Bad Timing for Luxury Arenas for Yankees, New York Mets and Dallas Cowboys - WSJ.com

Dallas Cowboys/HKS

A rendering of the new Dallas Cowboys stadium in Arlington, Texas.

When the New York Yankees throw open the doors to their new home on April 3, fans will walk into a $1.5 billion stadium filled with all the hallmarks of 21st-century sports extravagance: a steak house, a glass-enclosed sports bar and high-definition video screens in every direction.

Luxury suite-holders can access a separate deal-room for conducting business. In the sleek, exclusive "Legends Club," the high-definition screens are so ubiquitous they're even set into the lavatory mirrors. For spectators in the premium section's teak-armed seats, waiters will bring brick-oven pizza to anyone able to shell out $2,500 a ticket to watch a ballgame in the midst of the worst recession in a generation.

"Build the most expensive stadium, charge high prices and have the worst economy. It's called lack of sleep," says Lonn Trost, the Yankees chief operating officer.

rest http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123630159510147111.html

Desperate Yankees Can’t Sell New Premium Seats from SPORTSbyBROOKS

The interest is there. The payroll is there. The only thing that isn't there for the Yankees, it seems, are the fans. According to business of sports writer Richard Sandomir in THE NEW YORK TIMES, the Yankees are struggling to sell any premium seats or luxury boxes … and they're getting desperate.

(See those empty luxury boxes? They'll be empty during the season, too.)

rest http://www.sportsbybrooks.com/desperate-yankees-cant-sell-new-premium-seats-22688

Guess We All Owe Dubai An Apology [Tennis] from Deadspin

Everyone (i.e., me) rode the United Arab Emirates for denying an Israeli tennis player entry to their country, but judging by Sweden's reaction to a similar problem, the Mid-East nation looks like the sensible one.

The Israeli Davis Cup team is taking on Sweden this weekend in front of an empty arena in Malmo. No spectators were allowed in because anti-Israeli protesters threatened to disrupt the match. Of course, not being inside did not deter the angry mob. They stormed the arena, threw rocks, bottles and firecrackers at police and generally made a giant mess of things in the street. Because tennis players run the world, I guess?

rest http://deadspin.com/5166142/guess-we-all-owe-dubai-an-apology

AIG's $173 Billion Bailout Went in Part to Foreign Banks [Bailouts] from Gawker

from http://gawker.com/5166086/aigs-173-billion-bailout-went-in-part-to-foreign-banks

Where are insurance giant AIG's bailout billions really going? The White House doesn't want to tell us. But the Wall Street Journal, bless its Rupert Murdoch-owned heart, found out anyway: Foreign banks, lots of them!

The Federal Reserve began propping up AIG last September; a recent $30 billion infusion has brought the total bill to $173 billion. The government now owns 80 percent of the many-tentacled insurer, meaning that taxpayers are essentially on the hook for its liabilities. And AIG has spent roughly $50 billion fulfilling contracts it issued to banks to guarantee the value of various derivatives. Those complex financial bets went disastrously wrong as first the mortgage business and then the entire stock market imploded. U.S. legislators have been asking administration officials for names all week after the Treasury . They refused. But the WSJ got them:

Goldman Sachs
Deutsche Bank
Merrill Lynch
Société Générale
Calyon
Barclays
Rabobank
Danske
HSBC
Royal Bank of Scotland
Banco Santander
Morgan Stanley
Wachovia
Bank of America
Lloyds Banking Group

Ah yes, Rabobank, that pillar of the American economy.

Doomsaying economists like Nouriel Roubini have been saying that the global banking system is essentially insolvent. AIG's guarantees have allowed banks to avoid losses on otherwise worthless securities. To what extent is the protection issued through the government-backed AIG been masking their insolvency? Government officials have been saying since September that we must support AIG, lest its failure ripple through the banking system. But could we be just prolonging the inevitable?

Trump Baja Condo Project Goes South [Scams] from Gawker

Business blowhard Donald Trump has created an indelible meaning for his world-famous brand: failed real-estate ventures. The latest event to cement the Trump reputation: a failed condo project in Mexico which cost buyers $32 million.

Trump never put his own money into the Trump Ocean Resort Baja, an oceanside condominium tower north of Rosario, Baja California. Instead, he and daughter Ivanka lent their names and faces to the developers in exchange for a licensing fee. The Trump family appeared personally at a sales event in San Diego in 2006 and sold 188 units for $122 million in a single day.

