Free Republic

Bureaucrat perks are a fact of American life. Generous - even outrageous pensions, health care plans, and a host of opportunities to better oneself at conferences and seminars, usually held in places that the rest of us couldn't afford. But what if you work for a city that's so broke they can't pay their police department or fix the streetlights? From Detroit Free Pres: Four trustees of Detroit's two public pension funds are heading to a Hawaiian beach resort this weekend with their $22,000 tab paid for by the funds, which are mired in claims of mismanagement and said to...

President Barack Obama travelled to Michigan this week and made his case for class war in defense of the welfare state. We need to take more money from the rich, he said, or schools will not be able to afford books, students will not be able to afford college, and disabled children will not get health care. "Our economic success has never come from the top down," said Obama. "It comes from the middle out. It comes from the bottom up." Obama spoke these words a few miles from Detroit — the reductio ad absurdum of his argument. If America...

Oregon officials are preparing to foreclose on SoloPower Inc. after the government-backed startup missed a loan payment this week in the latest setback for the state's reeling green-energy sector. SoloPower, which is still scrambling to revive its struggling North Portland plant, missed a $50,800 payment Wednesday on a $10 million loan from the Oregon Energy Department, an agency spokeswoman said Friday. If the San Jose, Calif., company defaults, Portland taxpayers could be out $5 million, because the city guaranteed half the loan last year in wooing the plant away from Wilsonville. Already the state of Oregon is out $20 million...

Electric car maker CODA Holdings Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection Wednesday after selling just 100 cars and said it plans to quit the auto business altogether. The Los Angeles-based parent of CODA Automotive filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in federal court in Delaware. A consortium of debtors plans to acquire CODA for $25 million, according to a company statement. The company’s statement said it plans to concentrate on CODA Energy, an energy storage business founded two years ago, and exit the automotive business. “CODA Energy’s products are based on the same core battery management technology found in its vehicles...

California-based electric car maker, Coda, filed for bankruptcy protection on Wednesday, saying it plans to transition to the battery and energy-storage business. The company had positioned itself as a cheaper alternative to fellow electric-car maker Tesla (TSLA) and plug-in hybrid-car maker Fisker. Coda's all-electric mid-sized sedan went for roughly $37,000, but proved a huge sales disappointment, with less than 100 vehicles sold. A Tesla Model S, with its most potent battery option, goes for $72,000. Coda had the bodies and chassis of its cars built in China, with the battery systems installed in California. CEO Phil Murtaugh said in a...

Last week, as Philadelphia’s Mayor Nutter held an unprecedented closed-door session with a number of investors looking to raise money to help fix the city’s troubled finances, popular economist and blogger Michael Shedlock predicted that Philadelphia is effectively bankrupt. It does not take a genius to figure out what is going on here. Philadelphia is bankrupt. Without even seeing the details, it is safe to assume untenable union wages and pension benefits are at the heart of it all. A 47.6% funded pension is rather telling in and of itself. As a lifelong resident of the area, a native of...

Want to know why the gap between the haves and the have-nots keeps growing? Because the haves live within their means. They don’t waste their hard-earned money on all the crap that Americans spend billions, maybe even trillions, on each year. American consumers seem to have an almost insatiable appetite for just about any type of useless garbage that anyone decides to make in China for a few bucks and sell here for a few hundred. Which is probably why nobody has any savings and everyone complains they don’t have enough money to live on. Actually, the problem is much...

Fresno's shaky finances are not only hurting the city's reputation in U.S. capital markets. They're hurting Fresno County's, too, according to some financial experts. Analysts say while Fresno County has maintained a credit-worthy balance sheet, overcoming such hurdles as recession, soaring pension costs and slow economic growth, the county can't shake its association with the famously broke city when it comes to getting financing. The shared name -- and investor confusion about who is who -- cast a shadow over at least two county debt sales last year, analysts say. And future county sales, such as a planned short-term debt...

