It’s high time that taxpayers understand that when we get what little information that can be squeezed from the MSM regarding the insanity currently under way in Washington that what they don’t get is the far, far worse scenario happening in the unreported, unpublicized, background.
Taxpayers Risk $9.7 Trillion on Bailouts as Senate Votes
The stimulus package the U.S. Congress is completing would raise the government’s commitment to solving the financial crisis to $9.7 trillion, enough to pay off more than 90 percent of the nation’s home mortgages.
The Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation have lent or spent almost $3 trillion over the past two years and pledged to provide up to $5.7 trillion more if needed. The total already tapped has decreased about 1 percent since November, mostly because foreign central banks are using fewer dollars in currency-exchange agreements called swaps. The Senate is to vote early this week on a stimulus package totaling at least $780 billion that President Barack Obama says is needed to avert a deeper recession. That measure would need to be reconciled with an $819 billion plan the House approved last month.
Only the stimulus package to be approved this week, the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program passed four months ago and $168 billion in tax cuts and rebates approved in 2008 have been voted on by lawmakers. The remaining $8 trillion in commitments are lending programs and guarantees, almost all under the authority of the Fed and the FDIC. The recipients’ names have not been disclosed.
“We’ve seen money go out the back door of this government unlike any time in the history of our country,” Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, said on the Senate floor Feb. 3. “Nobody knows what went out of the Federal Reserve Board, to whom and for what purpose. How much from the FDIC? How much from TARP? When? Why?”
“NOBODY KNOWS….”
Financial Rescue
The pledges, amounting to almost two-thirds of the value of everything produced in the U.S. last year, are intended to rescue the financial system after the credit markets seized up about 18 months ago. The promises are composed of about $1 trillion in stimulus packages, around $3 trillion in lending and spending and $5.7 trillion in agreements to provide aid.
Federal Reserve lending to banks peaked at a record $2.3 trillion in December, dropping to $1.83 trillion by last week. The Fed balance sheet is still more than double the $880 billion it was in the week before Sept. 17 when it agreed to accept lower-quality collateral.
HAHAHAHAHA Good old boy Larry told us that it was ‘only’ $350 billion, not $1 trillion, but it seems that the Federal Reserve is busy loaning cash to the member banks to go on a shopping spree of completely unprecedented intensity. It’s not $1 trillion, the liability is $9.7 trillion when All factors are taken into account.
Looks like Congress is no longer the repository of the power to spend the taxpayers money. Folks, I tell you. I don’t believe my worries were misplaced. Look for some type of emergency powers to be invoked. I hope I am wrong.
From your linked article.
It gets much worse by September 2011, if my reading of the package is correct. And I’ve only finishec reading through page 20!
[Note: I submitted these calculations in comments to an earlier article, but made a mistake in calculating only through September 2010. The following calculations, however repugnant, are believed to be correct within a factor of two or less.]
Section 102 – Nutrition for Economic Recovery
Thrifty food plan: First month beginning 25 days after signing, increase cost by 85%, then by 12% per month through Sep 2011. Assuming the stimulus bill passes in February 2009 and this provision is enacted in March 2009, there will be an increase of 85% at the end of March 2009, and then 30 (!) months of 12% increases through Sept 2011.
The math to calculate overall increase of the program for the given time period is calculated as follows:
Final$ = [(initial$*1.85)*1.12^30]
Final$ = initial$ * 55.4
Therefore, if the program costs are to increase as is indicated in the current version of the stimulus bill, the cost of this program alone is to increase by a factor of more than 55 (5500%)? This seems ludicrous to me, and I would like to see the justification for the increases. Even if just $20 billion of provisions in this bill were to grow at the same rate, the spending will increase to more than $1.1 trillion, regardless of the rest of the spending!
This is mismanagement and theft of the highest order. The stimulus bill CANNOT be allowed to stand as is, and I think every concerned citizen should demand that such budgetary requirements be reviewed thoroughly.
the bill will stand and we will, as tax payers, take it in the ass. the dems dont care, they are only happy that they won and are on a spending spree that won’t havet he bills come due while they are still in office. they don’t give a shit. remember nancy pelosi saying she was strying to save the world? wow, she must have awesome powers, to save the world. i can’t see anything in this bill that will help me or mine in any way. and really, i want to know why we need a half million dollar dog park in the ghetto in california? as more and more are getting pissed, the dipshits in washington seem to be getting a clue that we are all pissed.
We are screwed. we are going to have a recession for a long time with this boondoggle. This is no stimulus package, it is a kick back to all those that elected Democrats over the past few elections.
