Prison Planet.com
Monday, July 20, 2009

According to the watchdog overseeing the federal government’s financial bailout program, the full exposure since 2007 amounts to a whopping $23.7 trillion dollars, or $80,000 for every American citizen.

The last time we were able to get a measure of the total cost of the bailout, it stood at around $8.5 trillion dollars. Eight months down the line and that figure has almost tripled.

The $23.7 trillion figure comprises “about 50 initiatives and programs set up by the Bush and Obama administrations as well as by the Federal Reserve,” according to the Associated Press.

In testimony which will be delivered to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee tomorrow, Neil Barofsky, the inspector general for the TARP, will tell Congress that “the Treasury Department has repeatedly failed to adopt recommendations aimed at making the TARP program more accountable and transparent.”

According to Barofsky, taxpayers are in the dark as to who has received the money and what they are doing with it.

As we have repeatedly highlighted, the destination of some $2 trillion in TARP funds was the subject of a lawsuit filed by Bloomberg late last year after the Fed refused to disclose the recipients. The suit is still ongoing as Bloomberg attempts to discover names of private financial institutions that received the money. Continue reading →

Source: The Economist print edition

And how the discipline should change to avoid the mistakes of the past

OF ALL the economic bubbles that have been pricked, few have burst more spectacularly than the reputation of economics itself. A few years ago, the dismal science was being acclaimed as a way of explaining ever more forms of human behaviour, from drug-dealing to sumo-wrestling. Wall Street ransacked the best universities for game theorists and options modellers. And on the public stage, economists were seen as far more trustworthy than politicians. John McCain joked that Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the Federal Reserve, was so indispensable that if he died, the president should “prop him up and put a pair of dark glasses on him.”

In the wake of the biggest economic calamity in 80 years that reputation has taken a beating. In the public mind an arrogant profession has been humbled. Though economists are still at the centre of the policy debate—think of Ben Bernanke or Larry Summers in America or Mervyn King in Britain—their pronouncements are viewed with more scepticism than before. The profession itself is suffering from guilt and rancour. In a recent lecture, Paul Krugman, winner of the Nobel prize in economics in 2008, argued that much of the past 30 years of macroeconomics was “spectacularly useless at best, and positively harmful at worst.” Barry Eichengreen, a prominent American economic historian, says the crisis has “cast into doubt much of what we thought we knew about economics.” Continue reading →

MINNEAPOLIS —  A Minnesota judge has ruled a 13-year-old boy with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a highly treatable form of cancer, must seek medical treatment over his parents’ objections.

In a 58-page ruling Friday, Brown County District Judge John Rodenberg found that Daniel Hauser of Sleepy Eye, Minn., has been “medically neglected” and is in need of child protection services. Rodenberg said Daniel will stay in the custody of his parents, but Colleen and Anthony Hauser have until May 19 to get an updated chest X-ray for their son and select an oncologist.

Rodenberg wrote that Daniel has only a “rudimentary understanding at best of the risks and benefits of chemotherapy. … he does not believe he is ill currently. The fact is that he is very ill currently.” Because of that and other evidence in the case, Rodenberg ruled there is a “compelling state interest sufficient to override the minor’s genuine opposition.” Continue reading →

Source: MSNBC

WASHINGTON – The federal government has devoted $4.7 trillion to help the financial sector through its crisis, a watchdog report said Monday.

Under the worst of circumstances, the report said, the government’s maximum exposure could total nearly $24 trillion, or $80,000 for every American.

The figures are part of a tough new quarterly report to Congress from special inspector general Neil Barofsky, who accuses the Treasury Department of repeatedly failing to adopt recommendations aimed at making one component of the government financial rescue effort more accountable and transparent.
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The $4.7 trillion commitment to the industry equals about one third of the overall U.S. economy and takes into account about 50 initiatives and programs set up since 2007 by the Bush and Obama administrations as well as by the Federal Reserve. Barofsky oversees one of the initiatives — the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Much of the government assistance is backed by collateral and Barofsky’s $23.7 trillion estimate represents the gross, not net, exposure that the government could face. No one has suggested that the full amount will be used.

Because of declining participation in short-term loan programs and because some infusions of money have been repaid, the maximum amount actually spent has declined to a current outstanding balance of $3 trillion, Barofsky said.

The agencies and the programs assisting the financial sector include a newly created Federal Housing Finance Agency, increased deposit insurance initiated by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., and 18 support programs created by the Fed under the special powers it can deploy to address a systemwide financial crisis.

Banks have cut back on their use of the Fed’s emergency lending program as well as other programs to ease credit stresses. Given that, the Fed has reduced the amount it will lend to financial institutions under two programs and it has decided to let a program to support money market mutual funds to expire as currently scheduled at the end of October.

Barofsky’s $23.7 trillion estimate represents the maximum exposure that the government would face if all eligible applicants requested the maximum assistance at the same time. It does not account for the fees and other costs that some of these programs charge and for the collateral that many of the programs require that participants provide.

“While quantity and quality of the assets backing all of these programs vary, ignoring that side of these programs misrepresents ‘potential exposure’ associated with them,” Treasury spokesman Andrew Williams said.

In his report, Barofsky says Treasury has accepted some of his recommendations for greater accountability, but says the department has not taken steps to require all TARP recipients to report on their actual use of funds. He said Treasury also should report the values of its investments in banks and other financial institutions, disclose the identity of borrowers under a nonrecourse loan program and disclose trading activity under a public-private investment fund.

Barofsky says Treasury’s inaction means taxpayers have not been told what the financial institutions that have received assistance are doing with the money.

Barofsky’s conclusion is contained in a quarterly report to Congress and in testimony he is prepared to give Tuesday to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

“The very credibility of TARP (and thus in large measure its chance of success) depends on whether Treasury will commit, in deed as in word, to operate TARP with the highest degree of transparency possible,” Barofsky said.

Financial update; this is a clip of an interview of Bob Chapman discussing the following topics:

• Gives unemployment statistics using the U6 figure
• Talks about GM
• Makes some forecasts on the dollar
• Believes other countries will stop using the dollar

Click Here to listen to the interview

Click here to listen to the June 26th interview with Bob Chapman.