Do OWS loons know how much TARP cost?

[DarrinS]

And do they know what the govt spends every month on things like entitlements? And do they know what percent of Americans pay for that?

Jazz hands

[Drachen]

really? Jazz hands? You are going to make fun of the deaf now?

[Agloco]

I'll just go ahead and get this out of the way now:


Another spectacular Darrin faceplant.

Thanks in advance TB :toast

[Cry Havoc]

http://i.imgur.com/lhBxk.gif

[DarrinS]

I know FuzzyLumpkins will love this article. Dovetails with my OP.


http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/10/11/niall-ferguson-on-a-clash-of-generations-in-wall-street-protests.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thedailybeast%2Farticles+%28T he+Daily+Beast+-+Latest+Articles%29





Blame the Baby Boomers

The Wall Street protesters blame Big Business for our economic problems. But Niall Ferguson claims they should direct their fury at the profligate spending of the baby boomers.

After years when young Americans yearned only to be occupied on Wall Street, suddenly they have taken to occupying it. It’s easy to scoff at this phenomenon. I know, because I have.


This is certainly not America’s answer to the Arab Spring—the Bobo Fall perhaps, unmistakably both bohemian and bourgeois. But it’s still worth taking seriously. What is it that makes evidently educated young people yearn to adopt leftist positions that are eerily reminiscent of the ones their parents adopted in 1968?


Check out the protesters’ website, which on Monday featured a speech by Slovenian critical theorist Slavoj Žižek. At first I thought this must be some kind of parody, but no, he really exists—red T-shirt, Krugman beard, and all: “The only sense in which we are communists is that we care for the commons. The commons of nature. The commons of what is privatized by intellectual property. The commons of biogenetics. For this and only for this we should fight.”


Yeah, man. Property is theft. Ne travaillez jamais. And all that.


There are three possible explanations for this retrogression to the language of ’68.

1.Increasing inequality exemplified by Wall Street is worth protesting against.
2.So is the fact that only a handful of bankers have been prosecuted for their part in the financial crisis.
3.Demonstrating is way cool.



Yet if I were a young American today, occupying Wall St. would not be my objective. Just reflect for a minute on the unbridled economic mayhem that would ensue if the protesters actually succeeded. The headline “Goldman Sachs Under Control of Hip Teenage Revolutionaries” would be the last straw for an already fragile economic recovery.


Now ask yourself what the financial crisis really means for today's 15- to 24-year-olds. Not only has it raised the probability that they will be unemployed after graduation. More seriously, it has massively increased the debt that they will have to service when they do get jobs.



Never in the history of intergenerational transfers has one generation left such a mountain of IOUs to another as the baby boomers are leaving to their grandchildren.


When you do the math, there is only one logical political home for today’s teens and 20-somethings ... and that is the Tea Party. For who else is promising to slash Medicare and Social Security and keep the tax burden at its historical average?


Let’s just remind ourselves of the report of the Trustees of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds back in 2007, which projected a rise in the cost of these two programs from 7.3 percent of gross domestic product to 17.5 percent by 2030. The trustees warned that to achieve actuarial balance—in other words, solvency—for these two programs would require (for Social Security) an increase of 16 percent in payroll tax revenues or an immediate reduction in benefits of 13 percent. For Medicare we are talking a 122 percent increase in payroll taxes or a 51 percent cut in spending.


As Laurence Kotlikoff and Scott Burns pointed out in The Coming Generational Storm, by 2030 there will be twice as many retirees as there are today but only 18 percent more workers. Unless there is really radical reform of entitlement programs—especially Medicare—the next generation of American workers will be paying roughly double the taxes their parents and grandparents paid. This is what Kotlikoff and Burns mean by “fiscal child abuse.”


Of these harsh realities the occupiers of Wall Street seem blissfully unaware. Fixated on the idea that they somehow represent the 99 percent of people who scrape by on 80 percent of total income, they fail to see that the real distributional conflict of our time is not between percentiles, much less classes, but between generations. And no generation has a keener interest in slashing future spending on entitlements than today’s teens and 20-somethings.


So occupying Wall Street is not the answer to this generation’s problems. The answer is to occupy the Tea Party—and wrest it from the grumpy old men who currently run it.


