Bank Bailout not Aboveboard

WedNEWSday - December 24th, 2008

As taxpayers we had $700 billion of our money confiscated by the Federal government in what is now known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).   If you want to know how this impacts your pocketbook we just need to make some simple calculations. 

According to the Tax Foundation, for the 2006 fiscal year 135,660,228 federal income tax returns were filed.  Of those, 32% or 43,362,718 qualified as “zero liability,” meaning that those individuals and/or families pay zero federal income tax yet still take advantage of various deductions and credits (meaning they actually get paid, as in “spreading the wealth around”).  This leaves 92,297,510 who actually paid federal income taxes in 2006.  If we divide the $700 billion by 92,297,510 we get $7,584.17 per taxpayer (roughly since these are 2006 numbers).

That’s $7,584.17 that I’m sure you and your family could use.  It would cover a couple family vacations, you could put it towards your child’s college education, pay down your mortgage, put it into your IRA or 401k, etc.  What’s disturbing is that Americans were opposed to the TARP but that did not matter to our government.  For the average family $7,584.17 is a nice “chunk” of change.  To the executives in the financial industry it is merely “chump” change. 

Now, I am all for free markets and those markets justifying the pay of any one individual, even in matters relating to executive compensation.  However, Benjamin Franklin once said, ”There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.”  Since said executives refuse to disclose how our money is being spent one has to wonder how much of it is going straight into their pocketbooks. 

Video of John Stossel on ABC’s 20/20 - December 21, 2008

This from The Houston Chronicle - December 23rd, 2008

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/steffy/6179912.html

This from The Dallas Morning News - December 23rd, 2008

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/122308dnbusbailout.3c71db0.html

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