Federal deficit: Trail of broken promises

And this is a surprise... how? Just wait until the real spending starts in Washington. The deficit reflects actual spending, not what the Obama administration has planned. You have to break the economy to change the economy... yes we can.

The war years' deficits of President Bush will look like chump change compared to what President Obama has planned.

Federal deficit: Trail of broken promises

Republicans and Democrats rage about the long-term deficit, as if they had nothing to do with it. But both parties undermine efforts to get it under control.

By Jeanne Sahadi, CNNMoney.com senior writer

Last Updated: October 29, 2009: 7:38 AM ET

Bailout tracker

The government is engaged in a far-reaching - and expensive - effort to rescue the economy. Here's how you can keep tabs on the bailouts. More

• Bank failures
• Brand name bankruptcies
• Fortune Recovery Index

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- When it comes to figuring out what has caused the country's record accumulation of debt, just about every politician in Washington has a theory.

The theories usually boil down to this: The other guy did it. The other party's White House. A previous Congress. You get the picture.

In reality, growing the deficit has been very much a bipartisan effort. Members of Congress from both parties and presidents past and present have all contributed to the problem.

And it is a problem. By 2019 the total debt accrued over the past several decades is on track to approach an unhealthy 82% of gross domestic product. That's one reason why those who own U.S. debt and credit ratings agencies will be looking for lawmakers to put together a plausible deficit-reduction plan in the next few years.

Read more....

Shortage of Vaccine Poses Political Test for Obama

Giving political blame is easy; taking political blame is unfair....

Shortage of Vaccine Poses Political Test for Obama

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

Published: October 28, 2009

WASHINGTON — The moment a novel strain of swine flu emerged in Mexico last spring, President Obama instructed his top advisers that his administration would not be caught flat-footed in the event of a deadly pandemic. Now, despite months of planning and preparation, a vaccine shortage is threatening to undermine public confidence in government, creating a very public test of Mr. Obama’s competence.

Tim Sloan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, right, with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, at a news conference on the government's response to the H1N1 flu virus.

The shortage, caused by delays in the vaccine manufacturing process, has put the president in exactly the situation he sought to avoid — one in which questions are being raised about the government’s response.

Read more....

Unemployed tap their 401(k)s

The Obama Administration keeps telling us that the recession has ended... ergo, the recovery has begun. Despite increasing unemployment, consumers are still spending money... albeit their futures' money.

Unemployed tap their 401(k)s

Almost half of all workers who left their job last year took a cash distribution from their plan, according to a new study.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Nearly half of U.S. workers who left their job last year cashed out their 401(k) accounts, according to a study released Wednesday, despite ongoing efforts to dissuade Americans from doing so.

Hewitt Associates, a global human resources consulting firm, said 46% of employees who left their job last year took a cash distribution from their 401(k) plan.

The "alarmingly high" number, which was based on a study of 170,000 401(k) participants, has remained virtually unchanged since 2005, the group said.

Read more....

Why worry about the future when there is always a bailout provision on the horizon?

Bill in works to let U.S. dissolve failing firms

... and how long until government decides which marriages to dissolve?

Bill in works to let U.S. dissolve failing firms

Intent is to avoid bailouts 'No taxpayer money' would be spent

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank acknowledges the political difficulty in creating resolution authority. (Susan Walsh/associated Press)

By David Cho, Brady Dennis and Neil Irwin

Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 27, 2009

House Democrats and the Obama administration are preparing to introduce major legislation aimed at eliminating the devil's choice the government faced last fall, when officials felt forced to decide between spending billions of dollars to rescue some of the nation's most powerful financial firms or letting their failures sink the economy.

The lawmakers and Treasury Department officials labored over the weekend to finish drafting legislation that would empower the government to seize troubled firms other than banks that are deemed "too big to fail." The legislation would set up the Federal Reserve to oversee the largest financial firms, and eliminate the agency that regulates thrifts. The officials said the measure could be unveiled as soon as Tuesday.

Read more....

Dollar resumes slide on China report

How can they do this to us? China is supposed to support us! Could our economists have been wrong?

Dollar resumes slide on China report

Investors sell the greenback after a report says China should increase its holdings of euros and yen in its foreign reserves.

October 26, 2009: 7:23 AM ET

Click the chart for current FX rates.

G-20 summit: 6 countries in recovery

The G-20's six largest economies took a big hit during the global recession in the past year and a half. Challenges remain but most appear on the path to recovery.

