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 [...]

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 [...]

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: [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 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 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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

The Wall Street Journal uncovers what happened, but we’ve discussed it quite a bit here already. The banks were allowed to over leverage themselves to the point of failure. Sure, relaxed rules on home ownership were a contributing factor to the downfall, but that was a symptom of the disease of easy credit, not the [...]

In one of those “every silver lining has a cloud” kind of situations, state and federal government road maintenance funds are dwindling as people drive less and use less gasoline per mile as they buy more fuel efficient cars. The federal government had to put $8 billion into the Highway Trust Fund because plummeting gas [...]

Looks like they’ve finally come to an agreement, but at the expensive of the poor and elderly. From LA Times: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders announced Monday that they had reached a deal to close California’s $26.3-billion deficit and begin paying all of the state’s bills again, potentially ending months of partisan wrangling and [...]

Politico did some digging and the results reveal a Governor that is even more at odds with his public persona. Long story short, he definitely used taxpayer funds to go visit his mistress. More at True/Slant.

Now this is true free market capitalism if I’ve ever seen it. Apparently the American Conservative Union offered FedEx their support if they’d sign off on a costly outreach campaign. FedEx said no and the organization backed UPS. More at True/Slant.