So much for keeping the special interests at bay.

For all the talk about reforming government, the bulk of the guests at Monday’s Fiscal Responsibility Summit are from groups with clear investments in the Obama administration.

Aside from the 64 representatives from the Obama administration and Congress, a sampling of the 56 “community leaders and stakeholders” shows that no less than seven union chiefs, 10 organizations advancing racial and ethnic concerns, 10 progressive think tanks and advocacy groups, three universities, three health care associations and at least six interests groups for women, seniors, disabled and gay rights groups were in attendance.

Six conservative think tanks and advocacy groups, two health policy organizations and four business associations along with one law firm specializing in Wall Street mergers, one retirement and financial services fund, a John McCain adviser and a representative from the Congressional Budget Office rounded out the guest list.

Unions
John Gage, American Federation of Government Employees
John Sweeney, AFL-CIO
Gerry McEntee, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
Randi Weingarten, American Federation of Teachers
Anna Burger, Change to Win
Dennis Van Roekel, National Education Association
Andy Stern, Service Employees Union International

Health Care Associations
Richard Umbdenstock, American Hospital Association
Nancy Neilson , American Medical Association
Becky Patton, American Nurses Association

Health Policy Foundations
Karen Davis, Commonwealth Fund
Drew Altman, Kaiser Family Foundation

Racial and Ethnic Interest Groups
Karen Narasaki, Asian American Justice Center (AAJC)
Dr. Ho Tran, Asian Pacific Islanders American Health Forum (APIAHF)
Gary Flowers, Black Leadership Forum
Eleanor Hinton Hoytt, Black Womens Health Imperative
Maya Rockeymoore, Congressional Black Caucus Foundation
Hilary Shelton, NAACP
Jackie Johnson Pata, National Congress of American Indians
Janet Murguia, National Council of La Raza
Marc Morial, National Urban League (NY)

Seniors, Women, Disabled, Gay Rights Groups
Bill Novelli, AARP
Ed Coyle, Alliance for Retired Americans
Marty Ford, Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities
Ellie Smeal, Feminist Majority
Joe Salomonese, Human Rights Campaign
Heidi Hartmann, Institute for Women’s Policy

Left-Leaning Think Tanks and Advocacy Groups
Alice Rivlin, Brookings Institution
Roger Hickey, Campaign for America’s Future
John Podesta, Center for American Progress
Larry Korb, Center for American Progress
Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research
Robert Greenstein, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Lawrence Mishel, Economic Policy Institute
John Cavanagh, Institue for Policy Studies
Barbara B. Kennelly, National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare
Al From, Progressive Policy Institute
Robert Reischauer, Urban Institute

Right-Leaning Think Tanks and Advocacy Groups
Kevin Hassitt, American Enterprise Institute
Maya MacGuinneas, Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget
Bob Bixby, Concord Coalition
Stewart Butler, Heritage Foundation
David Walker, Peter G. Peterson Foundation
Peter Peterson, Peter G. Peterson Foundation
Ron Pollack, Families USA

Business Interest Groups
John Castellani, Business Roundtable
Joe Minarek, Center for Economic Development
Martin Regalia, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Todd Stottlemyer, National Association of Independent Businesses

Universities
Bill Spriggs, Howard University
Fernando Torres-Gil, UCLA
Michael Graetz, Yale

Wall Street Law Firm
Fred Goldberg, Skadden

Retirement and Financial Services Firm
Roger Ferguson, Teachers Insurance and Annuities Association-College Retirement Education Fund

Former John McCain Adviser
Douglas Holtz-Eakin

Congressional Budget Office
Doug Elmendorf, Director

Dow, S&P 500 fall to 1997 levels as sagging confidence pulls stocks lower; Dow falls 251

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street has turned the clock back to 1997. Investors unable to extinguish their worries about a recession that has no end in sight dumped stocks again Monday. The Dow Jones industrial average tumbled 251 points to its lowest close since Oct. 28, 1997, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 index logged its lowest finish since April 11, 1997.

