Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are bracing for a fresh request from President Obama for another massive round of spending to shore up the nation's faltering financial system, which could send the total price for the bailout soaring toward $1 trillion.
So far, Congress has approved $700 billion for the financial system rescue. The first half of that money has been committed, and lawmakers last week agreed to give Obama access to the second half.
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$1 Trillion?!!
Wouldn't it have been cheaper to give each American $1 million? ($303 billion)
oops...that would only be $303 million...
So I guess you could give each American $1 billion and it'd still be cheaper than all these bailouts
boy am I dumb...I wasn't good in math
We need to extend the unemployment benefit time table if everyone is laying off and there won't be
a chance to even get employment, what is one to do??? The socialist countries in Europe have
extended long periods for collecting unemployment. Also, basic necessities for life cannot be
taken away from people. Why is it that we are second class citizens in the USA?
bailout - fine. Just don't give it to Wall Street or the banks. Fat lotta good that's done so far.
We're making a little over 4 %.
It has done a lot of good. You simply do not have the education to understand.
There is no question that more funds need to be injected into banks with troubled assets. What is missing from this debate is that the government is either loaning the money to the banks or buying preferred stock. This means, that at some indefinite future, when the whole banking system recovers, so does the government funds injected into banks with interest and equity appreciation, given that bank stock prices are at rock bottom now.
This is all about maintaining confidence in the banking system and avoiding the 1930's type collapse in banks and evaporation of massive amounts of deposits. Come hell or high water, the government will protect the deposits either by continually shoring the banks up or by taking them over outright. We have an endemic issue that is centered around the housing bubble. There is no systemic issue and no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Given that Uncle Sam will not allow the big banks such as B of A or Citi to go under, the idea of good bank, bad bank is just an overreach for quick fix. No magic pill can turn bad food into good food and we have to stop looking for the magic pill that will make people feel better about what is going on and do what is needed to allow this toxic assets to move through the system over time.
He are a few answers to some of your questions. Don't be ignorant like most Americans.
We are doing quite well with the TARP money.
http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/reports/termsheet.pdf
http://money.cnn.com/quote/sec/sec.filings.html?symb=C&sequenceid=1&guid=6275191
I am lost on this one if we got stock from Citi at 10.61 and it is 3.41 right now as it was then and we are on the hook for 306B they only lose 29B how is this good
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!!!
Enough when will the spending with accountability come. I can not wait for those in power to do something my chlidren and grandchildren should not have to live in a country that for a very long time spent in the name of great causes.
I am nothing more than a nurse and on 1-20-2009 I filed a suit in federal court in Indiana asking that no more money be spent until we find out what happened to the first 350B. Come on why is it that a nobody American Citizen must ask this question. Why because if you stand for something then you must do everything.
If you want to see the suit please go to my web site www.malenursemagazine.com information about me is there to. Or you can google LUCAS v Congress I know I will get my a** kick but, the fight is not for me but for all that want the truth.
Jerry R Lucas
They gave the money to the banks and the banks did with it what banks do, they invested it into what their analysts thought were investments that promised the highest returns for a reasonable risk. And that is obviously not to limit the number of foreclosures. That, in my opinion, was perfectly predictable. Not necessarily helpful to turn the economy around, but predictable nonetheless.
Its pretty clear to everyone that a big economic stimulus is needed. I read a lot of the House "economic recovery" bill this evening. Its pretty good actually though there'll be plenty of argument over how much gets spent where.
The achilles heal of the whole thing really is not the bill itself but the existing permit system that those receiving the money have to overcome. The bill talks in terms of very tight timelines - 90 days, a few months. Anyone who has ever worked on a big project in the USA be it infrastructure or just regular construction, knows that it takes years and years to get large projects through the permit process. Therefore, its going to be utterly impossible to spend part/all the money in a relatively short time period .
Just my swing on things.
$1 trillion of pork going straight to Democrat constituents. To be paid for by our grandchildren.
How about cutting taxes. It works every time it's tried.
That must have been the worst trolling attempt of the day. F-.
I thought we were supposed to give the handicapped an "A for effort."
As I am continually astounded by reality, I am floored that the head of the SEC, one of this country's largest, most powerful regulatory agencies has this to say about the regulation of securities: "the agencies are paid by companies to help them structure financial instruments, which the agencies then grade."
