I kid you not, the more I read about the bail-out plan and economic stimulus, the more confused I become. Fortunately, my big brother is Obi-Wan. :) My questions to him are in pink.
Okay. I'm completely confused.
So are most Americans.
Wasn't there a 325 billion dollar bail out last fall?
There was a $700MM+ bailout approved by Congress, of which only the first half (~ $325MM) was given away. Because it was administered by the Bush Crime Family, there was no oversight or accountability, so we discover that the money was spent on executive bonuses, luxury retreats, banks buying other failing banks as tax shelters, and stashing the money in order to ride out the crisis. In other words, almost none of it (apparently) was spent on what it was SUPPOSED to be spent on, which was buying the bad debt.
And now there is more money being shelled out?
Yes. If you remember my primer about the meltdown (http://hyperionappraisal.blogspot.com/2008/10/financial-disaster-in-three-acts.html), you can scoot to the bottom and realize that there is approximately $56 TRILLION dollars of exposure to bad debt, most of which is off-balance-sheet. In other words, banks have not been forthcoming about their actual exposure to bad debt, and therefore banks do not trust each other to lend. THAT set of facts is the basis for the "credit freeze" which is forcing businesses under.
Also, we still have between one and one-and-a-half trillion dollars worth of alt-a and option-ARM loans which have not reset, and experts are predicting another 10 million people will be losing their homes.
Is the 817 billion they are talking about now in addition to what was shelled out last fall?
Yes. Only it isn't $817MM, it's north of $900MM last time I checked.
Or hasn't anything actually been shelled out yet?
The most recent $900MM package has not been passed by Congress yet. The Rethuglicans are trying to scuttle it because it does not have enough tax cuts for their wealthy patrons.
Who is footing the bill for all of this, this time around?
We all are. Get ready for hyper-inflation. The money that is being handed out is not coming out of thin air. The government will have to print more money, thereby devaluing the currency, thereby causing inflation. All of us will be paying more for everything - food, energy, gas, medicine - everything - for as far as you can see into the future.
This is a failure of Republican economic policies, and with all their posturing and preening about "tax cuts" for everyone, they hide the biggest truth in all of this - that inflation is the cruelest tax of all.
