| I hope this comes off friendly... > Only $4 out of $700 billion ended up going to help home owners directly, the other $696B went to Wall St (even though it only passed congress because it was sold as helping the home owners) TARP bailouts did suck but were also necessary to fend off complete economic collapse [1] of western capitalism... The banks that received the money either didn't need it all because the US government proved to the world the dollar was safe, or they desperately needed it as markets swan dived into the ground and collapsed (which we didn't see)... Quantitative Easing (QE) was necessary as were the monetary policies (low interest rates) to stabilize the economy. It really wasn't allowed to be about healing, it was only ever triage to keep it (the economy) alive. Unfortunately, the US public didn't get bailed out, and we didn't throw the motherfuckers in jail... so we accomplished very little, but we did keep the world economy afloat. The real problem at the time for appropriate bailouts was political, congress wouldn't allocate more. People by and large do not understand macroeconomics, and that's likely, I believe, because they don't understand large numbers (this might sound silly or rude, but it's just fundamental and not a flippant or derogatory comment). ... with all that said, I totally agree that Trump is increasing spending... Like all republicans do, and to to be clear it's factually republican party who increase our deficits by-and-large through tax cuts [2] which don't grow the fucking economy because trickle down is bullshit. And anyone who wants to say the deficit went up by a ton because of the Obama administration keep in mind two things, please: 1.) TARP bailouts, and all that bullshit were a Bush problem.
2.) Most of the Iraq/Afghanistan war budget was paid for from appropriations by congress which didn't start hitting the books until 2009 (when Obama took office). I didn't much care for Obama as he was too much of a centrist, but I do believe in trying to present an accurate picture of what happened and why that happened. [1] I've always been on the fence if the collapse of Keynesian economics (and monetary policy when applicable) would be good for my inner anarcho-syndicalist... I tend to think it's better in steps, but maybe that's not possible; nor, I suppose is it relevant to this conversation... [2] Don't think I'm trying to solely blame Republicans for our fucked up economy, neoconservative liberal policies from democrats like Slick Willy did a number too... Like letting Glass-Steagall get repealed. |