Visualizing The True Cost Of The First Bank Bailout: $3.5 Trillion And Rising At Over $1 Trillion Every Year

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/visualizing-true-cost-first-bank-bailout-35-trillion-and-rising-over-1-trillion-every-year

What is immediately obvious is that US debt is currently $3.5 trillion higher than where it would be had America's banks not received a rescue.

The truth is that this is a proportional increase which if extrapolated into the future, means that every year the US will incur well over $1.2 trillion each and every year as a result of bailing out the banks. That is the true cost to Americans regardless of what Tim Geithner may claim. But note how we said First. Unfortunately, the Second Great Financial Crisis, that of bailing out insolvent sovereigns, is currently and process. And when all is said and done, the global cost in terms of new "trendline" debt will be many more trillions in incremental debt every year. And despite what economic voodoo theories say, near infinite debt always ends in near infinite pain. It will this time too. Guaranteed.

Fed Will Release Bank Loan Data as Top Court Rejects Appeal

What is the Fed and the Obama Administration hiding?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-21/fed-must-release-bank-loan-data-as-high-court-rejects-appeal.html

Perhaps the fact that foreign banks, hedge funds, and individuals may have also been bailed out is even more discomforting to the powers-that-be.

Chris Whalen: Fed let the real economy go to hell

Jim Rickards believes Chris Whalen to be the most astute banking analyst he's met.  This snippet further validates that label.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8vFbZ4J8kQ

Bank bashing is coming from both sides of the aisle

The normally liberal New York Times is joining forces with the right on bashing bank bailouts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/business/economy/18gret.html

Jim Sinclair on bank bailouts and bonuses

Jim Sinclair’s Commentary

Who paid the bonuses for Wall Street and how it worked:

1. FASB capitulates and allows holders of OTC derivatives to value them at whatever they wish.
2. International investment firms begin strong mark up policies towards their crap inventory.
3. Profits from the mark up of crap OTC derivatives by the international investment firms is recognized as trading income.
4. Tarp money comes into the firms and goes out as bonuses to the management, trading department and general employees at obscene levels.
5. Stock and bond issues are made to pay back tarp funds.
6. Therefore the money bonuses out by the international investment firms were TARP funds, not real earnings, but false FASB permitted mark up paper earnings through the trading department and declared as trading income.
7. The TARP money was paid back through the issue of stocks and bonds to the public, therefore the public paid the TARP back, not the financial institutions.
8. The obscene level of bonuses is because this game of convert false paper profit into cash into the bank account of the banksters and their merry crew is now game over. It was the last dip at the well of public funds laundered via TARP of the caved in FASB.
9. In the final analysis the public paid those obscene bonuses that were in truth, unearned.

Robert Rubin on the economy

Wow, Robert Rubin finally speaks, after stepping down from his perch at Citigroup. According to a few independent thinkers, Rubin was one of the main instigators in the cause of the financial and economic crises we find ourselves in. The former Treasury Secretary formerly headed up Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, encouraging banks to leverage up their balance sheets to increase dubious earnings via the use of derivatives, which ended up being toxic assets. We all know how that drunken party turned out.

His progeny in the ensuing bank bailouts include former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson (also, formerly of Goldman Sachs), top Obama financial advisor Lawrence Summers, and current Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, among other well-placed government bureaucrats and bankers.

The editorial actually gives fair warning to the approaching storm, even if it lacks any mea culpa for past misdeeds. I guess omission is a form of honesty.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/225623/page/1

First, there must be sound fiscal and monetary policies. The United States faces projected 10-year federal budget deficits that seriously threaten its bond market, exchange rate, economy, and the economic future of every American worker and family. Those risks are exacerbated by the context of those deficits: a low household-savings rate, even after recent increases; large funding requirements for federal debt maturities every year; heavy overweighting of dollar-denominated assets in foreign portfolios; worsened fiscal prospects in the decades after the current 10-year budget period; and competing claims for capital to fund deficits in other countries.

The conventional concern here is that private investment will be crowded out, which would result in a reduction of productivity, competitiveness, and growth. In addition, the very early 1990s showed that unsound fiscal conditions can have a symbolic effect that broadly undermines business and consumer confidence. But finally, and far more dangerously, our bond and currency markets could react with severe distress to fears about imbalances in the supply and demand for capital in the years ahead or about the possibilities of inflation. Those effects have been averted so far by a number of factors: large inflows of capital from abroad into Treasury securities; concerns about other major currencies; the low level of private demand for capital; and the psychological state of the market. But this cannot continue indefinitely, and change can occur with great force—and unpredictable timing.

Read Matt Taibbi's scathing article on Obama's big sellout and the pandering to big Wall Street bankers--at the expense and hoodwinking of tax payers. Robert Rubin is a central figure in the web of lies, deception, and pilfering.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31234647/obamas_big_sellout

Lloyd's Prayer

After Goldman Sachs Chairman Lloyd Blankfein glibly said his firm was "doing God's work" during an interview (a remark which he later dismissed as a joke), the jokesters on Wall Street had a field day. Among the more clever:

Our Chairman,
Who Art At Goldman,
Blankfein Be Thy Name.
The Rally's Come. God's Work Be Done
On Earth, As There's No Fear Of Correction.

Give Us This Day Our Daily Gains,
And Bankrupt Our Competitors
As You Taught Lehman And Bear Their Lessons.
And Bring Us Not Under Indictment.
For Thine Is The Treasury,
The House And The Senate,
Forever And Ever.

Goldman

Given taxpayers bailed banks out last year after horrendous losses, and given these same taxpayers are either furloughed or unemployed today, and given Wall Street is now patting themselves on the back for the recent liquidity-induced market rally, and given Wall Street is about to pay itself $30 billion in bonuses, "Lord" Blankfein should choose his words more carefully next time.