The centerpiece of the Administration’s rushed, colossal bailout and stimulus program is the taxpayer support of the nation’s 20 largest banks. Treasury Secretary Geithner, former Federal Reserve Bank of New York President, is Obama’s point man on the aggressive plan to bolster the financial s...

A positive trend is imposing itself on the American landscape. The average savings rate, which had been 7.7% in 1992 and even reached lofty levels of 12% in the ‘70s, dropped to almost zero four years ago and stayed there. In the last quarter of 2008 that trend made a dramatic turn.

 The four...

Obama announced that between $50 billion and $100 billion will be spent on making mortgage payments affordable, as part of the giant gamble he and Congress are making, under the title of “stimulus.� No help will be provided for those who made rational decisions on purchases, but ample support wi...

As the economy’s meltdown confuses politicians and economists, and stresses businesses and wage earners, the FBI has suddenly discovered a new path to career advancement. It has announced open season on the financial community with 530 corporate fraud investigations.

 The FBI also claimed tha...

American consumers are being accused of closing their wallets. This is evidenced in three months of contracted spending into the end of 2008. The new year has brought more of the same, and consumers are being admonished for spreading “weakness.�

 Politicians, economists , and the media, hav...

Today Microsoft announced a shaving of 5,000 jobs internally, and a reduction of thousands of external jobs with its contractors or suppliers. This is rationalized by “economic conditions.� Did we read anything about wholesale compensation cutbacks? Not much.

 This is not a condemnation of ...

The Editors of The Pacific Gate Post received an envelope from persons unknown, containing a letter apparently discarded in an alley behind an Upper East Side, Manhattan apartment building. The letter had been crumpled up into a ball and partially torn, possibly having been thrown out of a penthouse...

President Bush has cloaked his term in the White House with a singular distinction of secrecy that would give Richard Nixon a case of acute envy. President Elect Obama has just indicated that he does not want to be, “looking backwards.� Is this an appropriate deflection for an incoming administr...

Banks, and whomever else we blissfully accepted a credit card from, have been charging us, all of us, grossly usurious fees. Even those diligent observers faithfully sending off payments before they were due, have long been abused by capricious credit card issuers.

 When the Head of The Fed, Be...

  It is agonizing to watch Congress publicly stumbling through its analysis and qualification of the auto industry, providing appearance that it is doing its homework on a bailout. More than 40 per cent of Congress is made up of lawyers, with little grasp of finance, economics or business. Congress...