It might just be possible that the Bush administration has bankrupted the United States and is keeping its collective head down to avoid a public explosion of anger and, perhaps, violence as the American people realize that everything they’ve worked for, everything they believed was theirs has been systematically looted by the most successful thieves in the history of the United States.
Worse yet, the Federal Reserve Bank (the Fed) – a private corporation – collaborated with the US Treasury to secretly loan at least $2,000,000,000,000 (2 trillion) USD to US financial institutions over and above the $700,000,000,000 (700 billion) USD publicly handed over to the same institutions with the promise of "full transparency," a promise which has yet to be delivered to the US public.
A Dec. 12 Bloomberg article here entitled "Fed Refuses to Disclose Recipients of $2 Trillion (Update2)," may mean that the cat’s out of the bag and there’s no way to get it back in without a great deal of pain.
Short of George W. Bush giving everyone in his administration a "Get Out of Jail – Free" card, Dubya’s only chance to sneak out of town is to divert attention from this debacle by trashing as many important regulations as possible to keep the president-elect and his team busy while Bush and his cronies leave town (and perhaps the country). A number of well-known DKos contributors – "Bonddad" (Hale Stewart) and "Mish" (Mike Shedlock), to name two – have described a national debt in excess of $10 trillion USD. The US Treasury publicly acknowledges $1.78 trillion USD.
Bloomberg, Dec 12, 2009:
Bloomberg News, a unit of New York-based Bloomberg LP, on May 21 asked the Fed to provide data on collateral posted from April 4 to May 20. The central bank said on June 19 that it needed until July 3 to search documents and determine whether it would make them public. Bloomberg didn’t receive a formal response that would let it file an appeal within the legal time limit.
On Oct. 25, Bloomberg filed another request, expanding the range of when the collateral was posted. It filed suit Nov. 7.
In response to Bloomberg’s request, the Fed said the U.S. is facing "an unprecedented crisis" in which "loss in confidence in and between financial institutions can occur with lightning speed and devastating effects."
Since the behind-closed-doors creation of the Federal Reserve Bank in 1913, little or no transparency has been available from the Fed for a wide range of reasons, not the least of which is that it’s "allowed to withhold internal memos as well as information about trade secrets and commercial information." In other words, they can "protect" the assets of their borrowers by hiding the fact they’ve been making massive loans with the US Treasury’s money – our money; the US taxpayer’s money – without bothering to tell us.
Could it be the look of panic in the eyes of Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson is caused by their under-the-table shenanigans with their friends and previous employers? Or are they merely following the dictates of the GW Bush administration? Either way, they’ve failed in their primary duty: the protection of the US Treasury and the American banking system.
Sen. Everett Dirkson was popularly attributed for the comment "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money." While he may not have said those actual words in response to a $328 billion USD Federal debt ceiling in 1965, the sentiment remains even though the debt ceiling is now in the trillions.
While it may be that GW Bush and company have pulled off the greatest heist in history, it looks as if Bush’s "help" for the auto industry may be nothing more than a bank robber’s filling his pocket from the candy jar on his way out the door – the addition of insult to injury – or in Dubya’s case, a thumb in the public eye.