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Barney Fife writing proposal now to bail out the automakers with $25B stipulating GOVERNMENT OWNERSHIP.

The government is backing away from buying troubled mortgages and now are going to put it in an investment program taking capital. The facts changed. His approach is to give banks enough cash to keep homes on the books and keep cash in the banks.

They will not bail out those people who shouldn't have taken out the loans in the first place.

I just think it's because the stocks were so low yesterday that it was a buyer's market.

Wall Street,. Nancy Pelosi, Barney Fife, and the others are making it worse with all their stupid ideas.

They WANT this to happen and give more stimulus checks to people so the people will think they are the greatest since apple pie.

I don't see any of them trying to figure out what to do that will help us except throw money away to the groups that are keeping the money to pay their bonuses and take trips.

a not-very-scientific poll of under-18s. I imagine they think it's...like... totally way-cool to be a hyphenated-American, whether they actually are, or not. African-American, Asian-American, Hispanic-American, Native-American, Vulcan-American..ya' know? What ever....

Back in the ླྀ's a friend of mine spent one summer with a mission group on an Indian reservation, and thereafter tried to pass herself off as full-blooded Sioux (which is unlikely when you're a blonde.) It was just more interesting than being a white chick.

And why don't Caucasians get to use the hyphen? Hardly anybody claims to be Irish-American, German-American, French-American, British-American (that sounds weird).

Maybe we should march and demand our rights. Two! Four! Six! Eight! We wanna hyphenate! Whitebread! Whitebread! Yeaaaaah!

Citi Execs Make Killing On Stock Surge

Citigroup's recent upbeat news about its profitability has driven Wall Street's surge this week, but it also generated $2.2 million for four executives who bought millions of shares of company stock nine days ago, reports Bloomberg.

According to regulatory filings, director Roberto Hernandez bought 6 million shares on March 2 for an average price of $1.25. The stock touched a record low of $0.97 on March 5, but five days later CEO Vikram Pandit issued an internal memo saying the bank turned a profit over the first two months of the year. That news drove Citi shares up 47 percent to its Thursday close of $1.52, giving Hernandez a $1.7 million profit on paper, reports the news agency.

"You�re supposed to buy when everyone else is selling,� Bruce Foerster, a former Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. managing director who now runs South Beach Capital Markets in Miami, told Bloomberg. He said banks have internal monitoring systems to keep an eye on executive trades and prevent abuses.

Other executives include Latin America CEO Manuel Medina-Mora, who bought 1.5 million shares on March 3 at an average price of $1.24, Vice Chairman Lewis Kaden with 100,000 shares and controller John Gerspach with 65,000, reports Bloomberg.

In the last year, Citi's stock value has plummeted 95 percent as the company has suffered five straight quarters of losses.

Hernandez said he plans to step down from Citi's board after the bank's annual meeting in April but will keep his non-executive chairmanship of the company's Mexican bank, Banamex, reports Bloomberg.

leaning polling companies, Mrs. The fact, Obamanation's poll numbers are dropping and dramatically. However, I don't think he cares a fig. His real agenda is to destroy the economy, and when anarchy comes and his mask removed, he'll institute marshal law, and set himself up as dictator. That's his plan and those who pull his marionette strings. He is tooooooooooooo stoooooooooopid to do it on his own. That's what he has surrounded himself with left-wing America hating "experts." You'll be singing a different tune before long.

Martha Stewart comes to mind.

Shares Fell Two Weeks Later

By Jonathan M. Katz

Associated Press
Wednesday, September 21, 2005; Page A03

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a potential presidential candidate in 2008, sold all his stock in his family's hospital corporation about two weeks before it issued a disappointing earnings report and the price fell nearly 15 percent.

Frist held an undisclosed amount of stock in Hospital Corporation of America, based in Nashville, the nation's largest for-profit hospital chain. On June 13, he instructed the trustee managing the assets to sell his HCA shares and those of his wife and children, said Amy Call, a spokeswoman for Frist.

Frist's shares were sold by July 1 and those of his wife and children by July 8, Call said. The trustee decided when to sell the shares, and the Tennessee Republican had no control over the exact time they were sold, she said.

