Gedankonomist

Bankruptcy Lets Capitalism Run Its Course

I think that what he means is that the labor cost to the company is $65 per hour, where only a fraction goes to the employee. Even if you made $65, you really would not be making that kind of money because half or more would be going to the government anyway.

tinyurl.com/dzg6jy

"One of the most frequently blamed culprits in this debacle is the United Auto Workers, which for decades has been demanding all sorts of benefits and salary requirements that made the Big Three much less competitive than their foreign or non-union counterparts. The average total cost of a unionized employee is over $70 an hour, while the total cost for a non-union autoworker is usually less than $50. If Michigan were a "Right to Work" state, where each worker would be able to choose whether or not to join the union, the union would not have had as much clout and the discrepancy would not have been as great. But because the federal labor laws make union membership in a union shop compulsory (except when a state opts out via "Right to Work" legislation), the UAW was in effect able to exercise monopoly control of the workforce to win concessions that have not only damaged the Michigan-based automakers' ability to compete, but have ultimately put the workers' jobs in jeopardy."

More Outrageous than Bailout Bonuses? Nonstop Printing of Money

No doubt Congress will choose to give itself a bonus too. The hypocrites.

AIG: If You Can't Beat 'Em, Tax 'Em

The government should not have bailed out AIG in the first place.

But since AIG is a CFR (Council on Foreign Relations) corporate sponsor, and about 1/2 of the 3000 CFR members are in government, it should come as no surprise that AIG did get a "bailout."

Now that the damage has been done, the government should not make the damage worse by further continuing to meddle where it has no business meddling in.

Some Bank Behemoths Now Sub-Single Digit Midgets

"“The government has assumed almost all of the pain for itself thinking it will bring reassurance to the market."

The government did not assume the pain. You and I are the ones bending over.

I'm amazed how these academics are. They get paid 6-figure salaries at "prestigious" academic institutions, and yet they seem to know nothing.

I wonder how long it will be before enough parents realize that they can get their kids an equally good left-wing brainwashing from a school in the Caribbean, for a fraction of the price.

Then do you suppose these nit-wits will understand that perhaps NAFTA is not such a good idea? When they are subjected to the same "outsourcing" and "globalization" as the rest of us?

What Do We Need In 2009? More Failure

As long as the FED is continaully able to print money as it pleases, you will have bailouts to politically-connected cronies.

You say AIG was making risky loans and it "lost." No it didn't, AIG got it's bailout, so it "won." I bet that the CEO's of that company took that into account when it made it's "risky" loans.

AIG is a corporate member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The CFR has 3000 indicidual members, and 800 of these are in government. The rest are in academia, the banking sector or on corporate boards, with very few exceptions.