Why would any emergency powers need to be invoked when they only need to sway 2-3 GOP Senate members… and NOT ONE House GOP… to pass what they want, Steve? And these are readily in hand in the Senate with RINOs Specter, Collins and Snowe.
The point is, they don’t need the blessings of the GOP to pass this spending, so who needs “emergency” powers?
What they are busy doing is trying to get the US public to love jumping off this cliff. And it’s not working so well. Congress is taking the larger hit for public disdain, but Obama’s not faring so well himself, via Rasmussen.
And that’s only based on what we *may* know of this (as of NYTs blog, The Caucus, as of Feb 2nd) 600-700 pg bill. Who knows what it is today.
What really makes me laugh is the dichotomy of it all… Obama signs SCHIPs into law separate and apart from this stimulus package, to be funded by tobacco taxes. They’ve agreed to trim the anti-smoking funds from the stimulus, but it will show up again in the future. Good idea… fund a program on smokers, then spend more money to reduce the number of smokers that will fund the program. That nonsense has failed even here in liberal Oregon, fer heavens sake!
Is there a brain cell left working in politics?
Cloture will happen on this stimulus, and the Senate is likely to successfully pass this monstrosity… thanks (most likely) to the aforementioned RINOs. And then the battle really begins… reconciling the very different House and Senate bills for a final vote. We still haven’t even hit half time in this ball game.
Mata:
As usual, you are likely correct, however, I was considering not from what they are passing in Congress, but the unfunded liability, mentioned in the post. That insanity is far, far, more volatile in that there is not even a record (at least one that has been disclosed) showing WHO all has this money. Good grief, those people handing it out in no way can be trusted. For all we know, they may be funding the next terrorist attack on the United States and would be the last to know it. 10 bowling pins representing a trillion dollars each can only be juggled for so long before they come crashing down, one at a time or enmasse. Can’t juggle 10 pins, exactly right….Exactly Right.
The amount of money ‘going out the back door’ is getting to be up there with the average person’s comprehension of astronomical distances.
Like you, I still have a lot of faith in the people of this country, even the Democrat down at the local bar, crying into their beer, and suffering from buyers remorse.
But of course the “what have they done with the money” bit is a big concern, Steve. All the more reason they should keep their paws off in this instance.
I had to laugh my tail off at all these Congress types being incensed they didn’t know where the first $350 bil went. Hang, that’s the way they *wrote the dang bill!*. They constructed it so it placed all decision authority… sans any legal recourse… into the Treasury Secy’s hands. One man’s hands.
The demands for review of it all (ie where it went) was not for a few months at first and I believe every six months after that. And they never dictated what the recipients could do with the money… meaning restrict the use for TARP funds. Just where it went… eventually.
They wrote it. They signed it. Now they’re upset and “surprised”?? Right….
The thing is, no matter how good the intent is by the feds or Congress to do something, it is so bogged down in bureaucratic red tape and insanity the waste in funds is astronomic. Look at Iraq reconstruction money. Good idea. Dispersed wisely? Hang no…. Nothing ever is when done by government. First lesson… if you want it done right and profitably, *don’t* give it to government bureaucrats. I used to say the only exception to this was the US Post Office. But even they are having problems now. Bummer.
Quite frankly, giving any Congress (and most especially *this* Congress) this big of an “allowance” is nothing but a recipe for financial disaster.
Personally, I think the only thing they should do is allow the banks to adjust their losses for mark to market on the defaulted property, get those properties out on the marketk for current value and forgive the debt on the overinflated values (or limited government loans to bridge the gap to recovery). Let time and the free market sort out the housing price corrections. Real estate is already starting to kick back into action with increased activity.
But I am just amazed they can’t see what they are creating…. this Congressional spending will inevitably lead to inflation, which will lead to higher rates for inflation control, which drives housing prices down. They should just accommodate for the mortgage losses already on the books by readjusting the asset value to today’s current market prices, and allow the housing market to correct itself without additional Congressional spending. Their inflation bill is not going to help, but it sure is going to hurt further down line.
Now the obomination is trying to further ensure long term dem
dominance by rigging the census.
All I can say is, no justice, no peace.
LOL, Hard Right. I daresay Obama can’t get around the Constitutionality of the census. It was an Obama mouthpiece that stated the new Census Bureau Director would “work closely” with the WH. Considering how inexperienced our POTUS is, I can’t imagine his staff being any more in command of the facts. Time will tell, but I wager that the Census Bureau Director will continue to work within the Commerce Department, as US statute requires.
