Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #395: $5T

Washington's $5 Trillion Tab
For all the fury over Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's $700 billion emergency economic relief fund, it seems downright puny when compared to the running total of the government's response to the credit crisis.

According to CreditSights, a research firm in New York and London, the U.S. government has put itself on the hook for some $5 trillion, so far, in an attempt to arrest a collapse of the financial system.

The estimate includes many of the various solutions cooked up by Paulson and his counterparts Ben Bernanke at the Federal Reserve and Sheila Bair at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., as the credit crisis continues to plague banks and the broader markets.

Emphasis added by me.

I want all of you sitting there to consider all the times we've been told they was no money for:

1) Universal health care
2) Better roads
3) Better schools
4) Better food inspections (recall the e. coli outbreaks!)
5) Extensions of unemployment benefits
6) Rebuilding New Orleans
7) Supplying our troops with body armor

-- and more. In short, anything that directly affected the betterment of our lives as ordinary citizens, we were told we were too poor to afford.

Suddenly, all these crooked motherfuckers on Wall Street are given trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars of money.

Yet there was no money for us.

Remember that.

Remember that when your pension fund goes broke.

Remember that when your 401K is wiped out.

Remember that as you frantically put your possessions up on eBay.

Remember that as you're evicted from your home or apartment.

Remember that when you're on line for Food Stamps.

Remember that when you're living in a fucking cardboard box!

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