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The estimated cost to US taxpayers of the TARP bailout for financial institutions has been "revised" from its original sum of $189B to $356B...nearly double the original figure.
Understand that this is not the loan amount ($740B+) intended to free their balance sheets of "toxic" assets and restore the flow of credit...this figure is the net loss the Treasury expects John Q. Taxpayer to eat after all repayments are complete.
But here's the big, harrowing question: Just what will we have to show for this incredible cost outlay? What is it the American public is buying? Anything?
Bitch about military spending all you like, but at least with the comparatively cheap ($65B over 20+ years) F-22 program we get a couple hundred of the most technologically advanced warplanes ever built...plus the industry effects and jobs created in scientific R&D, design, manufacturing, logistics, and support operations. There is undeniably something of value resulting from the expenditure. TARP appears to be giving us nothing except more debt.
Understand that this is not the loan amount ($740B+) intended to free their balance sheets of "toxic" assets and restore the flow of credit...this figure is the net loss the Treasury expects John Q. Taxpayer to eat after all repayments are complete.
But here's the big, harrowing question: Just what will we have to show for this incredible cost outlay? What is it the American public is buying? Anything?
Bitch about military spending all you like, but at least with the comparatively cheap ($65B over 20+ years) F-22 program we get a couple hundred of the most technologically advanced warplanes ever built...plus the industry effects and jobs created in scientific R&D, design, manufacturing, logistics, and support operations. There is undeniably something of value resulting from the expenditure. TARP appears to be giving us nothing except more debt.