Thursday’s editorial explains our cautious stance when it comes to the news that Freestyle Music Park may reopen next summer:
Let’s hope the new owners of Freestyle Music Park – who look a lot like the old owners – know how to read and apply history. Specifically, they’d do well to brush up on the history of the Magic Harbor amusement park, an idea that failed in the area not once, but four times in the ’70s and ’80s.
Like many people, we imagine, we’re still a little hazy on exactly who now owns the park and whether it even changed hands in the foreclosure sale earlier this month. According to court documents, the park is now owned by FPI US LLC, which held the mortgage for former owner FBI MB Entertainment LLC. As The Sun News detailed last year, the two entities shared an address off George Bishop Parkway and there was certainly some overlap between principals of the two groups.
Friday’s editorial examines the need for systemic financial
reform through the lens of Beach First’s failure.
On a local level, the failure of
Beach First represents a tragedy for the community it intended to serve.
Since its founding in 1996, Beach
First sought to enhance the buying and building power of the Grand Strand by empowering
small and medium-size businesses to grow with the thriving economy. As we
consider the bank’s collapse, we ought not forget exactly how widespread the
optimism was in the explosive potential of our area.
Wednesday’s editorial is the first of a five-part series this
week on our legislative goals as the S.C. General Assembly reconvenes. The
first installment features social justice and public safety issues.
OPEN ADMISSION | Among the greatest injustices enshrined in S.C.
law is the state's relatively new practice of prohibiting bright young students
from attending public colleges based on their citizenship.
Tuesday's editorial supports new restrictions on the payday lending industry.
When S.C. lawmakers return to Columbia
this week, high on their list of priorities will be overturning Gov.
Mark Sanford's veto of a compromise bill to regulate predatory payday
lending practices, and we wish them the best of luck.
Ripped from the wires ... Cal Thomas adapts an aphorism made famous by the first Mayor Daley to the financial crisis:
By Cal Thomas
One of the more familiar sayings in politics is "don't get angry, get even.''
The anger caused by using millions in taxpayer bailout money to pay "retention'' bonuses to current and former AIG employees and to fund banks that mostly won't tell what they did with the money is an object lesson for all of us. It offers taxpayers an opportunity to "get even'' with those who have violated the U.S. Constitution, helped put our nation in peril and spent us into economic servitude to the Chinese.
Ripped from the wires ... When the president's staunchest supporters, such as columnist Eugene Robinson, turn on the treasury secretary, you know he's really a public liability:
By EUGENE ROBINSON
President Obama's claim that Timothy Geithner faces a more daunting set of challenges than any Treasury secretary since Alexander Hamilton may be an exaggeration, but not by much. Geithner may indeed be the hardest-working man in Washington. But in order to survive, let alone succeed, he's going to have to make a more convincing case that he's part of the solution and not part of the problem.
Ripped from the wires ... Myriam Marquez takes issue with the view that Americans who took advantage of the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act bear ultimate responsibility for the economic meltdown:
By Myriam Marquez
Blame the hedge fund managers. The subprime mortgages. Mismanagement at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac. Detroit automakers' stubborn refusal to build more energy-saving vehicles.
Blame the regulatory apathy of the Bush years. The bookkeeping tricks. (War? What war? Not in W.'s deficit numbers.) The unregulated credit default swaps. The blind devotion to Wall Street without a thought for Main Street.
Ripped from the wires ... Froma Harrop makes the case for allowing bankruptcy courts to rewite mortgages:
By FROMA HARROP
Let bankruptcy courts modify the terms of home mortgages, says President Obama and legislation now before Congress. Banks don't like the idea, but it's a good one, possibly even for them.
At his press conference Monday, President Obama made a point some of you may find startling: The federal deficit will expand regardless of whether Congress passes an economic stimulus bill.
"My administration inherited a deficit of over $1 trillion,'' the president said, "but because we also inherited the most profound economic emergency since the Great Depression, doing a little or nothing at all will result in even greater deficits, even greater job loss, even greater loss of income, and even greater loss of confidence. Those are deficits that could turn a crisis into a catastrophe.'' (emphasis added)
In an editorial Tuesday, the Miami Herald argues that Congress should quickly impose necessary new restrictions on the credit-card industry because the Fed is taking too long to get the job done:
Near the end of 2008, the Federal Reserve Board adopted new rules that would end some of the worst abuses by credit-card issuers. These rules, 18 months in the making, would put an end to such practices as hiking interest rates on customers who have never made a late payment and kept their accounts current, as well as the practice of increasing interest rates on money already borrowed. Trouble is, the rules won't take effect until July of next year.
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