As the record federal budget deficit draws increasing scrutiny from Washington to Wall Street to Main Street, deficit hawks may take aim at entitlement programs including Social Security.

via Will Baby Boomers Bankrupt Social Security?

Ah yes, blame the boomers  for the mismanagement of a government mandated ponzi scheme.

And don’t get me started on how SS is another FAILED social program from the “great” F.D.R.

“There is no empirical data to support the introduction of a new (uptick) rule,” Hyndman said yesterday at a securities industry conference in Chicago. “But this is the least intrusive of the proposals the SEC was considering.”

via SEC Proposes Very Limited Reintroduction of Uptick Rule on Short Selling

Brian, you retard. The ONLY empirical data around proves that an economy using fiat money ALWAYS fails.

The Obama administration will announce that 2010 will be renamed 2009, giving us another year of leeway to recover from the crisis. The move will make Obama?s poll ratings soar, as everyone would love to turn back the clock on their lives. ?It?s just like daylight savings time, but in reverse,? the president will say.

In a letter to its dealers, General Motors? said it would pay $7,000 for every new Saturn or Pontiac on their lots that is moved to rental-vehicle or service-vehicle fleets.

GM will book the sales to dealers as fleet deliveries, which would increase the company’s December car sales.

via GM Plans To Rush Pontiac, Saturn Sale: Report

And, if pretending that these are normal sales isn’t enough BS for one day, I also saw “Jan. 4, the last day of the December car sales month“.

The government’s original bailout of Fannie and Freddie required the companies to start cutting their portfolios of retained mortgages by 10% a year starting in 2010. That’s because rampant growth earlier this decade was partly responsible for the companies’ collapse last year.

However, Treasury said on Christmas Eve that the 10% reduction in 2010 will be based on the maximum allowed size of their portfolios, which is $900 billion, not the actual size, which was roughly $770 billion at the end of October, George noted.

via Treasury signals more Fannie, Freddie activism – MarketWatch.

These thieving bastards don’t miss a trick.

If Timmy Geithner was smart enough to think up this BS,? how’d he screw up his taxes?? He didn’t lie to congress did he?

This from a current ad by Dodge:

2010 RAM 1500 ST QUAD CAB 4X2

Offer 1: Get $2,500 Customer Cash Allowance plus $1,000 GMAC Bonus Cash

Offer 2: Get low APR financing plus $1,000 GMAC Bonus Cash

Offer 3: Get low APR financing with $1,000 Combo Cash Allowance plus $1,000 GMAC Bonus Cash

It looks like more taxpayer money is being funneled to Chrysler Group LLC via GMAC (itself a ward of the state).

China’s ballooning stock market bubble, fuelled by excessive liquidity, is likely to burst in the first half of 2010, punctured by economic concerns arising from higher-than-expected inflation, Morgan Stanley Asia Executive Director Jerry Lou said on Thursday

.China’s benchmark Shanghai Composite Index may peak around 4,000 points, as banks continue to lend massively to infrastructure projects initiated this year under the government’s $586 billion stimulus package

via China Stock Bubble to Burst Next Year

And our stimulus package $700+ billion and our markets are pumped up with excessive liquidity too. We should also expect the same result.

However, Spiegel reports that the Opel head works council does not even believe the company can be turned around. In quoting works council member Klaus Franz, Spiegel said:

The existing plans call for GM to reduce fixed costs in Europe by 30 percent and capacity by 20 to 25 percent. The American company expects the Opel-Vauxhall turnaround will cost 3.3 billion euro. “I have no idea how they expect to be able to raise the two billion Euros on their own.?

We know where the money is coming from; it is coming from the $18 billion escrow GM has courtesy of the U.S. government and taxpayers. This is a case in which U.S. taxpayers are funding European jobs. It?s as simple as that.

via GM?s phony taxpayer repayment

Almost 90 days after coming out of bankruptcy, General Motors is showing signs of getting healthy and moving closer to getting back in the black.

And there’s no doubt, the “new” GM is doing far better than the old GM. Cash flow was positive $3.3 Billion Structural costs dropped $6.7 Billion Starting next month, GM will repay $1.2 Billion of its $8.1 Billion in loans to the U.S. And Canadian governments

via GM Cuts Losses?Plans Early Loan Repayment

I thought we’ve given them some 30 billion. I guess only 8.1 billion was in loans and the rest was something else they artfully called something other than a “loan”.

As if we didn’t already know the numbers were “misleading”

The fundamental shortcoming is in the way imports are accounted for. A carburetor bought for $50 in China as a component of an American-made car, for example, more often than not shows up in the statistics as if it were the American-made version valued at, say, $100. The failure to distinguish adequately between what is made in America and what is made abroad falsely inflates the gross domestic product, which sums up all value added within the country.

American workers lose their jobs when carburetors they once made are imported instead. The federal data notices the decline in employment but fails to revalue the carburetors or even pinpoint that they are foreign-made. Because it seems as if $100 carburetors are being produced but fewer workers are needed to do so, productivity falsely rises ? in the national statistics.

via Economists Seek to Cure a Defect in National Data