By Scott S. Powell
Excerpts from San Jose Mercury News
“The president has been big on speeches, and another much-heralded speech on a new plan for jobs is scheduled before a joint session of Congress later this week. But Americans are getting teleprompter fatigue. They want to see new ideas and action.”
“The heart of the problem is that Obama’s idea of job creation largely revolves around public works projects that are rooted in Keynesian economics and driven by government funding and political payoffs.”
“First, the president could support the Freedom to Invest Act of 2011 (HR 1834)”
“Second, the president can ask his appointees at the National Labor Relations Board to fast-track the hearings and decision-making that would allow Boeing to open its 787 Dreamliner assembly plant in South Carolina”
“Third, President Obama can direct his Interior Department to cut through the red tape and renew the permit granted to ExxonMobil to develop the largest oil discovery in a decade located in the Julia field in the Gulf of Mexico.”
“Fourth, jobs are just waiting to be created by American companies eager to help tap the third largest proven oil reserve in the world, located in Alberta, Canada. The major holdup now is President Obama. He needs to approve the project and shepherd it through final State Department formalities.”
“We don’t need another speech on job creation that extols government investment. We need action that puts people to work in real jobs that help grow the economy, broaden the tax base and shrink our deficit and debt.”
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_18816791
SCOTT S. POWELL is a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a managing partner at RemingtonRand LLC.
If Obama really wanted to restore some faith in this economy he would lock up some of the former top brass (2008) at Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch, for the rest of their lives.
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REUTERS
Judge Sustains Claims of Former Shareholders of Now-Defunct Lehman Brothers
Wed Jul 27, 2011 5:49pm EDT
Today, in one of the most significant class action lawsuits to arise out
of the financial crisis, District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan sustained, in
large part, claims asserted by former Lehman Brothers shareholders in a
federal securities action related to the company’s 2008 collapse.
In a 106-page opinion, Judge Kaplan of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York held that plaintiffs had sufficiently alleged federal securities claims against former officers and directors of Lehman Brothers, including former CEO Richard S. Fuld and former CFO Erin Callan, Lehman’s auditor, Ernst & Young, and fifty-one underwriters that assisted Lehman Brothers in issuing billions of dollars in now-worthless securities to the investing public prior to its bankruptcy.
Plaintiffs, which include Alameda County Employees’ Retirement
Association, the Government of Guam Retirement Fund, the Northern Ireland Local Government Officers’ Superannuation Committee, the City of
Edinburgh Council as Administering Authority of the Lothian Pension Fund, and the Operating Engineers Local 3 Trust Fund, had alleged, among other things, that the defendants materially misrepresented Lehman’s financial position through the use of “Repo 105” transactions, and made material misstatements and omissions regarding Lehman’s risk exposures and risk management systems.
Judge Kaplan found that Lehman’s use of “Repo 105” transactions, which
the company used to artificially improve its reported capital position by temporarily removing assets from its balance sheet at quarter-end,
“paint[ed] a misleading picture of the company’s financial position at
the end of each quarter.” He also found that the defendants’ repeated
statements regarding the “strong” and “conservative” nature of Lehman’s
risk management systems were materially false and misleading “given the
allegations of frequent, significant departures from Lehman’s internally
stated policies.”
Co-Lead Counsel Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP and Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP are pleased that the Court allowed
shareholders’ core allegations in this matter to proceed, and look
forward to proving the allegations in the Complaint. Co-Lead Counsel
views the Court’s decision as an important victory for shareholders whose investments were decimated by Lehman’s demise.
Inside of six weeks your villans from Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch would be running the prison, which would be earning a profit, and they would be undertaking leveraged buyouts of other prisons.
And you would be banging your head against a brick wall, screaming at your gold-leaf framed portrait of The Messiah, Obama the Invincible, wondering how it all went so terribly wrong.
OK the Boeing thing is dumb.
However, our existing roads and bridges need $1-3T in repairs and maintenance just to bring them up to code, our dams? another $1T, our power plants and grid? another $1T. We have millions of contruction worker not working or working part time only because of the housing bust that will never come back. The 30 yr treasury is less than 4%! We should take action now while interest rates, materials and labor are cheap.
Tax incentives will not do one thing to fix the above, in fact most of the tax cuts Obama put in place ended up in China via our favorite big box stores.
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