Fiatch

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The Boston Globe reports on Government Motors:

General Motors Corp. will delay the closing of a Norton parts distribution center it planned to shutter by the end of the year, according to US Representative Barney Frank.

via Greg Mankiw.
[photo source]

Crimony.

One highlight:

For Mr Geithner knows the truth of the old adage: when you owe the bank a small amount, the bank has the power. But when you owe the bank a huge amount, it’s the other way round. Luo Ping, a director-general at the China Banking Regulatory Commission, put it nicely in an interview back in February: “Except for US Treasuries, what can you hold? US Treasuries are the safe haven. For everyone, including China, it is the only option. We hate you guys. Once you start issuing $1 trillion to $2 trillion [of bonds] we know the dollar is going to depreciate, so we hate you guys, but there is nothing much we can do.”

“We hate you guys?” Now that really does have the ring of marital breakdown. Let’s hope Mr Geithner is good at ducking crockery. Like divorces, major shifts in the balance of power are seldom amicable.

HT to When Giants Fall

A couple of the several people who read Fiatch have requested comments.  For now, you may engage each other on these posts and topics at FriendFeed.

If great discussions ensue, I will likely add comments here.  If it instead becomes a mess, I will delete the FriendFeed account.  If nothing much happens (the most likely result), then FriendFeed should be just fine.

Let’s see what shakes.  I’m confident that everyone will be respectful and chill and that we won’t have any of the shouting matches and boring tripe that can all-too-often characterize comments on the web.

Jules: Nobody’s gonna hurt anybody. We’re gonna be like three little Fonzies here. And what’s Fonzie like?
Come on Yolanda what’s Fonzie like?
Yolanda: Cool?
Jules: What?
Yolanda: He’s cool.
Jules: Correctamundo. And that’s what we’re gonna be. We’re gonna be cool.

Thanks, folks.

Entrepreneurship is hope and change.  And these true leaders keep right on driving even as government and the corrupt, out-moded, yet fabulously wealthy industry titans that survive off government handouts and regulatory cons continue to destroy shareholder value and entire communities.

Government Motors tee, via Despair, Inc.

Pictured above via The Library of Congress is Henry Morgenthau Jr., Secretary of the Treasury under Franklin D. Roosevelt. Washington, D.C., United States, date uncertain.

Karl Denninger of The Market Ticker (@tickerguy) today shared this quote from then Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau, “angry at the Keynesian spenders, confided to his diary May 1939:”

“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and now if I am wrong somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosper. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. I say after eight years of this administration, we have just as much unemployment as when we started. And enormous debt to boot.”

The position that the New Deal resolved the Depression is a con that is asserted by ambitious people seeking more power and longed for by suffering people who hope that someone can remove their pain.

… recommending this memoir for your summer reading list.