Barack Obama

[rjk83]

First off where is this 23 trillion number coming from? TARP wasl ike 700-something billion, how could it possibly cost that much?

The estimates that I know of are over $6 trillion for the freddie / fannie bailouts, the almost $1 trillion that was sent out from congress, over $7 trillion made available by the fed for bailouts of which only $2 trillion has been spent to date, and the rest, I don't know. This is the point, I don't know and you don't know and the "openness" & "transparency" that has been touted isn't a reality. However, the guy that is in charge of auditing this, the Special Inspector General for the TARP money, is testifying before congress today about the lack of transparency and the very real possibility that this will reach $23 Trillion.

Secondly, what would you have us do -- absolutely nothing & spend no money at all to fixthis problem?

I am clearly a conservative. Everything about me and my political thoughts are conservative. (note: conservative and not republican) I know that you can spend money in a positive way that will stimulate growth of business, I have seen republicans and democrats both do this. I will probably disagree with any liberal on almost all fundamental issues, but I do agree, as do most conservatives, that money needs to be spent to get us out of a recession, but you can't possibly believe that this is needed? Two times the total amount of debt that our country has ever accumulated. Spending the amount of money that doubles or triples our nations total debt and is over 2 times the total annual GDP for the entire country is crippling. I wouldn't expect to hear too much on the news about it of course so I hope that is not where people get their information. (yadda yadda, huge media bias to either the left side (everywhere besides fox news) or leaning to the right (fox news).

I just can't believe that even the most left person on the planet (outside of congress) could look at a number like that compared to our total national debt and GDP and say that it is necessary and/or OK for my government to spend that much money.

I may not have the direct answer or the fix for it, and it is not my job to do so, but that doesn't mean that I can't look at something and cry foul, and know that this is an incredibly bad deal. I still posses the common sense needed to look at this and say that something is wrong, there has been no transparency, 35 investigations into misuse of money, up to 20x the amount that was reported on originally. It's still my tax money and going to be my retirement and livelihood soon.