The total taxpayer price tag for our nation’s “economic recovery” currently stands at $13 trillion, or more than $4 trillion more than the entire U.S. national debt prior to the start of this government-induced financial madness.
A combination of bailouts, boondoogles and related interventionist shenanigans perpetrated by the big government boobs in Washington, the goal of the vast majority of these funds has been to unfreeze the credit markets by alleviating the burden of “toxic” (formerly troubled) assets.
It hasn’t worked.
And so yesterday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner proposed that government create a “market” for all this bad debt, which sort of misses the point that if it had any value, there might, we don’t know, already be a market.
But before you get too inspired about the notion of Geithner’s new “public-private partnership,” take a moment to run his numbers real quick.
From the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram:
Under a typical transaction, for every $100 in soured mortgages being purchased from banks, the private sector would put up $7 that would be matched by the government. A government loan would cover the remaining $86.
Hmmm …
Keep in mind that we’ve already allocated trillions to purchase these toxic assets ($1.25 trillion for Fannie and Freddie toxic MBS’s alone), so don’t buy the spin that we were going to buy them back in October of last year but then decided to lend directly to banks instead.
Because we did both … along with the O-bureaucrat bailout and the whole printing money thing.
Anyway, assuming you’re ready to get really, really, really depressed, here’s the latest edition of CNN’s bailout scorecard, showing all $13 trillion of the damage.
WEB EXTRA:
By liz March 24, 2009 at 8:02 am
Well we are repaying the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds, courtesy of some very corrupt people who lifted the money and stuck it in AIG>
You don’t have to believe me but I have documents that point towards this being the absolute truth.
The crisis originated in South Carolina… is being covered up by South Carolina pols, and affects every single resident of this state, and actually every citizen of the United States of America.
Unfortunately, people of SC probably have a reason to apologize.
By elmo March 25, 2009 at 10:51 am
What really chaps me is that the Federal Reserve has the never to ask for MORE power now. They will not even tell us who they have loaned our money to and yet they want more power to do more secretive shenanigans.
It is mind boggling that our elected officials are conspiring with the Fed to bankrupt our country.
By justsaynotojoe March 25, 2009 at 1:38 pm
One thing that was missing from both the President’s opening remarks and the questions from the assembled media was any discussion about when the Department of Justice will begin its investigations of the members of Congress who were positions of control or oversite when this debacle began. It is reasonable to assume that there are members of Congress with criminal culpability in these matters so it is reasonable to expect that the Executive Branch would initiate investigations and bring the miscreants before the bar of justice.
Come to think of it I don’t recall anyone from the Executive Branch calling for any investigations of the Legislative Branch. Wonder why that is and why the MSM has not been asking the same question.