You Have To Be A Crazy Nutcase To Keep Up
h/t The Market Ticker
IG: Treasury 'failed' to adopt bailout safeguards
By Silla Brush
Posted: 07/20/09 10:47 AM [ET]
The government’s top watchdog over the $700 billion financial rescue package said the Treasury Department has "repeatedly failed" to adopt his recommendations that would make the program more transparent and accountable to taxpayers.
Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general over the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), will tell lawmakers on Tuesday that taxpayers are being left in the dark about what banks are doing with bailout money, don't know the value of the government's investments and will not know the full extent of how the money is invested.
Barofsky said that while the TARP program that Congress passed amounts to $700 billion, the total federal government support since 2007 for the economy and the financial sector could reach a far higher figure of $23.7 trillion. The government has committed significantly more money through a variety of other federal agencies and programs.
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I have been guessing in the $trillions with a single digit. But obviously, I live in a fantasy land. All the while folks here and there, have been calling me a nutcase for arguing that the bailouts are far larger than is reported on television. I was still living in an a fairy tale, unicorn pooping skittles world, thinking that the bailouts were still under $10 trillion.
I honestly thought that this would take a few more years to get this big.
It just goes to show that you can't be too nutty if you want to try to keep up with reality.
Then again, I'm not really surprised. I've been wrong before. This isn't the first time that I'm not crazy tin foil hat looney toons enough to keep up with reality... I mean sane enough...
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Ok, it's now on the Wall Street Journal...
Government Tab for Crisis Could Hit $23.7 Trillion, Official Says
posted by Weaseldog @ 11:21 AM
8 comments
8 Comments:
The "New Deficit" math is starting to remind me of an advertisement for a 1973 Ford Pinto with 23 thousand miles on it. While fuel economy sounds attractive and the numbers themselves defy explanation, nothing in the engineering prepares our rear-ends for impact.
Good afternoon, 'dog.
In my December 3, 2008, article, "Feast of Famine," I put the so-called "notional value" of the toxic assets at $63 trillion.
That is not a guess; it's an approximation, and I am not the only economist who puts the total exposure there.
Fortunately, I could be wrong.
Unfortunately, I could be low-balling the exposure.
Folks should trust the Dark Wraith's math.
DW, I remember that article.
I'm sure you are low balling it.
As you know, the bailouts have not fixed anything. It's instead provided the liquidity to leverage more risk.
The brokers that lost their jobs at Lehman's got snapped up by the competition to keep doing what they were doing.
And so the risk grows.
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It feels strange calling it risk. It's like watching a tidal wave lift out of the ocean and saying, "There some risk that we may get wet."
I was just looking at 13 trillion bandied about. I hate to say it but that 23 trillion is probably low when all is said and done.
They are using taxpayer $ to bribe the gubbermint. Classic ripoff.
Soon the very concept of money will become meaningless. Give us all permission to write "This is a $100 bill" on a piece of notebook paper and take it to the shops and be done with it!
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