Who wants to be a bailout recipient? We do! say the steel companies.
Not content with what is likely to be the biggest public works program in decades, Big Steel wants to ensure taxpayers buy bridge, road, school and electric-grid steel only or largely from U.S. producers.
Every provision in Congress' forthcoming stimulus should contain "a buy America clause," Nucor CEO Daniel R. DiMicco told The New York Times.
What a good idea. The Buy America Act of 1933, signed by Herbert Hoover as he exited his miserable presidency, fueled a global trade war that hurt American exports and made the Great Depression even greater.
Don't look for Iran or Russia to be first to test the inexperienced President Barack Obama. The likes of the American Iron and Steel Institute and the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts will probably beat them to it. Everybody wants some pudding.
Retailers have asked Washington to stop states from collecting sales tax during 10-day periods in March, July and October.
"The situation is critical," the National Retail Federation wrote to Obama.
Maybe, but it's tough to see how tax holidays would help. Consumers would just switch shopping from taxable weeks to nontaxable ones. Stores would raise prices, pocketing what's normally collected by government. Washington would have to reimburse states for billions in lost revenue.
The only thing dumber would be bailouts for newspapers.
"The media is a vitally important part of America," Connecticut legislator Frank Nicastro told Reuters, which reports he has asked government to save two small papers in that state.
Commercial real estate developers, apparently jealous that they didn't mess up as badly as their residential real estate colleagues and have received no taxpayer gravy, are lining up with bowls.
They want to include mall and hotel loans along with credit-card and auto paper in the assets the Federal Reserve accepts as collateral for one of its slush funds.
There is "insufficient systemic capacity" to refinance expiring commercial real estate loans, a dozen trade groups wrote to Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., according to The Wall Street Journal.
But everybody's having trouble rolling over debt.
Including music companies. They've been plastered by the Internet and the recession almost as badly as newspapers and magazines.