LONDON (Reuters) -- The dollar was broadly weak on Monday, hitting a 14-month low against the euro following a Chinese report saying Beijing should increase its holdings of euros and yen in its foreign reserves.

On an otherwise quiet day for news, investors jumped on the report as an excuse to sell the U.S. currency further, though analysts said losses may be capped by concerns the dollar has limited scope for further falls.

Read more....

No Einstein in Your Crib? Get a Refund

You mean staring at a screen filled with animated characters doesn't improve your intelligence?

No Einstein in Your Crib? Get a Refund

By TAMAR LEWIN

Published: October 23, 2009

Parent alert: the Walt Disney Company is now offering refunds for all those “Baby Einstein” videos that did not make children into geniuses.

They may have been a great electronic baby sitter, but the unusual refunds appear to be a tacit admission that they did not increase infant intellect.

“We see it as an acknowledgment by the leading baby video company that baby videos are not educational, and we hope other baby media companies will follow suit by offering refunds,” said Susan Linn, director of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, which has been pushing the issue for years.

Read more....

China: I Divorce You

Marriages end when it the value of staying together is less than the grief of doing so. It works that way for economies as well.

Round and round it goes

Oct 22nd 2009
From The Economist print edition

America buys Chinese exports, China buys American Treasuries. Can it continue?

AT ONE stage it all seemed to be working, even if it appeared a little surreal. China, a developing country, lent vast amounts of money to wealthy America to feed its spending habit. Americans spent the money on Chinese-made goods, sending the dollars back to China, which lent them to America again. But now many talk of a decoupling of the two economies. Niall Ferguson, a Harvard historian who, only a couple of years ago, popularised the term “Chimerica” for the symbiosis between the two, now says it is a marriage headed for the rocks.

China’s export figures appeared to support the idea that the country depended hugely on overseas markets for its growth, and on America in particular. By 2007 the value of China’s exports amounted to about 36% of its GDP, up from just over 20% in 2001. America was (and remains) second only to the European Union as a customer for Chinese exports, and by far the biggest single country. This year China is on course to regain its position as the biggest supplier of goods to the American market, overtaking Canada. And by September 2008 China had surpassed Japan as the largest holder of US Treasuries (see chart 1), in other words as America’s principal creditor.

But the marriage was not quite as close as the headline figures suggested. China certainly helped its exporters by keeping the value of its currency low, buying dollars that were used to buy US Treasuries. Those Treasury holdings helped keep American interest rates low and American consumers spending. But sustaining such growth in exports was not as vital to China as many assumed. The value-added component of its exports accounted for a much smaller share of its GDP than the gross figure because much of the value of Chinese goods consumed in America was created elsewhere. The biggest driver of growth in China was investment, and that has become all the more true as China tries to pump up its economy with nearly $600 billion in stimulus spending. So although China’s economy no longer enjoys the double-digit growth rates of a few years ago, it is on course for 8% growth this year and a similar rate next year, says Nicholas Lardy of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC, even as America’s economy is still trying to emerge from recession.

Read more....

Fed issues guidelines to restrict pay practices at banks

Car companies, insurance companies, banks, hot dog stands, baby sitters... the Federal Government simply wants to be sure that anyone who is employed will not be overpaid. No such restrictions will apply to those who receive any number of Federal, State, local or volunteer organization assistance... the more you get, the better. Have to keep the core Democratic Party voters happy.

Fed issues guidelines to restrict pay practices at banks

By Neil Irwin

Thursday, October 22, 2009; 2:54 PM

The Federal Reserve issued new guidelines on Thursday that will restrict pay practices at banks, aiming to prevent them from paying employees in ways that could endanger the firms' long-term financial health.

Read more....

Justice = Democratic Party?

Say what?!!!

Justice concludes black voters need Democratic Party

U.S. blocks N.C. city's nonpartisan vote
By Ben Conery

KINSTON, N.C. | Voters in this small city decided overwhelmingly last year to do away with the party affiliation of candidates in local elections, but the Obama administration recently overruled the electorate and decided that equal rights for black voters cannot be achieved without the Democratic Party.

The Justice Department's ruling, which affects races for City Council and mayor, went so far as to say partisan elections are needed so that black voters can elect their "candidates of choice" - identified by the department as those who are Democrats and almost exclusively black.

Read more....

