[quote=TheBreeze]This article says that the U.S. has spent or pledged $9.7 trillion on the bailout so far and that amount is enough to pay off 90% of the nation’s mortgages:
So obviously the OP is on to something. It looks like the Bush administration bailed out a bunch of Bush’s cronies while the whole time saying that they were looking to help out with mortgages. What a crock. I hope that Chimpy MFer ends up in jail.[/quote]
There is a rather large difference between money “pledged” and “spent.” If I lend you $100K backed by a mortgage that you must pay back, that money is “pledged.” If I give you $100K to buy a house and you don’t have to pay me back, that money is “spent.” The government has “pledged” a boatload of money thus far, but hasn’t “spent” a lot of it yet (this will change after the stimulus package is passed – that’s money “spent”). Now we can debate what percentage of the “pledged” money we’ll ever see again – 100%, 90%, 80%, less? But whatever number that is, it’s a far cry from being totally “spent.” (Specifically, the actual number “spent” will be 100% less whatever we get back.) So I think the analogy used here is a bit silly. Again, we can debate the merits of all of these various programs, but let’s at least get the terminology and respective implications straight.
