BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

By Laurent Belsi CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE VIDEO IF YOU'RE ON AN AGGREGATOR Mad about the bank bailouts? Had enough of huge bonuses and too-big-to-fail apologies? Here's one way to do something about it. Take your money out. That's right. Take your checking and savings account out of that big money-center financial institution and move it to a community bank or credit union. There's even a movement afoot to help consumers make the switch, called Move Your Money , with a well-timed message and a good video (see below). The website offers search tools so consumers thinking about switching can type in their zip codes to find a credit union or a strong community bank nearby. Do big banks really care if a few thousand depositors pull out their money? Here's why they do. Banks' business foundation rests on core deposits, including the savings and checking accounts of consumers and businesses, says Dennis Santiago, CEO of Institutional Risk Analytics (IRA), a bank-rating ...

by Mary Williams Walsh For the first couple of days after his flight ditched into the Hudson River, Paul Jorgenson was just glad to be alive. But then he started to need his laptop, his wallet, his car keys -- all the essentials he had stowed under his seat and left behind in the sinking plane. A pleasant woman at US Airways told him not to worry; he would be made whole for his losses. But then the matter shifted to US Airways' insurer, the American International Group, operating under government stewardship since its bailout last fall. "Everything went downhill," said Mr. Jorgenson, a software executive in Charlotte, N.C., whose laptop and keys have not been recovered. When a homeowner has a burglary or a driver has a crash, all it normally takes is a call to the insurance company and a description of the loss to activate the policy. But aviation liability insurance is different. It is activated by a finding of negligence on the part of an airline. If there is no neglig...

Usually I fall on the opposite side of things from Michelle Malkin - but this piece of hers was so on target and truthfully funny I am reposting some excerpts here: The Kabuki Theater of AIG Outrage by Michelle Malkin All the world’s a stage, wrote Shakespeare, and in the world of Washington, the curtains have opened on the most elaborate farce of the year. Welcome, taxpayers, to the Kabuki Theater of AIG Outrage – where D.C.’s histrionic enablers of taxpayer-funded corporate bailouts compete for Best Performance of Hypocritical Indignation. Over the weekend, cloaked in their finest populist costumes, the Beltway’s hair-sprayed and powdered politicians and White House aides took to the airwaves to inveigh against $165 million in employee retention payments paid out by the government-backed insurance giant. Those bennies were reportedly part of a larger $450 million round of bonuses. After subpoenaing AIG, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo informed Congress that 73 employees in the...

from the inscrutable and laudable UppityWoman: You remember Countrywide Financials don’t you? The King of subprime lending piggishness? Stanford Kurland was their President and Second Banana to that other porky pig, CEO Angelo Mozilo, a guy you wanted to smack when you just looked at his smug overly-tanned face. These are the two thieves, along with their top executives, who led the charge of “teaser rates” that ballooned on unsuspecting borrowers, facilitating the housing mortgage crash. These are also the guys who handed out VIP loans to certain members of Congress as well–also known as “Friends of Angelo”. And what friends they were! Countrywide was the sweetheart of Fannie Mae. Fannie Mae couldn’t stop writing glowing reports on how great Countrywide was while they cheerily cooperated by handing out subprime mortgages to people who could barely make payments before the variable rate hike hit them. Birds of a feather bringing down America together. Countrywide went down in sh...