Flight Taxes Hiked to Bail Out Banks: It's Nothing to do With Environment, Says Darling

Flight taxes are being raised to help bail out the banks, Alistair Darling admitted yesterday.
In an extraordinary intervention, the Chancellor said the higher air passenger duty being introduced tomorrow was needed to plug gaps in the national finances.
He made no attempt to justify the move - which will add £340 to the ticket for a family of four flying long haul - on environmental grounds, the official reason for the tax.
Airlines warned yesterday that the tax would cost thousands of jobs and do nothing to combat global warming.'

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US Banks May Need More Govt Support to Cleanse Bad Assets

The treasury department should consider expanding programmes to cleanse troubled assets from bank balance sheets if current efforts fail to restart markets or if economic conditions worsen, a US bailout watchdog panel said on Tuesday.

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Darling is Lining up More Bailout Money For Banks

Public finance forecasts to be unveiled by Chancellor Alistair Darling on Wednesday are expected to include provisions for more funds to bail out ailing banks and building societies hit by the credit crunch.

In what is expected to be the most austere Budget for decades, sources close to the Government have said further cash for direct support for individual financial institutions has been earmarked. "Though the really big rescues are now in place, the authorities are aware that there are financial institutions that may not be able to survive without further help," said a Government insider.

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And you the british taxpayer will just roll over and take it like the good little illuminati bitches you are! Morons You deserve everything you get!

A Lexicon of Disappointment

All is not well in Obamafanland. It's not clear exactly what accounts for the change of mood. Maybe it was the rancid smell emanating from Treasury's latest bank bailout. Or the news that the president's chief economic adviser, Larry Summers, earned millions from the very Wall Street banks and hedge funds he is protecting from reregulation now. Or perhaps it began earlier, with Obama's silence during Israel's Gaza attack.

Whatever the last straw, a growing number of Obama enthusiasts are starting to entertain the possibility that their man is not, in fact, going to save the world if we all just hope really hard.

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AIG: Billions Dished Out in the Dark

This is crazy! Forget the bleating of Rush Limbaugh; the problem is not with the quite reasonable and, if anything, underfunded stimulus package, which in any case will be debated long and hard in Congress. The problem is with what is not being debated: the far more expensive Wall Street bailout that is being pushed through--as in the case of the latest AIG rescue--in secret, hurried deal-making primarily by the unelected secretary of the treasury and the chairman of the Federal Reserve.

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