[quote=SK in CV][quote=CA renter]
Who says a “Great Depression” has been avoided? Look at what’s happened to our national debt, much of it attributed to the bailouts of the financial industry.
[/quote]
In fairness, that claim is not really true. The TARP bailout was about $700 billion. Much of the rest of economic rescue monies over the last few years can’t accurately be called financial industry bailouts. It total, it’s probably around $1 trillion. Out of $13 trillion in federal debt. Something less than 8%. Not to minimize it, but even if none of the bailouts ever happened, we’d still have a huge debt problem.[/quote]
The TARP bailout was just the icing on the cake. If you look at the CNN bailout tracker link posted above, you’ll see that $11 trillion has been committed to various bailout/stimulus measures, and $3 trillion was already spent. Those numbers are from late 2009, and I’d like to see more updated numbers, but that’s the best I can find for now.
We have not even begun to realize the losses that we’ll see on all the GSE and FHA loans made over the past few years. I believe we are going to see a tremendous default rate on those as well.