Call it the Iced Tea Party.


Way cool.

[LnGrrrR]

More importantly, do they know how bad the new dishwashers are at removing my soap scum?

[DarrinS]

More importantly, do they know how bad the new dishwashers are at removing my soap scum?


Wow. Good stuff. How are my tax dollars treating you?

[Cry Havoc]

my tax dollars

Crofl.

[LnGrrrR]

Wow. Good stuff. How are my tax dollars treating you?

Pretty decently. I'm getting ready to head overseas for a rotation soon; should be quite interesting. What's up with your Jets? :)

[clambake]

how is your patent treating your master?

[MannyIsGod]

More importantly, do they know how bad the new dishwashers are at removing my soap scum?

:lmao

[DarrinS]

Pretty decently. I'm getting ready to head overseas for a rotation soon; should be quite interesting. What's up with your Jets? :)


Good luck to you. Jets suck, but the Pats D is still horrid.

[ElNono]

Do they know about the upcoming LED light bulb scam?

[DarrinS]

Not one well-reasoned thought on the OP?

I'm not surprised.

[LnGrrrR]

Good luck to you. Jets suck, but the Pats D is still horrid.

Trust me, I curse at their D every week. Thanks for the well wishes. Sending the wife and kids back to San Antonio while I'm gone, so I'll actually be down there next week or so.

[Winehole23]

Focusing on the cost of the TARP minimizes the true extent of the bailout. Darrin fails at delivery. Again.

[DarrinS]

Focusing on the cost of the TARP minimizes the true extent of the bailout. Darrin fails at delivery. Again.

What is the true extent of the bailout?

[DarrinS]

Trust me, I curse at their D every week. Thanks for the well wishes. Sending the wife and kids back to San Antonio while I'm gone, so I'll actually be down there next week or so.


Probably a lot cheaper than staying in Hawaii.

[Winehole23]

I don't know the exact figure, but I'm pretty sure this one (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aY0tX8UysIaM) doesn't include the $16T in secret Fed loans.

[MannyIsGod]

Do they know about the upcoming LED light bulb scam?

:lmao

[DarrinS]

I don't know the exact figure, but I'm pretty sure this one (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aY0tX8UysIaM) doesn't include the $16T in secret Fed loans.


Hmmm. Well, I don't know how you get from 300 billion to that figure.

[Winehole23]

http://www.cnbc.com/id/37982580/Fannie_Freddie_Bailout_Could_Cost_Taxpayers_1_Tril lion

[LnGrrrR]

Probably a lot cheaper than staying in Hawaii.

Well, if she stayed in Hawaii, we'd get BAh for here (basic allowance for housing). But I'd rather she have family to help raise the two kids. Plus, the in-laws rarely get to see the kids so they're happy about it.

[Winehole23]

http://www.econmatters.com/2011/08/wall-street-bailout-too-big-to-collect.html

[ElNono]

Does Darrin know how much TARP cost?

[Winehole23]

Does he think it's a winner?

[boutons_deux]

Does Yoni know that TARP was a Repug Paulson Secy of Treasury plan approved by his good buddy dubya?

[DarrinS]

Does Darrin know how much TARP cost?

Well, if I thought it was orders of magnitude higher than the entire US budget, I'd be down there with my torch and pitchfork too.

[DarrinS]

Well, if she stayed in Hawaii, we'd get BAh for here (basic allowance for housing). But I'd rather she have family to help raise the two kids. Plus, the in-laws rarely get to see the kids so they're happy about it.

Good call.

[Winehole23]

That TARP might've been wrong in principle seems to have eluded you.

[Winehole23]

Well, if I thought it was orders of magnitude higher than the entire US budget,who said so?

[DarrinS]

That TARP might've been wrong in principle seems to have eluded you.

I think the alternative may have been worse (can't prove -- obviously).

[Winehole23]

I said focusing on TARP misrepresents the scale of the bailout. That's undeniably true.

[DarrinS]

who said so?

Your first link had some crazy-ass numbers.

[Winehole23]

funds disbursed, not costs, but the magnitude of the funds committed put TARP in the shade.

