Does Anyone feel like Bailing

[xoxoxoBruce]

Troop strength will increase by 70,000, the Governors want their National Guards back.

[TheMercenary]

They will get them back, but that is hardly a relative increase. And just think, the state has not had to pay that bill for that time they are deployed.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Yeah, but they had to import illegals to landscape the Gov's mansion, with the Guard gone.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Yeah, but they had to import illegals to landscape the Gov's mansion, with the Guard gone.

Radar will be happy they have jobs. But now they will be out of work again.

Speaking of Illegals, we have noticed a huge decrease in their presence at the local areas where they stand around on the corners waiting for work. At one location there would be 30 - 40 per day in one place, now, none. Gone, poof. I think it has been related to the signifcant decrease in home building. Anyone else note a trend?

[tw]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

The Pentagon programs likely to be cut have no effect on our ability to fight terrorists. You don't need F-35s to stop truck bombs.

Military has an even bigger problem. Having massively increased spending, the ROI on that money has resulted in much less useful products. IEEE Spectrum recently had a major series on this problem. However that goes right back to a definition of quality. Throwing more money at something does not create more innovation and often results in less innovation.

Return to the lessons from Nam. Massive spending on a war that violates even basic military principles results in a smaller, weaker, and unaffordable military. Lessons from Nam apply to "Mission Accomplished" and the $1trillion bill that will be paid years from now. Monies spend in 1968+ resulted in a weaker military and massive job losses in the late 1970s. A fact that every informed American knew back when George Jr was blaming Saddam for 11 September and those mythical WMDs.

Spending $700million on an F-22 that cannot even support ground troops? What kind of military is that? One that is getting ready to fight an alien invasion from Mars? Well we started it by littering their planet. Or is that one preparing to unilaterally attack (Pearl Harbor) India, Germany or Russia?

George Jr wanted to increase the military budget from $400billion to almost $1trillion annually. After all, under George Jr, we were making enemies everywhere. Maybe a smarter America would invest in solving problems by diplomacy. But then means one talks to everyone - especially enemies existing and potential.

[classicman]

How much did military spending spending help to keep the charade of the economy going and mask the reality while prolonging the inevitable? Did it come up just months short? What if this meltdown hadn't happened till after the election? I wonder how that would have affected the outcome.

[classicman]

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe said Saturday that Congress was not told the truth about the bailout of the nation's financial system and should take back what is left of the $700 billion "blank check'' it gave the Bush administration.

"It is just outrageous that the American people don't know that Congress doesn't know how much money he (Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson) has given away to anyone,'' the Oklahoma Republican told the Tulsa World.

"It could be to his friends. It could be to anybody else. We don't know. There is no way of knowing.''

Last week the Treasury secretary announced he was abandoning his plan to free up the nation's credit system by buying up toxic assets from troubled financial institutions. Instead, Paulson wants to take a more direct action on the consumer credit front.

"He was able to get this authority from Congress predicated on what he was going to do, and then he didn't do it,'' Inhofe said.

"I have learned a long time ago. When they come up and say this has to be done and has to be done immediately, there is no other way of doing it, you have to sit back and take a deep breath and nine times out of 10 they are not telling the truth,'' he said.

"And this is one of those nine times.''

Here it comes.

[classicman]

His Letter here

[tw]

Goldman Sachs just announced that six top executives would "forgo" their $67million per person bonuses. Why is this significant? Because no other 'on government welfare' companies announced same. Meanwhile, Goldman will still pay something less than $1billion in bonuses to other employees. Thank god we rescued those bonuses.

[classicman]

I read that too, I thought there would be some early adopters to follow their lead. None as of yet though.

[xoxoxoBruce]

AIG is planning on doling out over $600 million in "delayed compensation" to it's people right after the first of the year. They said this isn't bailout money, this is money they had set aside for this.

[tw]

So many years ago, I pointed to the AIG building in lower Manhatten and told the National Park Service cop why that is a company I was waiting to go under. This may have been in 2004.

When GM has no profits, its unions get no Christmas bonuses. But its management does. When AIG puts $1trillion at risk, why does anyone in AIG get bonuses? The reasoning? If they don't get that bonus, then they cannot afford to live in NYC.

By getting no $67million bonus, top GS executives must suffer poverty - only $600,000 this year. So we would even blame the unions?

Lee Iacocca - a product oriented thinker - took only $1 per year at Chrysler until Chrysler was profitable. Bean counters educated in business schools would never do that. Their compensation is more important than their job.

[tw]

More examples of deregulation. From the Washington Post of 23 Nov 2008:

Banking Regulator Played Advocate Over Enforcer
Agency Let Lenders Grow Out of Control, Then Fail
The benefits were clear: Countrywide's new regulator, the Office of Thrift Supervision, promised more flexible oversight of issues related to the bank's mortgage lending. For OTS, which depends on fees paid by banks it regulates and competes with other regulators to land the largest financial firms, Countrywide was a lucrative catch.

But OTS was not an effective regulator. This year, the government has seized three of the largest institutions regulated by OTS, including IndyMac Bancorp, Washington Mutual -- the largest bank in U.S. history to go bust -- and on Friday evening, Downey Savings and Loan Association. The total assets of the OTS thrifts to fail this year: $355.7 billion. Three others were forced to sell to avoid failure, including Countrywide. ...

OTS is responsible for regulating thrifts, also known as savings and loans, which focus on mortgage lending. As the banks under OTS supervision expanded high-risk lending, the agency failed to rein in their destructive excesses despite clear evidence of mounting problems, according to banking officials and a review of financial documents. ...

In 2004, the year that risky loans called option adjustable-rate mortgages took off, then-OTS director James Gilleran lauded the banks for their role in providing home loans. "Our goal is to allow thrifts to operate with a wide breadth of freedom from regulatory intrusion," he said in a speech. ...

In the summer of 2003, leaders of the four federal agencies that oversee the banking industry gathered to highlight the Bush administration's commitment to reducing regulation. They posed for photographers behind a stack of papers wrapped in red tape. The others held garden shears. Gilleran, who succeeded Seidman as OTS director in late 2001, hefted a chain saw. ...

Gilleran was an impassioned advocate of deregulation. ... The result was a mismatch between a short-handed agency and a burgeoning thrift industry. ... He also reduced consumer protections. ...

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by classicman

Here it comes.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe said Saturday that Congress was not told the truth about the bailout of the nation's financial system and should take back what is left of the $700 billion "blank check'' it gave the Bush administration.

Karma is such a bitch.

[Trilby]

Re: merc's new sig.under his handle----sure glad you're not bitter, merc.

not bitter at all!