Fed Chief Cites Role of Trade Imbalances in Crisis

But our really smart economists said that China was simply "subsidizing" us... from 2006.

Fed Chief Cites Role of Trade Imbalances in Crisis

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
Published: October 19, 2009

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, said on Monday that global trade imbalances played a central role in the global economic crisis and warned that both the United States and fast-growing Asian nations needed to do more to prevent them from recurring.

Jim Lo Scalzo/Bloomberg

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke

“We were smug,” Mr. Bernanke said of the United States in a question and answer session following his speech.

In answer to another question, he said the American financial regulatory system was “inadequate” at managing the immense inflows of cheap money from China and other countries that had huge trade surpluses.

In his prepared remarks, Mr. Bernanke acknowledged that trade imbalances had declined sharply as a result of the crisis, mainly because trade itself plunged, but he warned that American foreign indebtedness would aggravate the imbalances once again unless the United States reduced its soaring federal budget deficit.

“The United States must increase its national saving rate,” he said. “The most effective way to accomplish this goal is by establishing a sustainable fiscal trajectory, anchored by a clear commitment to substantially reduce federal deficits over time.”

The federal deficit for the 2009 fiscal year soared to $1.4 trillion, almost triple the deficit in 2008, and budget analysts predict that budget deficits will average almost $1 trillion a year over the next decade.

By the same token, he said, Asian countries needed to rely less on exports and more on their consumption at home for their economic growth. One way to increase Asian household consumption, he said, would be for countries like China to increase social insurance programs and reduce the uncertainty that currently hangs over many consumers.

Speaking at a conference of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Mr. Bernanke said Asian countries had bounced back from the global recession faster than the rest of the world and had become the engine of the global economic recovery.

“By and large, countries in Asia came into the crisis with fairly strong macroeconomic fundamentals,” Mr. Bernanke said, and noted that countries like China, Japan and Korea had fought the downturn with aggressive stimulus programs.

With the Asian economy expanding at an annualized rate of 9 percent in the second quarter of this year, and China’s economy expanding at rates of more than 10 percent, Mr. Bernanke said, “Asia appears to be leading the global recovery.”

But the Fed chairman warned that the United States-led crisis was fueled in large part by huge inflows of cheap money to the United States from countries like China that were trying to recycle dollars from their huge trade surpluses.

The Fed chairman noted that global trade and financial imbalances had narrowed considerably since the crisis began, largely because the volume of international trade contracted by 20 percent from its peak before the crisis.

But he cautioned that the imbalances could widen out again as economic growth revives. While the United States has to tighten its belt by saving more and consuming less, China and other Asian countries need to increase their consumer spending to promote faster domestic economic growth.

Mr. Bernanke avoided what was in many ways the elephant in the room: the value of the United States dollar. The dollar has dropped sharply in recent weeks against the euro and the Japanese yen, which has helped increase American exports by making them cheaper in some foreign markets. But the dollar has not budged in more than a year against China’s renminbi, which the Chinese continue to tightly manage and which many economists say remains greatly undervalued.

Unethical Behavior Toward The West

It is unfair to ascribe lack of ethics or morality to any group based on the actions of some individuals. That said, there are some interesting examples of non-Western practices on display this week:

Scientist on French terror charge

Cern's particle collider aims to recreate conditions of the Big Bang

Anti-terrorism magistrates in Paris have filed preliminary charges against a French physicist arrested last week on suspicion of links to al-Qaeda.

The 32-year-old man of Algerian descent works at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern), Europe's main centre for studying particle physics.

He was one of two brothers detained in the town of Vienne on Thursday.

Officials said he had been in contact with people linked to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and planned attacks.

The researcher had been working on an experiment at the Cern laboratory which houses the giant Large Hadron Collider, designed to recreate the conditions that existed just after the Big Bang. It is located on the Swiss-French border.

Read more....

More locally...

Ex-Ford employee held in data theft

Engineer charged with copying proprietary documents and trying to sell them in China

Bryce G. Hoffman / The Detroit News

The Justice Department charged a former Ford Motor Co. engineer with stealing company secrets and trying to peddle them to Chinese competitors.

Chinese-born Xiang Dong Yu -- also known as Mike Yu -- was arrested Wednesday at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport when he tried to re-enter the country from China. The 47-year-old is charged with five counts of theft of trade secrets, attempted theft of trade secrets and unauthorized access to a protected computer.

