Poll: Who Is Accountable for US Tax Dollars? Who is Responsible For How They Are Spent?

#2

Amen Lucy!

ALL bills must be brought by the house first, Therese. Thats why Obama asked them to take up the bill.

and the Stimulus is whats still keeping us afloat but it is running out.

Study some economics , and some civics classes

WE must have spending to keep the economy going period.

once the right wing gets this through their thick skulls we can move onto step two instead of fighting them over the painfully obvious.

The Stimulus was the first bill passed by Obama, the House of Representatives, and the Senate that had to be passed "before we could find out what's in it." And, as time goes on, the more we find out that it was essentially a kickback scheme to Obama supporters. It went to shore up union jobs that supported Obama, GM used bailout money from a trust to pay back its bailout loans, Solyndra and 5 other failing Solar Energy companies received between $8-12 billion dollars in loan guarantees, Solyndra's loan was illegally restructured to allow private investors to get paid in bankruptcy proceedings before the Federal Government, and many of the jobs that were "saved" by it were eventually lost anyways. It was a piece of crap that should be the first piece of evidence that Obama is committing fraud at the very least.

Sorry, Therese Nelson, when I read the poll, it looked like a general question about all tax dollars. I wasn't aware (and I still don't believe) that all "tax dollars" were related to the Obama stimulus program. If your poll is specific to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the so-called "stimulus" bill) then you should have been more clear about that. You seemed to be asking about tax dollars generally, not just from the Obama stimulus.

Also, you state, "There were no qualifications or accounting from these banks in the Stimulus bill, it allowed egregious errors, Tax Dollars lost and with no one able to account for them."

There are several errors there.

First, you seem to be confusing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the Obama Stimulus bill that became law on February 17, 2009 when Obama signed it with the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, the bill that established the TARP fund which bought bank stocks, which became law October 3, 2008 when Bush signed it.

Beyond that, when Paulson called all the bank CEO's into a meeting on October 13, 2008, some of the stronger banks did not want to have the Treasury buy preferred stock in their banks.

From the Wall Street Journal,

Some of the big banks were unhappy about the government taking equity stakes, but acquiesced under pressure from Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in a meeting Monday. During the financial crisis, the government has steadily increased its involvement in financial markets, culminating with a move that rivals the breadth of the government's response to the Great Depression. It intertwines the banking sector with the federal government for years to come and gives taxpayers a direct stake in the future of American finance, including any possible losses.

Most of the big banks have bought back their "preferred stock" which they sold to the Treasury in October of 2009. Some of them wanted to pay early, but Paulson and Geithner forced them to wait until Geithner finished his "stress tests" in 2009.

Other parts of the TARP "slush fund" were diverted to GM and to other "emergencies." The whole thing was ill conceived and should never have been passed.

But the bank bailouts with the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 are completely separate issues from the "Stimulus" through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

As for the legislative procedural issues you point out. Nothing is passed in the House or the Senate until a Representative or a Senator sponsors the bill. Obama can take a bill to his party, and maybe someone will step up and sponsor it, maybe nobody will step up and sponsor it.

If you think, "There ought to be a law ...." and want a federal law, you could write a bill and take it to the office of your Congress Critter and ask them to sponsor it. Would that make you responsible for any funds spent in that bill?

¢ommon ¢ents

Oh please, everything you posted is pure speculation by the anti Obama crowd. NONE of you have one iota of proof that what you so wish to be true is.

Money went to GM because the bankers credit crises created a problem as people were losing their jobs and those same Wall Street "investor" bid up oil prices in the same way. Im glad Obama saved all those innocent people's jobs.

Any company who borrows money borrows money for cash flow . ever heard of it? Yeah thats the money they use to pay for all expenses over the months and years it may take to really start making profits. One of those monthly bills will be the one for the loan. It's literally done all the time.

Investment in solar is smart. Oil and other fossil fuels will not last. The sun is there everyday and the energy from bright sunny days can be stored. It is a wise investment.

There are many many businesses that have failed whether the private investors (who then write them off to the taxpayers as bad debts, fund them or the government ....welcome to reality.

There is nothing illegal about allowing private investors to get paid back first in bankruptcy proceedings.

That happens all the time in the private market. See the rules are skewed to save the rich people's money. that's why preferred shares get paid before common shares and employees pensions are simply wiped out .

