Thursday, January 08, 2009

Bailout Update

If you take a closer look at the bailout numbers, you will find that it is now exceeding $2 Trillion, with more expected by the Obama administration yet to be announced.

Scott Snider, partner and chair of the government relations and public policy practice at Steptoe & Johnson, Washington, D.C., says $365 billion will be spent on the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Not all of this money has been spent yet. $125 billion has been promised to "other banks" like those corporations that are becoming banks to qualify for bailout money. (i.e. GMAC). $15 billon of that money was claimed when the government released $7.58 billion to Pittsburgh-based PNC Services Financial Group, Inc., $3.41 billion to Fifth Third Bancorp and $1.3 billion to SunTrust Banks, Inc., including others. $20 billion of the TARP money is being used as seed money for the government’s Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) program, under which the Federal Reserve will extend up to $200 billion in non-recourse loans to holders of asset-backed securities (ABS) backed by consumer and small business loans in a bid to free up the ABS market.

After the Bear Stearns' $29 billion bailout in March, was the $200 billion government takeover of mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in early September, AIG for $152.5 billion (more than $127.5 billion has already been spent out of that) then Citigroup for $325 billion. $16.7 billion was spent in other FDIC takeovers of more than 20 banks Washington Mutual was the largetst. Now we are up to $1.1 trillion, not including the remaining $180 billion TARP not yet included in the calculation. There is $1.4 trillion in a commercial paper funding facility, $320 billion for the FHA, $659 billion in money market guarantees and $9 billion in student loan guarantees. The total is another $2.4 trillion.

We thought that the $700 billion number tossed around at the beginning of the crisis was a lot of money. Somehow our government has decided it has a bottomless checking account. So we need to get ready for some serious economic consequences not too far down the road. Stay out of debt, including your mortgage, become financially independent by saving aggressively and intelligently, lower your lifestyle as low as possible, and batten down the hatches.

2 comments:

Superb Jon said...

Catholics destroyed American industry. They find American cars too advanced for them to use or their mechanics to fix. Their slovenly, anti-intellectual work ethic produces vacuous, casuistrous blather. Ellis Island Popeholes brought in FDR. Carolignian Brzezinski spawned Zia al Haq, Khomeini, and bin Laden - breaks up superpowers via Aztlan and Kosovo as per Joel Garreau's Nine Nations. Brzezinski, Buckley and Buchanan winked anti-Semitic votes for Obama, delivered USA to Pope's feudal basket of Bamana Republics. Michael Pfleger and Joe Biden prove Obama is the Pope's boy. Talal got Pontifical medal as Fatima mandates Catholic-Muslim union against Jews (Francis Johnson, Great Sign, 1979, p. 126), Catholic Roger Taney wrote Dred Scott decision. John Wilkes Booth, Tammany Hall and Joe McCarthy were Catholics. Now Catholic majority Supreme Court. NYC top drop outs: Hispanic 32%, Black 25%, Italian 20%. NYC top illegals: Ecuadorean, Italian, Polish. Ate glis-glis but blamed plague on others, now lettuce coli. Their bigotry most encouraged terror yet they reap most security funds. Rabbi circumcizes lower, Pope upper brain. Tort explosion by glib casuistry. Bazelya 1992 case proves PLO-IRA-KLA links.

Unknown said...

Not sure what all that means.