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$7.2 Trillion
Monday, November 24th, 2008The government has now pledged more than half America’s annual GDP to bail out the financial sector.
Absolutely astonishing.
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In-Effing-sane.
Alex Jones was saying it was 5 trillion last week. Considering the source, I didn’t believe it was possible. Maybe I should start listening to his conspiracy ranting more often.
…..and I thought the problem was the military and the cost of the War on Terror……..boy was I fooled……
If they’ve had this money to spend all along ,why did’nt we get to spend it on things we really need?
What makes me laugh (because otherwise I’d cry) is this: we got into this mess because banks over-leveraged, and now the government is over-leveraging in an effort to get us out…
They didn’t have this money all along. Under the fractional reserve monetary system run by an international cartel of globalist bankers, collectively owning the Federal Reserve System, money is literally created out of nothing but a signature, with no assets behind it, on the fly. Think of the power you would have if you could write and spend an endless supply of bad checks, with impunity. That’s the power of the Federal Reserve.
Want more info on what I just shared? Go to http://www.barronscrediteducators.com. It’s a great portal for good information on this topic.
For years now (and for the last 18 months or so, with increased publicity), Ron Paul has been pointing out the problem with the Fed. Is Congress going to maybe give his words a little credence?
…Of course not.
$700 Billion here and $700 billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about some serious money.
The people with the guns always take from the people without guns.
See a related story about Congolese troops looting and shooting in a refugee camp.
Same shit, different day.
Tax the living crap out of the Middle Class, so that Washington can reward Wall Street for reckless risk-taking.
Swell.
Is that even capitalism?
The Federal Budget Deficit is going to EXPLODE.
Please! For the love of fuck, just STOP!
Anyone think various newly minted Congresscritters will do anything to slow this down? Yeah, me neither. And so it’s another 2 years until we get to voice our disapproval in the only way they actually pay any attention to. And two years of this shit… They can do a lot of fucking in two years. And we’re the ones getting fucked.
If all the bank loans were paid, no one could have a bank deposit, and there would not be a dollar of coin or currency in circulation. This is a staggering thought. We are completely dependent on the commercial Banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit. If the Banks create ample synthetic money we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible, but there it is. It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it becomes widely understood and the defects remedied very soon. – Robert H Hemphill
What we need in congress is the laziest people we can possibly find. People who are too lazy to do ANYTHING in Congress. At least if they’re not doing anything they won’t be able to screw anything up.
Penn Jillette I think said it pretty well: “We need someone stupid enough to understand that the president of the United States can’t solve many problems without taking away freedom and therefore shouldn’t try. The only reason John McCain scares me a little less is because I think he’s a little less likely to win. They both promise a government that will watch over us, and I don’t like that.”
Beyond the obvious oversight issue, I’m not sure why I should care how big the figure is. These aren’t grants.
MP, aside from the oversight issue, you should be concerned because the government is “loaning” money that it has borrowed to businesses that are failing. Did you ever wonder why these companies don’t just get loans from somebody else? Credit is “tight” (though I keep getting junk mail offering me credit) because these companies aren’t credit worthy. No one in their right mind would “lend” them the kind of money they’re asking for from the government, because they wouldn’t have faith that they’d get it back. So they go to the government, the government borrows the money, and gives it to the business that’s “too big to fail”, but is failing nonetheless. And who is on the hook for it? Several generations of taxpayers, that’s who.
If you have to ask, you, like most Americans it seems, don’t know the definition of capitalism.
Capitalism is where the Government takes a hands off approach to business and lets them sink or swim according to their own merits.
This is pure, unabashed Corporatism, where the Government puts it’s hands in to decide who is “worthy” of swimming and who isn’t. Some refer to it as “Corporate Socialism”, and they are not wrong.
Well, they aren’t grants until the company defaults on them.
Bill, then doesn’t it become a question of “why” they are failing? We can certainly look at companies who made risky loans and try to make a value judgment, but if not for those loans would the company be healthy? Should we try to distinguish between those companies whose business plans are 100% “bad” and those companies who might have a smaller risk factor but nonetheless are crippled by this ripple effect?
