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Will Lockheed's Rival Crash and Burn? By Rich Smith Investors know the saying: "Bulls make money, bears make money, but pigs get slaughtered." If you stumble onto a "good thing," don't get greedy -- take a fair profit. France's Dassault would be wise to heed that lesson. Yesterday, DefenseNews.com reported that Dassault has run into trouble in negotiations to sell the United Arab Emirates a fleet of Rafale fighter jets. The UAE wanted to purchase several dozen of the jets to replace its 63 French Mirage fighters. But a deal that was supposed to cost somewhere between $2.5 billion and...

Late last year, Republican Congressman Fred Upton, who co-sponsored the infamous ban on the current generation of inexpensive incandescent light bulbs included in the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act, was desperate to secure conservative support for his bid to become Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, the same committee in which he had introduced the despised ban three years earlier. He therefore promised that one of his first acts would be to advance legislation that would repeal the very light bulb ban he had once championed. Upton’s ploy succeeded, and in January of this year, Speaker of the...

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama will nominate businessman John Bryson to lead the Commerce Department, a White House official said Tuesday. Bryson's appointment brings another private sector player into an administration that has been making a concerted effort to improve its relationship with the business community.

New evidence of CFLs causing fires -- even exploding -- as well as new environmental concerns have come to light since my article The CFL Fraud published.  Here are some of the additional fires:  "I had one of these CFL's in my garage socket, and it blew a component (not the glass corkscrew) and caught fire.  Fortunately, I was standing four feet away at the time.  I turned off the power and smothered the bulb with a towel." LINK "I heard a sizzling sound like bacon, looked in the direction of the sound and watch the CFL burst into flame...

General Electric Co. reported a 77% increase in first-quarter earnings, lifted by marked improvement at its GE Capital financing arm and gains at most of its industrial units. The company also boosted its quarterly dividend by a penny to 15 cents. The move marks GE's third dividend increase in the past year, although the payout remains well short of GE's 31-cent dividend before the financial crisis and economic downturn. Many companies have been boosting dividends, looking to give cash back to shareholders as the need to hoard it wanes amid an improved economy.

President Barack Obama has been unabashed in his close association with General Electric CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt, including naming him to head the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Obama has continued to shower such honors and attention on Immelt despite the fact that GE has avoided paying ANY taxes. Indeed, GE has demanded a tax benefit of $3.2 billion. Now, GE has posted a 77% increase in profits while paying less taxes than any of its factory workers. Investors are doing well even if the taxpayers are getting killed. The company increased its quarterly dividend for the third time...

General Electric paid no American taxes in 2010, the New York Times reports: The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States. Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion. That may be hard to fathom for the millions of American business owners and households now preparing their own returns, but low taxes are nothing new for G.E. The company has been cutting the percentage of its American profits paid to the Internal Revenue Service for years, resulting in...

In America today, the biggest recipients of handouts are not poor people. They're corporations. General Electric CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt is super-close to President Obama. The president named Immelt chairman of his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Before that, Immelt was on Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. He's a regular companion when Obama travels abroad to hawk American exports. (Why does business need government to do that?) "Jeff Immelt is perhaps the CEO who is most cozy with President Obama," says journalist Tim Carney. "General Electric is structuring their business around where government is going ... high-speed rail, solar, wind....

Thanks to a nuclear-industry practice known as channeling law, General Electric (GE: 19.59, 0.00, 0.00%) doesn’t appear to be on the hook for liabilities related to the nuclear crisis at Japanese reactors designed 40 years ago by the blue-chip conglomerate. Since the magnitude 9.0 earthquake that has paralyzed Japan, GE’s stock has slumped as much as 7.4%, in part due to worries about its legal exposure to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility, which is said to be teetering near a nuclear catastrophe. However, analysts believe GE has little to worry about from a legal perspective and its bottom line may...

The warnings were stark and issued repeatedly as far back as 1972: If the cooling systems ever failed at a “Mark 1” nuclear reactor, the primary containment vessel surrounding the reactor would probably burst as the fuel rods inside overheated. Dangerous radiation would spew into the environment.

Some 40% of the roughly 700 waivers issued on Obamacare have gone to the Democrats’ liberal allies in the labor unions who, ironically enough, campaigned long and hard to get Obamacare passed. But now we learn that waivers from Obamacare isn’t where the cronyism is going to end. Guess who just got a big, fat waiver from new EPA rules? Why, none other Obama’s good friend General Electric whose CEO Jeff Immelt is one of Obama’s economic advisers. I wonder how long it will take someone to challenge this selective enforcement of the law in court. After all, it surely...

