder of Home Depot, was a guest on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Wednesday. Of the many topics discussed, the issue of bailing out Detroit came up. While Langone has jumped on the band wagon of wrongfully blaming the unions for the US automakers demise, he points out that General Motors’ problems was of their own making. He says instead of standing up to the union’s decades earlier, they just caved in to them then subsidized the cost by building junk (and selling at the same price). While I whole-hardly disagree with him that all the problems the car makers have is the fault of the union, I agree with him on the latter part, which I believe is the cause of their current problems. I personally was a GM man from 1956 until 1990. When friends asked why I switched after all those years, I said it was because GM started building junk. Four GM products (different models) in a row were absolute junk — they can’t be described any other way. But it wasn’t the unions fault. Line workers use the parts & materials they are given and they put the car together the way they are instructed to do so. As the old saying goes, you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. But blaming the unions has always been the popular thing to do, and any proof reflecting differently is waved off in spite of the fact that labor accounts for only 10% of the total cost of an American automobile. See the video below.
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April 17, 2009