See if you can discern the principle at work in these two news reports below.

First, from yesterdays’ National Post:

The [Canadian] federal Department of Finance has flagged several prominent Crown corporations as “not self-sustaining,” including the CBC, VIA Rail and the National Arts Centre, and has identified them as entities that could be sold as part of the government’s asset review, newly released documents show.

Second, from today’s Globe and Mail:

The [Canadian] federal and Ontario governments are receiving 12 per cent of the common shares in the new GM in return for $10.6-billion (Canadian) in financial assistance. The governments also receive about $1.3-billion in debt and some preferred shares in the new company.

But Prime Minister Stephen Harper held out almost no hope Monday that the bulk of the money will be repaid.

“Clearly, taxpayers will get some money back when the day comes that we begin to sell our equity share, but to be frank, we are not counting on that,” Mr. Harper told reporters. “We are not factoring that into our budgetary plans.”

I’m certainly not a mind-reader, but if I had to guess, here’s what I’d propose as the operative principle: “We will give taxpayers’ money to wealthy industrialists, shareholders, and friends, with little promise of return. We will NOT give taxpayers’ money to any organization which fails to benefit those same wealthy industrialists, shareholders, and friends…even if that organization actually provides valuable public services.”

What’s your guess?

According to Andrew Clark in the Guardian,

The rump of the bankrupt bank Lehman Brothers is sitting on a stockpile of 450,000 lb of uranium “yellowcake” which could be used to power a nuclear reactor or, theoretically, to make a bomb.

Those are some seriously toxic assets!

Remember when yellowcake was such a big deal that the U.S. government used it as justification to invade and destroy Iraq? Here are those famous sixteen words again, in case you’ve forgotten Bush’s fabulous 2003 State of the Union speech:

The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

So, maybe the U.S. will be invading Lehman Brothers next…?

The man whom many of us may remember as “Hakim Bey” is still online, still writing, under his “real” name, Peter Lamborn Wilson:

Coins might “really” be worth only their weight in metal but the temple says they’re worth more and the king is ready to enforce the decree. The object and its value are separated; the value floats free, the object circulates. Money works the way it works because of an absence not a presence. In fact money largely consists of absent wealth-debt — your debt to king and temple. Moreover, free of its anchor in the messy materiality of commodity currencies, money can now compound unto eternity, far beyond mere cows and jars of beer, beyond all worldly things, even unto heaven. “Money begets money,” Ben Franklin gloated. But money is dead. Coins are inanimate objects. Then money must be the sexuality of the dead.

His regularly-updated posts can be found on Reality Sandwich.

Today’s Washington Post describes the Treasury Department’s latest plan:

The government is seeking to resuscitate the nation’s crippled financial system by forging an alliance with the very outfits that most benefited from the bonanza preceding the collapse of the credit markets: hedge funds and private-equity firms.

The initiative to revive the consumer lending business, outlined by officials this week, offers these wealthy investors a new chance to make sizable profits — but, thanks to the government, without the risk of massive losses.

That would be like the government guaranteeing the mortgages of all the homeowners who are “underwater,” but letting the homeowners keep all the profits if their homes rise in value and they’re able to sell at a profit. Something tells me that wouldn’t fly. As Atrios says,

They made bad bets when they at least theoretically thought they could incur losses. Now the cunning plan is to hope they make good bets even though…no chance of losses!

This is all going to end really badly.

A great Vanity Fair article explains Iceland’s economic crash:

Yet another hedge-fund manager explained Icelandic banking to me this way: You have a dog, and I have a cat. We agree that they are each worth a billion dollars. You sell me the dog for a billion, and I sell you the cat for a billion. Now we are no longer pet owners, but Icelandic banks, with a billion dollars in new assets. “They created fake capital by trading assets amongst themselves at inflated values,” says a London hedge-fund manager. “This was how the banks and investment companies grew and grew. But they were lightweights in the international markets.”

Governor Deval Patrick said today that he was interested in placing tolls on vehicles on interstate highways at the state’s borders and that his administration had already contacted the federal government, which would need to give its permission, about the idea.

“What I would love to see is … border tolls at all of the interstate entrances, maybe Route 3 as well. In other words, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York. If we did that right, it would be possible to remove all of the tolls inside of the Commonwealth.”

Patrick rediscovers a timeless political solution: Raise the taxes paid by people who can’t vote against you!

Advice from the wise folks at T.Bear Sachs:

IRAQ WAR ENDS and other great headlines in today’s (fake) New York Times (courtesy of The Yes Men).

Good.is has a snappy video breaking down the $3 Trillion cost of war (as documented in Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilme’s exhaustively researched book, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict)