The titanic $700 billion-plus bailout plan for financial firms, which were reeling from toxic debts spawned from the subprime mortgage crisis, was cast back in September as a desperately needed package essential to staving off a complete meltdown of the U.S. economy.
Now, after all the intense economic and political drama attached to the federal proposal, it seems like the punch line of a very bad joke.
It has been reported that almost $300 billion of that bailout plan has been doled out, but that money has yet to reach anyone on main street. Some of the banking institutions that received the helping hand from the taxpayers have instead paid out dividends to shareholders, handed out bonuses to executives and are allegedly pooling the resources to acquire other troubled banks and consolidate their assets.
Also, consider the excesses of executives at AIG, who were the recipients of a separate taxpayer-funded bailout in September just as the meltdown was picking up heat. Twice since then, executives have been caught spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on “seminars” that included posh extravagances and pampered amenities to dull the pain.
Lawmakers are angry, and that may blow a new wind of change in Washington. Perhaps a new bailout plan — one targeted directly at the little people who are suffering most from the corporate greed and shortsightedness that symbolize this crisis — will replace this current program, which has done little more than embolden the idiots who have played a heavy hand in this economic mess.
From the Yankton (S.D.) Press & Dakotan
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