. . . Then we wouldn’t be experiencing this dog and pony show over the execs at AIG receiving the big bonuses.
It’s an undeniable fact that legislators rarely, if ever, read the bills that land on their desks before voting on them. Usually, they rely on the leadership of their party, their legislative aides and the lobbyists to tell them what the measure is about along with a recommendation on which way they should vote.
That’s what happened with the legislation that allowed for taxpayers’ dollars to be used to dole out multi-million dollar bonuses to AIG execs.
The congressional leadership wanted this bill to pass. The President wanted this bill to pass. And the folks at AIG wanted this bill to pass.
So, on the afternoon of February 13th, the 111th Congress –including six representatives from this state– approved and sent to the White House the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009; a bill that few, if any, of our lawmakers actually read; and a bill that allowed for executives to receive millions of dollars for running their company into the ground.
Now, we’re being treated to what I consider to be a disingenuous display of grandstanding by members of Congress who want to prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that they’re equally as outraged as their constituents are right now at executives being rewarded for crappy work.
I’m not outraged at AIG. I’m outraged at Congress for voting for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 without reading the damn thing first. I’m outraged at Congress holding hearings and proposing new laws to distract from the fact that they essentially authorized those big bonuses when they voted for the bill.
Now I know that some people will say that time was of the essence and that we needed to pass the AIG bailout bill immediately, but when we’re talking about spending billions of Americans’ tax dollars, don’t you think that the process should be very slow and deliberate so as to ensure that the American people are getting their money’s worth?
Right now, I feel like I got hosed by my own government on this issue. . .
. . .And it doesn’t feel so good.
[Here's your Neal Boortz disclaimer]:Don’t believe anything you read on this web page unless it is consistent with what you already know to be true, or unless you have taken the time to research the matter to prove its accuracy to your satisfaction. This is known as “doing your homework.
{ 41 comments }
What else is new?
The same trickery was employed by the Bush Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, when the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act restrictions on payment of bonuses were gutted by the provision that they applied to banks/institutions from whom the US government bought toxic assets.
Merely by buying bank ownership instead of impaired assets, the prohibition on bonuses was avoided.
Indeed, as much as 75% of the last $20 billion TARP funds expended by the Bush Administration to Bank Of America went to Merrill Lynch bonuses.
We are witnessing the grandest theft in world history, with our entire federal government expediting the looting.
The trickery going on during the bonus brouhaha will cost $hundreds of billions……The hand is quicker than the eye….the eye being on the bonus spectacle.
Our futures have been stolen and Congress has been a ready participant.
Don’t be distracted by the partisan blame-game. That distracts placing responsibility where it lies – CONGRESS and the last 3 administrations.
Hey smart guy,
The “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 ” has nothing to do with money going to AIG. The AIG money comes from a mutant blend of TARP funds and a LOT of back-door maneuvering by the Federal Reserve under emergency powers that Bernake activated when all this crap hit the fan.
So, let us put allegations of reading comprehension where they belong.
Meanwhile, I agree that the bailouts to the banks are a huge mess. Stiglitz had a solid idea – the $700 billion TARP money could just as easily been spent by the Feds to develop a “Good Bank” with $7 trillion of capital with a somewhat conservative 10:1 leverage ratio to send directly to banks.
At that time, AIG could be allowed to implode and its major counterparties – the same huge banks also receiving bailout funds – could be nationalized and real assets counted against liabilities, not those CDS “insurance” junk papers lying around. Profitable units get sold off or spun out with proceeds returning to the Treasury, and we get to have a couple of decades without nation-spanning banking conglomerates.
In other words, lots of very creative destruction.
Sorry “directly to banks” should be “directly to businesses,” as in doing the job that lending and deposit banks should have done, but had too much of an inferiority complex to the Goldnut Sachs guys’ big paydays to stick to.
Like the Georgia hous read this one. You future was stolen when the deficit was run up during the good times.
Library money based on politics
11:17 am March 18, 2009, by James Salzer
When Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue recommended which communities would get money for new libraries, there was little political distinction in his choices.
He reviewed a list recommended by state library officials. Money went to communities represented by Republicans at the statehouse, and money went to cities represented by Democrats.
General Assembly politics changed all that.
In the budget that will be passed by the House Wednesday, $1.895 million to renovate the Rockmart Library, represented by Rep. Rick Crawford (D-Cedartown), got the ax. So did $2 million for design and construction at the central library in heavily Democratic DeKalb County. Another $2 million to design and construct a library in Athens, represented by Reps. Keith Heard (D-Athens) and Doug McKillip (D-Athens), was culled from the budget. $2 million for a library in Democrat Forest Park was gone.
