According to one estimate published a few days ago, the value of all the direct spending, loans and guarantees provided so far (including those of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as well as Treasury and the Federal Reserve Board) now exceeds $4 trillion.
That needs to be seen in the context of the USA's GDP which is roughly 14 Trillion and falling.
And that needs to be seen also in the context of the fact that my plan to deal with the crisis would have cost much less (this was put forward in my Open Letter to President Obama, which was then published on the Internet; it suggested paying only for the insurance-component of global deals which had gone sour, and to let the global gamblers suffer the results of their gambling).
Instead, as the average taxpayer is now paying for the FULL losses of the gamblers, it is not surprising that the OTC gambling has actually increased - with the result that the value of derivatives, hedge funds et al, has arisen from 1.1 quadrillion in the Autumn to over 1.4 quadrillion now.
In any gambling, there must be losers as well as winners. So, while we are busy bailing out the losers, here are the questions that are not being asked:
- Who has been winning?
- Why are the winners not being asked to contribute to addressing the global financial crisis by being made to pay extra taxes on their windfall profits?
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