Government Already Overpaid By $78 Billion In Bailout Money
from the transparency? dept
Well here's a quick, but depressing one. As politicians are still debating the stimulus package, the head of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the TARP bailout funds is admitting that we, the taxpayers, appear to have already paid $254 billion for assets that appear to be worth $176 billion. That's a shortfall of $78 billion that may have just gone up in smoke, effectively. Now, it may eventually happen that the assets we now own appreciate in value, and that money is made back, but this is the key problem with just having the gov't jump into "buying" bad assets. It's almost guaranteed that they're going to overspend. If that doesn't make you uncomfortable about what sort of mess we're going to get with the stimulus package, I don't know what will. The government isn't just throwing money at a problem that might not need money -- it's doing it badly. On a historic level.
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Filed Under: bailout, overspending, tarp, transparency
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Thousands of prior examples have shown that the government is possibly the worst organization to handle tasks like this.
This is not shocking or surprising.
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Re: Phillip
Are there any examples showing that, say, private enterprise does a better job of bailing itself out?
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How do we know we overpaid?
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How do we know we overpaid?
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I'd appreciate an article about this topic if you feel that you can get enough solid information on it.
http://www.justaskgemalto.com
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The government...
So when you say "The government isn't just throwing money at a problem that might not need money -- it's doing it badly" what you mean is "The Bush government wassn't just throwing money at a problem that might not need money -- it was doing it badly."
The current government, which has a clue (unlike the Bush government), is far less likely to make $78 billion simply disappear.
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Re: The government...
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Re: The government...
Explain how fixing a road will get anyone a job?
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Re: The government...
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Re: The government...
They insist on throwing our money down the rat hole of insolvent banks -- by the way, the Level 3 toxic derivatives (IRS and CDS) with a notional value of $600 trillion exceed the combined balance sheets of all the countries of the WORLD.
The only thing the bailout is doing is temporarily protecting sovereign wealth funds (i.e. Saudi Arabia, China, etc.) and hedge funds who are the counter-parties to these bad trades. THEY are the ones being bailed out. "We the People" are going to get stuck with the bill.
The only way to solve this is immediate bankruptcy, with protection for depositors.
"The current government" at the rate they are going will make $78 TRILLION simply disappear. Get over it and start paying attention.
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And Stephen, get real, stop your Obama worship and look at what is in the stimulus package. Not everything is GWB's fault. Lets see, who controlled congress when (the Bush govt.) overspent?
The republicans voted against it, and should continue to vote against it. They should also cancel their 4% mortgage plan, as that would be a waste of money also.
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We should somehow tie the performance of these investments to their personal assets. Then they might give a shit. $78 billion gone? There goes their house. Maybe they would pay more attention to what they're throwing money at next time.
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What are the qualifications to be congress? You have to be a certain age and be elected. That's all it takes, and suddenly you have control of ungodly amounts of money!
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All of this money seems to be going to banks so they can loan out more money and put more people in debt. It doesn't seem to be stopping any foreclosures or anyone keep their jobs. Ok, they over paid for assets..where did that money go, how is it helping? Oh that's right....it helped AIG take all their exuctives to New York where they could each stay in rooms that cost like 20k a night.
What really amazes me is that wall street bankers earned almost 20 billion dollars in bonuses in 2008. How the hell does that happen? I know I sure as heck would not receive any type of bonus if I failed at my job so badly it destroyed the global economy.
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Duh?
I'm not saying it's a good idea, but it's not like this should have come as a surprise. Honestly, the sensationalism at Techdirt is getting worse and worse lately.
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Re: Duh?
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My Interpretation
Which not only the Bush approved TARP was doing, but the Obama pre-approved stimulus bill is looking like it will do as well.
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Haaaa,.
What do you expect, when the American Tax Payers
are the dumbest people to set foot on the planet.
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Conflating issues
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Re: Conflating issues
Not conflating the two. Just pointing out when they screw up something as "simple" as TARP so much, shouldn't we be a bit worried about how the stimulus will go down.
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TARP was a bad idea
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Seems to me Obama authorized the release of the second half of that money. GWB wasn't going to do it until Obama lobbied to have it released.
The problem is people like you play politics with this instead of looking at what is the right thing to do.
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Government Already Overpaid By $78 Billion In Bailout Money
Regardless the FED$ paid what they did. Only thing to ask now is why are these note/mortgages still on the books at the point of origin? All of the Toxic Mortgages are still on the books at your local banks. And this is one of the causes of the credit crunch we face now. Banks aren't permitted to borrow FED$ dollars when they hold foreclosed notes. If this is not address the TARP will by times end pay three to fours times of the total toxic mortgages on the market. The FED$ aren't smart enough to see this. Or is it because the American people are just so stupid and filled with apathy that the FED$ count on their stupidity
I think its both. but hey. what do I know right!
AL Otto
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