Guess how much the baliout REALLY costs?

[dixiegrrrrl]

"the total federal government support since 2007 for the economy and the financial sector could reach a far higher figure of $23.7 trillion. The government has committed significantly more money through a variety of other federal agencies and programs."

And, btw........
"The government’s top bailout watchdog, Neil Barofsky, also says his office has opened 35 criminal and civil investigations into issues including suspected accounting fraud, securities fraud, insider trading, mortgage servicer misconduct, mortgage fraud, public corruption, false statements and taxes."

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/watchdog-treasury-has-failed-to-adopt-bailout-safeguards-2009-07-20.html

DARE WE HOPE???

[GoesTo11]

1. I BLAME OBAMA!!!!!

He has destroyed the economy for generations with his squandrous handouts in the name of "stimulus".

Rush Limbaugh is Exactly right.

$23.7 Trillion - that's about 3/4 of a million dollars for every woman, man and child in this country - more than enough to retire on for all of us! All this to have the unemployment rate go up to 9.5% (where the real rate is more like 23.7%). Great "investment" I guess they never teach you about that in community organizing school.

[jody]

2. "3/4 of a million dollars" for me, that's the closest I'll ever become to being a millionaire. n/t

[GoesTo11]

3. With inflation, you'd be a millioniare in no time

[Zynx]

4. At first I thought this was satire. Now I see that it isn't.

Therefore it needs a very succinct response.

The $23.7 trillion is a potential obligation figure if basically every financial institution failed and every depositor had to be bailed out in addition to large numbers of commercial paper defaults. We have not spent $23.7 trillion nor has money supply increased by that much from the point of view of the Federal Reserve. In fact, we are nowhere close to that.

Second, this is not part of the stimulus package. The stimulus bill's series of programs can be looked at through recovery.gov and the various state government recovery websites.

Edit: I still hope that your post was satire.

[GoesTo11]

5. You were right the first time.

I'm tired of the chicken littles around here, and I'm tired of those who think the reason Obama hasn't done what they would like is that Obama has been bought off or that he is stupid.

Every number can be made to look big. For example, if FDIC guarantees $2.5 trillion of deposits, that doesn't mean it has cost $2.5 trillion. The cost of insuring those deposits (if any private insurer could do it) might be on the order of $50 billion. That's sort of what you were saying. I have $250,000 personal injury insurance on my car, but that doesn't mean anyone has spent $250,000.

And even 23.7 trillion would actually about 75,000 per person, but people like to get their arithmetic wrong and freak out about it.

I would like to see a reasonable accounting of what the risks are for the various things that are insured and some indication of what the value of that insurance really is (extrapolated from things where there is a market). I would guess the loans, grants, stock purchases and guarantees (everything but the stimulus) have all told really cost the gov't about $1 trillion. That's a lot, but about right if necessary to fend off another great depression.

[girl gone mad]

7. This might give you some indication:

Maiden Lane, one of the Fed's earliest vehicles in this crisis, which was designed to help liquidate Bear Stearnsg is now losing money. And that's not even including the sham money laundering operation set up to funnel cash through AIG so that counterparties would get paid in full for their junk derivatives.

http://blogs.ft.com/maverecon/2009/07/a-walk-down-maiden-lane/

All 3 Maiden Lanes are deep in the red.

[GoesTo11]

8. Good find. I remember reading about this shell co.

Looks like it's about 1/4 lost down the rathole. 1/4 of $23.7 trillion would be about $6 trillion. But 1/4 is probably an overestimate of ratholeness, as Maiden Lane was designed to be a toxic waste dump, even if it wasn't sold that way.

I truly dislike the lack of transparency here, though. They should have just said they were giving the $ to various parties. Of course, I would rather have seen Goldman lose something on their AIG games, rather than see them get paid twice and make record profits. If it were transparent, then first, I wouldn't be outraged about the gov't paying some amounts out to grease wheels etc. and second, they wouldn't be greasing so many wheels that don't need grease.

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. My post consists of a link to an article about the topic

and includes information about pending investigations.

I can't speak to the satire content of the article I linked to.

I personally made no satiric comments other than "dare we hope" in connection to the prosecutions.

[HamdenRice]

10. Exactly. Every other central bank would also have to fail

because one of the biggest line items is currency swap facilities with the other central banks.

Well put!

[Wednesdays]

9. K&R

:kick:

[Festivito]

11. That figure is unsupported in this article.

And the idea that we are paying that is ridiculous. The whole government runs on $3T/yr, where would it possibly spend in 23T$ in six months. Our GDP is only 13T$, and that's everything you and I earn and spend, and everything I earn and spend has not gone to a bank and stayed there.

Looks like one of the Republican CONCERN PROPAGANDA posts making it's stupid supporters think that those Dems are spend'n spend'n spend'n.

[JohnWxy]

12. of coures, we must have transparency. We have to know where the money is going. But the

$24 million is a worst case sceanario, it has not been spent,not materialized.

And the other side of the equation is what would have been the cost to do nothing. A collapsed economy bringing down the economies around the world as well. Unemployment far worse than we are seeing now. Incalculably worse.

Nobody likes having to shoulder the cost of this REPUBLICAN DYSTOPIA: years of declining real income for most people (except for the top 5%. Thank you. GOP), inflationary monetary policy to make the declining economy look better than it was by stimulating spending and borrowing by those who less and less could afford it. And also an inflated housing market a bubble helped along by unconscionable, fraudulent loan practices by predatory lenders which 50 States Attorney's General tried to stop but were stopped themselves by the Office of the Comprtroller of the Currency (in 2004, when it might have made a difference).

And topping it all off, the Commodities Futures MOdernization Act which made trading in Credit Default Swaps legal and UNREGULATED which lead directly to banks gambling on derivitive instruments and taking on enormous risks related to CDOs which they didn't understand or felt was eliminated by holding CDSs (the subprime lending really took off after the passage of the CFMA and the unregulated trade in CDSs.) So then we had to bail out the banking industry that gambled on Derivative Instrutments which banks thought virtually eliminated their risk (leading them to tell the SEC they could go from 12:1 debt to equity to 30:1 DTE. Of course, the SEC, accomodated paulsen and the other WSB chairmen).

Yes, nobody LIKED bailng these jerks out, but we really didn't have much choice.


But, of course, we must keep track of where the money is going.