No money was "handed out". It was loaned against collateral (mostly treasuries and GSE bonds). People are conflating the lending of last resort function of the Federal Reserve with the bailouts of the Treasury (TARP, et al). The whole reason Europe is on fire is because the ECB isn't the lender of last resort like the Federal Reserve is. We get to watch in real time as the second largest global currency evaporates in large part because it lacks this backstop.

The alternative was banks start to go bust because they could not finance their day to day activities. Would that have been a problem given how smoothly Lehman Brothers went? The few billion the banks made on the discount window was dwarfed by the hundreds of billions they were hemorrhaging in asset and loan losses. The LIBOR rates of the open market were crazy high, and there was no liquidity behind them so using those rates for a comparison to determine "what the banks made" isn't really proper accounting. As soon as there was liquidity available and interbank lending started again, the LIBOR rates fell dramatically.

Think of the headache involved counting all that collateral! 1,2,3,...7,699,999,000 7,700,000,000 bond units!

What is the state of the well on your grandparents property now? (I am curious, I am not implying anything nor am I taking sides in the debate)

Also, the study found methane in groundwater near gas wells (implying that the fraccing forced some gas out of the shale and into the water), they did not find fraccing fluids in the water. Thus, this is not a case of failed holding ponds spilling the fluid into the ground water. It could also be systemic failed well casings leaking gas into the ground and thus into the water supply, but I think that less likely.

"We found no evidence for contamination of drinking-water samples with deep saline brines or fracturing fluids."

If you read the fine print you will discover why GE got such a large tax credit:
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/40545/000119312510246292/d10q.htm
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/40545/000119312510173396/d10q.htm
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/40545/000004054509000071/frm10q.htm

Corporations pay taxes in the countries they operate in. They report financials for each of those countries, and they file taxes in each of those countries. GEFS also known as GE Capital is based in the US and its primary business here (which was giving out crap loans, but thats another story) was what generated the losses in 2008-9. So, the bulk of GE's losses in the 2008-9 meltdown came from its financial services, the bulk of those loses were conducted in the US and thus the bulk of their tax right offs did as well. The other business units in GE US operations are high revenue low margin businesses, and thus have little profit to offset against the losses.

It is patently unfair to include the entire results of the GE holding company's corporate profits, for which they pay taxes on to multiple countries, and then claim that they must be double taxed by the United States for business not conducted in the US. Granted, they locate a lot of their leasing business in low tax countries like Singapore and Ireland, but those profits are not "American Profits" if they leave them offshore.

As for that New York Times article, their smoking gun is that GE has been paying a smaller percentage of their overall profits to the IRS over the last 5 years. That is because their China, India, and Brazil business have grown like crazy in the last decade. They also bring this up after GE gets a monster tax credit from having GE Capital nearly implode in 2008, which skews the results of the last 2 years.

The key to the situation is this (and I quote from the NYtimes article):
"If G.E. financed the sale of a jet engine or generator in Ireland, for example, the company would no longer have to pay American tax on the interest income as long as the profits remained offshore." So if they take those profits from a subsidiary in Ireland and reinvest it all in their Irish business, they don't have to pay any taxes to the IRS on it. Is that wrong? I dunno, its been the law for over a decade. I think it was passed under Clinton. Since lately, the lions share of GE's profits have come from their financial services, the lions share of their taxes are subject to that law.

Why can't I feed the trolls? With proper care and feeding, we may be able to get them to breed in captivity :)
Mr Hedwards, I have an excellent education thank you. Please allow me to further yours. The GP was calling out a private institution for advocating business interests, as if this was somehow a terrible thing. Oh, and he used hyperbole, which I did as well in referencing Lenin.

Someone is standing a bit to the left of Lenin. Oh, and as far as cyber wars go, the one between 4chan and Youtube seems to be heating up!

You just described most of corporate america with your six steps.

Step #1 is very very plausible. One develops a potential working relationship with the target company and crafts an email to contain an innocuous looking document or link requested by the target. The link/document contains the latest exploit that has not been patched. The email is not suspicious because who would attack a potential business partner after all. It is an exploit that is preferably zero day and not yet in the virus/malware databases. Also, a new shell for the attack could be devised from the original code to insure it would be unrecognizable.

Step #4 can be obviated by infecting an admin's computer, and if I was targeting a company with a zero day unknown exploit, I would aim it at their IT guys.

Step #5a all networks are vulnerable to this sort of exploit, especially if the exploit is unknown to scanners & filters.

Step #5b if you root an admin's box, you can piggy back on him next time he does maintenance on *every* server and device he maintains.

I am surprised the list was only 100 companies. I assume every S&P 500 company has been penetrated to some degree.

Same thing with car and homeowners insurance. Both are a total waste of your time. You never need them and the insurance companies win. Just avoid having bad things happen to you and you will come out ahead.

Yes I was kidding.

If you must stay in the USA try the following: kill and eat the hearts of republicans (if you can find any that have one). Then you will gain their powers and be able to ignore your health problems until they go away. Do not move to Canada, their hockey team is bad. I recommend Switzerland or Sweden. If you don't like white people, try Singapore, Morocco, or Columbia. They all have better health care than the US. If you are picky about a country, check the WHO website. They have a list of countries with good health care.
If you have reached this point and are frothing at the mouth or hurling your mouse, lighten up and ebay yourself a sense of humor.

When you conflate 47 million uninsured with 9 million who "want" insurance, sure Issa's bill makes a little bit of sense. It wasn't extending Medicare it was extending the FEHBP to cover them. SEC. 8925 of HR 3438 says that non-federal employees have to pay the entire premium, which is a problem for the poor since there is no way in hell they could afford it. There is nothing wrong with making this plan available to non-federal employees if they want to pay for it, it just doesn't solve the problem of health care for poor people.

FYI, we pay for the uninsured health care already, when they show up to the emergency room. Only, when it is a chronic condition like diabetes it now costs 100 times as much to treat the disease with insulin than if they were detected as a borderline diabetic and could control it with diet. If they don't treat it with insulin, it will cost 10000 times or more since they will be getting ambulance rides with the following conditions: heart attack, stroke, kidney failure, blindness, and nerve & circulatory damage that can require amputation. Since 24 million americans have diabetes, it is kind of a problem if 2 million of them never see a doctor about it.

I know I will never convince you, but others who read this will be.