Among the buyers: Single mom Guadalupe Mendoza of Downey, Calif., who refinanced her own house and got a loan from her sister in order to put $200,000 down on a $667,000 condo. Her deposit is now gone, and she now says she can't afford to send her teenage sons to college.

In 2007, Ivanka Trump told the AP that her father was "the boss" and "involved in every capacity." But in December, Mendoza and other buyers got a letter revealing that Trump was not an investor and that bank financing had fallen through. In January, Trump announced that he was taking his name off the project.

rest at http://gawker.com/5166121/trump-baja-condo-project-goes-south

Wall Street on Welfare: The Taxpayers Pick Up the Trillion Dollar Tab for Riverboat Gamblers on the Dole

from http://buzzflash.com/articles/node/7894

By Mark Karlin

Ronald Reagan's evocation of the infamous and racially charged fictional image of a welfare mom driving a Cadillac doesn't hold a candle to the welfare CEOs of Wall Street -- still living the lavish lifestyles of Robin Leach's "Rich and Famous."

Rick Santelli's now famous stunt denouncing government intervention to stem the tide of foreclosures because taxpayers would allegedly be helping to bail out people who "knowingly" took risks is based on a flawed premise and completely overlooks the role of the moneyed class predatory loan industry.

But what isn't debatable -- even remotely -- is that all the so-called "socialist welfare" given out to help poor moms and their kids eat and stay alive doesn't hold a candle to what may be $2 trillion in welfare to Wall Street riverboat gamblers who took risks amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars and lost at the casino.  In Santelli's eyes, apparently, welfare for people who travel in a chauffeured limo is a duty of the taxpayer because the super rich deserve to have their vassals tithed to subsidize the risk taking of the wealthy.

The Wall Street economic implosion is due to many things, but, as Jon Stewart so devastatingly pointed out, it primarily came as a result of accumulated gambling debts.  Wall Street companies didn't play with poker chips: they doubled down again and again with the games of chance produced by deregulation such as derivatives and default swaps (not to mention the hedge fund industry, among others). 

Wall Street's complete meltdown -- which we learned about suddenly over one weekend that produced a $700 billion welfare bill (followed by more) -- wasn't exposed in advance by the mainstream corporate press, because they are part of the moneyed class that loves to take risks and live lavish styles at the public's expense.

Essentially, if you are wealthy enough and are a higher up at a Wall Street financial firm (they are not really banks anymore; they are financial-gambling companies that include banking to finance their gambling addiction) you know that the U.S. governnment will bail you out with welfare for the rich. 

Poor welfare recipients -- who were dramatically downsized as a result of "welfare reform" in 1996 -- never took our hard-earned money and wagered it in a game of roulette, but the Wall Street "free market" freeloaders did: to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.

What happened on Wall Street was not due to poor people over reaching; it was the result of super-rich people gambling with the fate of our economy (as allowed by the systematic "Reagan Revolution" de-regulation), losing it all (as the mainstream financial media -- particularly television -- cheered them on), and then asking for hundreds of billions of dollars in limousine welfare.

There was nothing free about the Republican "free market" mantra of cutting taxes and letting our financial industry run loose with our hard-earned money.  These "masters of the universe" in the financial industry got enormous tax cuts, deregulation, multiple homes, servants, mistresses and the like -- and we got the privilege of picking up the highest welfare check in history due to their failure at the gaming tables.

Socialism for the Wall Street barons and a "free market" mugging for the rest of us.

They picked our pockets clean.

‘Fair and Balanced’ Fox News allows only Republicans to debate Obama’s budget. from Think Progress

This morning on Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace welcomed Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) to discuss President Obama's budget plan — with not a single congressional Democrat or White House representative present to defend it. Predictably, Kyl and Ryan attacked Obama's budget (Kyl called it "terrifying"); Fox News gave Obama's critics an 15-plus minute opportunity to slam the budget without interruption.

REST http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/01/fns-gop-dominance/

Rick Santelli's rant was a preplanned right-wing scam to torpedo Obama's economic agenda from Crooks and Liars

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEZB4taSEoA

Just another day and just another conservative scandal. I thought the organization around Rick Santelli's rant was a little too smooth, a little too perfectly orchestrated for something not to be very, very wrong about it. That's why I've been so vocal about it and that's why it infuriated me so much, but I had no idea how deep this deception went.

