All Posts Tagged With: "bailout"
Stocks jump back up as Dubai is thrown a lifeline and Citi announces it will pay $20 billion back.
Jennifer McClelland | RSS | Mon, Dec 14 2009 | 1 Comment
The stock market has been doing better as compared to the same time last year, which was just a month or two after the biggest financial disaster of the decade. However, there have been some bumps along the way. If you look at something that has unfolded over just the past two or three weeks. Dubai was going bankrupt and there looked to be no one to save the country. That is, until today when Abu Dhabi surprised the country with it’s own $10 billion bailout.
With the country accepting a payment like that, it is easy to see why the stock market has kind of shot up today. Investors of the oil rich nation have had their fears calmed regarding the longevity of the emirate.
That is not the only financial news that has helped out the markets today. Citigroup has also announced this morning that it would be paying back $20 billion of bailout money that it has received from the United States government. The move will help put Citi back in control of its own company and will help out the government, which just passed a huge spending bill.
Financial news over the past two weeks has really been overshadowed by the whole “Tiger Woods” debacle. His story has completely caused a media frenzy and no one has mentioned that the Dow Jones has been over 10,000 for a while now. While there is plenty of good financial news to report on, there aren’t many news organizations that are doing so right now (that is, unless you watch cable news which has to report on several different things to fill up the time).
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Tags: emirate, tiger woods, dow jones
A little “lol” of the day
Jennifer McClelland | RSS | Wed, Oct 21 2009 | 0 Comments
Ever wonder what the difference between bankers and pirates are? This little image I dugg is pretty funny in regards to the topic.
Banks have been letting their own companies fail for the past year and the only thing that saves them every time is the government. Unfortunately, the goverment is nowhere to be seen in the image.
It’s good to have a laugh at the expense of banks and the people who run them because, after all, they are the ones who took our taxpayer money and some (like AIG) won’t ever be able to pay it back. I think that the government should take AIG and split it into a lot of different branches then dissolve the non profitable branches. It would be like firing your under-producing employees, it happens.
Image source: Politico
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Tags: merrill lynch, taxpayer money, bank of america
Pop culture featuring the Recession
Jennifer McClelland | RSS | Fri, Jul 24 2009 | 1 Comment
It looks like the recession has made its way into pop culture. HBO has a new series called “Hung” and in its premier recently, it showed scenes of Detroit factories that were abandoned and had a voiceover talking of how the city has now fallen. The series focuses on a man named Ray Drecker, a guy that many can relate to these days.
Drecker was a star athlete in his younger days and is now having a hard time; he is divorced, behind on bills, and lost his job as a high school football coach because of some budget cuts the school had to perform.
The recession is going into its second year and the economy has found its way into pop culture; movies and tv shows have altered their scripts to put the tones of the recession in the stories. Also, plenty of books are offering frugal ideas and tips.
Long running tv shows like the Simpsons have also started talking about the recession. In one episode Homer and Marge have to sell their house because their mortgage payment had gone through the roof. On 30 Rock the characters had to deal with budget cuts. Even the kids from South Park had to learn a lesson about the recession.
Barry Ritholtz, author of Bailout Nation, said, “On the one hand, it’s good when it becomes part of popular culture because people are talking about it and thinking about it, But on the other hand, it’s bad when people are obsessing about it to the point of absurdity.”
In past downturns, the recession has been a way to escape from the problems, but this time, it seems as though pop culture wants to immerse itself in the current situations everyone is facing.
If you look back to shows like Dynasty, in the 1980’s the show was very popular and featured people with a very flamboyant lifestyle where they would flaunt their money. They also thrived during the 1980’s recession.
During the Great Depression big musicals also became very popular.
“If you’ve got a loved one dying of cancer, you may not want to watch, as your entertainment, movies of loved ones dying of cancer,” Thompson said.
I don’t necessarily enjoy watching people suffer in a recession, but I do really like to know that other people, even those in television shows, feel the same way that everyone else does. It makes me feel like Hollywood is connected to the real world and that at least the writers understand what is going on with the average American.
Art is supposed to imitate life I thought. This would be the best way to do so. People want to find solace, this is not a cancer.