Money was cut for a library in Republican Walton County as well, but that was because legislators said it wasn’t ready for construction yet.
What was added? Two libraries in Haralson County, represented by two Republican members of the House Appropriations Committee, Howard Maxwell (R-Dallas) and Mark Butler (R-Carrollton). About $1.8 million was added for a library in Greensboro, represented by House Appropriations vice chairman Mickey Channell (R-Greensboro). Another $2 million was added for a library in Lee County, a county represented by one Democrat and one Republican, both on the House Appropriations Committee.
Powerful House members didn’t just get libraries in the budget.
Georgia State University got $17.6 million in the budget for two projects, including money for intramural fields. Downtown GSU is represented in the House by a Democrat. But it also is Republican House Speaker Glenn Richardson’s alma mater and his son works there.
House Appropriations Chairman Ben Harbin (R-Evans), wasn’t left out. Harbin is from a suburb of Augusta, and he is a big booster of Augusta’s Medical College of Georgia. The House budget adds $27 million for a new school of dentistry at MCG.
How did Perdue fare? Two minor projects that he recommended in his home Houston County got cut.
Odinseye2k,
Allow me to point you to three key provisions of the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009:”
4) a prohibition on such TARP recipient paying or accruing any bonus, retention award, or incentive compensation during the period that the obligation is outstanding to at least the 25 most highly-compensated employees, or such higher number as the Secretary may determine is in the public interest with respect to any TARP recipient;
(a) In General- Notwithstanding any other provision of law or agreement to the contrary, no person who is an officer, director, executive, or other employee of a financial institution or other entity that receives or has received funds under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (or ‘TARP’), established under section 101 of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, may receive annual compensation in excess of the amount of compensation paid to the President of the United States.
(b) Duration- The limitation in subsection (a) shall be a condition of the receipt of assistance under the TARP, and of any modification to such assistance that was received on or before the date of enactment of this Act, and shall remain in effect with respect to each financial institution or other entity that receives such assistance or modification for the duration of the assistance or obligation provided under the TARP.
All that language was stricken and in its place the following was included in the conference committee report adopted by Congress and signed by the President:
(iii) The prohibition required under clause (i) shall not be construed to prohibit any bonus payment required to be paid pursuant to a written employment contract executed on or before February 11, 2009, as such valid employment contracts are determined by the Secretary or the designee of the Secretary.
Here’s a link to all versions of the bill.
So they attempted to put a band-aid on the TARP through an unrelated bill and it got slapped down in committee. I’m still failing to see how that is a negligent “failure to read the bill” as opposed to just wanting to pass something proactive in terms of shoring up total spending in the country with government money.
The only legislators that would have made a stink on this to stop a $787 spending and tax bill for some legalese on an unrelated measure are Republicans, who, in case reminders need to be made, had no interest in this thing passing anyways.
So, the revised ARRA didn’t so much enable the bonus-gate as failed to stop it.
There are a lot more substantive ways to talk about / deal with this problem than to go into the weeds on cleanup of other bills on the same page as ARRA.
“But I would suggest the first thing that would make me feel a little bit better toward them if they’d follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say, I’m sorry, and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide. ”
Sen. Charles Grassley was talking about AIG executives, but I would say the same thing about 535 people in D.C.
Joe,
Grassley was a pig farmer, so he is in familiar company. Pigs are not known for sharp vision so Grassley and the other 534 cannot see the slop in their own eyes.
I hardly think the phrase “slapped down in committee” is appropriate in this case.
The three original provisions posted above were in the original version of the bill passed by the Senate meaning that the legislation –including the three original provisions I’m alluding to– had been through the committee process and made it to the full Senate for its consideration.
Now, as to your assertion “the only legislators that would have made a stink on this to stop a $787 spending and tax bill for some legalese on an unrelated measure are Republicans, who, in case reminders need to be made, had no interest in this thing passing anyways,” allow me to point to a February 15th article in The Hill newspaper titled “Obama, Dodd clash on executive pay.”
The gist is that Sen. Dodd wanted to prevent the type of big bonuses that we’re seeing from AIG. The White House didn’t. Dodd refused to back down and a conference committee removed his provisions which, I might add, had bipartisan support.
