We talk a big game… until our children are hungry.
Laying Blame: The GOP now wants to claim that BP's oil leak is Obama's fault because he didn't clean out the incompetents from Bush's MMS fast enough or intervene preemptively in BP's operations before the accident.
It Begins: The IMF-sponsored looting of Greece has begun. They will “privatize” the railways, the water and sewerage services, the postal service, the airports, cut the wages and pensions for public workers, and increase sales, fuel and alcohol taxes and send them directly to the banks.
American Nightmare: Nearly half of all Americans realize that they will never be able to buy a house if they have to save until they have enough for a 20% down payment. This includes a lot of current homeowners who are underwater and cannot get any money for a new down payment after they lose their current house. Of course if they quit paying the mortgage and saved the money until they get tossed out, that'd go a ways towards a down payment....
Oh, Another Thing: A study shows that some 31,000 miles of pipelines on the seafloor of the Gulf are vulnerable to rupture if a Category-4 hurricane passes overhead.
Quiz: Rank (in order of believability) the following excuses to explain why banks are dragging their feet about foreclosures: (a) Homeowners will start paying as soon as the economy picks up. (b) The cost of foreclosing is more than the value of the house. (c) You can’t go after them all. (d) The investors holding the paper on foreclosed houses can't afford to recognize the losses – the domino effect. (e) Can't prove or don’t know who actually owns the right to foreclose. (f) A foreclosed homeowner cannot be a repeat buyer for a long time and repeat buyers are more important than foreclosing on overpriced houses.
Size Matters: BP now puts the leak at 60,000 barrels a day, 20 times worse than the Exxon Valdez – so far. And they're being modest.
Varooom! Keep in mind that May 2009 was an easy target for the auto industry: Overall US auto sales were up 18% y/y. Chrylser's sales were up 33% y/y, as Lazarus returned from the dead. Ford was up 23%. GM posted a 16.6% rise. And even Toyota was up 6.7%. Much of the sales gains was in SUVs as buyers get lured in by lower gasoline prices.
Self-Hoisting Petard: BofA's Jack Schakett said “there is a huge incentive for customers to walk away because getting free rent and waiting out foreclosure can be very appealing to customers." He also said you'd get a rent-free ride for over a year. When the sheriff shows up, tell him you're a friend of Jack's.
The Circus: In Florida the former chairman of the state GOP has been charged with grand theft for stealing misappropriating $125,000 from the party. In Illinois the GOP's Senate candidate who last week lied misspoke about being the US Navy's intel officer of the year has now corrected the misunderstanding that arose from his claiming to have served in Operation Iraqi Freedom when what he meant to say was he served during that war. Don't get too smug, next week the Dem's will be back at it.
Porn O'Graph: Still looking.
4 comments:
The previous Chairman/Chief Exec, Sir John Browne did wonders for BP's financial performance in cutting down hard on costs. As in technical expertise, safety, production planning and design and equipment control and monitoring. The previous UK government held him up as a Wunderkind example to all in financial engineering. Pity about the oil drilling engineering.
RE: It Begins
They re-fied the house to take a vacation.
re:The Circus. So. I can be smug for 4-5 days!
RE: Porn O'Graph But it's important to note that the recession is OVER! The little blue line on the graph tells me so regardless of all my experiences and information to the contrary. Yet another official "call" that calls into question all the government BS about the economy.
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