No innocent person knows how much money was gifted to the failed and moribund giant investment banks. The complicit know, but they're not talking.
'
We know there was a so to speak straight-forward 1.3 trillion with a "T" bucks initially, and then we unofficially caught wind of several trillion more somehow diverted (created?) from the Federal Reserve, the guardian of our monetary substance. And from a faint almost muted voice of a decent academic on the internet, that somehow avoided suppression, we were advised that the total giveaway could amount to 17 (that's a 1 followed by a 7) trillion!
.
The government propaganda was that the large investment banks were "too big to fail," and that it was necessary to gift them the people's treasure lest the "economy" should crash, and we were to perhaps suppose that America was to become a third-world nation (?)
.
Leaning heavily backwards onto the greed embracing foundation of Reaganomics, all this lucre was to "trickle-down" to the desperate but humble folks of lesser means, save them from foreclosure, create honest jobs for them, put food on their tables, cover medical bills and tuition for their kids, etc, etc, and return the republic to prosperity!
.
It didn't happen, as we know, and it appears that such will not happen unless some honest stimulus is forthcoming from our majority Democrat government which favors Republican solutions. (I do believe that once upon a time there was an actual difference between the two major political persuasions. Happy Days areWhere Again?)
.
AIG, one of the most flagrant of the greed-mongering failures, immediately upon receipt of its federal welfare dole, slid a cool 15 billion across the Street to Goldman Sachs. Was that in the plan all along? Who knows? What we do know is that Goldman (a really neat moniker for a greed merchant) has provided a corps of officers to the Treasury and the Fed, as well as economic advisors to presidents across the past thirty years. What do you think?
.
Not to single out AIG from amongst its venal compadres, I must admit to my innocence again being exposed in the past several weeks by AIG's award to its $900,000 salary-level executives, bonuses of $6 million a head. Is that where we wanted OUR money to go to "save" the economy?
.
Well, whatever the total amount of the bailout -- be it $3 trillion, $5 trillion, or $17 trillion -- where did it all go? Again, no guiltless person knows. Since there is no evidence that it has stimulated our sick economy, one must suppose that it's being used for whatever the banksters see as their own best interests.
.
I've never waxed enthusiastic over "trickle-down" economics, but rather -- admittedly perhaps influenced by childhood hardship -- more the proponent of the "geyser" school, which has it that if stimulus is awarded to the people who actually need it the most, they will indeed spend it on housing, clothing, food and such, and that this influx of money at the bottom will spread throughout the economy to produce the "multiplier effect" that is essential to our economic well being, especially in alleviating unemployment.
.
Suppose, for instance --lacking any better and no completely honest data -- that the total of all the stimulus actions amounted to a conservative $3 trillion. And suppose that the demographers' estimate of homelessness being one percent of the U.S. population is accurate, that is roughly 3 million homeless people. Now, really stretching the imagination, suppose that the entire $3 trillion stimulus was awarded to the homeless!
.
What would the homeless do with this windfall? First off they'd buy food, rather than LeCoutre timepieces, houses rather than yachts made in the Netherlands, clothing from Macy's or Belks rather than from Seville Row, Buicks rather than Bentleys; and what was left over they'd put into the nearest local bank, where it could be further deployed to stimulate small businesses, rather than to buy gold to be secured in a subterranean vault in Zurich, or sneaked off to the Cayman Islands in pursuit of secret gains from the financial underworld.
.
One million homeless people sharing in $3 trillion of stimulus awards. Doing the math -- Wow! Can this be? Each homeless person in the United States gets one million dollars! Three million for a family of three! Four million for a family of four, etc, etc.
.
Seems extravagant? Well, that is how much total wealth our government and its agents have split amongst the relatively very few already overabundantly wealthy banksters.
.
To bailout the homeless rather than the banksters appears to be not only the superior moral choice but also more beneficial to the economy. What do you think?