You know a city is in deep trouble when its mayor invites Wall Street but not the press and not private citizens to a closed meeting to discuss the future, including a sell-off of city assets. Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, whose municipality has the lowest credit rating of the five most-populous U.S. cities, did just that. My translation: Philadelphia is bankrupt. However, that easily discernible fact will of course be denied until it officially happens. Please consider Philadelphia Holds Closed Meeting With Wall StreetPhiladelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, whose municipality has the lowest credit rating of the five most-populous U.S. cities,...

If you watch daytime TV or have been stuck watching daytime TV while visiting your parents, surely you’re familiar with The Scooter Store. The power wheelchair vendor has had some trouble lately, including accusations of Medicare and Medicaid fraud, a raid by the FBI, and even a lawsuit from the company’s hometown, of New Braunfels, Texas. The company laid off most of its employees, and plans to deal directly with health care providers, rather than blanketing the airwaves and selling directly to consumers. Those investigations came after a scathing investigative piece by CBS News about the company. (Warning: the video...

As green energy stimulus recipients raked in billions of dollars the last few years, with President Obama declaring what a great “investment” they were for taxpayers, friends of mine would jokingly ask, “Where’s my dividend?” “Where are my stock certificates?” “Where’s my free electric car?!” In the case of our $193-million stake in Fisker Automotive, thanks to a Department of Energy loan guarantee, it looks like American shareholders will end up with the whole company itself. With the Anaheim non-automaker (no cars produced since last summer) firing about 160 of its 200 remaining employees on Friday, a bankruptcy law firm...

After a federal judge ruled last week that the city of Stockton can reduce its debt through bankruptcy, observers began to frame the battle as one of municipal bondholders against public employees. But it's hard to shed tears for either of them. During the boom years, Stockton promised its future public-sector retirees free lifetime medical coverage. It also adopted rules allowing workers to spike their pensions by letting them include overtime and other payments from their final work year to calculate retirement pay. Stockton also issued far too many bonds. From 2003 to 2009, on an annual budget of just...

In Stockton, Calif., which has just entered into Chapter 9 bankruptcy, 41 percent of the people do not speak English at home and 21 percent cannot speak it very well, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Data that the Census Bureau developed on what it calls the “social characteristics” of Stockton during the five-year period from 2007 to 2011, indicate that this city, located eighty miles east of San Francisco in California’s San Joaquin Valley, had a population of 289,926. Of those 289,926 people, 76,869 (or about 27 percent) were foreign born, according to the Census Bureau. Of these foreign-born,...

<p>A few years ago, it was fashionable to compare California, Illinois, or whatever U.S. state was struggling financially to the troubled island nation of Greece. Now, with Stockton, California the largest U.S. municipality to enter bankruptcy, it may be tempting to make another Mediterranean comparison - this time to the troubled island nation of Cyprus.</p>

UPDATE 11:30 a.m. Friday: Reuters reports that Fisker has hired a bankruptcy attorney. Fisker Automotive , which has received $193 million of a $529 million Department of Energy stimulusloan guarantee and apparently still wants the rest of it, stopped making its sole electric car – the $102,000-plus Karma – last July. But only now has it decided to furlough workers for a week. “In parallel with the process of identifying a strategic partner, Fisker is, of course, continuing to manage its day-to- day operations and has recently instituted temporary furloughs for its U.S. workforce covering the final week of...

Bank Failures, Sovereign Bond Collapses, Savers Head for Their Mattresses Stock-Markets / Credit Crisis 2013March 28, 2013 - 05:21 PM GMT By: DeviantInvestor Throughout the colorful history of organized crime in the United States, periodic eruptions of inter-gang Mafia violence have dotted the criminal landscape. When turf wars broke out between competing crime families in major cities such as New York and Chicago, the combatants would conduct their warfare from unsavory redoubts such as abandoned warehouses or low-rent hotels and apartments. In such locations, the soldiers would spend their off hours sleeping on rented mattresses until the internecine conflicts had...

