Bush Bails Out Obama as Obama Takes Credit for Bush Bank Bailout

-




Leave it to politics to turn the tables as the only successful Obama economic program to date was not part of his recovery program at all but was the bank bailout by the Bush Administration. Obama is taking credit for the program that has already made a $4 billion profit for the US Treasury.




Of course only the banks Bush gave money have repaid. Once the Democrats took control with the election of Obama the bank bailout became the housing bailout (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), the insurance bailout (AIG), and the union/automaker bailout (GM and Chrysler). None of them have repaid the government billions yet.

Still it didn't keep Obama from taking credit for the bank repayments and the profit to the government. Not only does Obama never missed a chance to blame Bush for everything bad that has happened since Obama took office but now he won't give Bush credit for anything that might go right.




The Banks and the profit made include:
Goldman Sachs $1.4 billion
Morgan Stanley $1.3 billion
American Express $414 million

In addition five other banks including Northern Trust, Bank of New York Mellon, State Street, U.S. Bancorp and BB&T each paid between $100 million and $334 million in profits. These figures do not include 14 smaller banks who paid about $35 million in profits.




Of course another element of the bailout, the effort to stimulate home sales, has had little impact. The same is true of the program to buy the toxic loans currently held by the banks and capable of disrupting any economic recovery. But then you can't get what you were promised under this Administration so get used to it.

-

Obama Cabinet Nominees Spoil New Criminal Rehabilitation Program

Just when we thought the highest ranking appointees in the Obama Administration were going to constitute the most elite criminal rehabilitation program in the nation two of the three charter members withdrew from consideration this week.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who failed to pay $43,000 in back taxes until his Senate hearing, was first to make it through the process in spite of the tax problem. Obama said it was no big deal and Geithner said he didn't understand that he owed the taxes, a bit scary for the next head of IRS. What would happen to you if IRS discovered you did not pay $43,000 over a four year period? Geithner gets to be US Treasury Secretary. You would get federal prison.

Then along comes Tom Daschle, the former leader of the Democrats in the Senate and Obama's nominee to fix the health care mess. Seems he was paid over $5 million for lobbying for health care companies in a couple of years though he never bothered to register as a lobbyist. That was okay with Obama. But IRS said he owed $143,000 in back taxes for failing to report a full time car and driver paid for by his lobbying firm. He paid that and once again everything was okay with our new king of clean government President Obama and he urged the approval of Daschle.

Would you get a cabinet post with Obama if you owed $143,000 in back taxes? Once again federal prison would be more likely. A third key Obama appointee, Nancy Killefer, picked for what he described as the most important new post in his Administration, the government's first Chief Performance Officer, then had to acknowledge she also owed back taxes but just $946.69, a miniscule amount compared to the tens and hundreds of thousands owned by the old boys.

Nancy did the right thing, she immediately withdrew from consideration. Thus one of the most prominent female appointees of Obama was the first to recognize her civic duty and dropped out. A few hours later Daschle followed suit, even though Obama and others all agreed it was not significant enough to warrant withdrawing from the race. So far the new Obama standard is key employees are okay as long as they don't steal more than $143,000 from the government.

On Jan. 21, the day after his inauguration, Obama issued an executive order barring any former lobbyists who join his administration from dealing with matters or agencies related to their lobbying work. Nor could they join agencies they had lobbied in the previous two years.

However, William J. Lynn III, his choice to become the No. 2 official at the Defense Department, recently lobbied for military contractor Raytheon. And William Corr, tapped as deputy secretary at Health and Human Services, lobbied through most of last year as an anti-tobacco advocate. Before the ink had dried the first waivers of the brand new executive order had to be granted to allow lobbyists to join his staff in top agencies. Didn't Obama get a lot of mileage smearing John McCain for having lobbyist in his campaign?

It just seems that those campaign promises for a new way to govern free of the influences of the past don't seem so real now. A new level of ethics promised has not materialized. In fact, far more promises have been broken than kept in the early part of the new regime. If there was any doubt about this ask the United Auto Workers at General Motors. The union was one of Obama's biggest supporters and were promised a bail out for the auto industry and told by the new president they were the priority of his administration. Today GM announced one third of the UAW workers must be laid off. That does not sound like they are being protected by the new president.

GOP Convention Stuns Democrats and Liberal Media Partners

Tonight Sarah Palin made her long awaited speech to the nation and from the minute she started talking the reaction of the liberal media and Democratic analysts told me all I needed to know. The small town mayor and governor from Alaska may well be the Achilles heel to the liberal hopes to sweep the election this year.

What is it about a media that thinks lies, insults, distortions and smear campaigns have any place in America? The biggest loser this election year is the media, and journalists in general, who have forgotten their responsibilities to report the news and not make the news. There is no objective news being reported in America and the colleges and universities seem to be hell bent on turning out media stars and power brokers, not defenders of the truth.

Of course both the liberal and conservative media suffer from the same ego driven disease, foot in mouth syndrome, and they certainly don't get it. People are seeing through the crap being dished out in the endless news shows and cable forums all being done in the "public interest". I don't need some socialist telling me what I need. Now I don't care if a socialist reports the news as long as they can be objective but they don't even know what that means.

Reporters are more interested in becoming media stars in their own right so they can make the killing selling books and other works of nonsense and become analysts spouting even more of the silly opinions that penetrate their stories.

Broadcasters are licensed and the license says they will report news, not propaganda. America has moved a giant step closer to the media that functioned under the Soviet Union. They got their people in power, then eliminated the opposition. In the end the Russian people knew the media lied and the lies would soon bring down their empire.

Here in America today the lies being told by the mainstream media are blatantly obvious. People are seeing the truth as every year fewer and fewer people watch the nonsense. It is a sad state of affairs and one with little evidence it can be corrected.

Facts are ignored and untruths are published. Causes are pursued, people are smeared, social and moral issues are distorted and manipulated yet the reporters actually keep a straight face throughout the performance.

The media is this year's biggest loser. If we are not careful, the people will be the next biggest.

CPT SPECIAL - WHO CAN YOU TRUST???

We are introducing a new feature of the CPT identifying for you the handful of prominent people in the world we believe you can actually trust. When these people happen to come from the finance sector it is even rarer that they can be trusted. So our first entry into the CPT Trusted Hall of Fame is Mellody Hobson.

Mellody (born April 3, 1969) is the president of Ariel Capital Management, LLC, a Chicago investment firm managing over $14 billion in assets. She is a regular contributor on financial issues to ABC’s Good Morning America. Hobson was born in Chicago, Illinois and graduated from Princeton University in 1991 with a degree in South African Studies. She joined Ariel soon afterward as the firm's senior vice president and director of marketing until ascending to president in 2000.

Hobson serves on the board of many organizations, including the Chicago Public Library, the Field Museum, the Chicago Public Education Fund, and the Sundance Institute. She is also a director of the Starbucks Corporation, The Estee Lauder Companies, Inc. and Dreamworks Animation SKG, Inc.

One of the world's most eligible bachelorettes, Mellody is dating George Lucas of Star Wars fame who also happens to be one of the few nice guys in Hollywood not caught up in the movie industry hysteria. Mellody, way to go girl!