I Just Thought You Should Know

From Bloomberg.com
U.S. Taxpayers Risk $9.7 Trillion on Bailouts as Senate Votes

“We’ve seen money go out the back door of this government unlike any time in the history of our country,” Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, said on the Senate floor Feb. 3. “Nobody knows what went out of the Federal Reserve Board, to whom and for what purpose. How much from the FDIC? How much from TARP? When? Why?”

The remaining $8 trillion in commitments are lending programs and guarantees, almost all under the authority of the Fed and the FDIC. The recipients’ names have not been disclosed.

The promises are composed of about $1 trillion in stimulus packages, around $3 trillion in lending and spending and $5.7 trillion in agreements to provide aid.

So how much money is this really?

The $9.7 trillion in pledges would be enough to send a $1,430 check to every man, woman and child alive in the world. It’s 13 times what the U.S. has spent so far on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Congressional Budget Office data, and is almost enough to pay off every home mortgage loan in the U.S., calculated at $10.5 trillion by the Federal Reserve.

The chart that I posted above isn't really clear, so I'll just give you the gist.

The amount of the bailout is more than the sum of

The Louisiana Purchase

The New Deal

The Marshal Plan

The Korean War

The Vietnam War

The Moonshot

The Iraq War

The S&L Crisis

The NASA Space Program

In other words, it's a lot of f*#king money

Shouldn't we know where it is going?

The Federal Reserve so far is refusing to disclose loan recipients or reveal the collateral they are taking in return. Collateral is an asset pledged by a borrower in the event a loan payment isn’t made.

So much for transparency