– Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are dating again. And word has it they’re seeing way too much of each other. Because their Congressional “parents” cannot be totally unaware of what Fannie and Freddie have been up to, individual incumbents in both chambers are either consciously avoiding their personal oversight responsibility—to provide adult supervision—or, may actually condone the various schemes carried out by the two government-controlled mortgage finance companies

Oops. An Albany cop-union boss just let the protect-and-serve mask slip.Albany Police Officers Union President Chris Mesley says that, regardless of the faltering economy, a no-raise new contract is unacceptable.And to hell with the public.

via What union bosses think – NYPOST.com.

The message? Sacrifice is for suckers — not unionized government employees.

Thus do taxpayers end up working longer and harder to pay for the guaranteed salaries and plush benefits of union members.

Mesley admits that he understands that. He just doesn’t care.

The real action will have to be next year, after the mid-term elections. But even then, it’s not clear whether our political system can deal with the crisis of deficits and debt, or whether it will take our foreign creditors, on whose lending we are totally hooked, to administer the shock we need to get our financial foundation on a sound footing. I suspect the latter. They wouldn’t have to do much, just a few public pronouncements in Beijing that China’s central bank plans to invest excess reserves in a different way than it did in the past. In other words, there would not have to be withdrawals of foreign investments, just no increases to feed our ever-growing needs, to induce widespread panic in the markets and in Washington.

If I suspended my instincts about how the crisis would ultimately be resolved, and make an assumption that our political system could rise to the occasion—an assumption of historic proportions—what would Washington have to do?

When you are finished reading that link, go to this NYT article about the ‘Volcker Rule’..another must read

“I think it’s confused the issue considerably, because he’s basically fanned the fires of populism and in a lot of instances, populism doesn’t give you either good regulatory activity or strong markets.”

PAPER: Obama's fortunes set to deteriorate further...
Bernanke under pressure; Faltering support for Fed chief...
Dow Suffers Worst Week SInce Last March...
Obama seen as anti-business by 77% of investors...
Europe welcomes bank plan, won't imitate it...
White House nightmare persists...

RASMUSSEN:
Obama Approval Index: -19
Strongly Approve 24%
Strongly Disapprove 43%
Total Approval 44%

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Freddie Mac (NYSE:FRE – News; NYSE:FRE – News), the second largest provider of U.S. residential mortgage funding, on Friday posted a loss of $5 billion in the third quarter and predicted it would need more government support amid a “prolonged deterioration” in housing.

WHITE HOUSE MASTER TO SLASH EXEC PAY

Gaffes in federal reports this week about stimulus have called into question the government’s ability to accurately track how many jobs are being created by the massive $787 billion Recovery Act.

The data in Thursday’s reports were filled with mistakes, including an error that made it look like a French vaccine maker received the largest stimulus contract, $1.4 billion, when in fact it has gotten an award one-100th the size.

Government research organization OMB Watch said its assessment of the reports revealed many inconsistencies in the job data.

“The data is rife with mistakes,” said Craig Jennings, senior federal fiscal policy analyst at OMB Watch. “When you put out data that hasn’t yet been checked, it undermines transparency, because you are putting out wrong information.”

…A mistake in the very first contract listed on the site prompted doubts about the reliability of the reports.

Recovery.gov erroneously reported Thursday that French vaccine maker Sanofi Pasteur had received $1.4 billion in stimulus funds from the Department of Health and Human Services. The company topped the site’s list titled “Largest federal contracts in U.S.”

When CNNMoney.com first asked about the contract Thursday, a spokeswoman from Sanofi Pasteur suspected the $1.4 billion figure was a mistake. HHS spokeswoman Vicki Rivas-Vazquez said the number on recovery.gov was erroneous and the actual amount was $10.4 million.

Sanofi Pasteur said Friday that $10.4 million is the correct figure.

“We anticipated errors in the reporting and so informed many reporters beforehand,” said Edward Pound, spokesman for the Recovery Board. “This is the first time this kind of reporting is being done. These reports are being reviewed by federal agencies and recipients to catch any errors or problems.”

The Recovery Board has the tall task of compiling all of the data, and is spending $18 million revamping its Web site to manage all of the information.

OMB Watch said its review yielded “really weird job numbers,” including many discrepancies within the reports themselves. For instance, Jennings said OMB Watch found that many companies said in a narrative portion of their reports that it was able to retain several employees because of stimulus funds, but the “jobs created” column read “zero.”

The Recovery Board aggregates its jobs data from the “jobs created” column to display the total number of jobs saved or created. Jennings speculated that recipients might have been confused about the scope of the term “created.”

“I would not stake any sort of claims on those job numbers,” said Jennings. “We don’t know what’s going on there.”

