We have all seen this headline before, but one would think that in the midst of an extraordinary time in our history, some extraordinary measures would be taken. Instead, the Democrats in Congress are about to take the Bush recession and turn it into their own. Instead of utilizing new thinking to weather [...]
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”We have made significant progress, but there is no single action the federal government can take to end the financial market turmoil and the economic downturn.” World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, 28 January – 1 February 2009. I’m surprised I haven’t yet read any mention this year of Thomas Mann’s novel, The Magic Mountain, which was set in Davos. As Timothy Garton Ash wrote at The Guardian in February 2005: it “shows how the economically interdependent pre-1914 Europe, [...] Congress wanted to guarantee that the $700 billion financial bailout would limit the eye-popping pay of Wall Street executives, so lawmakers included a mechanism for reviewing executive compensation and penalizing firms that break the rules. But at the last minute, the Bush administration insisted on a one-sentence change to the provision, congressional aides said. The change [...] President Bush and the Treasury Department signaled on Friday that they would consider dipping into the $700 billion bailout program for financial institutions to aid the Big Three car companies, after Republican senators refused to support a compromise proposal to rescue the automakers. “Under normal economic conditions we would prefer that markets determine the ultimate fate [...] Stock intended to eventually earn taxpayers a profit as part of the Bush administration’s massive bank bailout has lost a third of its value — about $9 billion — in barely one month, according to an Associated Press analysis. Shares in virtually every bank that received federal money have remained below the prices the government [...] |
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