There has been an important story brewing over the past several months regarding General Motors' flawed bankruptcy process that has been widely ignored by the media. GM may have to readdress its 2009 bankruptcy settlement due to a lawsuit by a group of GM creditors against hedge funds over a settlement involving the company's Nova Scotia debt. The creditors brought to light the fact that the company did not have its ducks in a row at the time of its 2009 bankruptcy filing and allege that GM was still in the middle of backroom negotiations with hedge funds beyond the...

Have you read the opinion section of any newspaper in the last three years? Yes? Then there is a better-than-even chance you have come across some impressive-sounding analyst predict that the United States is "turning into Greece." Maybe it's been a while, so we'll recap. The short version of this story is that we'll spend ourselves into bankruptcy. The longer version says that too much public debt makes markets nervous. Nervous markets demand higher interest rates. Higher rates mean higher deficits and lower growth, both of which mean more burdensome debt. More burdensome debt makes markets even more nervous. And...

It seems to be a trend now, last October it was Seimens who gave up on solar, now it is British Petroleum, who has been in the solar business nearly 40 years, and has made the last closure announcements, finalizing what they announced in 2011. In the news today: (Reuters) – British oil major BP shut down the remnants of its solar unit on Wednesday, drawing a line under the business on which most of its Beyond Petroleum tagline of the early 2000s was premised. The unit, which BP has been scaling back since 2008, is the latest sun energy...

Fred Deluca, founder of Subway Restaurants says that government regulations are hurting business so much that if he were attempting to start Subway today he’d be unlikely to succeed. Among the regulations he cited as most harmful were the mandatory minimum wage and Obamacare. “The costs incurred to comply with regulations are particularly hard on small businesses,” Deluca complained. “A guy trying to run a sandwich shop can’t afford the added legal expense of trying to keep up with constantly changing rules. Government bureaucrats think we can easily pass higher costs on to customers, but customers have many choices and...

It could come Friday, when a cadre of officials makes the announcement from Lansing. It will start, regardless of whether the voters rejected it or not. It will start, and the only evidence we have to predict the outcome bodes very badly. An already tenuous situation could become worse, beyond the imagination of anyone involved.

Since President Barack Hussein Obama was inaugurated into office just over four years ago, Obama, the democrats, and a few spineless republican "leaders" in congress have increased the total combined national debt by more than six trillion dollars: Date                   Debt Held by the Public         Intragovernmental Holdings   Total Public Debt Outstanding 01/20/2009        6,307,310,739,681.66          4,319,566,309,231.42          10,626,877,048,913.08 02/28/2013      11,822,436,182,671.08          4,864,852,997,544.29          16,687,289,180,215.37 In this time period, the debt has...

Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan announced on Friday that the city of Detroit is so snarled in financial woes that the state must appoint an emergency manager to lead it out of disaster. “There is probably no city that is more financially challenged in the entire United States. If you look at the quality of services for citizens it’s ranked among the worst. So we went from the top to the bottom over the last 50 or 60 years,” Mr. Snyder told Detroiters in a town-hall-style meeting that was broadcast live on local television stations across the city.

The hollowing out of Detroit is nearly complete. All that's left is a bankrupt shell of a city with no services and scattered citizens that do not pay taxes. The Detroit News reports Half of Detroit Property Owners Don't Pay Taxes Nearly half of the owners of Detroit's 305,000 properties failed to pay their tax bills last year, exacerbating a punishing cycle of declining revenues and diminished services for a city in a financial crisis, according to a Detroit News analysis of government records. The News reviewed more than 200,000 pages of tax documents and found that 47 percent of...

