TV News LIES

It was July 12, 2007, and since then California has been living on borrowed money.

As in $21.5 billion worth of borrowed money, according to state Controller John Chiang: $16.5 billion borrowed from some of the state's 1,000-plus special funds, plus $5 billion in "revenue anticipation notes," which are basically money borrowed from private investors.

But, Chiang, whose office writes the state's checks, says California is about out of stopgap tricks to pay its bills and keep all its programs running.

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There is no way to know exactly how many billions of dollars in federal contracts American small businesses lost during the eight years of the Bush Administration. During President Bush's tenure, administration officials went to extreme lengths to make it difficult, if not impossible to obtain the government's records on small business contracting.

Under Bush, the United States Department of Justice went to federal court on several occasions to fight Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for the specific names of firms that had received federal small business contracts.

Since 2003, 15 federal investigations have found that Bush Administration officials have diverted billions of dollars in federal small business contracts to Fortune 500 firms and thousands of other large businesses in the U.S. and Europe. (http://www.asbl.com/documentlibrary.html)

Bank regulators closed two small banks on Friday, the first U.S. banks to fail this year but the latest in an upsurge that began last year as the struggling economy and falling home prices took their toll on financial institutions.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp said National Bank of Commerce of Berkeley, Illinois and Bank of Clark County of Vancouver, Washington were closing with other banks taking over their insured deposits.

In 2008, 25 banks were seized by officials, up from just 3 in 2007.

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Eighty-three of the nation's 100 largest corporations, including Citigroup, Bank of America and News Corp., had subsidiaries in offshore tax havens in 2007, and some of the companies received federal bailout funding, a government watchdog said Friday.

The Government Accountability Office released a report that said Bank of America Inc., Citigroup Inc. and Morgan Stanley all had more than 100 units in countries that maintain low or no taxes. The three financial institutions were included in the $700 billion financial bailout approved by Congress.

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The US government has seized control of Citigroup's staff Christmas party budget and set tight restrictions on the use of its corporate jet in exchange for its $45bn (£28bn) bail-out.

The measures are among a raft of restrictions on expenses detailed in the small print of filing made by Citi on New Year's Eve with the US financial regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In a memo to staff, Pandit said he and the chairman, Sir Win Bischoff, would forgo year-end bonuses for 2008 after the huge banking group lost three-quarters of its market value and was forced to go cap in hand to the treasury.

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It wasn't 1929, but like that infamous year, 2008 is sure to be remembered by economic historians as one unlike any other.

"We had a much simpler financial system back then. The number of wild and crazy things that happened this year is completely without precedent in world history,"

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