Auto sales analysts at Edmunds.com say the pricey program resulted in relatively few additional car sales.

The Cash for Clunkers program gave car buyers rebates of up to $4,500 if they traded in less fuel-efficient vehicles for new vehicles that met certain fuel economy requirements. A total of $3 billion was allotted for those rebates.

The average rebate was $4,000. But the overwhelming majority of sales would have taken place anyway at some time in the last half of 2009, according to Edmunds.com. That means the government ended up spending about $24,000 each for those 125,000 additional vehicle sales.

CNN Money

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Want to see if your bank will be the next to fail? This report covers ALL banks in the US.

Before you go and check out the site to find your bank. Here are some tips on finding your bank.
The banks are listed in order by ‘Texas Ratio’
And for those who don’t know what a Texas Ratio is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_ratio

The Texas ratio is a measure of a bank’s credit troubles. Developed by Gerard Cassidy and others at RBC Capital Markets, it is calculated by dividing the value of the lender’s non-performing loans by the sum of its tangible equity capital and loan loss reserves.

A majority of the “Failed Banks” on the FDIC’s Failed Bank List have had Texas ratio’s ABOVE 100 (though there is the occasional exception of a failure or two when the ratio approaches 50 or higher).

Now on to the list

Note: This is a large file. You can right-click on the file and download to your hard drive before opening it.

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As the Dow Jones Industrial Average celebrates its triumphant return to 10,000 and Wall Street’s infamous, massive bonuses return, The Los Angeles Times was left wondering Thursday morning: “Where’s the outrage?”

As if to answer their question, filmmaker Michael Moore made an appearance on NBC’s Today Show, explaining to interviewer Matt Lauer that such numbers are echoing from America’s financial sector because bankers are being rewarded for “burning down our economy.”

Raw Story

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6 injured as long lines of Detroiters waited for chance to get fed help to pay their bills!

The lure of federal cash assistance for needy Detroit families sparked pandemonium Wednesday at Cobo Center, as hundreds of city residents pushed, jostled and trampled others in a rush to apply for the aid.

In a scene that spoke volumes about the despair of one of the nation’s poorest cities, about 50,000 Detroiters descended on downtown to pick up 5,000 applications in hopes of enrolling in a federal program that pays a few hundred to a few thousand dollars to low-income residents to help pay rent and utilities.

In fact, some 60,000 residents applied for the aid over two days, although the city will only be able to help about 3,400 families.

The Detroit News

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On Tuesday, February 17th, President Barack Obama signed the $787 billion Stimulus Bill into law. In six and a half months, we have spent $84,587,463 or 14.5%. As I noted last month, $50,000 went to Frameline film house, which recently featured a film called “Thundercrack,” “the world’s only underground kinky art porno horror film, complete with four men, three women and a gorilla.” Another $25,000 went to “CounterPULSE, a performance art theater featuring a ‘performance’ titled ‘Perverts Put Out.’”

In the upcoming months, more stimulus funds will be spent on sex related studies. For example, we will spend:

• $221,000 to study “barriers to correct condom use” at Indiana University,
• $219,000 at Syracuse to look at “hookups” among adolescents
• $123,000 at the University of Illinois, Chicago to study “drug use as a sex enhancer”
• $28,000 at the University of Maryland at Baltimore to research how methamphetamine “enhances the motivation for female rat sexual behavior.”

Despite all this targeted spending, America has still lost 3.1 million jobs since the Stimulus Bill was passed. It’s not outrageous enough that with unemployment at 9.7 percent, Vice President Joe Biden says the Stimulus Bill is “doing more, faster and more efficiently and more effectively than most people expected.” No, Joe also added that it “was the right thing to do morally.”

$50,000 for Thudercrack was the moral thing to do, according to out Vice President.

Or was it the $14,000,000 spent to upgrade a Border Patrol post that sees three visitors a day?

Perhaps is was something else, but I’ll give Biden the benefit of the doubt and argue he meant that spending the money to help the American people during this time of economic crisis was right because you should help people when they need it. Morally, it would be wrong to let people suffer.

American Issues Project

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