By now everyone should be aware of the fact that the Federal Reserve brokered a deal last night whereby the U.S. taxpayer lent American International Group (NYSE:AIG) $85 billion dollars in order to insure an orderly wind-down of its failed business.So, just to make the governments priorities even more obvious, roughly 130 million taxpayers got a refund check of between $600 and $1800 totaling $160 billion while AIG, one corporation, now gets $85 billion…. Lest you think your rebate check was any less a loan than AIGs handout.
As for re-payment, the agreement was for a 24 month term but believing that this failed behemoth will miraculously be able to make good on an obligation that it was unable to genuinely satisfy during its last 3 – 6 months of decline, is putting faith over financial sense.
Let’s face the facts… The government just heaped another $85 billion on a pile that we and our descendants will be paying down for eons to come.
Could they have gotten the $85 billion from the wealthy individuals and firms (hedge funds and hedge fund investors, Goldman, Bear Stearns, Lehman, Merril, Morgan execs, etc. etc.) who clearly created this mess and, consequently, who most directly benefit from these bailouts… why not?
This $10 trillion “shadow financial system”, as Dr. Roubini rightly calls it, was surely not fashioned by you or me yet we are tasked to assume all its failure, as Bernanke-Paulson would put it, for our own good… The common good.
This is the most hideous form of hyper-capitalist-socialist tyranny whereby hundreds of millions of average and unwitting individuals are simply shackled to a life of toil and servitude by a small group of elites who care very little.
What would Thomas Paine think?