HCA shares peaked at midyear, climbing to $58.22 a share on June 22. After slipping slightly for two weeks, the price fell to $49.90 on July 13 after the company announced its quarterly earnings would not meet analysts' expectations. On Tuesday, the shares closed at $48.76.

The value of Frist's stock at the time of the sale was not disclosed. Earlier this year, he reported holding blind trusts valued at $7 million to $35 million.

Blind trusts are used to avoid conflicts of interest. Assets are turned over to a trustee who manages them without divulging any purchases or sales and reports only the total value and income earned to the owner.

To keep the trust blind, Frist was not allowed to know how much HCA stock he owned, Call said, but he was allowed to ask for all of it to be sold.

Frist, a surgeon first elected to the Senate in 1994, had been criticized for maintaining the holdings while dealing with legislation affecting the medical industry and managed care. Call said the Senate Select Committee on Ethics has found nothing wrong with Frist's holdings in the company in a blind trust.

To avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest, Senator Frist went beyond what ethics requires and sold the stock, Call said. Asked why he had not done so before, she said, I don't know that he's been worried about it in the past.

An HCA spokesman said the company had no part in Frist's decision.

Frist's father, Thomas, founded the company, and his brother, Thomas Jr., is a director and leading stockholder. The family is worth $1.1 billion, according to Forbes magazine.

HCA -- formerly known as Columbia HCA Healthcare Corp. -- has been a top contributor to the senator's campaigns, donating $83,450 since 1989, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The sale of the shares was first reported by Congressional Quarterly.

out of control when the race was within a few points, which only helps the dems out. The market can easily be manipulated by anyone with money (the Warren Buffets and George Soros' of the world) not to mention other countries.

My take on the whole election though is white guilt is going to push O into office. This is an historic election, people get caught up in the frenzy and emotion of it all, want to be a part of history in some small way, and voting for O seems not only politically correct (did you know you're a racist if you don't vote for him?) but eases a little of the white guilt some people have (another touchy-feely, PC thing to have). A man who has not had to answer tough questions, has little to no experience, has associations with radical tendencies, flip flops on most issues and is willing to wave the white flag is most likely going to be our next president. My only questoin is, what are Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and all the other lefties going to talk about for the next 4 years? I have a feeling the real truth about O is going to come out in the coming years.

everything is hunky-dorrey. Let's not get over enthusiastic here. The market has been down more than up lately. I would rather wait 6 months to see what's happening before I touch that subject.

As for O laughing in the 60 minutes interview, it doesn't bother me that much. It could be a way for him letting off steam. I, myself, when stressed out (as in federal jury duty), was so relieved the trial was over, I burst out laughing after we left the courtroom. This could be his way of relieving stress.

There's just too much going on in this government that turns me off especially with the bailouts and the so-called stimulus package, and I'm not too happy right now. I don't like the thought that every taxpayer, including my grandchildren or great-childen should I have any, are in debt to the government to the tune of ???, (all different figures thrown around on that).

As for posting, I only post when I have something to say. The news is the same old, same old, nothing interesting or new, so why post garbage like some on this board do. Right now, nothing on the news is piquing my interest.

One question I have.....how can O NOT accept the resignation of someone in his cabinet? That one has me stumped. Anyone has the right to resign from a job. Since when can you not quit a job? You want to answer that one?

Part of an interesting article on housing market upswing - inflation slowing down. Good news if it stays the course!

US housing starts rose sharply in February, providing some good news for the struggling housing industry. (Photo: AP)

McCain's Emission-Reduction Plan Receives Favorable Review

by: Frank Carlson

Posted August 11, 2008 | 11:43 AM (EST)

As U.S. Senators Barack Obama and John McCain begin their long descent into tit-for-tat rhetorical games, it's easy to forget key issues the two still broadly agree on: federally funded stem-cell research; nuclear nonproliferation; comprehensive immigration reform; faith-based social services; and global warming.

