>The Real Cost of the $819 Billion Bailout
>One of the ways rich people discriminate against the poor is in charging exorbatant interest rates. Try 42 percent, for example.
But that’s against the law, you protest. What about laws on the books prohibiting gouging or usury? You’re right, consumers are not supposed to pay rates in many jurisdictions higher than 18 percent.
The word usury means the charging of unreasonable or relatively high rates of interest. As such, the term is largely derived from Abrahamic religious principles; Riba is the corresponding Islamic term. The primary focus in this article is on the Christian tradition. The pivotal change in the English-speaking world seems to have come with the permission to charge interest on lent money: particularly the Act ‘In restraint of usury’ of Henry VIII in England in 1545. Every state has usury laws on the books.
But we’re talking about government usury. Not ours, but probably China’s. A country like the USA borrows all its money and then pays back at an effective rate of about 42 percent. Sounds awful, doesn’t it. It is!
How could we have gotten ourselves into this bind — having to pay the communists almost half of our bailout money? We’re dumb, and they’re smart. They also have savings accounts, while most Americans use a credit or debit card and spend every last dollar coming in.
When the wall came down in East Germany we thought we had won the cold war. We did. But now we’re losing it, and it’s an economic war not a political war. The more we bail out companies, banks, and governments the smaller our U.S. dollar becomes — and the less it buys at the grocery store. American people are becoming poorer, not better off because of these bailouts and many Americans are convinced the bailout stimulus package is not a good idea at all. In essence, America is becoming a socialist country and with each passing day and an increasly larger planned economy and less capitalism, we are resembling Communist China — at least socialist Germany.
Taxpayers will pay much more for the fiscal stimulus than previously revealed – over $1.17 trillion according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
Most sources have assessed the cost of the stimulus package at approximately $825 billion. But the CBO reports those estimates do not include the cost of the money that must be borrowed to pay for the plan. [Editor’s Note: To view the CBO letter reporting on the total cost of the stimulus plan, go here now.]
Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., asked the CBO – the research arm of Congress – to calculate the “money cost” of borrowing the funds needed to fulfill the stimulus projects being sought by congressional Democrats and President Obama. Like every other borrower, the government must pay back borrowed principal plus the interest on its debt.
The CBO responded with a Jan. 27 letter from CBO Director Douglas W. Elmendorf estimating the cost of borrowing the money would be $347.1 billion – or about 42 percent of the cost of the projects. That would push the total cost of the stimulus package to over $1.17 trillion.
gamesbaseball 