AllupInyourBiz

It wasn’t enough indication of what the concerned involved citizens wanted, when they contacted their respective House Representatives and told them not to pass an economic rescue plan, at ratio of 10 to 1. Yes, that’s right, it is an “economic rescue” plan, not a bailout bill. The president was offended that the media kept using the negative term “bailout.” He said that he liked to think of it more as a rescue of a a ship (the economy) that is in distress. That is probably how his aides explained  the measure to him (or drew a picture for him, illustrating a ship being rescued). I think that analogy pretty much sums up the extent of Dubya’s grasp on macroeconomics. To him, it is like a big ship that needs to be rescued. Unfortunately, the majority of our elected officials also have a very rudimentary understanding of complex economic dealings. This is extremely evident by the Senate’s actions today. Instead of letting the bill die, after it failed in the House, they are slapping some tax breaks on it, and a measure to raise the level to which a single account can be insured by FDIC (a program which many banks have not even been paying their premiums for), and are going to try to ram it through anyway. It is because the Senators recieve so much campaign funding from Wall Street firms? It is because they really think it is going to help? Is it because they would rather have the less sophisticated voters think they tried, instead of explaining to them the it isn’t the government’s place to fix everything? I guess we will find out, in the debates that are scheduled to start today at 12:30 Eastern Time. If you are interested, you can stream them from C-span2. The vote is scheduled to take place “after sundown.” If you are interested to see the language of the bill, you can download a PDF of the draft here. Is it too much to ask, for the senators to use history as an example of what happens when you try to rush into a legislative fix on a capitalist economy? Maybe it is too much. But I don’t think that it should be too much to ask them to give heed to wishes of the overwhelming majority of the people who elected them to office. That, after all, IS their job.

As LB’s stock hit an all time low twice this week, Fuld appears to have officially put the firm up for sale.

 Today a 172-page report was released by various chief risk officers, as well as other senior level executives from large Wall Street banks, outlining exactly what went wrong with the economy. The authors not only speculate as to the cause of the current situation, but also offer tips for avoiding a recurrence. Hmmmm, so you know what happened, you know how to avoid it….. you just wanted to test out your theories, or something?

The NYTimes DealBookreports today that Steven Rattner, former exec of Wall Street giant, Credit Suisse, had to call it quits early, because of Internet campaign. Apparently Rattner had an extramarital affair while working in London. The DealBook article says that “Kelly Cosgrove, the woman with whom Mr. Rattner had an affair, was married at the time to an Australian named Tommii Cosgrove. And after he learned of the affair, Mr. Cosgrove decided to make it his life’s mission to damage Mr. Rattner. And with Mr. Rattner’s resignation, he may have succeeded.” Way to go Cosgrove. I would have been pretty pissed off too.

According to Deal Book, a recent trend of roaming the Internet to purchase websites that poorly execute good ideas, has proved very profitable for some. Even the volume of websites that have been sold on eBay has purportedly doubled over the last three months. According to David Hermansen of birdcage.com, the trick is to find a niche and go after that type of site. Hermansen bought birdcage.com for $1,800 three years ago, then sold it late last year for $173,000.