All the major indexes slid more than 3 percent. The Dow is just over 100 points from 7,000.

“People left and right are throwing in the towel,” said Keith Springer, president of Capital Financial Advisory Services.

Investors pounded most financial stocks even as government agencies led by the Treasury Department said they would launch a revamped bank rescue program this week. The plan includes the option of increasing government ownership in financial institutions without having to pour more taxpayer money into them.

Although the government has said it doesn’t want to nationalize banks, many investors are clearly still concerned that this could be a possibility as banks continue to suffer severe losses because of the recession. They’re also worried that banks’ losses will keep escalating as the recession sends more borrowers into default.

“The biggest thing I see here is the incredible pessimism,” Springer said. “The government is doing a lousy job of alleviating fears.”

The Treasury and other agencies issued a statement after The Wall Street Journal reported that Citigroup is in talks for the government to boost its stake in the bank to as much as 40 percent. Analysts said the market, which initially rose on the statement, wanted more details of the government’s plans.

“It’s only a very partial picture of what we may get,” said Quincy Krosby, chief investment strategist at The Hartford. “This proverbial lack of clarity is damaging market psychology.”

Meanwhile, technology stocks fell after The Journal reported that Yahoo Inc.’s new chief executive plans to reorganize the company. But the selling came across the market as pessimism about the recession and its toll on companies deepened.

“There’s no where to hide anymore,” said Jim Herrick, director of equity trading at Baird & Co.

The market’s decline extends massive losses from last week when the major stock indexes tumbled more than 6 percent. The major indexes plunged through the lows they reached in late November, at the height of the credit crisis.

“There’s no main driver of the down day,” said Ryan Detrick, senior technical strategist at Schaeffer’s Investment Research. “There’s just so much skepticism in the overall market and (the question is) is the government doing proper things to get us out of this problem. Obviously the stock market is voting no.”

According to preliminary calculations, the Dow dropped 250.89, or 3.41 percent, to 7,114.78. It last closed this low on Oct. 28, 1997 when it finished at 6,971.32. The Dow hasn’t traded below the 7,000 mark since October 1997.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 26.72, or 3.47 percent, to 743.33. It was the lowest close since April 11, 1997, when it ended at 737.65.

The technology-laden Nasdaq composite index dropped 53.51, or 3.71 percent, to 1,387.72.

The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies fell 16.38 or 3.99 percent, to 394.58.

Declining issues outnumbered advancers by more than 6 to 1 on the New York Stock Exchange, where volume came to 1.61 billion shares compared with heavy volume of 2.12 billion shares on Friday.

Among tech stocks, Hewlett-Packard Co. fell $1.96, or 6.3 percent, to $29.28, and Intel Corp. dove 70 cents, or 5.5 percent, to $12.08.

Other big decliners included General Electric Co., which dropped to a 14-year low of $8.80, but ended down 53 cents, or 5.7 percent, at $8.85. Aluminum producer Alcoa Inc. tumbled 48 cents, or 7.6 percent, to $5.81.

Some financial stocks managed to gain, including Citigroup, which rose 19 cents, or 9.7 percent, to $2.14, and Bank of America Corp., which gained 12 cents, or 3.2 percent, to $3.91.

Bond prices were mixed. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, fell to 2.77 percent from 2.79 percent late Friday. The yield on the three-month T-bill, considered one of the safest investments, rose to 0.28 percent from 0.26 percent Friday.

The dollar was mixed against other major currencies, while gold prices fell.

Light, sweet crude fell $1.59 to settle at $38.44 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Overseas, Britain’s FTSE 100 fell 0.99 percent, Germany’s DAX index fell 1.95 percent, and France’s CAC-40 slipped 0.82 percent. Earlier, Japan’s Nikkei stock average fell 0.54 percent.

