Bailouts: The Final Stupendous Ripoff? A most excellent question, and we devote much of the podcast to this topic. We begin with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's twisting and turning of the use of the $700 billion financial-industry bailout, a large percentage of which has been handed out to nine large banks and AIG, according to Chris Carey's "A Big Change in Plans", published Wednesday in
www.bailoutsleuth.com. To top it off, seems there is not only no transparency in publishing how this money is being spent as promised, but rather total obscurity, as the only public information available is a list of the recipients. Adding insult to injury, a congressional oversight committee to date has no named members! Beyond ridiculous!
Automakers Line Up To Gorge At The Trough: Oh, why not? Everyone else is. Forget the fact that they, like many of the financial institutions receiving taxper-funded windfalls, put themselves in this sorry state because of greed. To that end, we discuss comments on the auto bailout by Susan Steigerwalt, M.D. and Mark Brenner, director of Labor Notes published in Wednesday's Institute for Public Accuracy, Thomas Friedman's "How to Fix a Flat", published Wednesday in the New York Times, and a timeline going back to 1834 on "Who Killed the Electric Car", a 2006 documentary published on
www.sonyclassics.com. A mandatory-listen segment.
Economic Fallout Filters Way Down: As if you didn't know it already, retail is in the tank and the jobless are really beginning to suffer. Join us as we discuss Parija Kavilanz's "No. 2 mall operator warns of bankruptcy" , published Monday in
www.cnnmoney.com, and David Glenn Cox's "Too Poor for Bankruptcy", published Wednesday in
www.informationclearinghouse.info . Truly an upside down situation.
Still Possible To Make Money? Yep, if you are in the gun or safe business. For real. Tune in to find out why.
Is There Any Hope? Well, maybe. There are three Senate races still to be decided, and if all go to the Dems, there will be the bullet-proof supermajority of 60. We turn to Scott Rafferty's "Why Al Franken Will be Minnesota's Next Senator" posted Wednesday on
www.alternet.org and Sam's take on Alaska and Georgia for inspiration.
We'll be back on Monday, November 17. Stay informed and stay tuned. Tell a friend!
