...Nomi Prins’s book, It Takes a Pillage. Nomi, who used to be a VP at Goldman but is now one of the leading authorities on where the bailout monies have been spent and why, frequently makes the point that the bailouts were more about paying off bets than they were about stabilizing the economy. This is from her second chapter, “This Was Never About the Little Guy”:
Here are some numbers for you. There were approximtely $1.4 trillion worth of subprime loans outstanding in the United States by the end of 2007. By the first quarter of 2009, there were forclosure filings against approximately 4.4 million properties. If it was only the subprime market's fault, $1.4 trillion would have covered the entire problem, right?Yet the Federal Reserve, the treasury, and the FDIC forked out $13 trillion to fix the housing “correction”… With all that money, the government could have bought up every residential mortgage in the country – there were about $11.9 trillion worth at the end of December 2008 – and still have had about a trillion left over to buy homes for every American who couldn’t afford them.
And to cover the devastating losses these wankers sunk on teachers' pension funds, we want to take away collective bargaining rights? Of people who make $40k a year (in a generous state) and drive a '98 Ford Taurus????