FY 2009 Federal Deficit Terrifyingly Huge

after reading the links within that link, this will make perfect sense:

That’s a little like resuscitating a guy who had a heart attack on the way to his execution. Yeah, he’s alive but for how much longer?

When confronted with something this unsustainable there’s only two things to be done.

1- Spend untold trillions more taking over the nation’s health insurance system.

and

2- Blame Bush.

Obama to conservatives: Grab a mop and help me clean up your mess

The good news: The “socialist mop” line made me laugh. The bad news: He’ll be telling us it’s our mess that he’s cleaning up until, oh, 2015 or so at the earliest. How he’s planning to blame the stimulus waste or inevitable cost overruns on health care on the right isn’t yet clear to me, but have faith. He’ll find a way. It’s … what he does.

Question: Given the electoral realities in Congress these days, is it really the right that’s his biggest pain in the ass?

• Cap-and-trade legislation had to limp over the finish line in the House of Representatives with the help of a few moderate Republicans, who then caught holy unshirted hell from their constituents. Environmental legislation generally has taken a drubbing in public opinion polls when people consider how costly it is.

• The Employee Free Choice Act may be stripped of its “card check” provision in the Senate, which would effectively do away with secret ballots for unionization elections. Even in its watered-down form — which still includes highly objectionable, mandatory, binding so-called gunpoint arbitration and makes no concessions to employers who don’t want to have to prop up teetering union pensions — it might not pass the Senate. And the leadership of the House has refused to touch it until the other chamber has made up its mind.

• On health care, forget the rage set off by private citizen Sarah Palin tweeting about “death panels.” Forget the misleading talk about whether there will be a “public option.” (The ever-evolving plan is one giant public option, folks.) Forget the angry voters who crowded into the town halls during the August recess. Forget that a number of Democratic senators and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) are still not willing to sign on to a bill. Right now, even after Obama’s address to the joint session of Congress last week, it’s possible Democrats don’t even have the votes in the House — where they currently enjoy a 77-seat majority.

It’s entirely possible — nay, likely — that Obama will lose on all three big issues. He’ll probably take that personally. As he has pushed for the passage of his reforms, his public approval ratings have taken a beating, and voters have started to trust the Republicans more than his party on a host of issues.

The question that most political handicappers are considering right now is not “Will Republicans make gains at the midterm elections?” but “How large will those gains be?”

….. a $10-billion provision tucked deep inside thousands of pages of health care overhaul bills that could help the UAW’s retiree health-care plan and other union-backed plans.

It would see the government — at least temporarily — pay 80 cents on the dollar to corporate and union insurance plans for claims between $15,000 and $90,000 for retirees age 55 to 64.

Big businesses with union workers are twice as likely to offer retiree benefits as nonunion ones.

Greg Mourad of the National Right to Work Committee called it “a shameless case of political payback,” saying Democrats and President Barack Obama are trying “to force the rest of us to pay billions to cover those unions’ health care.”

Labor advocates say even more funding may be needed.

“It is not enough money,” said former U.S. Rep. David Bonior, a Mt. Clemens Democrat who chairs the board at Washington, D.C.-based American Rights at Work, a labor advocacy group. “That will have to be supplemented to fill the gap.”

…. The health care debate roiling the nation promises an even greater impact in Michigan: It could determine whether the UAW’s gamble that it can insure 850,000 retirees from Detroit’s automakers pays off or goes bust.

Thanks to Detroit’s twin auto bankruptcies and other concessions, the UAW’s voluntary employee benefit association, or VEBA, had to take stock of unknown value for $24 billion in claims, while adding thousands of early retirees to its rolls.

Outside experts estimate the funds have about 30 cents in cash for every dollar of future claims, with no guarantee of what its stock assets will be worth. Lance Wallach, a New York-based VEBA expert, says if the funds “don’t get something, they’re out of business in 12 years.”

…. The $10 billion is aimed at a growing gap between the skyrocketing cost of care for early retirees — ages 55 to 64, too young for Medicare — and what President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats promise will be less-expensive coverage once, and if, the much-debated reform measures kick in several years from now.

“He is trying to fix the financial markets but does not have an assistant treasury secretary for financial markets. He is spending more money on transportation than anyone since Dwight D. Eisenhower but does not have his own inspector general watching how the dollars are used. He is fighting two wars but does not have an Army secretary.

He sent Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to Africa to talk about international development but does not have anyone running the Agency for International Development. He has invited major powers to a summit on nuclear nonproliferation but does not have an assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation. He has vowed to improve government efficiency but does not have the chief performance officer he promised.

‘If you’re running G.M. without half your senior executives in place, are you worried? I’d say your stockholders would be going nuts,’ said Terry Sullivan, a professor at the University of North Carolina and executive director of the White House Transition Project, which tracks appointments.”