Now, the reason why this all boils down to Congress failing to read the bill is that once that conference committee report hit the floor, if someone had even bothered to flip directly to the section where the original three Dodd provisions were, they would have noticed the deletions and that might have changed their vote.
But my guess is that the members of Congress just voted the way their leadership told them to, and now they’re raising hell over something that they themselves voted for.
You future was stolen when the deficit was run up during the good times.
Ah, but the theft blew past the sound barrier during the Bush years….debt was $5.8 trillion and went to $10.5 trillion before he left, $17 or $18 trillion if you count the nationalization of Freddie and Fannie.
NOW, it is breaking the speed of light. What these 535 con artists, Obama, Geithner, and Bernanke are doing will double it again before the next midterm Congressional elections.
They cannot double and triple the US official debt in such fashion without making our money into toilet paper.
Andre vs. Decaturguy is so much better than Andre vs. odinseye
I’m not outraged at AIG.
Really? I guess you are their biggest fan, Andre.
Not saying Congress is not to blame here, but, really, there is no physical way for Members of Congress to read every word that comes before them. That’s a pipe dream.
ROUND 45 OF ANDRE VS. DECATURGUY!
It’s Christmas in March!
there is no physical way for Members of Congress to read every word that comes before them.
That is an indictment of the system, as true as it may be.
This does not excuse them for TARP 1 or the EESA passed in September.
I read the thing online and called to warn both GA US Senators that the bill was a BLANK CHECK .
They decided to ignore me and the 90% of the people against that first legislated bailout (The sum total with what the FED anted up with NO APPROVAL is now bumpping on $12 trillion).
Now Isakson is left with the unacceptable excuse that Paulson/Bush misrepresented the bill and that he would not vote for it now.
$350 billion up in smoke. He was warned ahead of time.
The USA won’t survive the likes of these people.
It wasn’t an issue of reading the bill…from the WSJ
The administration is concerned the rules will prompt a wave of banks to return the government’s money and forgo future assistance, undermining the aid program’s effectiveness. Both Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers, who heads the National Economic Council, had called Sen. Dodd and asked him to reconsider, these people said.
It was a policy disagreement. The confrence deferred to the administrations position. Today they may wish that they hadn’t but this wasn’t the result.
Also AIG got no money from the stimulus, their money is Fed, TARP’s first half, and soon to be $30 billion from the second. So to say “AIG wanted this to pass” is simply false. There was no money for them in this.
But ultimately the mistake occured in 2008 when we bailed them out and didn’t put in these provisions. Do we really want to be in the business of doing this retroactively?
CS,
You are right most of AIG’s bailout money came from the Fed, before TARP was enacted.
$Billions of TARP money went to Wall Street bonuses, though, with $15 billion going to Merrill Lynch alone.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t TARP and all subsequent bailout money go towards making these companies avoid collapse while also giving them hope of viability after this turmoil goes away? Retaining top talent is the first step in making sure AIG becomes viable again.
Any one of those execs at AIG could quit and find a job paying that ammount at a different firm without all this commotion. Where would that leave AIG? Collasped.
The focus of the debate should be whether AIG should be left to die in the face of what it could do to the financial system, not how they are retaining top financial talent with .072% of the money the government has given them so far.
“Retaining top talent is the first step in making sure AIG becomes viable again.”
Hahahahahahaha…..
*Sniff, snort*
Bwahahahahaa…..
Excuse me, but when not are you functionally bankrupt, but you’ve blown a whole in the entire financial sector, you don’t have “top talent.” Certainly not at the division that gave you all of the red ink. At best you have hucksters and swindlers, at worst the merely suicidal by love of risk.
Barney Frank himself could run AIG better than those clowns have. And I’m not exactly endorsing Rep. Frank’s business acumen there.
If nothing else, AIG’s colossal failure at the hands of such “talent” is the number one indictment of the current CEO compensation system.
so if Andre isnt mad at AIG is it because they paid him to post this? Of course not, they would have found someone that people actually respect like Icarus
http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20090318/pl_politico/30833
Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) looks like he may be facing a fresh political firestorm.
Dodd just admitted on CNN that he inserted a loophole in the stimulus legislation that allowed million-dollar bonuses to insurance giant AIG to go forward – after previously denying any involvement in writing the controversial provision. .
“We wrote the language in the bill, the deal with bonuses, golden parachutes, excessive executive compensation that was adopted unanimously by the United States Senate in the stimulus bill,” Dodd told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer this afternoon.
“But for that language, there would have been no language to deal with this at all.”
