On the recordMay 11, 2010
The clever comedy tale that's being spun by Wall Street megabanks and their minions here in Washington is that they are paying back $700 billion our taxpayers bestowed on them in the fall of 2008. In fact, some spinmeisters say the bailout actually will cost our taxpayers just $109 billion, not the originally projected $700 billion of costs, called TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The PR spin even got CNN to report that the cost to the taxpayers will be far less than originally anticipated. If you believe that, you'll believe anything. One of the bittersweet reasons that they will pay back less is that the Obama administration originally stated that up to 4 million people could save their homes through the loan modification program that was part of the TARP. But through this February, only 170,000 distressed homeowners received any long-term modification. So that program is a failure, as the American people continue to be disgorged out of their homes. In fact, only 4 percent of those eligible have even been dealt with and their mortgages reworked. We need a full cost accounting across this economy of what these speculators did to us. They took our money, they gambled with it, and then they turned our Treasury into their insurance company. And now they're dumping all their mistakes on our generation and the next two to follow. I want to shine the light on a very dark corner where the true cost of the bailout sits.