Labor: Who says intransigence doesn't pay? After driving Hostess out of business by refusing to negotiate, union bakers have been rewarded by the White House with Trade Adjustment Assistance. It's all the foreigners' fault. Politics: Who says intransigence doesn't pay? After driving Hostess out of business by refusing to negotiate, the White House has decided to reward the union bakers with Trade Adjustment Assistence, blaming foreigners. What a sweet deal. ... the AFL-CIO-affiliated Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers & Grain Millers International (BCTGM). It refused to deal, taking the entire company, including fellow workers, down with it. Turns out the union...

<p>In a bid to slash $465 million of debt, Reader’s Digest parent RDA Holding Co. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy over the weekend for the second time in less than four years.</p> <p>The media company said it has reached a deal with its largest creditor, Wells Fargo (WFC), and more than 70% of its secured noteholders on a financial restructuring plan that includes the Chapter 11 filing.</p>

Remember Ray's Hell Burgers, the burger joint Obama visited a couple of times early in his first term? Dead. Kaput. The latest victims of the Obama Kiss of Death, in which seemingly every business he personally visits - especially those he touts as New Economy success stories - goes bankrupt. Sometimes this is understandable, as in the case of those green energy losers he keeps picking. But other times it really does seem like a curse.

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced his resignation from the Obama Administration this week. Chu had clashed frequently with critics of Obama's so-called green investment approach. He took the occasion of his pending departure to fire off a final volley at these critics. “Much as these people would like to portray the bankruptcies of a large number of recipients of government aid as a failure of the Administration's green investment policy, they are wrong,” Chu maintained. “Take the Solyndra Company as a example. The contention is that the $500 million we invested in this now bankrupt company was a waste...

U.S. media giant The Tribune Co, owner of the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, said late on Sunday it will emerge from bankruptcy on December 31, ending four years of Chapter 11 reorganization. Chicago-based Tribune said it will emerge from the Chapter 11 process with a portfolio of profitable assets that will include eight major daily newspapers and 23 TV stations. The company will also have a new board of directors. "Tribune will emerge as a dynamic multi-media company with a great mix of profitable assets, powerful brands in major markets, sufficient liquidity for operations and investments and...

A local New York newspaper is drawing the ire of its readers after publishing an interactive map that shows the names and addresses of thousands of residents who have handgun permits. The online map was published by The Journal News along with an article under the headline: "The gun owner next door: What you don't know about the weapons in your neighborhood." The newspaper obtained, and then published, the names and addresses of pistol permit holders in Westchester and Rockland counties through a Freedom of Information Act request. The article, in explaining the decision to publish the information, pointed to...

The other ObamaCare middle class tax hike arrives in 2014By: John Hayward 12/12/2012 09:14 AM If you think it’s been horrifying to watch ObamaCare pop open like a jack-in-the-box filled with tax increases over the last couple of weeks, just wait until the huge new taxes on health insurance companies hit in 2014. A study commissioned by America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) lays out the details: The [Affordable Care Act] imposes a new sales tax on health insurance that starts at $8 billion in 2014, increases to $14.3 billion in 2018, and will continue to increase each year. The Joint...

  (Source: inautonews.com) A123 could lose the rest of its $249 million grant We can put this under the "Duh" files: A123 Systems won't receive the remaining amount of its federal grant if Wanxiang Group is approved as the new owner. According to Reuters, which spoke to an unnamed official from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the DOE will cut A123 off from its $249 million grant the company received in 2009. A123 has only used $133 million of the grant so far. The official, who noted that all parties were aware of this consequence during last weekend's auction of A123, said...

It's been less than a year since we learned former NBA star Allen Iverson was broke, despite a $150 million career. Now we know why. TMZ has obtained court documents from Iverson's ongoing divorce proceedings that clearly show a man drowning in debt. Though he still earns $750,000 per year, Iverson is bleeding an estimated $360,000 each month. About a third of his debt is owed to creditors –– his bank account was seized last year when he couldn't come up with $860,000 he owed to a jeweler –– and another chunk goes to his mortgages. But there are a...