According to a federal indictment unsealed Wednesday, Yu was a product engineer for Ford from 1997 to 2007 and had access to Ford trade secrets. Law enforcement officials say that, just prior to leaving the Dearborn automaker, Yu copied thousands of confidential documents, including what they described as "sensitive Ford design documents" and "system design specification documents."

Read more....

Despite the more "progressive" view that it is unreasonable to claim one culture is superior to another, it is reasonable to claim that certain cultural traits may be more destructive than others. For example, the Islamic religion and culture officially see non-Muslims as religiously, morally, and culturally inferior, so it should not be surprising that progeny of that culture act in a manner that disregards morality and ethics in their dealings with those outside their culture.

U.S. Considers a New Assessment of Iran Threat

Perhaps in matters Middle East, the U.S. should just purchase intelligence from Israel.

U.S. Considers a New Assessment of Iran Threat

By SIOBHAN GORMAN and JAY SOLOMON

WASHINGTON -- U.S. spy agencies are considering whether to rewrite a controversial 2007 intelligence report that asserted Tehran halted its efforts to build nuclear weapons in 2003, current and former U.S. intelligence officials say.

The intelligence agencies' rethink comes as pressure is mounting on Capitol Hill, and among U.S. allies, for the Obama administration to redo the 2007 assessment, after a string of recent revelations about Tehran's nuclear program.

Read more....

Israel 'must answer' for Gaza war

You may recall reading about German air raids over England in the mid-20th century. I don't remember Germany indicating that England must answer for participating in the invasion of Germany during WWII.

Palestinians need to learn an important lesson: DON'T PICK A FIGHT YOU CAN'T WIN.

Israel 'must answer' for Gaza war

Israel is accused of bombing civilian buildings without military necessity

The Palestinians have urged the UN to act to punish Israel for its offensive in the Gaza Strip last winter.

The move reverses a Palestinian decision to defer action on a UN report that accuses both Israel and Hamas of war crimes during the conflict.

Israel rejected the report as biased during a UN Security Council debate.

Read more....

Where was that article about Palestinians unnecessarily bombing Israeli civilian targets? Oh, wait, there wasn't any such article. Hmmmmmmmm.

Goodbye Columbus

24% Say America Should No Longer Honor Columbus With A Holiday

Monday, October 12, 2009

Intrepid explorer who discovered America or merciless oppressor of the native peoples who already lived here? Some historians paint a darker picture of Christopher Columbus these days, and nearly a quarter (24%) of adults now don't think America should honor him with a national holiday.

Fifty-eight percent (58%) disagree and say Columbus should be honored with a holiday. Seventeen percent (17%) are undecided.

Sixty-nine percent (69%) of Republicans favor continuance of Columbus Day, compared to 52% of Democrats and 54% of adults not affiliated with either party. Democrats are nearly twice as likely as Republicans to think Columbus should not be honored.

Read more...

37% of people under 30 supported Michael Jackson Day as a replacement for Columbus Day.

Most common comments: "What has Columbus done in the past 600 years?" "Michael's lip tats rock." "Who is Columbus?" "What's a New World and how do you get there without a spaceship?"|

Government Debt To Shield Against Missiles

Read this without regard to context.

Treasuries Rise as North Korea Missiles Spur Demand for Safety

By Wes Goodman

Oct. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Treasuries rose for the first time in almost a week after reports that North Korea fired five missiles yesterday, increasing demand for the relative security of government debt.

Read more....

It appears that with the massive amount of government debt being created this year that if you get enough of that debt and stack it high enough, you will be shielded from incoming missiles.

President Obama Narrowly Misses Nobel Prize In Economics

President Obama was just edged out for the Nobel Prize in Economics. His stimulus package, which has not yet spent the preponderance of the funds approved, was credited with saving the global economy and would have garnered the Prize except for this extraordinary pair...

Nobel economics prize for governance duo

By Chris Giles, Economics Editor

Published: October 12 2009 14:03 | Last updated: October 12 2009 14:03

Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson shared the 2009 nobel prize for economics on Monday for their work on how economic transactions operate outside markets in common spaces and and within companies.

The Riksbank, the Swedish central bank, has awarded the prize every year since 1969 in memory of Alfred Nobel, and this year was the first time this “new nobel” has been awarded to a woman.

Read more....

