IMHO, there isn't much more our party can do to curb voter enthusiasm than to continue pushing bullshit memes like those being spun on the front page of this morning's NY Times' business section on TARP's second (and final) anniversary: "
TARP Bailout to Cost Less Than Once Anticipated."
Most voters aren't even aware of the name of their current member of the House of Representatives. So, it comes as no surprise that the public conflates virtually all of the Wall Street bailout meme to only one program: TARP. In fact, Los Angeles-based author, journalist, and former Bear Stearns executive and Goldman Sachs managing director Nomi Prins reminds us there are many dozens of taxpayer-funded Wall Street bailout programs still in place, and here on Main Street we're still on the hook for...drumroll please...more than $3.5 trillion in bailout cash and related supports directly for the vampire squids, as well as another $2.8+ trillion in ongoing commitments to government-sponsored entities and/or government-sponsored enterprises (i.e.: "GSE's"), such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Prins, along with colleague Krisztina Ugrin, over the past three or four hours and just in time for the 10/2 March on D.C., has provided her followers with the latest update of her
extremely well-annotated "
Bailout Tally," as well as the second annual edition of the Wall Street "
Bailout Anniversary Report."
It's a real eye-opener, and it makes a story, such as this, in today's NY Times, smell very much like the propaganda turd that it is.
Silly Democratic bloggers, dontcha know? Wall Street is your friend!
Thank god there are people like Nomi Prins still around to speak truth to power!
Nomi Prins is a journalist and Senior Fellow at Demos. Her latest book is: It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bonuses, Bailouts, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street (Wiley, September, 2009). She is the author of Other People's Money: The Corporate Mugging of America (The New Press, October 2004), a devastating exposé into corporate corruption, political collusion and Wall Street deception. Other People's Money was chosen as a Best Book of 2004 by The Economist, Barron's and The Library Journal. Her book Jacked: How "Conservatives" are Picking your Pocket (whether you voted for them or not) (Polipoint Press, Sept. 2006) catalogs her travels around the USA; talking to people about their economic lives.
Before becoming a journalist, Nomi worked on Wall Street as a managing director at Goldman Sachs, and running the international analytics group at Bear Stearns in London...
Checkout Prins' reports, linked above. Brief, but plenty of easy-to-understand graphics. Lots of solid annotation. Then read this piece of propaganda in today's NY Times. Apparently, as I'm sure you'll see in some of the comments, you can fool some of the people all of the time!
Yes, you can!
TARP Bailout to Cost Less Than Once Anticipated
By JACKIE CALMES
New York Times
October 1, 2010
WASHINGTON -- Even as voters rage and candidates put up ads against government bailouts, the reviled mother of them all -- the $700 billion lifeline to banks, insurance and auto companies -- will expire after Sunday at a fraction of that cost, and could conceivably earn taxpayers a profit.
A final accounting of the government's full range of interventions in the economy, including the bailouts of the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is years off and will most likely remain controversial and potentially costly.
But the once-unthinkable possibility that the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program could end up costing far less, or even nothing, became more likely on Thursday with the news that the government had negotiated a plan with the American International Group to begin repaying taxpayers.
The rescue of the troubled insurer included $70 billion from the bailout program that was enacted two years ago, at the height of the global financial crisis late in the Bush administration, initially to prop up big banks.
At the White House on Thursday, the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, briefed President Obama about A.I.G. and about the broader outlook for the expiring rescue program, putting the projected losses at less than $50 billion, at most. Yet neither the White House nor Congressional Democrats are likely to boast much in the month remaining before midterm elections. For most voters, TARP remains a four-letter word.
Un-freakin'-believable!
So, flame away, and tell me how amazing this brilliant Democratic financial miracle really is...come on...I know you want to....because the folks on Main Street are just dying to hear all about it! (Or, are they just dying?)
Way to ramp up the enthusiasm...for whom, exactly?