MATT TAIBI: OBAMA'S SELLOUT

We could have paid off every subprime mortgage in America for about $1.4 trillion and instead shelled out at least ten times that to Wall Street, primarily to pay off derivative bets made by bankers on those assets.

TARP is just one small slice of the bailout package — most of the bailout monies went out through little-known Fed programs like the TALF, the TLGP, the TIP, the PPI, and the Maiden Lanes. The number my friend Nomi Prins is using now for the bailouts is about $14 trillion in total outlays, and just as Barofsky pointed out, that number could rise.

Most of the bailouts came in the form of very cheap money lent out to the same banks that caused the crisis, who then took that money and lent it out at market rates, pocketing the difference.

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It’s almost impossible to not make mountains of money when your cost of capital is next to nothing because you’re borrowing your money from the government basically for free.

Obama's Big Sellout
TAIBBLOG
The president has packed his economic team with Wall Street insiders intent on turning the bailout into an all-out giveaway

Obama's Big Sellout
MATT TAIBBI
Posted Dec 09, 2009 2:35 PM