Giant Spoof: Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize

It looks as if the Huffington Post is playing an April's Fool joke on everyone... just a few months early. Given the mess of foreign relations and the heightening tensions worldwide, it takes a pretty sick mind to come up with this:

October 09, 2009

Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize

President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, citing his outreach to the Muslim world and attempts to curb nuclear proliferation.

The stunning choice made Obama the third sitting U.S. president to win the Nobel Peace Prize and shocked Nobel observers because Obama took office less than two weeks before the Feb. 1 nomination deadline. Obama's name had been mentioned in speculation before the award but many Nobel watchers believed it was too early to award the president.

Pirates hit navy ship 'in error'

Well, of course they thought it was harmless and were surprised at resistance... it was flying a French flag, after all.

Pirates hit navy ship 'in error'

The pirates attacked the 160m ship in skiffs

A group of Somali pirates has been captured after attacking a French navy ship by mistake, apparently thinking it was a harmless cargo vessel.

French military spokesman Admiral Christophe Prazuck said the pirates attacked in skiffs late at night some 500km (310 miles) off the Somali coast.

But the command and supply ship, the Somme, repelled the attack and chased the pirates, capturing five of them.

Dozens of international warships fight piracy in Somalia's lawless waters.

Once they realised they were facing a ship that was responding and was heading towards them, they stopped shooting and attempted to flee Admiral Christophe Prazuck Postcard from a pirate capital

The country has had no effective central government since 1991, leading to a complete breakdown of law and order, and pirates operate off the coast almost with impunity.

Admiral Prazuck told French TV station La Chaine Info the pirates seemed to be surprised that the navy ship fought back.

Read more....

Let's Remember That Letterman's a Clown, Not a Cleric or Congressman

True... a lecherous clown.

Let's Remember That Letterman's a Clown, Not a Cleric or Congressman

Letterman has had to apologize several times for various acts. (Cbs Photo Via Associated Press)

Tom Shales

Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 6, 2009

One of many sad things about recent stanzas in the ballad of David Letterman is that now, in all media, Dave will be lumped in with other sexually misbehaving celebrities, even though he stands head and heart above most of them.

We the long-suffering admirers of Dave have had our fealty tested on several occasions -- as when he promised a young woman from the audience $10,000 if she could swish a basketball through a hoop. When she did, he tried to back out of the deal. Deplorable!

His recent on-air confession that he's had sex with many women on his "Late Show" staff was, however, quite a bit worse.

Read more....

In a Guinea Seized by Violence, Women as Prey

Strangely silent: United Nations.

Should the world send in troops? Why bother? Locate the places where the government officials live, work, and do their nastiness... and bomb the hell out of them. The message to animals such as these should be, we won't get our hands dirty with the likes of you. We won't send in our people to fight you. We will just exterminate you.

And that should be the common message sent around the world.

But we are too civilized and we need to keep the moral high ground....

In a Guinea Seized by Violence, Women as Prey

By ADAM NOSSITER

Published: October 5, 2009

CONAKRY, Guinea — Cellphone snapshots, ugly and hard to refute, are circulating here and feeding rage: they show that women were the particular targets of the Guinean soldiers who suppressed a political demonstration at a stadium here last week, with victims and witnesses describing rapes, beatings and acts of intentional humiliation.

In a cellphone photograph given to The New York Times, soldiers surrounded a woman on the ground on Sept. 28 in Conakry, Guinea. Several images appear to show attacks on women.

“I can’t sleep at night, after what I saw,” said one middle-aged woman from an established family here, who said she had been beaten and sexually molested. “And I am afraid. I saw lots of women raped, and lots of dead.”

One photograph shows a naked woman lying on muddy ground, her legs up in the air, a man in military fatigues in front of her. In a second picture a soldier in a red beret is pulling the clothes off a distraught-looking woman half-lying, half-sitting on muddy ground. In a third a mostly nude woman lying on the ground is pulling on her trousers.

Read more....

US growth could pass 3%, says Greenspan... but that's not much to cheer about

For all of you who have lost 30-40% of the value of your home and investments, this may not be all that exciting. From FT.com:

US growth could pass 3%, says Greenspan

By Anna Fifield in Washington

Published: October 4 2009 22:29 | Last updated: October 4 2009 22:29

US growth could exceed 3 per cent this quarter as the economic recovery takes hold, Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chairman, said on Sunday, in spite of a rise in unemployment numbers.

But the Obama administration should not intervene again to prop up the economy because its stimulus package had yet to take full effect, Mr Greenspan told ABC TV’s This Week programme.