President Obama is continuing his outreach to American business, though the principal business he wants to reach out to is General Electric. Mr. Obama seems to have decided that what's good for GE is good for America, or at least for himself. It has been a banner year in government largesse for America's fourth-largest corporation. This month, the Federal Communications Commission approved the 51 percent/49 percent NBC Universal joint venture between Comcast and GE. Last week, GE announced a White House-backed plan for another joint venture with a Chinese avionics company. Mr. Obama capped the good news by naming GE...

Technology Transfer: During the visit of China's president, and as China's new stealth fighter takes to the sky, America's top jet engine manufacturer agrees to provide Beijing with state-of-the-art aircraft technology. The aircraft industry remains one of America's strongest manufacturing sectors, providing needed jobs and industrial sales. Already buffeted by the heavily subsidized European Airbus, it may also face stiffer competition one day from a Chinese behemoth buying what American technology it cannot steal. General Electric plans this week to sign a joint-venture agreement under which it will share its most sophisticated airplane electronics, including technology from Boeing's 787 Dreamliner,...

Last Night On "TingleBall", Chris Matthews continued his rants on Sarah Palin as if she was the primary culprit behind the Saturday Shootings. He put together a compilation Sarah Palin video with bits of her "Reloading Related Remarks",and in the video,there is a carefully edited bit of Palin shooting the caribou/reindeer.The shooting of the deer was the focus.Chrissy Tingles Matthews actually thinks that the average American will believe that Sarah Palin shooting the deer is the Primary Reason A Lunatic Went On A Shooting Spree In Tuscon! Could a cable news anchor BE ANY MORE IGNORANT? !!

The General Electric-Rolls Royce F136 alternate engine for the Joint Strike Fighter program looked increasingly vulnerable Dec. 15 when efforts to prolong the controversial program appeared to be losing steam in Congress. In separate but related actions Dec. 14-15, defense lawmakers and their aides said they have worked out a quick compromise to help pass defense authorization legislation for Fiscal 2011, not including an earmark for the engine, while a Senate Democratic appropriations proposal that included F136 language ran into growing conservative opposition. The authorization measure – stripped down after a provision to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy stopped...

General Electric and Rolls-Royce have been granted a two-week breathing space by the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) to continue tests of the endangered F136 Joint Strike Fighter alternate engine. GE-Rolls says the JPO “has enabled us to find a way to stretch the funding” for continued testing of the F136 until Dec. 17, the date earlier indicated as a possible extension by the development team. The change was made possible, the JPO says, by the program execution to date. “The JPO has modified the contract accordingly, and there is no indication that a stop-work order will be issued,” GE-Rolls...

BRISTOL — America’s most popular radio talk show host, Rush Limbaugh, blasted Bristol the other day for supposedly making off with some of the $3.3 trillion in loans given to businesses by the Federal Reserve during the recession. While the charge is false – even absurd given the city’s paltry place in the financial arena – Limbaugh didn’t stop there. He described Bristol to his millions of listeners as nothing more than ESPN. “That’s all that’s there: ESPN and a couple of cheap hotels,” Limbaugh said on his nationally syndicated show Thursday. That was more than enough to stir Bristol’s...

An important skirmish in the battle over military spending is taking place in this industrial suburb of Cincinnati. At stake is a program to develop an alternate engine for the Joint Strike Fighter, a stealthy, supersonic jet supposed to be the backbone of the U.S. fighter fleet for the next three decades. For the past four years, Congress has funded the development of the second engine against the wishes of the Pentagon, which maintains that only a Pratt & Whitney engine should be funded. View Full Image Reuters Congress could decide within days whether to fund a second engine for...

The failure of the F136 engine in late September resulted from a “seal clearance” in the fan that was set too tight, causing friction. “The issue with engine 008 was unique to that engine,” GE spokesman Rick Kennedy said in an email. “No modification [will be] required to other engines.” Engines 05 and 07 continue to run well in tests. The program could ill afford any bad news at this time. The Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen Norton Schwartz, appeared to open the door to a compromise with GE and Rolls Royce over the F136 when he said they...

An announced engine selection for Israel's first batch of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters has sparked a new dispute between both rival manufacturers. Pratt & Whitney says the company has received a verbal commitment by Israel to buy the F135 engine to power the first batch of 20 F-35s ordered under a $2.75 billion agreement signed last week. The General Electric/Rolls-Royce team developing the F136 alternate engine claims the selection process remains ongoing. "We fully anticipate we will have an opportunity to compete with the F136" in Israel, GE says. The controversy leaves in doubt the first potential engine selection by...