It’s just another example of how little both Obama and his staff know of the workings of the Executive Office… and that includes just what is his to command, and what isn’t. All expected from a guy who was never qualified for the gig to begin with.
Reality will catch up… and quickly.
Mata:
Great points!
Yeah, the idiots can’t figure out why their pants are down around their ankles after they gave away their belts.
That’s what a lot of people think about the bank losses, myself included, but they are on their own spending sprees.
Hard Right:
But those democrats don’t believe in gerrymandering, didn’t you know that? LOL, gotta remember the “Obomination”
I hopr you are right Mata. We don’t need Rahm messing with the census.
The more I see of this “stimulus” bill the more clear it
becomes it is only about lining the pockets of dem supporters and
nothing else.
MataHarley,
Do you honestly wonder why the politicians were upset and surprised at not knowing where the first $350 billion TARP money went, even though these same politicians knew that there was zero accountability written into the distribution rules?
Maybe I’m just jaded, but I think the “outrage was simply a show to make the angry public believe that the pols were also upset. After a week or so of tongue lashing, Paulsen and Kashkari went back to business as usual.
I’d be more than happy to trade place with either of these two crooks. I can take a week of name-calling and inuendo in order to be able to spend $350 billion on my friends.
Until these mopes (and our “concerned congressional representatives) are able to account for how the first $350 billion was spent, they should be locked up and not allowed to go near public funds. It’s all a big con game, and we’re hopelessly screwed until we figure out how to wrestle power away from the ruling corporate elite.
Dang, ruaqtpi2… guess I forgot to use the official FA “sarcasm” icon… LOL
Nope. No “wondering” on my part. Which is why I was laughing my tail off. It was at their PR campaign to save their stupid hides. You are absolutely correct. The outrage was merely a bad partisan circus show. Perhaps it entertained many of those not in command of reality on the first “stimulus/bailout” bill. But most certainly for me, it was ironic entertainment at best.
Here in California the strategy worked brilliantly: increased government tax revenues and decreased the number of people smoking. What a deal!
What happened in Oregon, precisely? Tobacco tax legislation is always win-win. Either it increases revenues or it decreases smoking, but, actually, in every case, save for Oregon (of which I’m dubious) it does both. What a deal!
So what the heck happened in Oregon? Did the number of smokers increase and tax receipts went down? Somehow, I doubt that.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
Larry, if you increase the taxes but decrease the number of smokers without a significant demand on the increased taxes outlay for a mandated health plan, the increased taxes may indeed bring in more revenue without spending….
…for a while.
Certainly not for a long term health program who’s costs increase yearly.
Thus, that is not the case in SCHIPS. You can’t decrease the base that funds the program, fund a program who’s costs increase yearly, and expect this to work indefinitely.
INRE California specific, last I remember is Rob Reiner… one of the big players in reaping the cash for anti-smoking ads, was complaining that he was running out of cash for his cause because the ads and nanny legislation worked. There were less smokers funding his coffers, and he could make less ads.
Perhaps you’d like to give us a few more specifics about how it “worked” in California. Perhaps you’ll tell us, other than *not* funding an irate Rob Reiner on more ads for “STOP SMOKING”, how it “worked” in relation to a funded health program.
BTW, in Oregon, it never got out of the gate. They wanted to fund a health program, and the numbers didn’t add up even to those in favor it of. You see, they wanted to fund more than Rob Reiner’s ads.
@MataHarley:
You’re right!
Pat Dollard looked it up:
http://patdollard.com/2009/02/obamas-bid-to-control-the-2010-census/
Thanks for the info/Constitutional reality back up, Missy.
@MataHarley:
Ah yes, the US Constitution.
I seem to remember that.
Such fond, pleasant memories of how things once were.
I do wonder however if anyone in the Obamanation will have the courage, the spine, the wherewithal, or dare I say it, the sheer impudence to question “The One” on this particular decision.
Or shall they continue to line up like sheep, bleating back the chant of “O-baaaa-ma O-baaaa-ma”.
We’ll see.
….. gawd I’m glad you’re back, Aye. You do so make me laugh!
Here’s an interesting article – especially when the first link is then combined with the info in the second link…
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2009/02/smoking-gun-caller-explains-stimulus-as.html
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2009/02/were-up-against-decades-of-bitter.html
And heck…while we’re on it…might as well combine those two with this one in the same vein:
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2009/02/big-dig-ulus.html
hey, Ms. Suek… would you mind summarizing *your* point on your links? Thanks…