“It looks as though it’s going to be 3 per cent, maybe possibly even higher,” Mr Greenspan said when asked if he still stood by his August prediction of 2.5 per cent growth in the final quarter of 2009.

“The problem with knowing what the third quarter is going to look like is we won’t get all of the data for several months. So there is a lot guesswork involved,” he said. “But it’s on track, at this stage, for more than 2.5 per cent.”

Read more....

For those of you confused by percentages, just remember this: for every 33.3333% decrease, it takes a 50% increase to offset the loss. Okay, okay... here is an example:

Starting point 100

33.3333% loss goes to 66.6667

50% increase goes to 100

Similarly, a 25% loss requires a 33.3333% increase to offset it. It takes more effort to create wealth than destroy it... and the mathematics prove that. And the bigger the percentage loss, the bigger... proportionally... the percentage gain needed to offset it.

Chicago... No

The Olympic committee rejected Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympic games. Now what will happen to all of those slums owned by Obama's buddies.




Nothing.

Olympics Chicago Politics Style

Just as any good politician with Chicago roots, President Obama is pushing the Windy City for the 2016 games... so says Financial Times:

Obama urges IOC to 'choose America'

By Roger Blitz in Copenhagen

Published: October 2 2009 10:55 | Last updated: October 2 2009 10:55

Barack Obama on Friday urged the International Olympic Committee to choose Chicago and “choose America” as the host city for the 2016 Olympics, promising that the city would “make the world proud”, while acknowledging that hosting the Games would help restore his country’s standing in the world.

The US president described himself as a “passionate supporter” of the Olympic movement, saying he shared its values and beliefs and that the Olympics “helps us understand one another just a little better”.

In answer to a question from an IOC member from Pakistan about the difficulties foreigners experience entering the US, Mr Obama said: “One of the legacies I want to see coming out of Chicago hosting the Games is a reminder that America at its best is open to the world.”

Read more....

And then there is this from Michelle Malkin:

Bringing the games to the Windy City is Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley’s “vision.” The entrenched Democratic power-broker – in office since 1989 – would like to cap off his graft-tainted career with a glorious, $4 billion bread and circuses production. The influential Daley machine backed Barack Obama for the presidential primary. Obama lavished praise on Daley’s stewardship of the city. Longtime Daley cronies helped pave Obama’s path to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Now, they’re returning the favor for their hometown boss.

Senior White House adviser and Obama consigliere Valerie Jarrett is a Daley loyalist who worked as his deputy chief of staff, deputy corporation counsel, and planning commissioner. She hired the future First Lady of the United States, then-Michelle Robinson, as a mayoral assistant. Jarrett went on to serve as president and CEO of The Habitat Company, a real estate firm with a massive stake in federally-funded Chicago public housing projects.

One of those public-private partnerships, the Grove Parc Plaza Apartments, was run into the ground under Jarrett’s watch. Federal inspectors graded the condition of the complex a bottom-of-the-barrel 11 on a 100-point scale. “They are rapidly displacing poor people, and these companies are profiting from this displacement,” Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle of Southside Together Organizing for Power, a community group that seeks to help tenants stay in the same neighborhoods, told the Boston Globe last year. “The same exact people who ran these places into the ground,” the private companies paid to build and manage the city’s affordable housing, “now are profiting by redeveloping them.”

Coincidentally enough, Grove Parc — now targeted for demolition as a result of years of neglect by Obama’s developer friends—sits in the shadows of the proposed site of the city’s 2016 Olympics Stadium.

Jarrett served as vice chair of Chicago’s 2016 Summer Olympics bid committee before moving to the White House, where she has helmed a new “White House Office on Olympic, Paralympic and Youth Sport” with an undisclosed budget and staff. It’s not just taxpayers in cash-strapped Chicago who should be worried about this field of schemes. Crain’s Chicago Business reports that Jarrett and Chicago 2016 committee member Lori Healey met this month with federal officials at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development “to discuss financing options” for the estimated $1 billion Olympic Village.

The door is open and the administration is “willing to meet and listen” to any federal subsidy proposals, Jarrett said. Hey, what happened to Obama’s tough rules on interest-conflicted lobbying by his administration officials?

Read more....

Is this one of those, "I'll scratch your butt if you'll scratch mine" situations?

Isn't Chicago politics grand? And we can solve the problem of our closed borders, too!