Free Republic

The federal government agreed Sunday to take unprecedented steps to stabilize Citigroup Inc. by moving to guarantee close to $300 billion in troubled assets weighing on the bank's books, according to people familiar with details of the plan. Treasury has agreed to inject an additional $20 billion in capital into Citigroup under terms of the deal hashed out between the bank, the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Treasury officials will charge a higher interest rate for the capital injection -- 8% for the first few years -- than it has charged to dozens of...

Update 2: Sources with knowledge of the deal say government officials are now getting cold feet over the plan to buy the troubled assets from Citigroup. Situation is still fluid and people close to the company say some sort of a deal will likely be worked out tonight. one other option being considered now is for the government to put money into citigroup. The problem with buying the assets from citi is political: people close to the deal know that other firms will line up and ask the government to purchase their troubled assets as well knowing that all brokerage...

“You just sit and you worry,” said Pat Weber, a construction administrator in Fennville who was laid off more than a year ago. “In the last year, I’ve put in for more than 100 jobs. I stopped counting after 110. It’s just so defeating.” All around Fennville and its neighbors here in southwest Michigan, front lawns are peppered with for-sale signs and merchants complain about slow days. But while this remains a beautiful place with none of the obvious blight of Detroit on the other side of the state, residents say the hardship beneath the surface is very real. It...

FR won't let me post bloomberg content but the link is at Drudge.

he CEOs of GM, Ford and Chrysler may have told Congress that they will likely go out of business without a bailout yet that has not stopped them from traveling in style, not even First Class is good enough. All three CEOs - Rick Wagoner of GM, Alan Mulally of Ford, and Robert Nardelli of Chrysler - exercised their perks Tuesday by flying in corporate jets to DC. Wagoner flew in GM's $36 million luxury aircraft to tell members of Congress that the company is burning through cash, asking for $10-12 billion for GM alone. Wagoner's private jet trip to...

"I'm very much attracted to the prepackaged bankruptcy idea," said Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., who held auto bailout hearings Tuesday as chairman of the Senate banking committee. He was referring to a method of seeking Chapter 11 protection whereby a company would negotiate plans with creditors before filing for bankruptcy, thus speeding up the process. "I believe their best option would be some type of Chapter 11 bankruptcy, where they can renegotiate — get rid of the management," the banking committee's ranking Republican, Richard Shelby of Alabama, said Wednesday on CBS' "Early Show.

Falling oil prices will take a bite out of Alaska's state budget and put a damper on oil-field investment, Gov. Sarah Palin told a conference of major North Slope oil operators on Wednesday. Palin, the Republican party's vice-presidential nominee for the recent U.S. presidential election, said the days of oil-revenue budget surpluses are over. "It's a wakeup call. We preached, when oil was at $140, that we had to prepare for the day when prices would drop," Palin told reporters. "We realized it today." Palin has until December 15 to present operating and capital budgets for fiscal 2010. She was...

Nonetheless, sources close to Hillary Clinton have told Newsday and other news outlets that she is still not sure she wants the job. "He [Obama] is trying to figure out how to handle Bill, and, quite frankly, she's trying to figure out how to handle Bill," said a source familiar with the confirmation process. "You can't have foreign dictators financing the pet projects of a husband of a secretary of state."

Hillary Clinton would be "a very good selection" as secretary of state, the Senate's second-ranking Republican, Jon Kyle of Arizona, said in an interview with Fox News Sunday morning. "It seems to me she's got the experience. She's got the temperament for it. I think she would be well received around the world," Kyl said. Sen. Byron Dorgan (R, N.D.) told Fox he didn't think she would have trouble winning confirmation. "She's worked across the aisle, has good bipartisan relationships" and "would have instant credibility around the world," he added. The U.S. has "a lot of relationships to repair and...

She failed to save John McCain from presidential election doom, but Sarah Palin, the Republican senator’s controversial running mate, may yet emerge as the saviour of the American publishing industry. Literary agents are queueing up to sign her to a book deal that could earn her up to $7m. With Barack Obama’s election victory certain to generate dozens of volumes from politicians, strategists and journalists – and with another shelfload of memoirs expected from members of President George W Bush’s administration – Palin’s personal account of her tumultuous introduction to national politics is widely regarded as the book most likely...

A strategist for a rival potential presidential rival e-mails to express amusement with Gov. Sarah Palin's come one, come all PR strategy: "Fine with us. Let her be the sacrificial lamb for 2012." Which means: a lot of the folks who you'd think are angling to run in 2012 are certainly preparing to do so, but they're looking to and thinking about 2016....

Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, the titan of Alaska politics convicted of felony charges last month, fell behind by more than 800 votes Wednesday as the count resumed in his re-election bid. Democrat Mark Begich, the two-term mayor of Anchorage, began the day down more than 3,200 votes but went up by 814 as officials resumed their counting of early and absentee ballots. The tally was 132,196 to 131,382. Neither side was claiming victory or conceding defeat, with tens of thousands of outstanding ballots. "I've always said that this would be a close race," Begich said in a statement. "I'm confident...

The elections division still has over 10,000 ballots left to count today and thousands more through next week, but the latest numbers show Mark Begich leading Sen. Ted Stevens 125,019 to 125,016. The new numbers, reflecting nearly 43,000 absentee ballots counted today, are from all over the state. Election night, Ted Stevens led the Democratic Begich by about 3,000 votes. The state today is counting a total of about 60,000 absentee and questioned ballots. The Division of Elections said it expects to count roughly 35,000 additional absentee and questioned ballots over the next week.

Sarah Palin responds to her critics at the liberal blogs.

The rehabilitation of Palin has begun. They got their messiah in power and now it's time to think of the bottom line. Love her or hate her and there doesn't seem to be much middle ground with Sarah, people can't stop talking about her. We obsess about her. The liberal nuts still obsess about her. And the networks know that to destroy her future prospects is to destroy a valuable future source of ad revenue in the biggest reality tv show there is.......the fact is they need Sarah rehabilitated to run in the primaries in 2012 to save their networks....

The reason elite opinion makers are set on destroying her is fear. They sense that like Ronald Reagan, and unlike, say, Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty, she really, genuinely doesn't care what they think, and for that reason is willing and able to go over their heads and make a strong, direct appeal to voters. Some of them may even remember that Ronald Reagan's negatives were as high as his positives in the polls as late as 10 days before he carried 44 states in 1980. This is a time when elite opinion, including its conservative wing, is unanimous in...

If this was always going to be a democratic year, does what you know now about Obama change how you felt in the primaries? I know it's a disgusting choice between the two, but even Ann Coulter supported Hillary over the Hussein and even McCain.

On accusations of her going rogue during the campaign: “So, as days went on, it was good, it was fine. But being quite independent, just like John McCain is also, yes, maybe there is some characterizing of me going rogue when once in a while I would say something that -- hey, I said it from the heart. I believed in going off script once in a while in some of the rallies in order to really reiterate, perhaps, something that I believed about John McCain.” “Maybe it wasn't written in the script, but so what. Geez, if this is...

If you watched the campaign closely, you saw Piper Palin often at her Mother’s side. I have no idea what will happen in the Governor’s future…but Piper? She may end up President! Check out some of the pics of her:

We just returned from Gov. Sarah Palin's home in Wasilla, where we shared a wide-ranging, 30-minute interview with KTUU.