Britannia Radio

$12.8 Trillion :

The True Cost Of The Bank Bailout

By KPBS

We all know about TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which spent $700 billion in taxpayers’ money to bail out banks after the financial crisis. That money was scrutinized by Congress and the media.

But it turns out that that $700 billion is just a small part of a much larger pool of money that has gone into propping up our nation’s financial system. And most of that taxpayer money hasn’t had much public scrutiny at all.

According to a team at Bloomberg News, at one point last year the U.S. had lent, spent or guaranteed as much as $12.8 trillion to rescue the economy. The Bloomberg reporters have been following that money. Alison Stewart spoke with one, Bob Ivry, to talk about the true cost to the taxpayer of the Wall Street bailout.

September 04, 2010

Watch the full episode. See more Need To Know.

Watch the full episode. See more Need To Know.

Comments (5) Sort by: Date Rating Last Activity +7 bjo· 14 hours ago This is very interesting, but I've noticed for quite a long time now that these kinds of stories' main attribute is confirming what we actually already know if we're thinking (which many of us "regular folk" are not). What good is that? To feel vindicated when the truth comes out after it is way too late? The mobsters running the racket (our elected representatives, the banks, global corporate syndicate, whatever) know they can just spin, spin, spin, dissimulate, stall, and spin some more until it is too late for the truth to make one bit of difference for the people who have been royally screwed, which is most of us. What an outrage. What an outrage that so many in the professional classes (that term better pinpoints the demographic than "middle class" which is an extremely amorphous term) actually buy that hokum about how the economy would crash if our government didn't hand over our hard earned money (that they collect unconstitutionally) to the richest banks who are now colossally richer. Oh, oh, oh!! The sky will fall if we don't give them all our money (what's left over from the American government/corporate war adventures abroad)! What a joke. Decades upon decades of propaganda have convinced people of this hooey. The people fork over huge amounts of their paltry earnings for zip in return - what they're given back is nose diving wages, pink slips, and being told to be good Americans and "sacrifice" a little for the sake of the nation (thanks Obama for your spineless bullshit that I turn off every time I change the chanel and accidentally catch of glimpse of you yammering away in your narcissistic theater of one). Take a look at the headlines of the articles published on this site today: one about how US students are helpless to pay off their (inflated cost of) education, and one about how the richest lawmakers grew wealthier as the economy faltered. Ha ha ha. This is not breaking news. Close to 15 years ago I was asking my students at a private college back east how they thought they had a hope in hell of every paying back the 80,000-140,000 of debt they were going to be saddled with at the age of 21 (because they sure as hell were never going to find off jobs that paid enough to deal with that kind of debt). Now somebody writes an article about it. What the hell. Everyone knows the government is totally corrupt and enriching themselves at the cost of their country (treasonous) in the grand tradition of the extremely lengthy "last days" of the Roman Empire. There is something really wrong when all those who work in the so-called Fourth Estate can only state the obvious long after the damage has been done. Went to church today where a visiting pastor from Kenya spoke about a massive shanty town outside Nairobi with between 350 and 700 thousand residents - they have no idea how many because they don't include those people in the census. They have no electricity, no running water, no way to buy food, the whole 9 yards. I sat there thinking how really inconceivable it is that in the modern age people in these massive numbers are unable to just pick up, go out into the middle of nowhere, start farming and taking care of themselves (instead of going to the rubbish dump every day to dig up food out of the muck). None of us are capable of being self-sufficient in most places in the world - fish in a barrell - utterly helpless, utterly incapable of being self-sufficient. Billions of people around the world totally dependent on an infrastructure run by a hydra-headed crime syndicate. How pathetic, tragic, and mind blowing. Report · 12 hours ago This Mark Pittman who began investigating this turns up dead! I google that and all I could find was that his reason for death is unknown at this time. (they mention he had some heart trouble...don't they always?) bjo: Did you see this article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100905/ap_on_bi_ge/u... Making us all dependent on the "system" is what they have been up to. For people that can't stand conspiracy theorists: Sorry, but how can anyone say that many of these conspiracy theorists were wrong or are nuts? I have been reading this stuff since 2002, and the outcomes are pretty much right on the lines of the conspiracy theorists. This has been pre-planned. The outcome is all turning out just as was prescribed. The wars in the middle east and Africa are all about bringing these nations and these people and cultures under thorough control. Plenty of scraps were thrown at the masses in the West to keep them appeased while they instate their totalitarian system. It is and always was a Class War. Throughout history it is always about the controllers versus the rest of people. They are successful because they always keep a couple layers of professional class people nearby (who really are the true blue GATEKEEPERS if there ever was) , also called their minions. Those gatekeepers will do all they can to preserve the status quo, if they don't they know their future lies with those at the bottom of the heap. A real revolution would skip the Trains, Planes, and automobiles and go directly for the jugular. Report 1 reply · active 12 hours ago +2 bjo· 8 hours ago Thanks for the link to that article. I'm going to read up on Mark Pittman now. Yes, it's planned and just reading the yahoo article had my throat closing up and my blood pressure rising even though I didn't read anything I didn't already know. It's just horrendous. And what's truly psychosis producing is the language used to explain the current state of affairs -- all those verbs with no subjects doing the doing. The piece (and most articles explaining the bad news) uses sentences constructed to, intentionally or not, give the impression that the economy and the job market (pay and types of jobs) are forces of nature and not directed by humans. Decent jobs concentrated in only a few fields with health care at the top? Health care? Did you read a recent article that talked about how people over the age of 65 are spending huge percentages less on home furnishings, dinners out, autombiles, etc. while at the same time health insurance costs have gone up something like 180%? And some economists have the nerve to talk about how it's the "lack of confidence" that is the real problem? Oh, don't get me started!! GMO taking over crop after crop, cheap and poisonous "food" still filling the restaurants in malls and on mainstreet, not to mention being foisted off on children with no power to say no (schools) or ill people (hospitals) - the population gets sicker and sicker and the health care industry reaps untold profits. I have to stop with this - the controlling is happening on so many levels, it's overwhelming - the pieces all fit together like a perfect jig saw puzzle of... totalitarianism. Saw it coming years ago, but fooled myself way down deep in the recesses of my psyche that the oncoming horror wouldn't arrive in my lifetime. The sorrow of totalitarianism is that the majority of people don't see it clicking into place all around them -- then the iron door slams shut and the real terror begins. Report 0 jack· 10 hours ago And they are not printing money ?