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Archive for February, 2010

Obama is no FDR, We’re no Mass Movement.

It’s open season on Obama whom so many hoped would lead us out of the neo-liberal wilderness. He once was a community organizer and ought to know how working people have suffered through a generation of tax breaks for the rich, Wall Street deregulation, and unfair competition.

When the economy crashed he was in the perfect position to limit the unjustified pay levels on Wall Street and bring a crashing halt to the runaway financialization of our economy. Instead we got a multi-trillion dollar bailout for Wall Street, no health care reform, no serious financial reforms whatsoever, record unemployment, and political gridlock that’s will be with us for years to come.

Is it his fault? Or ours?

Obama has made his share of blunders. However, his statement that we “don’t begrudge” the high salaries on Wall Street because that’s part of the “free-market system” is about the dumbest thing he’s ever said. He was referring to Jamie Dimon’s $17.4 million payday, and Lloyd Blankfein’s $9 million.

But surely the President knows that at this very moment Wall Street is still receiving $10.4 trillion (not billion) in subsidies from the taxpayer — and that’s after the TARP repayments. That’s some free-market.

Dimon’s JP Morgan Chase still has a $34.3 billion subsidy, and Blankfein at Goldman Sachs is sitting on $23.9 billion of government welfare. (Many thanks to Nomi Prins for her first rate sleuthing.. ) Dimon and Blankfein would love to re-write history so that they could be portrayed as swashbuckling entrepreneurial survivors, men who avoided the bad risks that felled so many others.

But without government welfare their institutions would have gone under. They are two very lucky (and well connected) welfare recipients — lucky not to be among the 28 million Americans that go without jobs or are forced into part-time work.

We can moan all we want about Obama’s shortcomings, the mistakes his Administration has made and his inability to take on Wall Street.  But we haven’t exactly applied a lot of heat. A million people on the mall demanding “Jobs Now” along with serious Wall Street reforms might help. A million people showing up repeatedly might actually get the job done.

The free market on Wall Street is dead and has been for a long time. It’s been replaced by a billionaire bailout society that will provide decades of chronic unemployment and on-going bailouts for the super-rich. It’s a damn shame Obama can’t deal with it. It’s a bigger shame that we won’t force him too.

Conn. Powerhouse Explosion Kills 5

Fire marshals on Monday were preparing to start their investigation into a massive explosion that rocked an under-construction power plant where gas lines were being tested, killing at least five people.

A dozen or more others were hurt in Sunday’s blast, which was so powerful it alarmed residents who heard the boom and felt tremors in their homes miles away from the Kleen Energy Systems plant in Middletown, about 20 miles south of Hartford.

The explosion left huge pieces of metal that once encased the plant peeling off its sides. A large swath of the structure was blackened and surrounded by debris, but the building, its roof and its two smokestacks were still standing at the site, which is near Wesleyan University on a wooded and hilly 137-acre parcel of land overlooking the Connecticut River.

The Kleen Energy plant is seen in this aerial photo after an explosion in Middletown, Conn., Sunday, Feb. 7, 2010. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)

The nearly completed 620-megawatt plant is being built to produce energy primarily using natural gas, which accounts for about a fifth of the nation’s electricity. Workers for the construction company, O&G Industries, were purging a gas line, clearing it of air, when the explosion occurred around 11:15 a.m. Sunday, Santostefano said.

About 50 to 60 people were in the area at the time, he said.

Kleen Energy Systems LLC began construction on the plant in February 2008. It had signed a deal with Connecticut Light and Power for the electricity produced by the plant, which was scheduled to be completed by mid-2010 and would be one of the biggest built in New England in the last few years.

The Truth About Union Electricians in IBEW Local 58.

GMAC Loses $5 Billion in Fourth Quarter

NEW YORK (Reuters) – GMAC Financial Services, a lender that has received more than $16 billion from the U.S. government across multiple bailouts, said it lost $5 billion in the fourth quarter after writing down bad mortgage assets.

GMAC, one of the largest car loan makers in the United States, said in December that it did not expect to record more major losses from its mortgage unit. Home loans fueled GMAC’s growth earlier this decade but have since triggered billions of dollars of losses for the company.

The fourth-quarter loss compares with net income of $7.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008.