GM will drop the Pontiac brand.

General Motors is preparing to announce that the Pontiac car
brand, once marketed as GM's "Excitement division," will be
killed off, according to a source familiar with the decision.

One of the first muscle cars of the late 60s. But the time for such
things is long past and the brand has not been viable for quite some
time.

So as a tribute I offer this.
Little GTO - Ronnie and the Daytonas

Little GTO, you're really lookin' fine 
Three deuces and a four-speed and a 389 
Listen to her tachin' up now, listen to her why-ee-eye-ine 
C'mon and turn it on, wind it up, blow it out GTO 

Wa-wa,  
Wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa  
Wa-wa,  
Wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa  
Wa-wa (Ahhh, little GTO) 
Wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa 

You oughta see her on a road course or a quarter mile 
This little modified Pon-Pon has got plenty of style 
She beats the gassers and the rail jobs, 
really drives 'em why-ee-eye-ild 
C'mon and turn it on, wind it up, blow it out GTO 

Wa-wa, (Yeah, yeah, little GT") 
wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa  
Wa-wa,  
Wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa  
Wa-wa (Ahhh, little GTO) 
Wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa 

Gonna save all my money 
and buy a GTO 
Get a helmet and a roll bar 
and I'll be ready to go 
Take it out to Pomona 
and let 'em know , yeah, yeah 
That I'm the coolest thing around 
Little buddy, gonna shut you down 
When I turn it on, wind it up, blow it out GTO 

Wa-wa, 
Wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa  
Wa-wa, 
Wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa  
Wa-wa 
Wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa 


C

David gives the opinion  of TPM Reader JS. I have to say that I don't
really buy it. Obama may be more open than past presidents but he
still shows that he likes to play his cards close to his chest.

On the bail out which I and many others have railed about, I don't think
he has told all. At least all of the options he maybe considering. 
Though forcing the the insolvent banks into some sort of receivership
and breaking them up appears to be the obvious solution, it may not
yet be quite the right time yet for this option.

This makes think about FDR and Dentists. Come again ? (I hear you ask)
Yes...remember that FDR came into office after the economy had been on
the rocks for at least two years.  There had already been massive farm failures
do to the dust bowl, hundreds of banks had already failed, factories had closed
and unemployment had been in the double digits everywhere for years.
Getting his agenda through congress was not that difficult.

Now for the dentist analogy. Suppose one has a bad tooth ache but hates
dentists. Your hurting but aspirin can still kill the pain however temporary.
You consider going to the dentist ..... later. But now the pain is so bad
no amount of aspirin (or any other over the counter medication) has ANY
effect. Not only will you go to the dentist, but you'll even be willing to
have the thing removed while standing on your head, if need be.

Get the point. The country has not quite been hurting enough, long enough
to get the kinds of bills passed in Congress or to have the banks dealt with
in the appropriate manner to fix things up. Obama may have actually come
into office a bit too soon, in some respects.

Now as to prosecuting those responsible for torture he may want to, but
would rather have Congress take the lead on it. And/or the Justice Dept.
I refer to FDR here again. He wanted to go to war with Germany, and
to a lesser extent Japan, but the timing and mood was not right. Congress
as well as the population simply did not want to be involved.  The attack
on Pearl changed that in a big hurry.

So I am just guessing that Obama is moving on those things for which the
timing and mood is correct. I do not believe he would say or do anything
to obstruct any probe that is made into the Bush torture memos or those
responsible for them or the actions. But I am not surprised  he has not
come out and pushed it hard either.

After all he is a politician and a pretty good one at that.

Addendum:

But then again, I could be wrong. This is a bit crazy.

C


 

Liz and Meghan go after one another, or at least each others
political folks. But why does this seem more like cheesy
female mud wrestling than a mature discussion.

Because their both republicans ?


C

Something really needs to be done about these SOBs. Talk about gall,
arrogance, nerve. They take our money and now want Congress to
cow-tow their wishes.

TARP recipients are currently lobbying against
compensation caps at companies receiving TARP, against
increasing bank regulation - and even against
increased oversight of the use of TARP funds in the TARP
Reform and Accountability Act!  They are also lobbying
against the Arbitration Fairness Act, the Fairness in
Nursing Home Arbitration Act, the Mortgage Reform
and Anti-Predatory Lending Act and the Helping Families
Save Their Homes in Bankruptcy Act, Credit Card Holders
Bill of Rights and the Stop Unfair Practices in Credit Cards
Act!