Dodd had previously said that he played no role in writing the controversial language, and was not a part of the conference committee that inserted the language in the bill. As late as today, Dodd’s spokeswoman denied the senator’s involvement.
The AIG bonuses have caused a political firestorm, with Republicans and Democrats alike looking to lay blame for who’s responsible, and leading lawmakers looking to revoke the bonuses.
Dodd’s role in the legislation will likely come up as he faces the likelihood of a tough re-election. Former GOP congressman Rob Simmons announced he was running this week, and has already taken issue with Dodd’s stewardship as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.
F. Mae & F. Mac executives will soon be awarded million dollar bonuses as well. (contractural & yes, someone in the gov’t had prior knowledge of these bonuses just as in the case of AIG.) Yet, we don’t see the same outrage or the same stage show as we see with AIG.
I guess Mae & Mac have been outstanding in performance & management.
You give idiots enough rope and they will hang themselves…Golden BOY and his band of socialist are being exposed for what they are…one being enept. Tax and spend with no accountability will be the undoing of this administration.
The BOY is in over his head and just wait he will start point fingers blaming someone else. After the glitter and lights have gone he will be exposed for what he is… a state senator out of his league. But hey he can play round ball and go on Leno while the financial markets are in a whirlwind. And have you heard he is getting a 500k advance on a childrens book. What a joke he is, and he has lessened the office of the presidency. CHANGE you weaklings got it, it’s embarrassing for this great country.
Fannie and Freddie haven’t recieved nearly $200billion in assistance.
Listen, this is harldy the first time a bill was passed that was not read. Anybody remember the PATRIOT Act. Yeah, that wasn’t read either. Everything put together, that bill has cost nearly $1trillion over the past several years as well and has resulted in a long list of items on court dockets.
If these measures do not work, who isn’t there to blame? The Negligence of the GOP got us here, then they added an a$$ load of “pork” to a bill that they voted down (getting their cake and eating it too). The Dems tried something that worked before, and we will see if it works again.
Dodd is safe in his seat, deb. Thinking he will go anywhere is as stupid as thinking GA is a swing state. Remember Lamont…yeah, Connecticut is not GA. The people there are smart and politcally savvy. Hell, Lieberman was too conservative for Conn. Furthermore, Simmons is somewhat of a light weight.
Goldwater you are a DUMBA**, enough said.
Fannie and Freddie just got their bailout doubled to nearly $400 billion in February. But, hey, who’s countin’?
The BOY is in over his head and just wait he will start point fingers blaming someone else.
Wow …. just wow.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=aT_tMXRy2vDs
Dodd Blames Obama Administration for Bonus Amendment (Update1)
By Ryan J. Donmoyer
March 19 (Bloomberg) — Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd said the Obama administration asked him to insert a provision in last month’s $787 billion economic- stimulus legislation that had the effect of authorizing American International Group Inc.’s bonuses.
Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, said yesterday he agreed to modify restrictions on executive pay at companies receiving taxpayer assistance to exempt bonuses already agreed upon in contracts. He said he did so without realizing the change would benefit AIG, whose recent $165 million payment to employees has sparked a public furor.
Dodd said he had wanted to limit executive compensation at companies that got money from the government’s financial-rescue fund. AIG has received $173 billion in bailout money. His provision was changed as the stimulus legislation was negotiated between the House and Senate.
“I did not want to make any changes to my original Senate- passed amendment” to the stimulus bill, “but I did so at the request of administration officials, who gave us no indication that this was in any way related to AIG,” Dodd said in a statement released last night. “Let me be clear — I was completely unaware of these AIG bonuses until I learned of them last week.” He didn’t name the administration officials who made the request.
No Insistence
An administration official said last night that representatives of President Barack Obama didn’t insist on the change, though they did contend that the language in Dodd’s amendment could be legally challenged because it would apply retroactively to bonus agreements. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity.
That provision in the stimulus bill may undercut complaints by congressional Democrats about the AIG bonuses because most of them voted for the legislation. No Republicans in the House and only three in the Senate supported the stimulus measure
“Taxpayers deserve better than this from their government, and this is just the latest reason why legislation must be transparent for all Americans to see before it is recklessly signed into law,” said Eric Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House.
The new law, approved by Congress Feb. 13 and signed into law by Obama the next week, effectively authorized bonus arrangements at companies receiving taxpayer bailouts as long as they were in place before Feb. 11. The AIG bonuses qualified under that provision.