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Tags: great depression, music, tv show
AIG is asking the government for permisssion to give out more bonuses
Jennifer McClelland | RSS | Thu, Jul 09 2009 | 0 Comments
Everyone’s favorite business to hate is now looking to ask the government to pay out $2.4 million in bonuses to executives at the company. This comes after just a few months ago, the company green-lit several hundred million dollars in bonus money that started a huge backlash against the company.
The company is hoping by asking the government to approve the bonuses, it can avoid the public outrage again. I think that right now, the government is not the place where the “public” has a lot of faith right now as far as large corporations go.
At least they are asking for permission before just handing out millions of dollars to executives. The company doesn’t actually need the permission of Kenneth Feinberg, the overseer of the compensation of top executives of seven of the largest companies that received federal bailouts. The $2.4 million in bonuses would go out to about 40 of the highest ranking execs at AIG.
“Anytime we write a check to anybody” it is highly scrutinized, said an AIG official, who declined to speak on the record because the negotiations with Feinberg are ongoing. “We would want to feel comfortable that the government is comfortable with what we are doing.”
In November, AIG’s top seven executives, including Chairman Edward M. Liddy, agreed to forgo their bonuses through 2009. Then, in March, facing pressure from Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and other government officials, the company restructured its corporate bonus plans for the remaining top 50 executives. As part of this agreement, the senior executives were to receive half their 2008 bonuses — which totaled $9.6 million — in the spring, with another quarter disbursed on July 15 and the rest on Sept. 15. The last two payments would depend on whether the company made progress in revamping its business and paying back bailout money to taxpayers.
So, here we go, a large corporation going back on their word…are we really surprised? I’m not. Especially when it’s a company that is the epitome of greed and what is wrong with our capitalist system. It’s companies like this that make everyone else look bad. I’m not saying that capitalism or the free market is wrong, but when you have this much wrong with one company…things go very wrong in a big way.
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Tags: treasury secretary, senior executives, bonus money
Do you think that GM should change its name to something else?
Jennifer McClelland | RSS | Mon, Jun 15 2009 | 2 Comments
There have been several companies that have changed their names after coming under fire and falling into bankruptcy. Some of the companies that have done that include ValuJet or now known as AirTran, Altria or as you may have once known it, Philip Morris, and Xe, which was once known as Blackwater. Even electronics maker LG has changed its name from Lucky Goldstar to just LG and said that it stood for “Life’s Good” and now it’s doing very well with its sales of consumer electronics and appliances.
These companies have done well with the name change; it is as if they are shedding what they once were and becoming a new company with a shiny, squeaky clean image.
Marketing professionals across the country agree that the rebranding of GM could be a good thing. “If the goal is to try and put this company on a massive diet and just turn it into a smaller car manufacturing operation, I’m not sure there’d be that much harm in rebranding,” said Jean-Pierre Dube, a University of Chicago marketing professor. “The brand isn’t in good shape,” he said, “so they have little to lose.”
The General Motors brand has already become a tarnished brand, with a reputation of building poor quality cars and now with a huge bankruptcy filing under its belt, not to mention what everyone thinks about the company taking all that federal money to keep from having to file for the huge bailout…which they filed anyway.
Of course, right now many GM officials are sticking to their guns and not wanting to rebrand the company. CEO Fritz Henderson said that rebranding wasn’t very high on his list of things to do in the company. Which is possibly a good thing to do considering all the troubles he inherited, but couldn’t rebranding be handed off to the marketing department? After all, GM still has one of those and it really doesn’t have the money to be throwing into high-cost tv spots right now.
Bits and pieces of GM have already begun to be rebranded; GMAC financial services has changed its name to Ally Bank and General Motors Asset Managemnet is now known as Promark Global Advisors.
But, with a company that is as well known as GM could it work?
I don’t see anything wrong with trying to perhaps market the company differently than before, but an entire new brand could be tricky to pull off for the company. I think that the best implementation of rebranding could come from if it were to rebrand some of its subsidiaries such as Chevy or Cadillac.
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Tags: lucky goldstar, gm officials, marketing department
