DavyJ

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

"With the financial industry stabilized, and many banks having or about to repay the government's aid with interest, the government is in talks with lawmakers to use unspent TARP money to offset jobs spending and aid the long-term unemployed."

Yep, once the money is out there, there is no getting it back. $200 billion at 3.5% (~ten year bond rate) interest is $70 billion over ten years that is automatically added to the deficit with no accountability.

Stocks Bounce, But Big-Name Investors Aren't Convinced

Re: "Retail sales were expected to grow 0.9% over the prior month, but actually grew a better 1.4%, which started fueling the market before the open."

But the report also said: "The government also revised the September results down to a 2.3 percent decline, from the 1.5 percent drop initially reported."

Subtract the 0.8 percent revision and sales were actually 0.2 percent less than expected!

But nevermind. Just minor details of a fraction of a percent.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

$787,000,000,000 stimulus created 650,000 jobs so far. That $1,210,769 per job.

But it's on track for 3,500,000 jobs created by the end of the year so that will only be $224,857 per job.

Well, we'll see.

$33 Billion in Taxpayer Money Subsidized Wall Street Bonuses

Just for the record, Goldman Sachs converted from an investment bank to a traditional bank in order to receive TARP funds. That hardly seems that they "were forced into it".

It seems to me they saw the huge one time investment opportunity using taxpayer money and couldn't resist.


On Jul 31 05:31 PM homogenik wrote:

> You are right for the most part however goldman and jpm didnt need
> the bailout but were forced into it. ...

Geithner's Plan for Bad Assets: Part of a Master Program

As if Social Security didn't have enough trouble, we get suggestions like this:

"Galbraith proposes a payroll tax holiday: "This is a particularly potent suggestion, because it is large and immediate," and puts income in the pockets of working families, he says. For me a key to recession-busting as it also is for development aid to poor developing countries, how to productively put money into the pockets of the poor, including poor pensioners especially, who all have the virtue that they spend what they get."

Well read this news from yesterday's Market Currents:

"Monday, March 30, 2009 12:40 PM
This While Americans were busy yelling about outrageous bonus payments and federal bailouts, the Social Security surplus quietly slipped away."

www.bloomberg.com/apps...

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

We need "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" buttons for articles as we have for comments. You can't rely on a article being on the most read list as often the title will lead you astray and even though you didn't like the article, just by reading it you are endorsing it. Complimentary comments don't help since they aren't available until you have committed to read the article.

In particular, this article comes to mind:

seekingalpha.com/artic...

By the way, I looked for a more appropriate place for suggestions didn't readily find one.