Notable News of the Week

1. Monday April 13, 2009: Governor Jennifer Granholm would support a graduated income tax. Now you all know I have supported Governor Granholm many times when others have not, but this is insane. Ted's comment: According to an article in Forbes magazine within the last 30 days, Michigan is the #5 most taxed state in the country. Now the Governor wants to raise the taxes even higher? Does she want to be able to say we are #1, the highest taxed state in the country? I would not want that title. Last year we had 2.5 million people leave Michigan and that number is not slowing down. Isn't it time our governmental bodies realize that we cannot support the State's current services. That, rather than raise taxes to cover the costs, it is time to start cutting back services, combining governmental bodies including state, county and city to reduce taxes, not increase them. Governor Granholm, if you keep raising taxes, anyone with money will simply leave the state.
2. Tuesday April 14, 2009 Bloomberg: The U.S. government is considering swapping some of the $13.4 billion General Motors Corp. owes it for an equity stake in a stripped-down version of the car maker. Then 2 hours later Reuters UK: GM bankruptcy fears drag down auto stocks. Ted's Comments: Well, what do you expect after last year's Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fiasco, where the government asked (told) them to make loans and provide liquidity to the markets and then took them over; causing the stocks to lose 80% of their value? Now they are about to do the same thing to an almost nonexistent GM stock value. If that is not enough, has anyone looked at how many jobs GM going into chapter 11 is going to cost this country? According to Fortune in 2006 GM had 335,000 employees, in 2007 GM had 266,000 employees and the 2008 estimates were 243,000 employees. Under the chapter 11 program GM will end up with less than 133,000 employees and it will probably affect another 500,000 employees of suppliers. That is a loss of over 702,0000 jobs in the last three years and that is probably low. No wonder the country is in a funk! Best not have all our money invested before the June 2009 GM chapter 11 deadline. We are going to want to see how this plays out.
3. Wednesday April 15, 2009 Bloomberg: Analysts estimate that profits at S&P 500 companies decreased for the seventh straight quarter in the January to March Period, the longest stretch of declines since at least the Great Depression. Ted's comments: This either means that we will start out of the mess we are currently in or we are out to set a 100 year record. For now we are slowly getting back into investments. However, we are very worried about the June 1, 2009 deadline for GM and will wait to put all our eggs back into investments until we see how that plays out.