Obama and many lawmakers who voted for the legislation, such as Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, are demanding AIG employees surrender their bonuses.
Schumer Letter
Schumer yesterday sent a letter to AIG Chief Executive Officer Edward Liddy warning him to return bonuses or face confiscatory taxes on them. The letter was signed by Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, and seven other senators.
Brian Fallon, a spokesman for Schumer, said the senator “supported a provision on the Senate floor that would have prevented these types of bonuses, but he was not on the conference committee that negotiated the final language.”
A House vote is planned for today on a bill to impose a 90 percent tax on executive bonuses paid by AIG and other companies getting more than $5 billion in federal bailout funds.
“I expect it to pass in overwhelmingly bipartisan fashion,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, told reporters yesterday in Washington.
Republican Attacks
Republicans seized on the provision in the stimulus bill to paint Democrats as hypocrites.
“The fact is that the bill the president signed, which protected the AIG bonuses and others, was written behind closed doors by Democratic leaders of the House and Senate,” Iowa Senator Charles Grassley said in a statement.
Dodd said the provision was written to give the Treasury Department enough discretion to reclaim bonuses as necessary.
“Fortunately, we wrote this amendment in a way that allows the Treasury Department to go back and review these bonus contracts and seek to recover the money for taxpayers,” he said.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told lawmakers in a letter this week that department lawyers believe it would be “legally difficult” to prevent AIG from paying bonuses.
Other Democrats who voted for the stimulus bill have ramped up criticism of AIG’s bonuses, including Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, who told reporters, “I think the time has come to exercise our ownership rights.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Ryan J. Donmoyer in Washington at [email protected]
Last Updated: March 19, 2009 08:31 EDT
The House has just passed legislation that would tax AIG bonuses at 90%. Let that sink in & comment.
How about Congress taxing their own pay for mismanagement of the government?
Perfect, DD. Now THAT’S a revolution I’ll bet we can get people on all sides fired-up over. Just need to make sure that the fringe from both parties don’t hijack the issue.
Bucky,
The bill specified AIG by name?
328 to 93… sink in, SINK IN,…. How does something as stupid as this SINK IN?
It’s official. The Socialist-Democratic-Republican Party has now congealed into a single party.
My decision to become a Libertarian is re-enforced daily while these clowns (federal and state) are in session.
The meltdown of the GOP continues….
Looks like it has sunk in! The bill would tax a bonus at 90% for any of the businesses receiving bail outs of $5B or more. (Since Mae & Mac are $100% funded does it include their bonuses?)
Regardless, of your political affiliation – our country has just moved in a direction that could be called the mother of all Consitution busters to date. I hope there will be a filabuster in the Senate.
Visions of pitchforks are giving better than 500 Congressthieves sleepless nights.
They actually so much contempt for the people that they think THIS is going to placate us?
They stole our futures then bailed out the robber barons.
This is becoming more apparent by the day.
Today the Wall Street Journal opined “This needs to be repeated every time someone
pleads, “Who could have known?” Plenty of people did see the disaster coming. Most of them were marginalized, however, laboring at out-of-the-way econ departments, blogs and B-list think tanks.
They were excluded and even ridiculed because their larger understanding of the economy was not one that fit well with the sort of Wall Street worship preached by the likes of CNBC.”
Thanks WSJ, that was entirely too late, yet accurate.
The folks who GOT IT RIGHT are still being ignored.
The Dems and GOP are wreaking havoc with what little chance remains for us to pull our fat from the fire.
AIG was named specifically, but the legislation also states that it is applicable to all receivers of bonuses from TARP recipients.
Unfortunately, there is a chance that the tax will be found unconstitutional if it is passed and signed into law.
Indy brought up a subject that very good book was written on, has anybody here read “The Black Swan.”
If this tax is written to punish these people, isn’t that just a thinly veiled “bill of attainder”?
Yes, Goldwater, Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan warned that in a maelstrom of damaging cycles/systems/events that an unforeseen low probability event could arise and devastate everything. The more volatility exists and the more extraordinary bail-outs occur, the likelihood of a Black Swan event increases.
As for the tax on bail-out bonuses, that is a diversion totally. This story came out on Bloomberg on 2/9/09. I can go find the link if anyone doubts this. Anyone saying that they just found out is LYING. This tax is unconstitutional and does not erase the fact that CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT are responsible for the bail-out money.
Now YOUR money is being used by the recipients to fund all manner of give-aways, including a Bank Of AMerica promotion for a Dreamworks movie.