Obama and McCain agree that human-induced global warming exists and even on the system America should adopt to counteract it -- cap and trade, a plan that sets a limit (cap) on the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by manufacturers and power plants, for example, and then hands out credits that polluters can trade among themselves to pull themselves within the legal limits. Heavy emitters of greenhouse gases have to buy credits from low-level emitters. Cap-and-trade plans reward all sides for reducing emissions. Low-level emitters reduce in order to pile up additional credits to sell and high-level emitters reduce in order to spend less on credits.

Where Obama and McCain disagree on the plan concerns the role of the government, specifically how the government should allocate permits to companies. And unlike the current, silly spat over tire pressure gauges, this one matters.

Obama favors a full auction of the credits, which would act like a tax on companies, collecting a great deal of money right off the bat for the government to redistribute. This cash, he says, could go to alternative energy research and projects, then the credits would go to markets.

McCain says he would dole out permits in much the same way proposed by the Climate Security Act of 2007. That act failed in June to receive enough Senate support to even bring to a vote, but the basics are the same: Give the great majority of the permits away, and let the market set the price to support investment.

Here is where conventional political lines become blurred.

If you favor a more free market approach, McCain's plan may be for you because the government would collect far less money from businesses for redistribution. But if you're spooked by special interests, political favors for lobbyists and political corruption--as McCain says he is--then perhaps you side with Obama's strategy.

So what does Richard Sandor, architect of the wildly successful cap and trade system for reducing sulfur dioxide(SO2) and now CEO of the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), say?

He's for a partial auction of credits like the one McCain is backing.

"If you look at full auctioning of permits, what happens?" Sandor asked reporters during a recent interview at his office near the Board of Trade in downtown Chicago. "The day that they are auctioned, you have a net transfer of wealth from the private sector to the public sector at that moment. What, then, happens to climate change? Nothing has happened. You have just had a transfer of wealth.
Climate Exchange, the first voluntary but legally
binding market for trading emissions in North America.

It's better to let the private sector decide where the money should go, Sandor says, which is why he's against a carbon tax. And, he adds, there is precedent for believing so.

"The program that's worked is SO2," Sandor said. "Some amount of auctioning is, I think, OK. We will implement whatever the government does. We don't have an official opinion, but I'm guided by the SO2 program and how it accomplished its objectives so cheaply that that's the way to do it."

Sandor insisted the CCX is not a policy-making entity and that it will implement any system lawmakers put forth. Much like pilots, he said, the CCX will fly whichever planes the engineers--or rather, politicians--design.

"If you design it wrong," he said, "you may have to go 30 extra miles, you may have some accidents, or crashes, and we really speak to the efficacy of the design and leave public policy to the people who are policy makers in Washington. We're not advocates."

The CCX is currently North America's only voluntary but legally binding platform for trading carbon and other emissions. Even without a mandatory cap and trade system in the U.S., many companies have already begun to reduce their emissions in the hopes of improving their public image and perhaps reaping revenues through emissions reductions.

While Sandor explains why he's against Obama's plan for the full auction of credits, his greatest priority is getting mandatory cap and trade in place, whatever the framework. Undoubtedly, this would be a great boon to the CCX, and Sandor believes it is coming.

"Both candidates, McCain and Obama, have publicly embraced it," Sandor said. "I believe in their hearts that they're committed to reducing global warming and see it as a major threat. Is it inevitable? I think so. Could there be bumps? Yes."

Those bumps, worries Sandor, include a terrorist attack that could dislodge global warming from the political agenda in favor of dealing with more immediate problems.

"And that's the nightmare scenario that I worry about because it's easy to not worry about intergenerational problems when you have immediate security needs," he says. "And I'm not suggesting that they aren't more important. In fact, they are. But the thing that will slip will be the longer-based horizon, and I think that's a danger that we have."As U.S. Senators Barack Obama and John McCain begin their long descent into tit-for-tat rhetorical games, it's easy to forget key issues the two still broadly agree on: federally funded stem-cell rese...

So the stock market's down.... sm

Citi Execs Make Killing On Stock Surge

Martha Stewart comes to mind.

Shares Fell Two Weeks Later