But these companies are not just lobbying in favor of
their own(ers) interests; they are lobbying against
those of the rest of us.  Recently it has come to light
that Bank of America, Citigroup and other TARP
recipients are organizing efforts to oppose the Employee
Free Choice Act - federal legislation that would
enable workers to organize unions, which results in
increased income and benefits for working people,
thereby enabling them to make their credit card and
mortgage payments.

Use of corporate funds to influence our government is a
larger problem than just this current misuse of TARP.
In fact, this BofA and other companies' use of TARP
funds to oppose the Employee Free Choice Act supports an
argument that the current economic crisis is a result of
corporate lobbying.  A corporate-funded assault on
government has resulted in de-legislation and
deregulation, enriching a few at the expense of the rest
of us, while eroding the foundations of our economy and
our democracy.  Now the public has been harvested in one
scheme after another, plundered for every dollar as
incomes stagnated, debt skyrocketed and savings fell.
Consumption fell off the cliff as the work- and
debt-load tapped out people's ability to
participate in the economy.  The resulting crisis has
led to taxpayer dollars propping them all up.

This has got to stop. If I were up there I would give these cretins
all a good swift kick, at the very least. Why is Congress even
putting up with this BS any way ??

Addendum :
Congress needs to do this with the banking and credit card bills
also.


C

 

Rather under the radar but here is a link to the testimony of
Joseph Stiglitz and Simon Johnson and Thomas M. Hoenig
to the Joint Economic Committee, chaired by Congresswoman
Carolyn B. Maloney. Excellent reading.  Here's a bit of it.
Simon Johnson:

But the second challenge - the power of the
oligarchy - is just as important as the
first. And the advice from those with
experience in severe banking crises would be
just as simple: break the oligarchy. In the
U.S., this means breaking up the oversized
institutions that have a disproportionate
influence on public policy. And it means
splitting a single interest group into
competing sub-groups with different interests.

Joseph Stiglitz:

In short, our bail-outs run the risk of
transferring large amounts of money, often in
non-transparent ways, to those banks that did
the worse job in risk management-hardly
principles on which normal market economics is
based. Among these are some of the
too-big-to-fail banks. In effect, the government
is tilting the playing field-towards the losers,
worsening the tilt that is always there simply
from the implicit guarantees associated with
being too big to fail. As I argue below, some of
these subsidies may be an inevitable consequence
of these banks' too big to fail status, but much
of it is not. It has been a matter of policy
choice. The non-transparent way we have been
bailing out the banks will almost surely
increase the total cost to the economy and to
the taxpayer. We have confused two different
principles: bailing out the banks and bailing
out the bankers, their shareholders, and
(possibly) certain categories of bondholders. We
could have saved the banks but not the
shareholders at a much lower cost than the
amount spent. To put it another way, we have
confused financial restructuring of an
institution with the collapse of the
institution. Even an institution which is too
big to fail is not too big to be financially
restructured.

Thomas M. Hoenig:

One of the more troubling aspects of this crisis
has been that in many ways these events have not
been unpredictable.

A decade ago, I and others anticipated that the
financial megamergers we were seeing at that
time would lead to a situation like the one we
face today. Although we did not have any way of
knowing the events that would provide the
stimulus for this crisis, there were already
concerns in 1999 that,

"In a world dominated by mega financial
institutions, governments could be reluctant to
close those that become troubled for fear of
systemic effects on the financial system. To the
extent these institutions become 'too big to
fail,' and where uninsured depositors and other
creditors are protected by implicit government
guarantees, the consequences can be quite
serious. Indeed, the result may be a less stable
and a less efficient financial system."

I do hope that these messages find their way to the rest of
Congress and not just fade away in the chamber in which
they were issued.

C

Dean Baker would like to know.

With house prices falling rapidly back to earth, the
housing construction boom is now a bust and saving rates
are returning to normal. The economy is also
experiencing a collapse in a non-residential real estate
bubble that developed up in the wake of the housing
bubble. There has been huge overbuilding in retail,
office space, hotels, and most other categories of
non-residential construction.

This backdrop in extremely important in assessing the
"fix the banks" battle cry of the economists who did not
see the housing bubble. The word from this distinguished
group is that if we can get the banks lending again,
then the economy will be on its way to recovery.
Coincidentally, the central ingredient in their formula
is throwing hundreds of billions, or even trillions, of
taxpayer dollars at the banks. In other words, they want
to impose huge taxes on ordinary workers to give more
money to the people who were most directly responsible
for the propelling the bubble.

