The Ben Burnank or Quantitative Easing Explained

THIS IS A MUST SEE

Hopey Changey Road

This is a little glossy for me, but some of that Hopey Changey stuff is ok once in a while, right?

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Crippling Mortgage? Walk away . . . big business would.

Welcome back!  Happy New Year!  Here's a delightful thought for the new year!

". . . in a market society, since when are people responsible for the economic effects of their actions? Every oil speculator helps to drive up gasoline prices. Every hedge fund that speculated against a bank by purchasing credit-default swaps on its bonds signaled skepticism about the bank’s creditworthiness and helped to make it more costly for the bank to borrow, and thus to issue loans. We are all economic pinballs, insensibly colliding for better or worse."

So let's all act like the banks and just walk away!  An interesting perspective from John Courson at the NYTimes . . . full article HERE.

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MTA faces massive cuts - where's Bloomberg?

From the NY Daily news HERE, the same sweeping cuts the MTA threatened before the wimpy bailout earlier this year are back on the schedule including the elimination of the W and Z lines, and the late-night shuttering of stations in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn along the N and R lines.

" Facing a massive budget crisis, the cash-squeezed MTA is moving to implement sweeping service cuts – again – including shutting down dozens of bus routes. Two subway lines also would be wiped off the map and four stations would be shuttered overnight under the plan expected to go before a Metropolitan Transportation Authority committee on Monday. If it sounds familiar, it is. The lineup is the same roster of reductions threatened earlier this year when the MTA was lobbying for a state bailout. The cuts never happened.

But in recent weeks the MTA has been rocked by bad news. The state – struggling with its own budget mess – slashed transit funding by $143 million. And cash from state payroll taxes is coming in about $200 million short of what the state had planned for mass transit. Even with 2010 service cuts, the MTA will have to find other ways to plug the sudden budget gap, sources said.

“We’re not going to rely on anyone else to do anything for us. We’re going to rely on ourselves,” MTA board member Mitchell Pally said."

Bloomberg, who ran on promises of salvaging and fortifying the MTA, has been silent on the topic. Hello Mike? Is this thing on?

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