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-- the 2008 New York Fed administered Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) to lend up to $1 trillion on a non-recourse basis to holders of certain AAA-rated asset-backed securities (ABS) backed by newly and recently originated consumer and small business loans;
-- Fed purchases of money market instruments;
-- the Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP) to subsidize toxic asset purchases with government guarantees; and
-- trillions of dollars in bank bailouts; according to Neil Barofsky, the Special Treasury Department's TARP Inspector General, banks got or were pledged up to $23.7 trillion, or the equivalent of an $80,000 liability for every American; in March 2009, Bloomberg reported that the Treasury and Fed "spent, lent, or committed $12.8 trillion" up to that point, and more was available for the asking, besides other free money at near zero percent rates plus interest on reserves held by the Fed.
Wall Street never had it so good. For the public, hard times are worsening as America sinks deeper into depression, a protracted one according to some experts hitting the needy and disadvantaged hardest. The land of the free is now the most callous, the result of what former Wall Street and government insider Catherine Austin Fitts calls a "financial coup d'etat."
She explains the "pump(ing) and dump(ing) of the entire American economy," duping the public, fleecing trillions of dollars, and it's more than just "a process (to destroy) the middle class. (It's) genocide (by other means) - a much more subtle and lethal version than ever before perpetrated by the scoundrels of our history texts."
The scheme includes abusive market manipulation, "fraudulent housing (and other bubbles), pump and dump schemes, naked short selling, precious metals price suppression, and active intervention in the markets by the government and central bank" along with insiders trading on privileged information unavailable to the public. It's part of a government - business partnership for enormous profits through "legislation, contracts, regulat(ory laxness), financing, (and) subsidies" - a conspiratorial plot to transfer household wealth to powerful special interests.
Here's a taste of the consequences, courtesy of economist David Rosenberg on February 16.
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