The right wing moneychangers tried once again to control the message and lie to the American people to push their agenda that only hurts America. The right wing elite hated FDR because he turned on his own class of people and put the average American worker ahead of them. They were shocked that he would care about the state of our nation over the vested interests in a very small few. I did write that Rick's behavior was indicative of most talking heads that appear on the Wall Street shows because they are slaves to the very wealthy. These same people are terrified that Barack Obama may indeed reach America in the same way that FDR reached into the hearts of a depressed and hopeless American population that was beat down by the the depression back in 1929.

Rick Santelli is a traitor to this country and he should be fired immediately along with all those that participated in this fraud. The rest should be exposed and made to answer for this charade.
What a great job of reporting by Mark Ames and Yasha Levine of Playboy:

Last week, CNBC correspondent Rick Santelli rocketed from being a little-known second-string correspondent to a populist hero of the disenfranchised, a 21st-century Samuel Adams, the leader and symbol of the downtrodden American masses suffering under the onslaught of 21st century socialism and big government. Santelli's "rant" last-week calling for a "Chicago Tea Party" to protest President Obama's plans to help distressed American homeowners rapidly spread across the blogosphere and shot right up into White House spokesman Robert Gibbs' craw, whose smackdown during a press conference was later characterized by Santelli as "a threat" from the White House. A nationwide "tea party" grassroots Internet protest movement has sprung up seemingly spontaneously, all inspired by Santelli, with rallies planned today in cities from coast to coast to protest against Obama's economic policies.

REST http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/rick-santellis-rant-was-coordinated-eff

New GOP Lie: Regulations are the Problem from Pensito Review

More of this doesn't help

Jon already noted the falsity of Gov. Bobby Jindal's (R-La.) assertion that regulations were responsible for the Bush administration's failed response to Hurricane Katrina. So why did Jindal, who later admitted things didn't exactly happen the way he said they did in his rebuttal to Pres. Obama's "state of the union" speech, go there?

According to a local editorial, written presciently before either speech, Republicans intend to use stimulating the economy as an excuse to gut regulations. And loosening regulations, if anyone remembers, is at the heart of the economic problem. Anne Schindler, in Folio Weekly, a northeast Florida alternative weekly whose articles are unfortunately not available online, detailed how Republican legislators in Florida are making the same play.

Lobbyists' arguments are simple, if a bit non-linear: Though regulations have nothing to do with the collapsing real estate market, developers want to ease regulations in order to kickstart business

While lawmakers desperately plug budget holes and draft legislation aimed at restarting Florida's failing economy, development lobbyists are descending on Tallahassee…This argument is simple, if a bit non-linear: Though regulations have nothing to do with the collapsing real estate market, developers want to ease regulations in order to kickstart business.

…Lobbyists working for Associated Industries…[are] distributing a booklet titled "Economic Stimulus Package 2.0," which calls for "reductions in regulatory red tape as a way to stimulate business activity." What kind of "red tape" do they want to hack through?

You can guess. Schindler goes on to enumerate bills that would eliminate impact fees, which help switch the burdens of infrastructure needed for new development from the taxpayers to the speculators, and builders who propose to "streamline" environmental permitting, which is Republican-speak for "Let the party start." But, she says, these modest government measures are not the problem.

REST http://www.pensitoreview.com/2009/03/01/new-gop-line-regulations-are-the-problem/

Vanden Huevel rips Rove: ‘It’s laughable for you to talk about fiscal responsibility.’ from Think Progress

Today on ABC's This Week, Karl Rove slammed the cost of President Obama's new budget. The Nation's Katrina Vanden Heuvel quickly fired back at Rove's newly-discovered sense of fiscal responsibility, observing that Rove and President Bush "helped plunge this nation into trillion dollars of debt":

VANDEN HEUEVEL: But, Mr. Rove –

ROVE: Call me Karl.

VANDEN HEUVEL: It's laughable for you to talk about fiscal responsibility from someone who helped plunge this nation into trillion dollars of debt, through tax cuts for the very rich and a war we never should have fought. And also starving the beast. Starving government has been a Republican role in terms of government. And, therefore, when George asks why government hasn't functioned, people have not seen the role of government improving the conditions of their lives for decades.

Watch it:

REST http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/01/vanden-huevel-rove/