Companies pay governmental agencies "to help them structure financial instruments, which the agencies then grade."
Huh? Excuse me . . . there is so much wrong in that statement that the CIA, the FBI, the FSLIC, state regulatory agencies and any cow poke with a computer should be looking into. WTF?
Repubs had no problem with spending when they were getting us into Iraq! -for purely financial reasons we must get out of iraq, no more wars, we cant afford it!
I want some tarp
Let's get serious about putting our economy back on track. The money is right here in the U.S. and anyone who works for a large corporation knows exactly where it's stashed. The CEO's and Board's of Directors have it all! We've been waiting over 28 years for that money to "trickle down", but trickling amounts of money isn't cutting it, so let's open the floodgates.
Let's break it down by the numbers:
With ~100 million families in the U.S., the wealthiest 1% represents 1 million families. And, at the rate they spend cash, $1-10 million bucks is chump change to them, so they'll never miss it...
1 million X $10 million = $10 TRILLION -- U.S. economic crisis solved!
Include those in the top 2-5% and not only could we save the economy, but we would have the money to invest in new technologies as well:
4 million X $2 million = $8 TRILLION
Tax them ALL and let THEM eat cake.
At the bottom of your top 1% are people who earn $300k/year. Can you tell me how you tax a $300k earner $10 million?
OK. Back to the drawing board. Or is that math class? Probably both.
How about getting the American People to "invest" in investment. The idea needs some work but it has merit. Why borrow it from the Chinese when we should be able to raise a trillion right here. Based on a working population of 250 million people its a big base to draw from.
The top 1% starts at 300K per year. Then you get the top .5%. I believe they make 1M a year. It continues upward. Don't forget the executives that pay themselves 45M in bonuses. I don't care that it is via stock options or other fancy mechanisms. In the end, the top 1% earns an outrageous % of the total money. Reich said the number the other night. Is it 40%? Too much. What bothers me most is that 107K cap on social security. I think the top 1% should pay it on all of their income. Just like the regular people.
Nationalization will only succeed in bailing out the rich at the expense of the poor. Bailing out the irresponsible at the expense of the responsible. As Ralph Nader said, "This is not a free market, but a corporate managed market." Our elected officials allowed bank lobbyist to write the laws that killed competition and squashed the little guy. We need to let these banks et al fail.
Banks fail, you have to pay $4 trillion to replace the FDIC insured bank accounts. Got some change?
We spent $2 trillion on Iraq, $500 billion on last year's oil imports, so who says we can't afford a $1 trillion bailout? You just have to close your eyes and think of America.
We are moving towards a Great Depression -- and fast. As WP article informs us, "the job market is now consistently losing 500,000-plus jobs per month".
The economic policy (which is certainly stupid) that has greatly contributed to this alarming news has been the effect of outsourcing http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/bp222//). As of 2007 we have lost 5.6 million jobs.
To turn this economy around, American corporations are going to have to be brutally stopped from outsourcing by force of law. To be sure, what has been good for corporate America in the past has not been good for America as a nation and for the millions of American worker-consumers.
The only problem with that is that the world is not adding 500,000 jobs per month that came from the US. Just because jobs are disappearing over here does not mean they will show up anywhere else. Indeed, the rest of the world is losing jobs as well.
And you can not force a company from laying off people. It's their business and their business only. You can, if you want, nationalize the company, and then find out that you either have to lay off those people yourself or pay their salaries from other people's taxes. Sounds good?
One could, of course, make a law that the government can not purchase from companies which employ workers outside of the US. That would mean that all government agencies have to immediately stop purchasing pretty much anything. No more computers, no more software. Go back to paper and pencil and cardboard boxes.
I beg to differ. I work for a company that is definitely sending jobs overseas. Tens of thousands of jobs. People sometimes get to train their replacements. We have around 120K employees in the US and 330K worldwide. A few years ago we had over 250K employees in the US. We don't have "layoffs." No one in the the US is getting rehired. Nationalization is not required. But fair trade agreements, eliminations of tax breaks for companies shipping jobs overseas, requiring any government work to be done in this country and labor contracts certainly would help.
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Washington Post | Lori Montgomery and David Cho | January 24, 2009 09:08 AM