And what of the companies who have done nothing wrong but rely on credit to meet short term needs? Should they be made to suffer too for something that they could not have foreseen? Certainly you can make the argument for “creative destruction” but why destroy something over an aberration when they in essence only failed to plan for an economic meltdown. Can you defend yourself against that?
If in fact money is going out as loans, then I’m more concerned with oversight on getting the loans paid back to the taxpayers. I’m not excited about the idea of gov. loans at this scale and a tiny part of me wants to see taxpayers take it on the chin in the hope that it wakes them up, but then I’m insulated right now too. I’m not so sure I would maintain that idealism if my job (neck) were on the line if these loans weren’t being given out.
Kwix: I kinda sorta figured out that these Federal assistance efforts are NOT capitalism.
It is corporate socialism.
In fact, the way it’s working out, the Government has the total DOWNSIDE of reckless risktaking on the part of Wall Street as well as apparently other business sectors as well, i.e. Detroit.
While Wall Street executives garnered all the benefits of the historical upside of their risk-taking:
Stock options, bonuses, executive salary, fringe benefits like corporate jets, stadium sky-boxes, unlimited expense accounts, etc.
Whim,
The basic flaw in the Corporate model is that executives are able to take leveraged risks far outside of the consequences they’d be personally fiscally liable for. Even when executives hold a high percentage of personal assets in instruments tied to their company, they are still managing asset pools exponentially larger than their own asset pools.
Unfortunately, I don’t see a good solution to this either.
Is the money that is being “loaned” actually being borrowed from others that have cash to loan through the sale of US Govt securities, or is it just being printed?
Will we ever be know the truth about what is being done, or will we just suffer the effect sometime in the future and be told BS?
Edintally,
As Tonto sort of said to the Lone (Loan?) Ranger, “Who you calling ‘we’, Kemosabe?”
The problem is that we the taxpayers clearly have no say, and the government seems to be in no position to make sound judgments on our behalf as to which companies should and should not be propped up.
The whole purpose of a market is that it can generate that information by allowing failing companies to fail, while good ones succeed. We have made a mess of the marked through government interference (Fannie and Freddie, keeping interest rates artificially low to sustain the housing bubble, Sarbanes-Oxley, and so on ad infinitum), so it seems unwise to assume that the next intrusion of government into the market will make everything better, as that wasn’t the intent all along.
Beyond that, when Congress or the Treasury are making the decisions, they do not necessarily have the experience in a particular industry, or any private sector experience at all, to guide them, and they have no stake in the outcome of their decisions, especially considering that incumbent congresscritters have a re-election rate well over 90 % while Congress has an approval rating around, what, 15%?
I still believe that the best thing to do is nothing. Unfortunately, we should have started doing that years ago.
You know, I never believed in cartoon-style, absolutist, evil-for-the-sake-of-evil supervillains, until that day Henry Paulson came in to Congress and asked for “$700 billion.”
Economic ignorance will lead to this country’s demise. Same goes for all of Western Civilization I suppose.
http://rightklik.blogspot.com/
Can someone let me know when I should start planning my escape, I mean move, from this country to another that won’t end up bankrupt with a citizenry looting, stealing and killing each other for food?
Thanks.
Because I sure didn’t have ANYTHING BETTER to do with my $100K than give it to failing banks. Nope! My family is A-OK!
Somewhere on a hill, a man starts to play the violin while silhouetted against a burning city. We see he’s wearing a Floor Trader badge with “Nero” as his name. Camera dissolve and then we come back with a shot of monkeys throwing feces against a dilapidated Statue of Liberty and a caption “2015″.
America: the end. New Zealand, here I come. Thank Vishnu I’m so good with sheep.
This is a great idea. Lets give money we don’t have to companies which went bankrupt due to lending stupendous sums (which they didn’t have) to other companies and persons who are now also bankrupt.
Come on! It’s only 7 trillion! We can always print more!
Z
NYC
United States of Zimbabwe