The following cutting comes from a recent Bloomberg article (here: goo.gl/ngVjc ) reporting on the real amount of money the Federal Reserve "loaned" to banks back when the financial shit first hit the fan (seen in the above screencap from last Thursday's Daily Show which was running footage from CNN):
"The amount of money the central bank parceled out was surprising even to Gary H. Stern, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 1985 to 2009, who says he “wasn’t aware of the magnitude.” It dwarfed the Treasury Department’s better-known $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Add up guarantees and lending limits, and the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion as of March 2009 to rescuing the financial system, more than half the value of everything produced in the U.S. that year."
What is also disappointing to me is the Daily Show's reference to the Federal Reserve as part of the USG. Effectively, it is not. It is run by a board that is appointed by the POTUS (read more on Wikipedia here: goo.gl/DICqs ) and we all know how money-smart recent Oval Office Inhabitants have been (they usually take advice from industry insiders and are never critical of Fed policy or behavior). So if you have an effective idiot deciding who runs an agency of the government, it's a bad idea to act like said agency can actually be controlled by the USG or, even less likely, by We the People.
While the Fed must appear at hearings in front of Congress (Wikipedia: goo.gl/fIQhk ), it must only do so twice a year and, as with the POTUS, one must wonder how said Congresspeople would be qualified to oversee such hearings. These are the same group that counted Ted "the Internet is a Series of Tubes" Stevens as a member. And even if there are people in the Senate and the House that do have a clue about money, remember the Fed only has to show up TWICE year. In odd years the Fed Chairman appears before the House and in even years, the Senate.
That really doesn't sound like a lot of control the USG has over the Fed, does it? No wonder they could slip $7,770,000,000,000 by the USG. That's about half the National Debt! What the fuck is wrong with our leaders? When that much money is loaned out, don't think it has no effect on the value of the dollar. I can't imagine that much new money getting paid back, either.
Of course, calling these "loans" at all is a joke since, as the Daily Show reported, the $7 trillion+ was loaned out with an interest rate of 0.01%! (go to the Bloomberg article here: goo.gl/ngVjc and find this fact underneath the "Below Market" heading.)
Saying this indicates a serious logical disconnect between what our leaders' priorities are and what they should be is an understatement. But allow me to explain how:
So, to keep these banks afloat, they basically give trillions to banks like it's candy. Meanwhile, how many people die from a lack of adequate health care that they can't get because they can't afford it? Beyond that, how many people died this year of cancer, a disease that saw the USG throw less than $2 billion at it in 2010 (goo.gl/eHdOR )? This is a disease that one in three women will get and one in two men will get. I don't know about you, but I'd happily trade huge banks for small ones and not get cancer, but hey, that's not where the USG's priorities are.
AMERICA: Where we save the banks, save the corporations, indefinitely detain suspected terrorists and let the citizens die.