[DarrinS]

I said focusing on TARP misrepresents the scale of the bailout. That's undeniably true.

And I think that the younger generation is getting screwed over by demographics and their grandparents' entitlements WAAAAAAY more than they are getting screwed by WS fat cats.

[Agloco]

Well, if I thought it was orders of magnitude higher than the entire US budget, I'd be down there with my torch and pitchfork too.

And become an unproductive member of society? Say it ain't so.

[Winehole23]

both are true, but it's telling you choose to minimize the part played by big finance

[DarrinS]

And become an unproductive member of society? Say it ain't so.

But I would absolutely refuse to participate in group chant and jazz hands.

[ElNono]

As Jimmy Kimmel said...

"I don't like this focus on paying for things. That's what future generations are for."

[LnGrrrR]

^ :lol

[Drachen]

But I would absolutely refuse to participate in group chant and jazz hands.

There he goes again, making fun of deaf people.

[Winehole23]

http://www.gao.gov/assets/590/587555.pdf

[Winehole23]

http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/2587.html

[Wild Cobra]

Do OWS loons know how much TARP cost?
I think most of them are mindless idiots that want a Nanny state.

[vy65]

Suppose you buy fire insurance from Inflammable Insurance. You pay $1000 for a year of insurance. There is no fire, so you make no claim. Next year, you find a different provider offering a better price, and you switch.

Soon after your relationship has ended, you discover that Inflammable failed to pay any claims at all during the year you were insured, because all customer premiums were diverted to the Cayman Islands and then spent on kiddy porn and Pez. Were you defrauded? Do you have any cause for complaint? After all, ex post your cash flows turned out to be the same as if you had been dealt with fairly.

Of course you have been defrauded. You did not get what you had paid for. You had paid for Inflammable to bear risk on your behalf. It did not do so. The money you paid was simply stolen.

I'm not so sure that's fraud. Ostensibly, the fire insurance contract calls for the insurer to cover the insured's permitted claims in the event of a fire. I'm not aware of a contract for insurance which explicitly (meaning, per its terms) allocates risk.

Is that a function or a byproduct of the contract? Absolutely. But the insurance policy is still a contract. Meaning if there's no fire, there's no allowed or allowable claim - and - if there's no claim, there's nothing to claim that the contract was breached.


In financial markets, risk-bearing is the ultimate commodity. It is what financial market participants buy and sell. As a financial speculator, I spend exorbitant amounts of money buying out-of-the-money options to limit my downside risk. The vast majority of those options expire worthless, just like the vast majority of fire insurance policies end with no claims paid. If only someone would give me all those options for free, or sell them to me for half the market price, or reimburse the cost of the options that I never end up using, I would be rich. Seriously, given the years I’ve been in this game, I’d be pretty set if I had my option premiums back. It doesn’t seem fair at all that I am confined to a modest middle-class life because I had to buy all this insurance I never used.

I understand the argument. And there's some merit to the claim that the government shouldn't act as an insurer for the financial sector's risk taking. But I think that's a matter of public policy; the implication that the bailouts constitute legal fraud is off the mark.

Now, the author might not be getting at actionable fraud - but then how are you to make sense of his use of "defrauded" in the insurance example above.

[4>0rings]

Just the other day, the Federal Lightbulb Department gave me a citation on incandescent bulb use in my home!

[Winehole23]

$133B outstanding, $34B in likely losses. So much for TARP the moneymaker.

http://www.sigtarp.gov/reports/congress/2012/January_26_2012_Report_to_Congress.pdf

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Your first link had some crazy-ass numbers.

Where's your link to anything other than a poorly supported article which you try and pigeonhole me with because it mentions a dislike for babyboomers?

You can hardly speak for yourself without looking like a dipshit so please refrain from speaking for me.

Thanks!

