The thing that bothers me (guess I should attempt this myself - but right now my spare time doesn't exist) is why are we continuously bailing banks, not the economy?
Why is there no computation of the simple check the fed could have written each man/woman/child in the country with the same amount of money? I'd guess it'd be over $100k/capita, which would have really worked!
Oh, I guess they disguise all this as loans, but you know, at those interest rates, they aren't good loans, and I don't see anyone paying it back - just a circle jerk where the banks borrow at 25 bps - fine with the .gov as long as they then buy treasuries yielding more and get a risk-free carry (and then use the T's as collateral for leverage). That's not a loan if there's positive carry - it's a gift. So if they are in the gift-giving game, why not gift people in general, instead of a select few?
Why the smoke and mirrors? This amounts to a pure gift to banks. Where's my cut?
I think if you include this along with all the other under the table stuff - swaps and junk they all claim is net-zero, the per capita amount is insane. If we all got checks like that - we'd go out and stimulate this economy in a heartbeat by spending the money, instead of locking it up in reserves.
After all, this country could do fine without those big banks - small banks would take up the slack pretty quick, especially if we did not allow the big guys to steal depositors money when they were allowed to go under.
It kind of shows the corruption for what it is when you look at it that way.
I am also waiting for the first big bank to want that FASB rule set back the way it was, EG having to mark to market. The first big bank with an actually-good balance sheet would be shouting for this from the rooftops, as it would give them great competitive advantage to have the best *real* book, but I hear not a peep, just crickets. Does this mean it's really much worse than reported - for everyone? It has to.
Further, that ?~$700 trillion of derivitives they all claim are hedges and/or net zero - if that's true, and it IS A huge threat/risk to system stability, why not pile all this "net zero" paper up and burn it, and refuse to write more of it, worldwide. They are either lying about the net-zero issue, or just so greedy they think they'll win this not-net-zero and have the chair when the music stops. Both are abominable in my mind - you're lying, or you're lying...
Anyone want to take a stab at the per-capita check they could have written to we, the people, instead of doing what they are doing?