22 April 2009 - The CFO of Freddie Mac was found dead in an apparent suicide. Of course, any death is a tragedy, but this is certainly a sign of the times.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Tuesday he believes most banks are liquid enough to survive the current hardships facing them. The Obama administration has ?stress-tested? troubled banks, and plans on releasing the results May 4. This is uncharted territory, because the government has been doing stress tests for a while, and has maintained a ?watch list? for troubled banks, but has not previously released its findings.

It looks like the car companies are going to get some money after all, but not what they were looking for. For those that haven’t been following the story, GM and Chrysler came back with their hands out after the first round of bailout money, but the government said no because they hadn?t completed the milestones the government wanted to see. GM went back, and was apparently preparing to file bankruptcy. Now the money is coming: about $5B for GM and $500 M for Chrysler, so it appears the Obama administration may have been bluffing.

While the federal government has been working feverishly to try to fix our embattled economy, pouring billions of dollars in, they are trying to save money and increase capital in the Post Office. They are raising first-class postage to .44 on May 11, and are having a ?postage sale? on bulk post cards?a first for our postal service. There are also rumors of cutting postal carriers to a 5-day workweek, which would save on wage expenditures.