Free Republic

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Breaking News: An American car company will soon be taken-over by a business person who has expertise in the car industry. And the guy “taking over” is actually “happy” about it. As the bankrupt General Motors corporation seeks to get rid of it’s “non core” car brands, Roger Penske, the American race car driver-turned global business magnate, will soon be purchasing Saturn, and taking over the sales, marketing, and distribution of Saturn cars and parts. Penske‘s company will not be manufacturing Saturn cars themselves - he’s soliciting bids from other companies to design and build the cars for him -...

Sign the Petition! “Congress should not enact an expensive spending bill under the pretense of stimulus or recovery. We cannot spend our way to prosperity, and such an expansion of the federal government will put a crushing burden on taxpayers in the long-term.” Click Here to sign the petition.

It was an obvious marketing maneuver — but free food is free food — and thousands of Western New Yorkers were happy to join in the campaign Tuesday, lining up for a free Grand Slam breakfast at many of the 12 Denny’s locations locally. By 6 a. m., the parking lot and all of the tables were full at Denny’s Delaware Avenue location. In the predawn darkness and light snow, lines of early-risers spilled out of most of the national chain’s area restaurants, which served free Grand Slams from 6 a. m. to 2 p. m. One diner, St. Joseph’s...

With a record amount of commercial real-estate debt coming due, some of the country's biggest property developers have become the latest to go hat-in-hand to the government for assistance. They're warning policymakers that thousands of office complexes, hotels, shopping centers and other commercial buildings are headed into defaults, foreclosures and bankruptcies. The reason: according to research firm Foresight Analytics LCC, $530 billion of commercial mortgages will be coming due for refinancing in the next three years -- with about $160 billion maturing in the next year. Credit, meanwhile, is practically nonexistent and cash flows from commercial property are siphoning off.

No Auto Bailout? Investors May Just Say 'No Problem' BAILOUT, AUTOMAKERS, BIG THREE, FORD, GENERAL MOTORS, GM, CHRYSLER, CARS, ECONOMY, STOCK MARKET NEWS CNBC.com | 19 Nov 2008 | 01:28 PM ET If Congress turns its back on the Big Three auto makers—as many expect—investors probably won't drive the stock market off a cliff. Instead, some market experts see at most a brief selloff once news hits that Ford , General Motors and Chrysler won't be getting a bailout. Market reaction otherwise could be muted, despite the big scare headlines such a development would generate—and worries among average investors (see...

Let me say this very clearly: Unions today are essentially bagmen for Democrats. They extort dues from helpless workers take their cut and kickback the rest to the Democrat Party. In many locations all, state and local government workers are compelled to join a union if they want to get hired. “Agency shop” laws see that no one escapes union extortion.. While unions were started to protect workers from evil management their members now generally need protection from evil labor bosses. The Union Autoworkers Union is such a union. Over the past decades its membership rolls have fallen and its...

United Auto Workers President Ron Gettlefinger said it is critical the Big 3 receive a financial aid package from Congress to avoid one or more of Detroit's auto makers from sliding into a Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

Call the Capitol now!! Let's do the same thing we did with scamnesty. Let's take down the phone system! HELL NO TO THE BAILOUT!!! LET'S GET OUR AMERICA BACK!! SUPPORT THE TRUE REPUBLICANS WHO ARE THERE FIGHTING FOR US!!!

Ya got PANIC! Right here in Freeper City! With a capital P And that rhymes with B And that stands for BAIL!Well, anyone who wasted six hours yesterday on all the FR bailout threads saw them. The messages calling for a BLACK FRIDAY if Congress didn't JUMP when Henry and Ben whispered "Frog!"Let's see how the Chicken Littles did, OK? The DOW - Falls of from 500 to 900 points were described as "very likely" if we didn't LOCK IN A BAILOUT TODAY.Reality?According to preliminary calculations, the Dow rose 121.07, or 1.10 percent, to 11,143.13. OIL - Meltdown claims included...

To the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate: As economists, we want to express to Congress our great concern for the plan proposed by Treasury Secretary Paulson to deal with the financial crisis. We are well aware of the difficulty of the current financial situation and we agree with the need for bold action to ensure that the financial system continues to function. We see three fatal pitfalls in the currently proposed plan: 1) Its fairness. The plan is a subsidy to investors at taxpayers’ expense. Investors who took risks to earn...

Start with McCain's five point modification of the Paulson plan: (1) oversight, (2) taxpayer equity,(3) full disclosure of all transactions, (post them all in detail, online) (4) executive pay caps, (controversial here on FR, but anyone who wants to keep his golden parachute needs to sink or swim on his own.) (5) no pork.Add to those:(6) no purchases at greater than 50% of face value, ever. (7) no bailout funds for foreign institutions (let their own taxpayers handle that tab), and (8) no bailout of funds backed by "no collateral" loans (credit cards, student loans, etc)And with that in mind,...

Why We're Floundering And a better way forward. by Lawrence B. Lindsey 09/24/2008 7:45:00 PM LAST THURSDAY NIGHT Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke stood surrounded by the bipartisan leadership of Congress to announce that a consensus had emerged that drastic action was needed to save our financial system. On Saturday the first vague details of that action began to emerge. By the time of the first hearings on Tuesday a groundswell of popular opposition produced some of the most broad-based skeptical questioning of the nation's economic leadership that I can remember. What happened? First, it is...

The conventional wisdom is settling in: It's awful, and terribly un-conservative, to nationalize a big lump of the financial industry, but the alternative is too awful to contemplate. Baloney. It may be politically too awful to contemplate, i.e. hazardous to the well-being of our political class, but that's the kind of short-termism that got us here. Once this thing is done, it's done, and the dollar is a few inches closer to being a Soviet rouble. The conviction that government will always bail out a financial catastrophe will be factored into all future trading and financing decisions. Down the road...

Former Reagan diplomat Alan Keyes commented Sept. 23 on the federal government's bailout of mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The former Assistant Secretary of State, currently running for president as an independent, said the bailout plan as proposed by the Bush administration would effectively transform our nation into "a socialist society." The following is the text of Keyes' statement: What I have to say about the bailout is that, with a concrete proposal on the table, it becomes much more obvious what is actually going on right now, and I think that we have to confront it. And...

Senators Isakson/Chambliss, I am writing to express my hope that you will oppose ANY federal bailout of wall street, including government purchase of private mortgage loans and asset backed securities. The implementation of this plan would result in the immediate insolvency of numerous banks and financial institutions across the country as the marking to market of these assets would create a massive hole in the capital base of these banks. Under the alternative of not bailing out these institutions, many will still fold. However, allowing them to fold on their own will allow PRIVATE industry to come in and buy...

....there's one piece of the mortgage-meltdown tale that virtually every article or television program dances around without ever quite confronting. It's the story of the liar's loan. At the height of the mortgage boom .the liar's loan became a routine way of doing business;.in 2006 in some parts of the country, these loans made up as much as half of new mortgages Imagine a city center where running red lights isn't something occasional .... but where everybody does it all the time. That's a lot like the mortgage market one or two years ago. Of all the problems in mortgage...