Here Come the Peasants With Pitchforks

Related Newser Stories

• Report Rips TARP Strategy (or Lack Thereof)

  12 hours, 13 minutes ago
  So much for transparency. A blistering draft report being issued by a congressional oversight panel today says Treasury has failed to reveal its strategy for stabilizing the financial system and failed to answer questions asked by the watchdog group, the Wall Street Journal reports. But worse still, it’s done nothing to help struggling homeowners trapped under mortgages that are worth more than their homes.
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• Geithner Overhauls Bailout to Aid Homeowners, Small Biz

  15 hours, 30 minutes ago
  The incoming Treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, is conducting a top-to-bottom overhaul of the $700 billion financial rescue program passed by a skeptical Congress last fall. Geithner and other Obama advisers will expand the program to cover small businesses, municipalities, and even homeowners before asking Congress for the second tranche of the bailout, the Washington Post reports. The new approach will be laid out publicly before Geithner's confirmation hearing next week.
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• Porn Kings Want Federal Bailout

  Jan 7, 09 4:34 PM CST
  Recession depression has hampered America's sex drive, claim Larry Flynt (of Hustler fame) and Joe Francis (Girls Gone Wild). The adult-entertainment kings want a federal bailout for slumping DVD sales, down 22% in the past year. Placing themselves alongside Detroit’s automakers in national importance, the duo says Congress should fork over $5 billion to help them through, TMZ reports. More »

• $173B Later, Taxpayers Still Can't Get a Loan

  Jan 6, 09 10:09 AM CST
  Though US taxpayers own $172.5 billion of shares and warrants in 208 financial institutions, most of them still can’t get a loan. Interbank lending rates have fallen since TARP funds have been paid out, but consumer lending remains tight and average credit card rates are virtually unchanged from October 2007, Bloomberg reports. "If you’re taking money from the public purse, we should get something in return, and we’re really not,” says an econ professor.
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• Vindicated in 2008, Some Experts Foresee Gloomy '09

  Jan 2, 09 10:52 AM CST
  Labeled overly pessimistic for years, a few Wall Street prognosticators became the oracles of 2008 by correctly predicting the unwinding of the global economy, the Wall Street Journal reports. The doomsayers correctly anticipated bank failures, stock market declines, and the housing market collapse of the second half of 2008. As for 2009, don’t expect things to get any rosier, they say.
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