Unions Are Bad For Everything

Sep 3rd, 2010 at 8:52 am by susie

Dave Johnson on the marketing strategy.

Bookmark It

Posted in Class War, Corporate Statism, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels | Comments Off

There Goes My Blood Pressure

Sep 3rd, 2010 at 8:47 am by susie

Remember the rumors a few months ago that BP was restructuring itself so it could file for bankruptcy and avoid paying for the cleanup? A couple of people accused me of being too cynical. Hah!

Now they’re crying poor mouth:

BP is warning Congress that if lawmakers pass legislation that bars the company from getting new offshore drilling permits, it may not have the money to pay for all the damages caused by its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The company says a ban would also imperil the ambitious Gulf Coast restoration efforts that officials want the company to voluntarily support.

BP executives insist that they have not backed away from their commitment to the White House to set aside $20 billion in an escrow fund over the next four years to pay damage claims and government penalties stemming from the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. The explosion killed 11 workers and spewed millions of barrels of oil into the gulf.

Bookmark It

Posted in Class War, Corporate Statism, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Disastrous | 5 Comments »

No One Could Have Known

Sep 3rd, 2010 at 8:38 am by susie

That handing billions of dollars to companies without requiring that they lend or hire would lead to such serious problems:

Romer’s farewell luncheon had been scheduled for the club’s ballroom, but attendance was light and the event was moved to a smaller room. Romer, wearing a green suit, read brightly from her text – a delivery at odds with the dark material she was presenting. When she and her colleagues began work, she acknowledged, they did not realize “how quickly and strongly the financial crisis would affect the economy.” They “failed to anticipate just how violent the recession would be.”

Even now, Romer said, mystery persists. “To this day, economists don’t fully understand why firms cut production as much as they did or why they cut labor so much more than they normally would.” Her defense was that “almost all analysts were surprised by the violent reaction.”

Bookmark It