On Sun, 27 Dec 2009, dredmond at efn.org wrote:
>> 1) So far the US hasn't frittered away any money on banks, did it? It
>> lent money and was repaid with interest, or bought assets and then sold
>> them at a profit.
>
> TARP was the tip of the rentier subsidy iceberg. True cost of the bailout:
> $14 trillion (Nomi Prins, bless her soul, has the gory details:
> http://www.nomiprins.com/bailout.html).
Um, this counts purchases of assets as if it was a cost. That's just not right.
> Basically, Obama's team replaced busted private loans with US T-bills,
> socializing private losses with public money.
AKA they created a temporary nationalized bank. IMHO the only problem is that it's temporary and narrow. I wish it were larger in its concerns.
> Despite the huge bailout, the US debt to GDP ratio is still
> an unsustainable 376%
Is this a typo? That ratio is about 80% and NBD.
Michael