RUSH: Now, this is the genius that is going to fix our economy. This is on CNBC.com. Lawrence Summers, the National Economic Council, he’s one of the advisors. He’s said this about the stimulus and its effect on the economy.
SUMMERS: We saw data today for the first time, uh, that showed that the first $16 billion of the stimulus created over 30,000 jobs. So this is working, and the majority of the funds haven’t yet been paid out. I think you have to recognize that we’re in a very different place than we were nine months ago. No one talks about the economy being in ‘free fall.’
RUSH: Ah!
SUMMERS: GDP growth is actually likely to be positive for the next, uh, six months —
RUSH: Oh!
SUMMERS: — so I think we’re turning a corner.
RUSH: Oh!
SUMMERS: As that corner is, uh, turned, I think you’ll see recovery gather speed, aaaand you’ll start to see the unemployment rate coming down.
RUSH: We’ve been turning the corner since freaking June! ‘Thirty thousand jobs, and most of it hasn’t been paid out. Whoa, it’s going great! This is working.’ No one talks about the economy being in free fall anymore. They don’t? Food banks are running out of food. Let’s go to Fort Worth, Texas, KTVT, Channel 11, CBS Eyeball News. Here’s a montage of a report by Carol Cavazos about where the federal stimulus money is going. You’ll also hear a financial expert in there, a guy named Jim LaCamp.
CAVAZOS: Case in point: Creamy peanut butter. According to the government’s stimulus website, Clements Foods of Lewisville received $891,500 in stimulus money. They said it helped ‘create or save’ eight jobs, to produce 972,000 pounds of creamy peanut butter.
LACAMP: That’s a lot of money per job.
CAVAZOS: Fort Worth-based Lockheed Martin received more than $4.6 million and said it created or saved 2.2 jobs.
RUSH: Whoa!
CAVAZOS: Most of the money went to paint hangar floors at Edwards Air Force Base in California. And Applied Systems Engineering in Benbrook received more than 400,000 stimulus dollars without creating or saving any jobs but to buy six microwave transmitter tubes. Their marketing director, who wouldn’t talk on camera, said it would keep people busy.
RUSH: There’s your stimulus money at work for you. An enterprising local Eyeball News team in Fort Worth, Texas, is doing the dirty work. Did you hear this now? It was $891,500 in stimulus money to create or save eight jobs making peanut butter. My favorite is $4.6 million to Lockheed Martin to create or save 2.2 jobs painting hangar floors to keep people busy. There’s your stimulus money for you, folks. Oh, by the way, grab sound bite 21. This afternoon on Andrea Mitchell (NBC News, Washington) she interviewed Austan Goolsbee, another one of these elitist egghead Ivy Leaguers, an economic advisor. I think he’s economic advisor. Are you sure it’s not foreign policy?
Oh, by the way, the Vince Flynn book, I forgot to mention the title. Pursuit of Honor is the Vince Flynn book. So talking to Goolsbee, and she said, ‘What concern do you have about pay and bonuses? We see that the pay czar is clawing back money from Ken Lewis at Bank of America…’ Stop and think of this. They are taking back what he has earned this year, the CEO of Bank of America. They are taking the money back, they’re not just banning his salary next year. They’re taking money back from him he’s already earned! So she’s asking him about that. ‘At this stage do you think there needs to be a new policy especially for firms that took bailout money even if they paid it back in terms business?’
GOOLSBEE: Ken Feinberg’s role is exactly to be the person to provide some senseless analysis to figure out what is appropriate and what is not for recipients of government money. I think it points to the importance of financial regulatory reform that the president has been pushing, and that is in a coherent financial system, people should be getting rewarded for performing well, not for performing badly. And this should be a matter between shareholders and the executives at the companies that they hold the shares of.
RUSH: Well, what the hell have you got a pay czar involved for? You say the pay czar is going to decide what pay is appropriate, then you say it ought to be between the board of directors and the shareholders. And what happens if the board of directors is you? Which is what’s happening here. These people scare the hell out of me, folks, the stuff that’s happening here. Ted Turner says he wants to buy CNN! He couldn’t do any worse than whoever is running the place now. At least when Ted Turner ran it people watched it. He was on CNN. No! Bloomberg Television news. Betty Liu interviewed Ted Turner, and she said, ‘Sumner Redstone said earlier this year at a Milken conference that you selling Turner Broadcasting to TimeWarner was your downfall.’
TURNER: Yes.
LIU: I don’t know if you saw that comment from him.
TURNER: No, I didn’t, but he’s right. I made a mistake. I was tired.
RUSH: And then she said, ‘What do you think about the government bailout of banks and also the auto industry?’
TURNER: I hate to see stupidity being bailed out, because the auto industry in the United States was building cars that if they’d looked ahead, could have told you that those great big cars were going to be a lot of trouble.
LIU: And what about Wall Street, then? What about the banks?
TURNER: Well, they were lending too much money. It used to be that you had to have equity to borrow money. You had to put equity in your house, and you couldn’t get a car for no money down, either. You know, you had to have equity. I’m used to that, and I think it was a pretty good system. But I’m an old man now. You know, I’m an old fuddy-duddy. I do know that you can’t forever spend more than you make.
RUSH: Oh, yes, you can! We’re doing it. Old Ted’s become a real fuddy-duddy.