I just want a rough calculation of how much have I personally (as an average American family) contributed to all the assorted bailouts.
Bonus for a rough breakdown of how that money was split among banks, auto, etc.
All in so-far numbers, understanding that more could be still to come.
I locked the other two identical threads on this.
Gfactor
General Questions Moderator
There are roughly 300MM US citizens, roughly 100MM households. Divide whatever enormous bailout number you have accordingly.
The latest bailout proposal is about $2800 per person. Not counting the earlier one, future ones or things being thrown around elsewhere. (The Fed has been doing some “creative” loans lately. And we’re on the hook for those.)
As repeatedly noted, we might get some of that back. The previous Reagan/Bush era bailout started with something like $800-900 million and the taxpayers ended up losing $100 million or so once assets were sold off and such. (But again, a lot of creative accounting. So not everyone trusts those numbers.)
Thanks, and sorry about that. I was somehow giving me the all ok but then the thread didn’t show up anywhere.
$2800 per person (not household)?. That’s a lot.
Is it all mostly going to banks, or is there any significant portion of it going to other types of industries (auto, etc)?
When you say get that back, do you mean the government from the banks or the people from the government?
I don’t know about the Obama people but the Bush II people were under the impression that they should be allowed to use the money on just about anything financial institution related. Apparently the US auto companies were not part of the plan since there was a different (defeated) bill to give them money.
The government will buy up poor debt, shares in financial institutions, etc. And at some later time sell off those assets. (Some of these might be worth money now but in a market panic, buyers don’t want to buy them until things settle down.)
To see how this worked earlier, read about Resolution Trust Corporation but keep in mind that this is a much worse situation. Like at least a factor of 10.
The Big Problem is that no one really knows the true value of a lot of the complex financial instruments that have been developed. And given the number of layers involved (company A owns stock in company B which has shares in fund C which is secured by company D which is backed by futures in Nogales guacamole), this creates distrust and freezes the flow of money. And trust and flow are key to having a modern economy.
I saw a chart at the NY Times website with a breakdown on who got (or will be getting) bailout money from the TARP (the $700B bailout passed last October), let me see if I can dig that up…
Ah, here it is:
http://projects.nytimes.com/creditcrisis/recipients/table
Most of the recipients are banks, lenders, and insurance companies, although automakers and the cities of Atlanta, Phoenix, and Philadelphia are also on the list.
Excellent. Thanks for the responses.