All manner of outrages will pop up, because of the sheer size of the $11 trillion bailouts that DOUBLED THE NATIONAL DEBT IN SIX MONTHS.
While everyone was distracted by the bonus imbroglio, the TALF was being modified to allow the fraudsters to essentially COUNTERFEIT ‘toxic’ assets and dump them on all of us to the tune of HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS.
This era will define “INSANITY.”
And WE will go down as the biggest FOOLS to have ever been birthed since the dawn of man.
Fudging the numbers a little bit on the deficit are we?
We go through these cycles occasionally. We, America, always has…because we do not know or agree on our own history. No, we will not go down as the biggest fools. That honor belongs to the free market conservatives of the 1920′s…and then to anybody who thought it prudent to engage in a ground war in Asia (the list is long).
I bring up the Black Swan because of all of this. Politics is a game…it always has been and always will be. Democrats will eventually lose their majority…unless the GOP divides and we devolve to a more parliamentary structure of coalition politics.
In the end, economic terms need to be taught to the next generation properly. I do not know how capitalism and socialism have become redefined…perhaps it is left over from Cold War politics. What has been going on for the better part of 15 years has been a tug of war between two opposing sides…with both sides going to extremes to win out. This has left a huge vacuum…a sort of Tragedy of the Commons, if you will.
The world is not as simple and clean cut as liberal vs conservative. There is an entire spectrum of political ideology and flexibility between many of them. Many modern liberal ideas are destructive and just as many modern conservative ideas are as well.I
In the end, we need to reconcile. I am not trying to work my hand is matters of persuasion. Persuasion has never been my cup of tea. Facts interest me,…even if they are hard to face or seem offensive.
Every non-visceral issue of today can solved. American politics has gotten to the point where solving any of these issues only reduces the job security of the politicians charged with creating solutions. What incentive is there to do anything in these offices? Take Paul Broun or John Lewis for example. The 10th will always elect Paul Broun so long as he calls democrats baby killers. The 5th will always elected Lewis so long as he is John Lewis. Why bother working?
Perhaps I am just getting disillusioned in my old age…but all of this crap has become just one big popularity contest. None of the partisans care about this country…they only care about getting their way.
Not fudging at all.
The official debt stood at $5.8 trillion when Bush took office. By the time he left it was around $10.5 trillion. The debt of Fannie and Freddie is $6 trillion and that was nationalized last summer. We are now at $11 trillion official, ISSUED debt, plus $6 trillion GSE debt for a total of $17 trillion. Bush did not include costs of Iraq, but Obama is. Obama will run a DEFICIT (one year’s increase in the debt) that they are admitting will approach $2 trillion, but in reality will be $3.5 trillion minimum.
In the last year the Fed has created another $9 trillion in bailouts and just this week took the step to financial Armageddon by announcing that they are firing up the money printing machine to the tune of more than a $trillion.
Words just don’t describe this ….try “madness” ….”insanity”….pick your own.
On the bright side,…inflation helps pay of debt.
I will be fine. The rest of us (the top 1%) will be fine. Free market economics really only helps us out. It lets us keep you, the middle and lower classes, work your fingers to the bone to make us more money.
I retired before all this deregulation that got us to this point. Doesn’t mean I did not invest heavily in companies that I knew were taking advantage of government leaving the markets.
Afterall, people in my position do not need credit. We can buy things flat out…whether it is another house or a another yacht. Just remember, “free market” capitalism allowed those of us with enormous amounts of capital to dump on all of you that don’t.
I know that is not the American dream most of you were brought up with. All these lies about working your way up and equal opportunity are illusions. They are the shadow puppets on the walls of the cave we call the United States. The economic elite are holding those puppets in front of the candle light to provide the rest of you cattle with an illusion of reality in this country. It seems that every now and again a few people escape the cave and are blinded by the light. It just so happens that the liberals embrace reality now, and the conservatives want to destroy those that come back with the truth. Hence hacks like Rush and Erick preferring Obama to fail. For any of this to succeed, even marginally, would mean that the conservative ideology held by the right wing is wrong again.
If you want to blame somebody, blame yourselves. All of you morons bought into this crap because the Cold War made you afraid of anything government being involved in the markets or financial institutions. Heck…none you even knew about these toxifying financial arrangements before it blew up in your faces and layoffs started happening.
The madness and insanity is that this country has not embraced social-capitalism. The right wing doesn’t want to think for themselves and the left doesn’t do much thinking at all.
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