Where is the US economy headed?

They used money from an account they OWNED.
They were given a loan from TARP. They were given money for operating expenses in exchange for stock.

And speaking of GM... I love how they paid back their TARP money with TARP money and called it a good thing.

smoke and mirrors

Where did I say it was a bad thing to give half of the money back?

And speaking of GM... I love how they paid back their TARP money with TARP money and called it a good thing.

smoke and mirrors

For what it's worth (not a whole hell of a lot)... GM closed at 0.41 per share yesterday vs $5.00 on Dec 2, 2008 and $13.08 on Sept 19, 2008. They "sold" us stock, which is basically worthless, in exchange for funds that they used to pay of our loan to them.

The US Government will put another $30.1 billion into the company, for a total of nearly $50 billion, which was supposed to be a loan but which the government will now convert into a 60% ownership stake in the company. The governments of Canada and Ontario will “lend” an additional $9.5 billion to GM which will then be converted into about 12.5% ownership of the company. The United Auto Workers union will own 17.5% of the company. In a stunning transfer of wealth from private investors to government and unions, the UAW will own 75% more of the new GM than the investors holding $27 billion of debt to the existing company, even though GM’s own bankruptcy filing shows that the “employee obligations” to the UAW are billions of dollars less than the debt owed to bondholders. And bondholders will get 1/6th the ownership stake of the government despite having lent more than half as much money to GM.

Existing shareholders will be wiped out.

So, if it wasn't a good thing then what was it? Is it not a bad thing to be deceptive?

You may have meant something else but your words as written seem to show you thought it was a bad thing to use some funds from one loan to pay off the other. They didn't take out a new loan to pay off the old one. They already had access to the money prior to deciding to use it to pay off the loan.

No, you are incorrect.

GM stock in the existing company doesn't trade. It is a private company. The government won't recoup it's money until the company goes public again. The GM stock that is trading is basically worthless since it isn't tied to the GM that is currently building cars.

Investors largely wrote off a jump in weekly jobless claims that might have been skewed by seasonal factors. Instead they focused on earnings from a broad range of companies that demonstrate businesses are not seeing a slowdown in the recovery that economic data would otherwise indicate.

Home sales tumble 5.1 percent in June

The report counts home sales once a deal closes. Last month's report captured some buyers receiving federal tax credits of up to $8,000 that boosted sales this year. Buyers initially had to close their purchases by June 30, but Congress extended the deadline to the end of September.

Since the tax credits expired, the number of people buying homes has fallen sharply, despite lower prices and the lowest mortgage rates in decades. The situation has been worsened by high unemployment, tight lending standards and rising foreclosures.

"Economic uncertainty is clouding that buying opportunity," said Lawrence Yun, the Realtors' chief economist. "It's still a fragile situation in the housing market."

As sales have slowed, the inventory of unsold homes on the market has risen 2.5 percent to nearly 4 million. That's a nearly nine-month supply at the current sales pace, the highest level since August. It compares with a healthy level of about six months.

Sales are likely to keep falling for three to four months, Yun said. That would likely boost the supply of unsold homes to more than 10 months for the first time since the spring of 2009. And it could push down home prices. source

What you are promoting in this naive quote is the raygun economic policy known as "trickle down." After raygun, 80% of the working public failed to progress economically while the fat cats in the top 20% made certain their incomes soared.

The Washington Post babbled again today about Obama inheriting a huge deficit from Bush. Amazingly enough,...... a lot of people swallow this nonsense. So once more, a short civics lesson.


Budgets do not come from the White House. They come from Congress, and the party that controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democrat Party. They controlled the budget process for FY 2008 and FY 2009, as well as FY 2010 and FY 2011. In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush somewhat belatedly got tough on spending increases.
For FY 2009 though, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid bypassed George Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office. At that time, they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the FY 2009 budgets.

And where was Barack Obama during this time? He was a member of that very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill as President to complete FY 2009. Let's remember what the deficits looked like during that period: (below)


If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the FY 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After that, Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that includes Barack Obama, who voted for the budgets. If Obama inherited anything, he inherited it from himself.
In a nutshell, what Obama is saying is: I inherited a deficit that I voted for and then I voted to expand that deficit four-fold since January 20th.

There is no way this will be widely publicized,
Unless each of us sends it on!
This is your chance to make a difference.

Quote:

The Washington Post babbled again today about Obama inheriting a huge deficit from Bush. Amazingly enough,...... a lot of people swallow this nonsense. So once more, a short civics lesson.

If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the FY 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the Obama administration will allow tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans to expire on schedule despite calls from a small but increasingly vocal group of Democrats to delay any tax increases.