Jon did a great take on Cheney and the media last night. It was about Cheney and then about how the people at the National Press Club yucked it up with him when he said he hadn't read Richard Clark's book. I think it's worth a post.

when millionaires in an armored limo drop by a soup kitchen and do a photo op, it makes people think we're really making progress.

Hogwash. I remember those years...and his years as Governor.

This is another attempt to paint Reagan as some harmless old coot, as everyone's favorite, but absent minded, uncle.

Bullshit. Ronald Reagan was a miserable old bastard with no real empathy for real people. His diatribes against "welfare queens" were and are legendary.

That pathetic sack of shit..as President...had the BALLS to discuss some woman who put her dog on welfare...and attempt to use that as justification for throwing social programs completely out the window. As if there isn't cheating EVERYWHERE...in private business, public activities...and oh horrors!...even government.

A miserable old bastard who's natural life went on far too long as far I am concerned.

The Beacon: Federal Reserve cannot account for $9 Trillion

The article has shabby language conflating stimulus and bailout.

The stimulus is the $767 billion of the 2009 'Recovery' Act. How much good will be accomplished remains to be seen but it does involve jobs for working people and benefits via the states.

The various bailouts are welfare for the bankers. These include action by the Treasury: TARP 1 & 2, AIG, Freddie and Fannie etc and action by Fed: various lending facilities and direct purchases of toxic assets from the big banks. They have committed $12.8 trillion and spent $4.8 trillion. Chart here

TARP I, $350 billion was so poorly drawn that the money cannot be fully accounted for. The other Treasaury amounts are better accounted for, that doesn't make them more palatable.

THE FED amounts tracking has not been disclosed because according to the law, the Fed is independent.

WE DO NOT KNOW that they cannot account for it, we do know that they will not say because that is their mission. Bernanke reiterated this yesterday in his testimony before Congress.

The Fed does have serious mission creep which the Congress courtesy of Christopher Dodd in '91 expanded. here

The Bankers are loving it and every time someone conflates stimulus with bailout they love it even more. If the peons are going to be seriously pissed off, as they should be, better, according to the Wall Street Crooks, that they are thoroughly confused about who to be pissed off at.

Get the Peons pissed off at the Federal Reserve and take the heat off the real crooks.

In a similar vein it is why my blood boils every time someone talks about the car companies, because they have gotten only one penny on the Bankster's dollar.

Truthout, James Galbraith, to big to fail, to big to jail, here. Via TomDispatch here

Galbraith responds to a question about William K Black's assessment on Bill Moyers (here) that the Banksters plan was fraud from the start.

MR: Do you think this fraud was a plan?

JKG: Sure it was! There was a whole class of lenders out there, many of whom were completely unregulated, the Countrywide Financials of the world, others of whom should have been regulated but were effectively desupervized, the Indymacs and the Washington Mutuals, where the business model was "push those bonuses out the door, get as many of them signed up as possible because if they pay for the first 30 days, we can sell them and pocket the fees. After that, it isn't our responsibility."

My question to Mr. Obama is why aren't these guys headed to jail.