Read more »

I guess she's doing her job then.

The dissenters worried that the alternative
approaches presented in the report, including
nationalization, management changes and the
liquidation of failed banks, implied that the banking
system was insolvent and that the current plan was
already a failure.

Maybe that's because they (banks) are insolvent and the plan
is pretty much a failure.

Warren says that the report is the product of
interviews with dozens of experts across the
political and intellectual spectrum.

"That majority report was based on an understanding
that came from many different voices," Warren said.
"I think we write panel reports that reflect a broad
spectrum of ideas."

The lack of consensus has fueled Republican
criticisms that Warren is reaching far beyond the
original intent of the panel by suggesting regulatory
changes.

In private conversations, even some Democrats
complain that Warren's role as a constant Cassandra
could undermine already tenuous public support for
the bank, auto industry and other financial rescue
programs.

Earth to Congress....the public already does not support the
bank, auto industry and any other rescue program.

Since then, Democrats have jumped on an idea that
Warren first proposed two years ago, introducing
legislation that would create a Financial Product
Safety Commission charged with overseeing new
consumer lending and investment products. Warren
argues that a commission modeled after the Consumer
Product Safety Commission, which oversees the
security of toys and small appliances, would have
kept the subprime mortgages that sparked the current
recession off the market in the first place.

"It is impossible to buy a toaster that has a
one-in-five chance of bursting into flames and
burning down your house," Warren wrote in Harvard
Magazine last May. "But it is possible to refinance
your home with a mortgage that has the same
one-in-five chance of putting your family out on the
street - and the mortgage won't even carry a
disclosure of that fact."

President Obama backed the proposal on "The Tonight
Show With Jay Leno" last month, using the toaster
analogy to explain the idea.

The commission idea is opposed by conservatives and
financial services firms, who argue it would prohibit
innovation and impose unnecessary additional
regulations on financial services companies.

"We wouldn't be able to invest in anything the
commission didn't decide was absolutely safe for us,"
said Peter Wallison, co-director of the American
Enterprise Institute's program on financial policy
studies. "There wouldn't be any innovation and there
wouldn't be any new ideas."

What you really mean is that Wall Street and the banks wouldn't
be able to come up with new and different ways to bilk and defraud
the consumers, investors and bond holders.

C

A good article on fanatical religion  by Loren Adams.

Jesus stopped the Pharisees in their tracks with these
words: "He that is without sin cast the first stone." Of
course, all of them like alley cats had snuck around on
their wives for a little "extracurricular" at evening on
the streets. That's the way the self-righteous behave:
sin on the sly. One by one, the Pharisees dropped their
stones and faded into the night.... until no one was
left except Jesus and the prostitute. Jesus turned to
her and said, "Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no
more."

Republicans demand others tow the line for Jesus and
worship America's "Judeo-Christian" heritage, a form of
"Christian idolatry." Republicans are the first to pick
up stones to throw at "liberals" which are painted with
the broad stroke without ever knowing what "liberals"
stand for.

The drive for censorship is fueled by guilt. Those most
prone to criticize carry the most baggage.

Fundamentalists only see in solid black and white, no
variations of hue. There's no truth but the absolute to
the narrow-minded. Yet the guilty are more prone to
condemn than the just. Look at the record.

It's ZERO TOLERANCE with the so-called conservative
crowd...."Three strikes you're out!" Mitigating
circumstances are dismissed; there is only room for
black and white.

I wish could say that this particular behavior is held only by those on
the right but it is not. There are far to many self proclaimed progressives
and liberals that are just as fanatical about their religion. Looking down
on those who don't believe as they do about their healthy life style or
education or the car they drive or music they listen to or economic
status. And far too often just as hypocritical about it and just as snotty.  

Just as much of a turn off to those who gather at truck stops and sports
bars. And then wonder how could these people vote against their own
self interest. It's not their self interest they are voting against, it's the
snotty self righteous attitudes of far too many liberals.

C

One of the few places I know that has more ass holes than the US.

"Israel wants to know that if its forces
were given the green light they could
strike at Iran in a matter of days, even
hours. They are making preparations on
every level for this eventuality. The
message to Iran is that the threat is not
just words," one senior defence official
told The Times.

This will do wonders for the world economy. Of course Israel could
car less. Wonder what they will do when the US can no longer afford
to send them their allowance.Or is it blackmail. I forget which.

C