Tennessean
02/01/09
Politicians and banks are under an increasing amount of pressure to increase lending, as critics complain the $700 billion financial rescue plan has done little to help borrowers so far. Several big banks in the Nashville market such as Regions Financial Corp., Bank of America and the parent company of First Tennessee Bank reduced their overall loan portfolios between the third and fourth quarters of 2008 amid a worsening economy, despite receiving billions of dollars from the U.S. Treasury to fight the credit crunch...
http://tennessean.com/article/20090201/BUSINESS01/902010377
Washington logic
Foundation for Economic Education
by Sheldon Richman
01/30/09
Let me see if I have this straight. The U.S. government is going to borrow $819-$??? billion, largely from the Chinese (if they’ll lend it, which they may not) and put that money into people’s pockets in a hundred different ways, from paying workers for filling potholes, to extending unemployment benefits, to expanding Medicare, to weatherizing buildings, to enlarging the National Endowment for the Arts, and on and on and on. This is going to make us all richer. What would we do without those folks in Washington, D.C.?
http://tinyurl.com/bexvqz
Obama’s new bank giveaway
CounterPunch
by Michael Hudson
01/31/09
The government’s solution, placed in its hands by the financial lobbyists, is to bail out the bankers and Wall Street while leaving the ‘real’ economy even more highly indebted. Families, businesses and government are having to spend more wage income, profits and tax revenues on debt service instead of buying goods and services. So why is the solution to this debt overhead held to be yet MORE debt? Is there not something crazy here?
http://counterpunch.org/hudson01302009.html
The ugly truth
CounterPunch
by Dave Lindorff
02/01/09
America, and individual Americans, have been living profligately for years in an unreal economy, propped up by easy credit which inflated the value of real estate to incredible levels, and which led people to spend way beyond their means. Ordinary middle-class working people have been encouraged to buy obscenely oversized homes at 5% down, or even no down payment. They have been lured into buying cars the size of trucks, one for each driving-aged member of the family (in our town, so many high school kids drive to school that the school ran out of parking spaces and the yellow school buses, largely empty on their runs, are referred to by the students as the ’shame train,’ an embarrassment to be seen riding). They’ve installed individual back-yard swimming pools, unwilling to share the water with their neighbors in community pools. Boring faux ethnic restaurant franchises of all kinds have befouled the landscape, filling up with families too stressed out to cook, and willing to endure over-salted, over-priced and tasteless cuisine and tacky plastic decor night after night. Now this is all crashing down. … Eventually, the economic slide will hit bottom and begin its slow climb back, as all recessions do, but there will be no return to the days of $500,000 McMansion developments, three-car garages and a new car every two or three years for both parents plus a car for each highschooler...
http://counterpunch.org/lindorff01302009.html
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=$700
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=financial+rescue
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=credit+crunch
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Treasury
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=lobbyists
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=bailout
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Wall+Street
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=real+economy
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Sheldon+Richman
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Michael+Hudson
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Dave+Lindorff
