(must read) Debt posturing - by Ismael Hossein-Zadeh (asiatimesonline)

[green prol]

Debt posturing - by Ismael Hossein-Zadeh

http://atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/MH03Dj03.html

snip:

What are the root causes of the national debt and deficit? They are, first and foremost, the multi-trillion dollar bailout packages that were bestowed upon Wall Street in order to rescue the financial gamblers, the constantly escalating costs of war and militarism, the huge tax giveaways to the wealthy, and the skyrocketing costs of healthcare, systematically jacked up by the insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

Snip - (a good discussion about what is not the cause of the debt)

The ruling kleptocracy and the corporate media have created a huge misperception regarding the bailout of the Wall Street gamblers: that the government paid only $780 billion of the taxpayers' money (called TARP, or Troubled Asset Relief Program) to rescue the bankrupt or near bankruptcy speculators, and that once these financial speculators returned to profitability, they paid all they owed the taxpayers back - the end of the story!

In reality, the TARP money was only a small fraction of the government's giveaway of taxpayers' money to Wall Street. Other forms of government handouts, not known to the public, included trillions of dollars in terms of subsidies, backstops, guarantees, loans, purchases of worthless toxic assets at their pre-recession high prices, and a number of other confounding types of plunder.

Here is how Senator Bernie Sanders (of Vermont) put it: "The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the US provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression."

MUCH MORE AT LINK:
http://atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/MH03Dj03.html

[xchrom]

1. The whole political status quo was up to their necks in the bail out debacle.

And they have been up to their necks since forever w/ the MIC.

[green prol]

2. Quite right. This is yet another phase of the ongoing assault

on democracy, the average citizen, our civil rights, the whole ball of wax.

[PDJane]

3. Yes. Just yes.

And the fact that so many have taken the propaganda and vote against their own interests is a triumph for the corporate interests.

Thank Edward Bernays.

[green prol]

4. Love your sig line! nt.

[PDJane]

5. Thank you! Seems apropos......