[Winehole23]

After 3½ years, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (“TARP”) continues to be an active and significant part of the Government’s response to the financial crisis. It is a widely held misconception that TARP will make a profit. The most recent cost estimate for TARP is a loss of $60 billion. Taxpayers are still owed $118.5 billion (including $14 billion written off or otherwise lost).http://www.sigtarp.gov/frate2abAt2a/tre9uPrUvAst.pdf

[Winehole23]

TARP lost money, then there's the banks that failed:


Since 2007, 471 U.S. banks have failed, nearly depleting the FDIC deposit-insurance fund with $92.5 billion in losses. Rather than sue, the agency has typically preferred to settle for a fraction of the losses while helping the banks avoid bad press.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, The Times obtained more than 1,600 pages of FDIC settlements, made from 2007 through this year with former bank insiders and others accused of wrongdoing. The agreements constitute a catalog of fraud and negligence: reckless loans to homeowners and builders; falsified documents; inflated appraisals; lender refusals to buy back bad loans.


Defendants benefit by settling because they can avoid admitting guilt and limit the damages they might face in court. The FDIC benefits by collecting money without the hassle and expense of litigation. The no-press-release arrangements help close those deals.


Deutsche Bank, now the world's largest, settled to resolve claims that subsidiary MortgageIT sold shaky loans to Pasadena-based IndyMac Bank, which imploded under the weight of risky mortgages and construction loans. The IndyMac failure — considered one of the early events that helped usher in the 2008 financial meltdown — caused a scene reminiscent of the grim bank failures of the 1930s, with panicked depositors lining up outside branches trying to reclaim their money.
Overall, the FDIC collected $787 million in settlements by pressing civil claims related to bank failures from 2007 through 2012 — a fraction of its total losses.

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/mar/11/business/la-fi-fdic-settlements-20130311

[Winehole23]

http://www.banksterusa.org/sites/default/files/images/graphone602_0.png

[Winehole23]

http://www.banksterusa.org/sites/default/files/images/555.png

[Winehole23]

Disbursed
Outstanding


Non-TARP
$4,4152. billion (93%)
$1,815.8 billion (94%)


TARP
$307.6 billion (7%)
$117.7 billion (6%)


Total Bailout
$4,722.8 billion
$1,993.6 billion

[Winehole23]

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Total_Wall_Street_Bailout_Cost

[boutons_deux]

the Fed/Treasury bailed out the financial sector, while the financial sectors kept, keeps stealing homes

Deceptive Practices in Foreclosures

Despite happy talk about a housing rebound, nearly three million homeowners are in or near foreclosure, and many continue to be victimized by improper and possibly illegal practices.

The banks hire property management companies to determine whether homeowners who are behind on their mortgage payments have abandoned their homes and, if so, to secure the vacant property.

It doesn’t always go that way. The Illinois suit accuses the largest company in the industry, Safeguard, of breaking into homes despite evidence of occupancy, damaging and removing personal property, changing locks, cutting off utilities, and bullying occupants into leaving their homes when they have the legal right to stay. In several other states, private lawsuits and complaints to legal aid lawyers have alleged similar abuses.

Under the foreclosure settlement, banks are responsible for vetting, supervising and auditing contractors, a category that clearly includes property management companies. Profit and expediency, however, seem to have trumped due process yet again.

Property companies and their subcontractors make more money on vacant homes than on occupied ones, because abandoned property requires more work, including changing locks, boarding up doorways and removing trash. And banks get some or all of the proceeds from the sale of vacant homes.

In the past, banks have downplayed foreclosure abuses by noting that affected homeowners were, after all, late on their payments, as if that justifies harassment and worse. The Illinois suit makes clear that eviction is permissible only after a legal process is concluded. In addition, state laws to protect homeowners are consistent with federal policies — weak as they are — to promote loan modifications. Both state and federal laws are intended to ensure fairness in the brutal foreclosure process.

Safeguard has said its work meets “the highest standards in the industry.” The banks have said they carefully monitor the property management companies. That is hard to square with allegations in the Illinois suit, including the claim that Safeguard deemed homes vacant when the foreclosure process was not under way or when homeowners were negotiating loan modifications with the bank.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/09/14/opinion/deceptive-practices-in-foreclosures.html?from=opinion

Safeguard? safeguarding the financial sector's stolen $Bs.

If Obama succeeds in getting Summers into the Fed, America will be even more fucked and always unfuckable.

[Winehole23]

more up to date, numbers in Section 2, starting at page 39: http://www.sigtarp.gov/Quarterly%20Reports/July_24_2013_Report_to_Congress.pdf