An interesting article in this weeks BusinessWeek.  I’ve always liked the Facetime section of the magazine, and since Maria Bartiromo quite writing the column, I’ve wondered who will fill her shoes.

This week, Diane Brady chats with Pay Czar Ken Feinberg on the TARP program and its effectiveness.

Naturally, Feinberg is elated that the big banks are in a proverbial race to pay back the TARP money they borrowed from the government to help keep them out of Chapter 11. To hold any contempt would come off as sinister and socialistic.

The article speculates that it was the pay cap of $500,000 that really persuaded companies to pay back the money at such a rapid pace.  Feinberg does a great job of trying to spin the results into a “yeah, we knew it would happen this way”.  He goes on to say that the Government has no business regulating pay for companies that haven’t, or don’t, take tax payer money.  While I hope he and his compatriots in Washington actually believe that, unfortunately, I’m not buying it.

Lately my mantra has become, as the late Bob Novak put it: “Always love your Country, but never trust your Government”.

I believe the Government never wanted the banks to repay the money, at least not this quickly.  The fact that they want to turn around and hand the returned TARP money out for a second round of stimulus should be evidence enough.

In the end, the Government will end up getting most of the TARP money back, but not because companies suddenly became healthy enough to do so.  They got the money back because the banks found out how terrible it is to sleep with the Government, and wanted out ASAP.

Economics, Finance BusinessWeek, Facetime, government, Ken Feinberg, TARP

Incompetence in Washington… abolish the Fed, abolish the Treasury… Yeah, that about sums it up.

Economics, Investing Jim Rogers

Obviously the jobs number out last week was positive, although I wouldn’t read too far into it.

You’d expect jobless claims to decrease this time of year due to seasonal employment. How many seasonal jobs are there? No one knows, but hopefully this data will tide us over until the economy starts swinging to the upside.

Economics Economics, employment, jobs, seasonal employment