Where is the US economy headed?

Citigroup loses $7.8B in 4Q
By STEPHEN BERNARD, AP Business Writer Stephen Bernard, Ap Business Writer 37 mins ago

NEW YORK " Citigroup Inc. became the latest bank to take a cautious view of consumers' credit problems, reporting a $7.77 fourth-quarter loss due to failed loans and the costs of repaying government bailout money.

The bank said Tuesday it did see some early signs of improvement in its credit business although it still needed to set aside $8.18 billion to cover unpaid loans. That amount was down 10 percent from the third quarter, and 36 percent from a year earlier.

John Gerspach, Citigroup's chief financial officer, reported one of those improving signs during a conference call with the media, noting that the number of mortgage and credit card loans that were newly delinquent, or between one and three months past due, had started to stabilize and even drop in some of its lending portfolios.

However, "the U.S. credit story is still very much developing," Gerspach said.

By DAVID STOCKMAN
Published: January 19, 2010
WHILE supply-side catechism insists that lower taxes are a growth tonic, the theory also argues that if you want less of something, tax it more. The economy desperately needs less of our bloated, unproductive and increasingly parasitic banking system. In this respect, the White House appears to have gone over to the supply side with its proposed tax on big banks, as it scores populist points against the banksters, too.

Not surprisingly, the bankers are already whining, even though the tax would amount to a financial pinprick " a levy of only 0.15 percent on the debts (other than deposits) of the big financial conglomerates. Their objections are evidence that the administration is on the right track.

Make no mistake. The banking system has become an agent of destruction for the gross domestic product and of impoverishment for the middle class. To be sure, it was lured into these unsavory missions by a truly insane monetary policy under which, most recently, the Federal Reserve purchased $1.5 trillion of longer-dated Treasury bonds and housing agency securities in less than a year. It was an unprecedented exercise in market-rigging with printing-press money, and it gave a sharp boost to the price of bonds and other securities held by banks, permitting them to book huge revenues from trading and bookkeeping gains.

Banks do not produce any products, and yet claim to have made billions in profit. They do this with fancy bookkeeping tricks that the feds allow them to practice at the sacrifice of "everybody else."

It doesn't take any economic class to know that an overabundance of US dollars circulating in this country without the products to back it up only creates inflation. The US government is guilty of the same crime; they keep printing money, and selling bonds as if there's no worry about the future inflation crisis.

ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/suppl/empsit.cpseea1.txt
Total employment in the USA in:
December 2006 = 144,427,000
December 2007 = 146,047,000 (maximum total employment in USA history)
December 2008 = 143,338,000
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
December 2009 = 137,792,000

You have to wonder about ican when his argument is that Obama is making us more capitalist by letting the banks do what they are in order to make us socialist.

Unconnected from reality seems to be what most of the electroate is.

Declaring people to be unconnected from reality is just a fairly polite way of declaring them to be idiots and mad.

Declaring people to be idiots and mad when they don't agree with the speaker

Who determines what is reality? And history is written by the winners and isent necessarly what truely happens.

cicerone imposter wrote:

When asked to prove their claim that Obama has taken away their freedoms, they have never shown one incident of such an idiotic idea. None, never, nada.

Our actual claim is that Obama is ATTEMPTING to take away our freedoms.
Multiple examples of Obama advocating that which constitutes ATTEMPTING to take away our freedoms, have been posted here. Continuation of Stimulus, proposed 2nd Stimulus, extension of TARP, extension of Fannie and Freddie, Cap and Trade, elimination of charter schools, and extension of federal healthcare, are a few examples.

ican711nm wrote:

cicerone poster wrote:

Obama didn't listen to the people, and he lost. That's what Bush did, and the country almost died.

Well cice, you admit--or rather, logically imply-- Obama's amplified emulations of Bush's errors, if continued, will cause the country to finally die.

Will the real cicerone imposter please stand up?

Seattle-based Taco Del Mar said Thursday that it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States Bankruptcy Court in Seattle.

The company is expecting to continue all business operations during the restructuring without interruption. “Although this was not our first choice, we believe that the Chapter 11 process will allow us to maximize the value of the company’s assets,” said Larry Destro, president and CEO of Taco Del Mar, in a statement.

This restructuring does not involve the franchisee-owned Taco Del Mar store location operations.