The Federal Reserve doled out a staggering 7.77 trillion dollars in secret loans in an effort to stabilize banks during the financial crisis — cheap money from the public purse that the banks subsequently lent out at higher rates for a profit of $13 billion dollars, Bloomberg News reports. (more)
House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan dubbed President Obama’s budget “debt on arrival,” in the first Republican response to the $3.7 trillion plan released by the White House Monday, adding “it would be better if we did nothing than if we passed this budget.” (more)
Sen. Pat Toomey introduced a bill Tuesday aimed at laying out a path for the federal government to avoid default on its obligations if the debt limit is not raised in the coming months. (more)
Backed by top GOP leaders including House Speaker John Boehner, Republican Rep. Mike Turner is introducing a constitutional amendment to ban the federal government from owning corporations in whole or part following aggressive intervention by the Treasury Department during the financial crisis. (more)
It’s looking increasingly likely that California will get bailed out by the federal government. The Golden State is $70 billion in the hole. Analysts expect that figure to reach $150 billion within four years — and that’s not including the state’s $500 billion unfunded pension liability. Spending needs to be cut dramatically, but it won’t be; the state is too politically dysfunctional to do that. And the election of big-spender Jerry Brown will only make things worse. (Incidentally, Governor-elect Brown recently described his state’s budget problems this way: “It is much worse than I thought. I am shocked.”) (more)
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Since the recession began three years ago, Congress has poured a total of $2.8 trillion into the economy in an effort to spur hiring, get people spending again and prop up industries struggling to stay afloat. (more)
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told a congressional oversight panel this morning that the cost of the federal financial rescue program will ultimately be only a “fraction” of the cost originally estimated by the Congressional Budget Office. (more)
Wall Street’s biggest banks, rebounding after a government bailout, are set to complete their best two years in investment banking and trading, buoyed by 2010 results likely to be the second-highest ever. (more)
A newly discovered exchange of e-mails led the House ethics committee on Friday to delay its trial of Representative Maxine Waters, a California Democrat accused of helping steer bailout money to a bank in which her husband owned shares. (more)
DETROIT — When executives from General Motors begin pitching its public stock offering to investors this week, they will extol the company’s financial turnaround, its snazzy new car lineup led by the plug-in Chevrolet Volt, and its growing operations in China and other international markets. (more)
The U.S. government’s bailout of financial firms through the Troubled Asset Relief Program provided taxpayers with higher returns than they could have made buying 30-year Treasury bonds — enough money to fund the Securities and Exchange Commission for the next two decades. (more)
There’s no doubt the main catalyst for the Tea Party movement and the motivation of other independent voters today is the out-of-control spending, bailouts, trillions in debt, and the unprecedented aggressive expansion of government into our lives, businesses, health care, and earnings, by the Obama administration, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and their allies. The debt in the trillions dwarfs all other deficits in our nation’s history many times over, and, if it is not reversed, it will be the ruin of our country. To preserve the American Dream, millions of freedom-loving Americans are going to stand up on Election Day and demand change. (more)
Getting snippy with host Candy Crowley Sunday on “State of the Union,” David Axelrod bristled at the idea that Democrats are talking about foreign money to distract from the state of the economy and the jobs picture. The notion that outside groups are allowing foreign interests to interfere in American elections has been ctions has been roundly rejected by third-party fact-checkers and media. (more)
Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), a potential presidential candidate, this weekend defended his vote for the 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which Tea Party activists vehemently oppose. (more)
Sunday marks the two-year anniversary of President Bush signing the “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act,” better known as TARP (the Troubled Assets Relief Program). (more)
WASHINGTON — Even as voters rage and candidates put up ads against government bailouts, the reviled mother of them all — the $700 billion lifeline to banks, insurance and auto companies — will expire after Sunday at a fraction of that cost, and could conceivably earn taxpayers a profit. (more)
The American International Group said Thursday that it had reached an agreement in principle to repay the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for the company’s 2008 rescue, and to gradually return the ownership of its stock to the public markets. (more)
President Obama is crowing about his small-business bill, signed into law on Monday. “It was critical that we cut taxes and made more loans available to entrepreneurs,” he said. Trouble is, small businesses and community banks don’t want Obama’s $30 billion program. That’s right. They don’t want it. (more)
According to their reelection campaign ads, Democratic Reps. Kathy Dahlkemper, Frank Kratovil, Dina Titus, Mary Jo Kilroy, and Glenn Nye all voted against the Wall Street bailout. Which is fascinating, since, as FactCheck.org pointed out a few weeks ago, not one of them was in office when the bailout was passed. (more)