Let me get my obligatory free-trade qualifier out of the way here first: It's not so much that there's anything at all wrong with businesses buying and selling on the international arena, because foreign markets may have demands for products we don't, and we all stand to make money off of one another in a mutually beneficial and productive way. Free-trade is not a zero-sum game, and everybody wins.The problem here is that in the case of A123 Systems, a manufacturer of lithium-ion batteries for electric cards, the Obama administration spoon-fed hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money into...

This was a week of some surprises and some perfectly foreseeable consequences of forces which have been in play for some time. The fiscal cliff talks have gone nowhere, to the surprise of only the most daft who do not realize that the President does not want a pragmatic solution. He's fixated on soaking "the rich", stirring up class hatred and trying to drive a wedge between his opposition forces. Among the surprises is this: Michigan, long seen as the showplace home of America's industrialized unions, has voted to become a right to work state. Its Governor Rick Snyder said...

DETROIT, MI - Bankruptcy may be inevitable for Michigan's largest city. State leaders, including Gov. Rick Snyder, are working on a plan to guide the city through a "managed bankruptcy," according to Daniel Howes at The Detroit News. An emergency fiscal manager likely would take over the city, supplanting a mayor and City Council that have been unable to implement meaningful reforms.

LANSING (CBS Detroit) - It would no doubt be controversial, but the idea of dissolving the fiscally struggling city of Detroit and absorbing it into Wayne County is being tossed around in Lansing. WWJ Lansing Bureau Chief Tim Skubick reports some state Republicans are talking about giving the city the option to vote itself into bankruptcy. And mid-Michigan Senator Rick Jones said all options should be considered — including dissolving the city. “If we have to, that is one idea we have to look at. We really have to look at everything that is on the table,” Jones said. “Again,...

Big Island Carbon LLC, which spent some $50 million to build a biomass plant to turn Hawaii-grown macadamia nut shells into granulated activated carbon, has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. The company, which has not started commercial operations at the Kawaihae plant, has laid off all 25 employees, including CEO Rick Vidgen, who was let go on Oct. 9 along with Chief Operating Officer Fred Baker and Controller Gerald Gruber, according to documents filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, where the bankruptcy was filed on Nov. 5. Vidgen declined to comment on the bankruptcy filing. Big Island Carbon...

Realistic Republicans understand that President Obama and the Democrats head into fiscal cliff negotiations in a far stronger bargaining position now than in 2011. When voters were asked on Nov. 6 whether they favored raising taxes to reduce the deficit, a total of 60 percent said yes (47 percent favored increasing taxes for those who earn $250,000 or more, and 13 percent approved tax increases for all). So taxes will be going up. As a matter of political strategy -- not to say survival -- Republicans will have to agree to raise taxes on those defined as rich. It's more...

A reply by stimulus recipient ($115 million of a $249 million grant paid out)A123 Systems to an inquiry by Republican Sens.Charles Grassley (Iowa) andJohn Thune (S.D.) showed theelectric vehicle battery manufacturer received nearly $1 million in Recovery Act funds on the day it declared bankruptcy. The money flow is not likely to stop. A123 as a whole, or in pieces, is going to be sold to the court-approved buyer(s). That is likely to be eitherJohnson Controls, which is the lead bidder for the company’s automotive business, or Wanxiang Group, which wants to buy the whole company. A123 had an agreement...

This morning’s news that Hostess Brands, Inc. was shutting its doors after 82 years of operation (originally under the name International Bakeries Corporation) has elicited a lot of commentary from various sources. Culturally, I’m seeing a lot of people lament the fact that some of their favorite brands of snack food or bread — from Twinkies to Ho-Hos to Wonder Bread to Beefsteak Rye Bread — will no longer be available. Politically, there’s been a definite theme on the right blaming the Baker’s Union for the company’s collapse since they would not agree to a modification of their contract notwithstanding...

