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NEWS > HEALTH > TARP TO OFFER SUBSIDIES FOR COBRA PURCHASES; GI JOE NOT AMUSED
TARP TO OFFER SUBSIDIES FOR COBRA PURCHASES; GI JOE NOT AMUSED
February 11 2009
Washington, DC – Amongst the many initiatives in the newest round of financing into the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) is a provision allowing laid off workers the opportunity to purchase health insurance from the federal COBRA program. While this was always a part of Barack Obama’s campaign promises, the need has never been greater as more and more workers are finding themselves on the unemployment line, and as the August release of the live action G.I. Joe comes approaches.
“While many are criticising the details of this most recent influx of cash there’s little doubt that it will have an impact at least in the long term. Many of the initiatives are designed around making work, but adding in tax cuts and money to help support health insurance can be just as valuable,” said Scrape TV Business analyst Ken Green. “After all when the jobs eventually come back the country is going to need workers and being sick, impaired, or dead makes that very difficult. The health care system in the United States is, to put it mildly, lacking and it makes sense to make an effort to help those in need. Yes it’s vaguely socialist, but the bailouts are themselves and like them or not they do help.”
Workers across all fields have been seeing job loss but experts believe that certain fields, particularly leisure, are going to be feeling the effects long after everyone else has gone back to work.
“Say in the case of movies, a new movie is released and has ten per cent lower gross because of the depressed economy. That means less money to the studio who next year have to look at what they are spending and as their grosses decrease, so too does their production. Film, music, videogames will all see erosion for a long time to come because those industries don’t have a clear picture of their financials until their product is released,” continued Green. “Low profile releases are going to be the most significantly affected; by high profile titles likely won’t reach their full potential. Throw in the increase in piracy and illegal distribution and you have a toxic mix for those in the entertainment field.”
Many watching the movie industry are even more concerned than others because of last year’s writer’s strike which forced a number of movies to be rushed into production with questionable quality and unpolished scripts.
“There was already a great deal of concern over this year’s crop of films, especially the blockbusters and the quality of the overall production. First up of the major films will be ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’ which has already been suffering very bad buzz. It’s the first high profile summer release and could set the tone for other blockbusters like ‘Transformers 2’ and the live action ‘G.I. Joe’ movie,” said Scrape TV Entertainment analyst Tracey Temple. “Add to that the decline in DVD sales and the growing threat of piracy over the web and studio executives are very concerned about the long term viability of the business. It may not be long before they are looking for bailout dollars as well. The best they can hope for is that people spend their COBRA dollars on seeing the fictional COBRA this summer.”
While we attempted to contact executives for Paramount, the studio behind the release of ‘G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra’ our calls were not returned.
“Paramount has bet heavily on nostalgia this year. With ‘Transformers’, ‘G.I. Joe’, and the ‘Friday the 13th’ remake the studio seems to be living out the eighties. Especially ironic considering the last major economic crisis in the US happened in that decade as well,” continued Temple. “No doubt people who grew up with those properties will flock to the theatres but those people have
jobs and families and aren’t the crowd that make blockbusters bust. Those three titles may have seemed a sure bet a year ago, but now people are more worried about their jobs then they are about Cobra Commander’s plans for world domination.”
We also attempted to contact Cobra Commander for a quote but fictional characters are notoriously hard to reach. We imagine his reaction to the current financial crisis would be something like “Excellent. A perfect victory for Cobra hahahahhahaha.” Equally we were unable to contact either Hawk or Duke from the Joe team. It is unclear what kind of health benefits either organization offer their employees.
William Ashford, Business Correspondent
NEWS > HEALTH > TARP TO OFFER SUBSIDIES FOR COBRA PURCHASES; GI JOE NOT AMUSED
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