We posted a video about the new Village At Robinhood shopping Center back on the 5th showing a nearly completed Harris Teeter along with BB&T, McDonald’s and others. Well in driving by the shopping center this past weekend I noticed things were a bit different:

It appears Harris Teeter has pulled out before they even opened. The signage is down and no further work has been done for at least a week according to local employees. We were told everything was online to open the doors the first week of March then all of a sudden a crew came out and took down all signage and that was the last anyone has seen go on. This would appear to be part of the company announcement that they will be cutting back from 19 new stores in 2009 to 16. So what happens to a strip mall when the anchor store closes before opening?

Friday, February 20, 2009 8:41 PM

WASHINGTON – In sheer size, the economic measures announced by President Barack Obama to address “a crisis unlike we’ve ever known” are remarkable, rivaling and in many cases dwarfing the New Deal programs that Franklin D. Roosevelt famously created to battle the Great Depression.

Winning approval was a political tour-de-force for the new administration.

Yet gloom and uncertainty persist about the plan’s ability to deliver a cure for the economy’s severe ailments.

Stocks plunged to six-year lows after the burst of bill signings, bailout announcements and presidential pledges.

And polls show Americans are increasingly worried about losing jobs and not having enough money to pay their bills.

Why the skepticism?

Read the rest of this entry »

Feb 22, 4:35 AM (ET)

By MATTHEW LEE

BEIJING (AP) – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton wants China to continue investing in the United States because the two countries’ financial futures are closely tied together.

“I certainly do think that the Chinese government and central bank are making a smart decision by continuing to invest in Treasury bonds,” she said during an interview Sunday with the popular talk show “One on One.”"It’s a safe investment. The United States has a well-deserved financial reputation.”

To boost the economy, the U.S has to incur more debt, she said, shortly before departing for Washington. “It would not be in China’s interest if we were unable to get our economy moving,” Clinton said. “So by continuing to support American Treasury instruments, the Chinese are recognizing our interconnection. We are truly going to rise or fall together. We are in the same boat and, thankfully, we are rowing in the same direction.

“Our economies are so intertwined, the Chinese know that to start exporting again to their biggest market, namely the United States, the United States has to take some very drastic measures with this stimulus package, which means we have to incur more debt.”

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Plan Would Cut War Spending, Increase Taxes on the Wealthy

By Lori Montgomery and Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, February 22, 2009; A01

President Obama is putting the finishing touches on an ambitious first budget that seeks to cut the federal deficit in half over the next four years, primarily by raising taxes on businesses and the wealthy and by slashing spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, administration officials said.

In addition to tackling a deficit swollen by the $787 billion stimulus package and other efforts to ease the nation’s economic crisis, the budget blueprint will press aggressively for progress on the domestic agenda Obama outlined during the presidential campaign. This would include key changes to environmental policies and a major expansion of health coverage that he hopes to enact later this year.

A summary of Obama’s budget request for the fiscal year that begins in October will be delivered to Congress on Thursday, with the complete, multi-hundred-page document to follow in April. But Obama plans to unveil his goals for scaling back record deficits and rebuilding the nation’s costly and inefficient health care system tomorrow, when he addresses lawmakers and budget experts at a White House summit on restoring “fiscal responsibility” to Washington.

Yesterday in his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama said he is determined to “get exploding deficits under control” and said his budget request is “sober in its assessments, honest in its accounting, and lays out in detail my strategy for investing in what we need, cutting what we don’t, and restoring fiscal discipline.”

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Having trouble with your computer? You’ve come to the right place. Even if you don’t know a computer language (or don’t want to), you can solve several common PC problems on your own, using the resources listed here.

Today’s Windows-based PCs make life easier than ever for both home enthusiasts and working professionals. But every piece of hardware and each software application you introduce to your system comes with its own unique requirements, and unfortunately, they don’t always “play well” together.

If it falls into the wrong hands, it can be used for tracking, stalking, identity theft, and counterfeiting. If the government continues to stick its head in the sand and ignore the very real privacy and security threats that researchers, civil liberties organizations, and even industry groups have repeatedly brought to its attention, the American people will pay a very high price.