We all know we’re on an unsustainable course with all of this spending. And this is why I voted for this guy: he’s a realist. We needed a short term shot in the arm when he first got in here, but now we have to worry about the long term consequences.
Politico has more:
On the practical [...]

We’ve crossed the psychological barrier and this spells bad news for Dems unless they can turn it around in the next couple months. Because this is the highest rate since 1983 and you’ll be hearing that time and time again in the next month.
Here’s more about those numbers:
Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates [...]

The Wash Post’s Ezra Klein interviewed the CEO of Kaiser Permanente and found massive differences when looking at health care costs in the US and other countries.
Yes, it’s not even close.

Gee, I wonder why we’re going bankrupt…
And those are just 3 graphs! Want to see the other 19? Click here to download the whole report [...]

Who’s this guy?
Meet Kenneth R. Feinberg, the new pay “czar” for the White House. He’s tasked with reigning in the out of control compensation at companies the government helped recently.
I think it should be noted right off the bat that this is tied to executive compensation and bonuses…two pots of money that are so [...]

True, it might go right back down tomorrow, but I have to say that this is a nice little psychological boost.
But it’s not just psychological.
Look at the 52 week spread in that picture…at this time last year we were down to 6,469. That’s a pretty significant jump in just one year’s time. Not only that, [...]

It’s a little known fact that one of the big reasons Iraq turned around is we simply offered a better price than al Qaeda. Within a month the word got out that we were paying top dollar and the insurgents were turning against the terrorists and the US body count started to drop.
Will the same [...]

Not only that it’s fully paid for.
That’s the latest report from the CBO and it’s encouraging to say the very least.
Here’s more from The Hill:
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued a cost estimate of the healthcare reform bill under consideration by the Senate Finance Committee, concluding it would increase federal spending by $829 billion over [...]

Bernie Madoff being pinned to the wall by a huge, farting bull…which is supposed to represent Wall Street.
All from the mind of Chinese artist Chen Wenling.
I mean, come on…that is AWESOME!
A question…if you had to create a sculpture that summed up what happened last year…what would it look like and why?
(Photo: BBC)

If you’re not familiar with the word rescission, this is the practice of canceling policies because people didn’t reveal a preexisting condition. And it’s one of the key reasons why the health insurance companies can claim that there’s $100 billion in health care fraud every year.
Here’s one example of what they consider fraud…
“They said I [...]

The rise in unemployment is slowing down and we’re pulling out of this recession sooner than expected.
Why?
The reason is clear to me: we stepped in, took action and did something instead of just allowing the markets determine our fate.
WSJ explains…
The U.S. economy is beginning to show signs of improvement, with many economists asserting the [...]

Per Politico, the White House claims that “more than half of the projected deficits over the next 10 years are directly attributable to the previous Administration’s failure to follow the pay-as-you-go principle.”
But even if that’s true, which is likely given the Medicare drug benefit, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the expansion of the [...]

The company that literally almost brought it all tumbling down about a year ago right around this time is back in the black?
Not so much.
More from Politics Daily…
For the first time since 2007, AIG on Friday claimed a profit. The insurance giant reported second-quarter net income of over $1.8 billion. That’s still just a fraction [...]

A new website for the controversial, popular program is up and it includes some things you need to know if you’d like to take advantage.

Your vehicle must be less than 25 years old on the trade-in date

Only purchase or lease of new vehicles qualify

Generally, trade-in vehicles must get 18 or less MPG (some very large [...]

I wrote about the problems the Postal Service faced back in January, and today we get word that their financial woes are even more severe than previously thought.
From NBC…

Back to the January post, which was about cutting back on delivery days, I saw two advantages to that model…
First, the fewer the days the mail is [...]

The following story doesn’t say it explicitly, but when both Dems and Repubs are saying yes to this, you know it’s going to pass.
From Politico:
On ABC’s “This Week,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in response to a question by host George Stephanopoulos about extending benefits: “I think that is something that the administration and Congress [...]

And this is for 2008…a year when their failure nearly brought the entire world’s financial system to its knees.
I don’t care if these bonuses were contractual or not. New circumstances (you know…like BANKRUPTCY!) could allow them to renegotiate with their employees.
From the AP comes the list…
Citigroup…
Citigroup Inc., one of the biggest recipients of government bailout [...]

That’s the plan, but color me skeptical. These corporations have too much influence on Capitol Hill. Still, the fact that we’re even talking about it is encouraging.
CNN explains why this issue has reignited…
Two weeks ago, Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) was roundly panned amid speculation that it was considering paying its employees some of the [...]

Early this month, Tyler Durden of Zero Hedge reported on the case of Sergey Aleynikov (pictured above), a former employee of Goldman Sachs who allegedly stole the code that runs their automated high frequency trading software.
Well, this could have been the catalyst for the recent focus on high frequency trading and may ultimately lead [...]

Another day, another incredibly questionable Wall Street practice. And this one is particularly galling.
Basically, some of the stock exchanges allow companies to see trades 3 milliseconds before they hit the market. It’s called “flash” trading, and the only folks who can take advantage of such information are the ones who pay a fee (of course) [...]

So yeah…what was all that talk about never seeing any of the TARP money again?
And this is after 10 banks said last month they’d be paying back $68B worth of TARP money. Goldman was one of them. And the American taxpayer turned a tidy profit on the deal.
From Bloomberg:
Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s repayments to the [...]