Ed The Merlin

Pay czar Ken Feinberg's first move to clamp down on pay at the seven firms he regulates (AIG, BAC, C, GM, GMAC, Chrysler and Chrysler Financial) will reportedly be to clip top executives' take-home pay, shifting a portion of their compensation into stock with a several-year lockup. The government hopes his suggestions will be voluntarily adopted by other companies.

The point isn't if the companies committed suicide...it has nothing to do with it...it's the fact that this is the precursor to controlling ALL companies whether government controlled or not.
The failure of these companies is a different issue.

Sources say Chinese state-owned oil company CNOOC (CEO) is in talks with Nigeria to buy a large stake in some of Africa's richest oil blocks, at a possible value of $30B. A successful buy would put CNOOC in competition with western oil majors with a strong presence in the area (TOT, RDS.A, CVX, XOM).

I believe China has a long term strategy of "taking us to the cleaners" by solidifying the resources they need and by holding us hostage with their buying of treasuries. If we don't wake up soon, the "cancer" will have spread so far it will be impossible to recover. It will the United States that "kowtow's" to China. As for the unions, history and the statistics of companies that were controlled by unions had lower growth, productivity and profit. So not only are the welfare gang parasitic so are the unions. This country has blinders on and can;t see it if it bit them. GM went down because of poor management and the UAW.

Market Outlook: Bulls Losing Momentum?

Similar feeling...hope not wishful thinking. Right, where is the up-tick rule fix? Only thing I see right now affecting the market is the Hedge fund regulation, but that might turn out to be good getting rid of all the shorting.

Instead of the $30B in loans it requested, GM (GM) will get enough aid to restructure over the next 60 days. COO Fritz Henderson will take over as CEO immediately. Rick Wagoner is out. Shares -17.1% premarket.

Unfortunately I have thought that Wagoner should go a long time ago. This shows you that boards and stockholders don't pay attention. They rubber stamp everything. BUT the bigger issue is you now have a president that ousts a CEO...right or wrong...that's not the way the system is suppose to work. What's next? And as far as Fx Maven statement about universal health care...there's no correlation IMHO.