GM will be begin paying back the TARP money in December, the company announced this morning. It’s a statement in need of a little context. Basically, GM will be using a portion of its $50 billion in TARP bailout money it received to in turn repay another portion of the TARP loans.

The administration’s $75 billion mortgage modification program is meant to help 3 million to 4 million homeowners avoid foreclosures. The latest data, out Tuesday, shows mortgage servicers are making some progress toward this goal, but big questions remain about how effective the program will be.

Wall Street bankers are really mad these days -- in both senses of that word! You'd think these whizzes of speculative finance would be ecstatically happy and filled with gratitude, not anger. After all, having crashed our economy, they were allowed to keep their cushy jobs, get bailed out with trillions of our tax dollars, and permitted to go right back to playing the same old casino games that had previously enriched them at our expense. Once again, such powerhouse outfits as Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are raking-in tons of money -- and, as in the gilded days before Wall Street plunged Main Street into deep recession, bankers have promptly reverted to the selfish ethic of lavishing multimillion-dollar bonuses on themselves. Goldman, for example, has already set aside more than $16 billion to dole out as end-of-year bonuses for its bankers. That's a pace of self-enrichment that will siphon off nearly half of all the money that Goldman takes in this year! So, why are they mad? Because you and I are not showing them any love. Believe it or not, Wall Streeters actually expected that their return to grandiose banker bonuses would be greeted with huzzahs and "you the man" cheers from an admiring public, rather than another coast-to-coast explosion of anger.

CIT filed for bankruptcy protection on Sunday, and part of its plan to heal itself is wiping out the taxpayers’ $2.33 billion stake in the company.