Big News of the day or BIGGEST News of the day?
Read the article below and let me know what you think in the comments section:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. taxpayer profits from bank bailout investments are being offset by estimated losses from American International Group and automakers and mortgage payment cuts for struggling homeowners, a U.S. Treasury report showed on Monday.
The Treasury estimated net losses on its $700 billion bailout program at $68.5 billion for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2009.
The December report for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, showed that the fiscal 2009 net loss included estimated losses of $30.4 billion for AIG and $30.4 billion for automakers, with $27.1 billion in losses from the Home Affordable Modification Program.
These were much larger than a $15 billion profit registered from the Capital Purchase Program for banks and $4.4 billion in profits from other bank investments, asset guarantee and lending programs.
A senior Treasury official said the bank investments will ultimately produce a positive return for taxpayers. But the department was not yet ready to update its estimate of the final taxpayer costs for the bailouts.
The official said the Treasury would update its cost estimates on a quarterly basis as the bailout program shifts its focus toward small business lending and housing relief in its final 10 months of operation.
The Treasury in November said TARP’s ultimate cost estimate had been reduced to about $141 billion from $341 billion earlier in the year. Further reductions in the final cost estimate could aid the Obama administration as it faces pressure to produce a new budget that starts to show deficit reductions.
(Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Dan Grebler)
Unfortunately, this story was not the lead anywhere today, though Fox did have a related one on their top three stories. Drudge’s lead story today is about Scott Brown, the candidate for former Senator Kennedy’s seat (okay, that one’s fairly important). Yesterday, he had an accusation that Senator Reid (D-NV) had a facelift or something. Drudge did have this story, but buried several stories down. Meanwhile, cable news is failing as badly as usual to provide important news. Fox has the “tell-all” story about Senate Majority Leader Reid (D-NV) as their lead story, and CNN has David Frum’s newest column as theirs. MSNBC actually has the most important lead story of the three, with an article about the death of an Iranian opposition leader. ABC is also not doing their job, with a massive lead story about President Obama allegedly playing favorites regarding the race card.
Once again, I’ll ask Americans to look at the important news. Who really cares if Sarah Palin is on Fox? Is anyone surprised? Reid has said two racial statements in recent weeks. Why are we letting our elected officials waste our taxpayer money over his comments? (Note- every time they go after or defend Reid instead of doing their job they are wasting taxpayer money.) We are losing billions of dollars to corrupt government, business and other officials and executives…and we care about something stupid Reid said or the common-sense career move of Sarah Palin? Give me a break. Let’s worry about the troops dying overseas, our sovereignty, the education of our youth and the other critical issues facing this country. Our mainstream/professional media certainly won’t do it, obviously, but in the age of the Internet and other technologies, we the people have no excuse.
Have White House Officials Ever Had A Real Job?
“Name and shame” is apparently the Treasury’s new tactic for going after mortgage companies that don’t do what the government wants. In short, some mortgage companies *gasp* are running a business like a business! The fiends…
Okay, enough sarcasm for the moment. Apparently, the Treasury people don’t want mortgage companies to keep their interest rates where they are, and the situation has become so bad that “[t]he Obama administration will crack down on mortgage companies that are failing to do enough to help borrowers at risk of foreclosure, as part of a broad effort to boost participation in its mortgage assistance program.” In other words, more government intervention in the markets. Just what we need. (Note the sarcasm…)
According to Investor’s Business Daily, “To shame loan servicers into doing a better job, Treasury will publish a list in December of those that are lagging.” First they came after Limbaugh, then after Cramer, then AIG and Fox. Now they are coming after mortgage companies. Whatever one’s opinion is of AIG, Limbaugh and the rest that the current administration has personally targeted thus far, it is bad public policy for the president of a democratic republic to go after private citizens and companies like this. Mind you, the mortgage companies haven’t been accused of doing anything illegal (unlike ACORN). They have merely not bowed and scraped to President Obama.
Update: Regarding the title of this post, Jonah Goldberg of NRO says only 10% of the current presidential cabinet has private-sector experience. So maybe the answer is a giant NO. (Big surprise, that.)
Update 2: Goldberg’s information is incorrect. I apologize for the error. Many of the advisors President Obama relies on do have private sector experience- but they’re still wrong. (And the experience is limited…)
