The Day After….The Hangover Continues
It is the day after the Democrats in the House passed the $819B, (really $1.2 Trillion), stimulus/spending package with all of Nancy’s pet projects getting their share of our pie, and what do I wake up to? The DOW has given back half of it’s gains from yesterday (so far), and two articles that are surely going to make y’all feel warm and fuzzy today:
Hill Republican: Stimulus Aids Illegal Immigrants: (Your tax dollars at work!)
WASHINGTON (AP) – The $800 billion-plus economic stimulus measure making its way through Congress could steer government checks to illegal immigrants, a top Republican congressional official asserted Thursday.The legislation, which would send tax credits of $500 per worker and $1,000 per couple, expressly disqualifies nonresident aliens, but it would allow people who don’t have Social Security numbers to be eligible for the checks.
Undocumented immigrants who are not eligible for a Social Security number can file tax returns with an alternative number. A House-passed version of the economic recovery bill and one making its way through the Senate would allow anyone with such a number, called an individual taxpayer identification number, to qualify for the tax credits.
A revolt among GOP conservatives to similar provisions of a 2008 economic stimulus bill, which sent rebate checks to most wage earners, forced Democratic congressional leaders to add stricter eligibility requirements. That legislation, enacted in February 2008, required that people have valid Social Security numbers in order to get checks.
And an article that is probably more important considering everything that we have been learning about The Fed, The Treasury, Ben Bernanke, Hank Paulson, Timothy Geithner and the NY Bank cabal that is ruining our country:
New Bank Bailout Could Cost $2 Trillion (What? I thought the first $700B was to bailout the banks and buy up the bad assets according to Paulson. Exactly how long are we going to let them lie to us?)
WASHINGTON — Government officials seeking to revamp the U.S. financial bailout have discussed spending another $1 trillion to $2 trillion to help restore banks to health, according to people familiar with the matter.
President Barack Obama’s new administration is wrestling with how to stem the continuing loss of confidence in the financial system, as it divides up the remaining $350 billion from the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program launched last fall. The potential size of rescue efforts being discussed suggests the administration may need to ask Congress for more funds. Some of the remaining $350 billion of TARP funds has already been earmarked for other efforts, including aid to auto makers and to homeowners facing foreclosure.
The administration, which could announce its plans within days, hasn’t yet made a determination on the final shape of its new proposal, and the exact details could change. Among the issues officials are wrestling with: How to fix damaged financial institutions without ending up owning them.
The aim is to encourage banks to begin lending again and investors to put private capital back into financial institutions. The administration is expected to take a series of steps, including relieving banks of bad loans and distressed securities. The so-called “bad bank” that would buy these assets could be seeded with $100 billion to $200 billion from the TARP funds, with the rest of the money — as much as $1 trillion to $2 trillion — raised by selling government-backed debt or borrowing from the Federal Reserve. (…and what is the interest going to be on $2T when $887B has $347Billion in interest? We should probably be talking about 5 future generations in debt to the Fed instead of just three.)
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A Treasury spokeswoman said that “while lots of options are on the table, there are no final decisions” on what she described as a “comprehensive plan.” She added: “The president has made it clear that he’ll do whatever it takes to stabilize our financial system so that we can get credit flowing again to families and businesses.” (8 Trillion has gone into saving the banks and insurance companies so far with no effect; what is another $2 Trillion going to do?)
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Wednesday that he wants to avoid nationalizing banks if possible. “We’d like to do our best to preserve that system,” Mr. Geithner said. But given the weakened state of the banking industry, with bank share prices low and their capital needs high, economists say the government probably can’t avoid owning at least some banks for a temporary period. (I suspect Geithner is lying, just like Paulson and Bernanke did.)
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But buying common shares raises the likelihood that weaker banks will become largely government-owned. Bank share prices are so low that any sizable government investment in a bank would give the U.S. effective control of it.
The best approach is to have banks “under pretty heavy government control as briefly as possible — basically long enough to take off the bad assets and recapitalize — and sell the back to full private control as quickly as possible,” said Adam Posen, deputy director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. (“Sell the bank to full private control as quickly as possible; does anybody really think that is going to happen?)
I am going to get into so much trouble for saying this out loud, but I am going to say it while I still can. So the question would be, when are Americans going to start marching peaceably in the streets requiring the resignation and prosecution of all these liars and thieves?
(P.S. I would like to extend a warm welcome to the Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, IBM, and Google corporations for their patronage. I would also like to thank NASA for their return visit. If you want to know what NASA is actually looking at, email me.)
