Cost of bailouts so far: $3.45 trillion! All of BushCo's Iraq War looting pales in comparison!

[mhatrw]

This is simply disgusting. This is nothing more than unabashed looting. Our Treasury has been effectively privatized. Corporate welfare kings have bankrupted our federal government.

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/126117/Cos

While the government is clearly spending a lot of taxpayers' money to bail out financial firms, the tally is even bigger than most Americans (economists and pundits included) are probably aware or willing to admit.

The bailout bonanza has gotten so big and happened so fast it's the true cost often gets lost in the discussion. Maybe Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke prefer it that way because the tally so far is nearly $3.5 trillion, and that's before a likely handout for the auto industry.

Yes, $3.45 trillion has already been spent, as Bailoutsleuth.com details:

* $2T Emergency Fed Loans (the ones the Fed won't discuss, as detailed here)
* $700B TARP (designed to buy bad debt, the fund is rapidly transforming as we'll discuss in an upcoming segment)
* $300B Hope Now (the government's year-old attempt at mortgage workouts)
* $200B Fannie/Freddie
* $140B Tax Breaks for Banks (WaPo has the details)
* $110B: AIG (with it's new deal this week, the big insurer got $40B of TARP money, plus $110B in other relief)

Tallying up the "true" cost of the bailout is difficult, and won't be known for months if not years. But considering $3.5 trillion is about 25% of the U.S. economy ($13.8 trillion in 2007) and the U.S. deficit may hit $1 trillion in fiscal 2009, hyperinflation and/or sharply higher interest rates seem likely outcomes down the road.

more ...

[MichiganVote]

1. George Bush does what Prescott Bush couldn't. All planned, all the way.

[avaistheone1]

8. Bin Laden got his wish...Wall Street has pretty much been destroyed and

it happened on Bush's watch.

[mhatrw]

2. Kick n/t

[earth mom]

3. K & R! nt

[illuminaughty]

4. kick n/t

[cliffordu]

5. K&R!....some of these people need to be sent to prison for life.

[asteroid2003QQ47]

6. For the perps...

nothing short of a meeting with Mr. Guillotine will suffice.
That's not likely to happen though, is it? So, looking on the bright side,
instead of being hated for our freedoms, permanent victimhood status might
generate pity with which to wallow in from more advanced nations.
-----------------------------------------

"...government is not our friend...the gravest dangers to our freedoms lie hidden in a government that has seized them from us...vigilance and adherence to natural law can save us from the power-hungry bureaucrats who run the government today."
--Judge Andrew P. Napolitano

[TexasObserver]

7. It's the biggest bank heist in the history of the world.

Except in this story, it's the banks doing the heisting.

How's that for a plot twist?



Get me George Clooney, Clive Owens, Brad Pitt, and Spike Lee.

[mhatrw]

9. Yep. It gives the term "bank heist" a whole new meaning.

They threatened to shoot themselves unless we gave them all our money, so we did.

[petgoat]

10. Bow Howdy! That even eclipses the $2.3 Trillion in Pentagon spending they could not account for

that Rumsfeld just happened to reveal the day before 9/11 pre-empted the story.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml

It's interesting that the computers that had the necessary data were destroyed
in the 9/11 attacks.

[mhatrw]

11. See the glory of the royal scam. n/t

[mhatrw]

12. TARP TOXIC SHOCK: PREZ HANK DRUMS UP A PLAN ZZZZZZZ

http://www.nypost.com/seven/11132008/business/tarp_toxic_shock__prez_hank_drums_up_a_p_138482.htm

STAMMERIN' Hank Paulson whiffs again. Yesterday Paulson, the nation's treasury secretary and the de facto president of the US, decided to completely scrap his original plan to buy up toxic securities from his friends on Wall Street - which was probably too tough to pull off with only 10 weeks left in his term - and directly go to Plan C. Plan B, of course, was launched earlier when Hank announced that he would use some of the $700 billion bailout check that Congress gave him to add capital directly to banks. That would have been a fine change, except that Hank forgot to mention to the banks that the money was supposed to be lent out - not used for dividends, executive salaries or redecorating offices. Oh well, just a small oversight! So now Hank is going to try again, saying "I will never apologize for changing a strategy or an approach if the facts change."