The Hostess brand is heading to the auction block, following an announcement that the company would be shutting down. But that may not mean an end to Twinkies. A Mexican company called Bimbo, which is credited as being the largest bread maker in the world, may have plans to buy the brand. Grupo Bimbo is no stranger to acquiring foreign companies. With other baking goods companies like Mrs. Baird's Bakeries and Sara Lee already under his belt, Daniel Servitje who runs Bimbo, has already shown interest in Hostess in the past. The Bimbo company attempted a deal in 2007 during...

Top Secret Recipes Version of the Hostess Twinkie The Twinkie was invented in 1930 by the late James A. Dewar, then the Chicago-area regional manager of Continental Baking Company, the parent corporation behind the Hostess trademark. At the time, Continental made "Little Short Cake Fingers" only during the six-week strawberry season, and Dewar realized that the aluminum pans in which the cakes were baked sat idle the rest of the year. He came up with the idea of injecting the little cakes with a creamy filling to make them a year-round product and decided to charge a nickel for a...

The Demise Of The Twinkie: Hostess Files Motion To Liquidate By Tom Gara And that’s that: Hostess Brands, maker of Twinkies, Wonder Bread and more, announced this morning it has filed a motion with bankruptcy court to start liquidating the company immediately. A huge number of jobs are soon to be lost. “Hostess Brands will move promptly to lay off most of its 18,500-member workforce,” said CEO Gregory F. Rayburn in the statement, “and focus on selling its assets to the highest bidders.” In a letter posted on a new site set up to communicate with employees and suppliers through...

The venture finance operation that raised money for crony capitalist investorsKleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers, and their green tech firms like electric car companyFisker Automotive ($193 million paid in stimulus loan guarantees) and fuel cell manufacturerBloom Energy, is shutting down, according to a Fortune report. Advanced Equities, Inc. had recently been reprimanded by the Securities and Exchange Commission and by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) for misleading investors and for breach of contract with its brokers. Fortune cited sources that said AEI brokers were told last week that Monday would be their last day. Crain’s Chicago Business confirmed that...

Hostess Brands said Wednesday that it will go into liquidation unless bakers striking in protest against a new contract imposed in bankruptcy court return to work by the end of the day Thursday. "We simply do not have the financial resources to survive an ongoing national strike," Hostess CEO Greg Rayburn said in a statement. The liquidation would result in Hostess' nearly 18,000 workers losing their jobs. The bakers' union represents around 5,000. The union did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday, but has called the concessions demanded in the new contract "outrageous." "Our members are on...

AMF Bowling Worldwide Inc., the world's largest bowling operator, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to restructure its mounting debt. The Hanover County-based company said this morning that it filed a pre-arranged petition with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Richmond. AMF said it expects completing the restructuring process and exiting Chapter 11 within five months. AMF operates a location in Lynchburg near the intersection of U.S. 29 and Candlers Mountain Road, near James T. Davis Paint Center. The company said it will continue its normal business operations during the Chapter 11 process, and its bowling centers will maintain normal operating...

WASHINGTON — President Bush signed the biggest rewrite of U.S. bankruptcy law in a quarter century on Wednesday, making it harder for debt-ridden Americans to wipe out their obligations. “Bankruptcy should always be a last resort in our legal system,” Bush said. “If someone does not pay his or her debts the rest of society ends up paying them.” Many debtors will have to work out repayment plans instead of having their obligations erased in bankruptcy court under the law, which will go into effect in six months. The 500-page legislation won final congressional approval last week after being pushed...

American Suzuki Motor Corp, the sole distributor of Suzuki Motor Corp (7269.T) vehicles in the continental United States, will file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection with $346 million in debt, of which $173 million is owed to Suzuki group companies, it said. Japan's No. 4 automaker said in a statement that it would be unable to maintain profitability in its automobile business in the United States, given the currency rate and its automobile lineup, made up primarily of small cars. American Suzuki, which sold 2,023 vehicles in the United States last month, plans to compensate car dealers as it phases...

Obama Saved GM?