Exactly what has changed? The economy still stinks and Hank is still clueless. But the election did change a thing or two. Paulson won't be able to roll over his lame-brained ideas for bankrupting the country into another Republican administration. Now he has to wrap things up as soon as possible - hence, the need to commit the $700 billion quickly before the other side gets involved with its own stupid ideas. With yesterday's change, the money that was going to go to the Friends of Hank's On Wall Street will now be used to add liquidity to the borrowing system. Hank apparently hasn't worked out all the details yet, so he'll have to get back to us on that.

In case you've forgotten with all the nips and tucks, the original plan was called TARP and it was first rejected by the leery House, which later went along after a lot of arm twisting, name calling and pork barreling. TARP stands for the Troubled Asset Rescue Program. But since troubled assets are no longer part of the picture - or the abbreviation - the nickname will be a little naked with just the "R" and the "P."

So I'll replace the two missing letters in the abbreviation. It's the least I can do since Hank has been spending so much time looking out for the interests of me and all other Americans. How about this? Paulson's Economic Recovery Plan, or PERP. As I've said before, that acronym will fit nicely when Hank is sweating it out in front of Congress a year or two from now.

more ...

[mhatrw]

13. Lame Duck Treasury Does Whatever It Pleases With Our Money

http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/market-movers/2008/11/12/treasury-enters-its-lame-duck-phase

There does indeed seem to have been a visible change in Treasury policy since the election. Until that point, it cared a little about optics. Now, it's giving monster bailouts to the likes of AIG and American Express; it's dragging its feet on homeowner relief; and in general Hank Paulson's Wall Street buddies seem to be getting much better access than anybody in Detroit. And no one's even trying very hard to defend these actions in public: they know they'll be out of a job in January anyway, so they're just doing what they want to do and what they feel is right, without caring much whether anybody else agrees with them.

[mhatrw]

14. Dodd blasts Paulson: Deal with the damn foreclosures!

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/dodd-rips-paulson-on-use-of-bailout-funds-2008-11-13.html

Sen. Chris Dodd said Thursday that banks and other companies receiving aid under the federal government’s rescue package are not using the money to prevent foreclosures, the root cause of the crisis. The Connecticut Democrat, chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, said the Treasury Department must focus on preventing foreclosures and working with lenders to modify outstanding loans. He upbraided Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson for appearing to move toward supporting consumer credit and “denying the underlying problem” of foreclosures.

“Until we solve the foreclosure problem, we will not have any hope of solving larger economic problems,” Dodd said at a hearing. “It is still confounding to me why the secretary of the Treasury hasn’t dealt with this.” ...

Dodd and others also targeted companies under the program for reportedly using money to finance mergers and acquisitions of relatively healthy institutions and to pay bonuses and dividends. ...

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that the Treasury Department’s move to invest capital directly in banks isn’t working in practice because the provisions aren’t strong enough to prevent banks from hoarding cash and thus doing little to free up credit markets. “In its zeal to include larger banks, Treasury failed to make the rules strict enough,” he said. “The capital injection program isn't doing enough to induce lending.”

[mhatrw]

15. And this is just the down payment!

http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2008/11/13/expanding-the-700-billion-bailoutto-1-trillion/

As we learned on Tuesday, the Troubled Asset Relief Program isn’t exactly fulfilling the promise of its name. But according to some influential observers it may not be large enough to fulfill its new function to recapitalize the U.S. banking system.

At a conference sponsored by The Deal in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday, H. Rodgin Cohen, the chairman of Sullivan & Cromwell, dared utter what he called “the T word,” or “trillion.”

The $700 billion put into TARP so far is a big number but is beginning to look like little more than the first installment, he said.

Given the considerable leverage weighing on the financial system and the ongoing efforts of many firms to pare down their balance sheets, it would be lucky if the TARP money is enough to maintain stability in the system. If Washington’s goal is to spur lending in order to resuscitate the economy, it will likely have to raise the total to the neighborhood of $1 trillion, according to Mr. Cohen.