Show me specifically the "fraud at the very least" Obama has committed. Have proof NOT conjecture.

The stimulus was used mostly to save state budgets including perry precious Texas budget he falsely claimed he balanced all by his li'l self.

Money went to GM because the bankers credit crises created a problem as people were losing their jobs and those same Wall Street "investor" bid up oil prices in the same way. Im glad Obama saved all those innocent people's jobs.

The credit crisis came from congress loosening up restrictions on the housing market. And as to GM, the goverment calls the bailout of gm a success, but they don't tell the entire story. GM was split into 2 entities, one held the debt, pension debt, and "abandoned" properties, while the other held the viable assets. The first part is still in limbo, needing billions of dollers to clean up, while the second part paid off its loans and is improving.

The President, who ever is in office at the time, is The Commander. When running for this position, President obama stated repeatedly that he would go through and look for Government waste, line by line, Department by Department. It is up to Obama, or the President residing, to sign or not sign for the way our tax dollars are spent. It is up to him to ensure that Oversight Committees are doing THEIR job. I have had numerous businesses also, and as boss, it rested on my shoulders, not any one working under me, that I may have put into a position. Success or failure depended on my attention to all matters, not being on 'vacation'.

Arkansas Gloria: well-stated.

What a bunch of bull@!$%#.

Arkansas Gloria, Lkessler, if you think any one person is capable of overseeing all this government does you are way way way the @!$%# out there. Which may be why you had "numerous businesses"

Why don't you add to it the obstructionism of say a coward like Shelby from Alabamastan, blocking vital appointees to Obama's administration.

None of them are doing their jobs. Working together for the country. Or haven't you heard Bitch McConnell state his "primary job" as blocking anything that would help Obama get reelected.

Go back to grade school, you all still have a lot more growing up to do.

hugh b: wow, you should take your own advice--and by the way, please, get some mouthwash too, while you're at it.

Not one person can oversee how government spends its money, but if the CIC can't account for it, either A) he's clueless or B) the people he chose to surround himself with are. I'm betting on both A and B when it comes to Mr. Obama.

Chuck,

You haven't been paying attention, have you? GM was proven to pay back part of its bailout loans with money from an account that held bailout grant money. There are 6 Solar Energy companies that got Stimulus money that are all failing and in many cases were showing signs of failing when they got the money and that totals between $8 and $12 billion in loans and grants. There is a one sentence FEDERAL LAW that prevents Federal loans from being restructured so that private investors recover money before the Federal Government. That law was violated by the DOE restructuring the Solyndra loan so that two hedge funds recovered money before the Federal Government if Solyndra went bankrupt. And, what I stated about jobs being saved only to be lost is a truism. None of this is speculation, and you can easily move your fingers or speak into your computer and have it do a Google/Yahoo/Bing search for everything I posted. I don't have time at the moment to post the links.

True, Greg, but Obama made sure we of that when he, himself, said, "the buck stops with me"... more than once - and we will hold that to him in about a year from now.

The President requests spending, the House approves or disapproves.

The only way this country is going to move in any comprehensive direction is for Obama to list everything he is against so the Teapublicans will fall over themselves to pass the bills.

Pathetic form of governing but we are dealing with a bunch of squabbling chilldren.

Problem is that that information isn't liked by many people. No matter how reckless the loan programs were, they were within the regulations that congress passed in order to boost home ownership. Congress wanted more people to have the ability to own homes, banks drew up new ways to do it, then the federal goverment backed the loans with guarantees. The market collapsed and the goverment was on the hook for billions of dollars of guaranteed home loans that the banks and other institutions held. Since those were the primary cause for many banks and institutions downfalls when the bottom dropped out of the prices, the goverment was lucky that the banks and such didn't demand that the goverment buy back all loans that it had backed at the guaranteed price. Instead they got loans that people complain about since they don't know or care to know the full story.

Correction it was the Dodd-Frank bill.

Linda - WRONG. When you are bonded, all that does is insure that the BONDING company pays the municipality - THEN they come back against you personally.

The consequences of NOT bailing them out leave a huge problem . Hence , the panic of all the bankers in Sept 2008. The bailout was absolutely 100000% needed . Allowing the entire banking system to crash with everyone's money in them is suicidal.

The bigger question to me is why the money was given without the stipulation of no contracts being paid and no bonuses being paid regardless of the year they were written in.

But again Republicans, for whatever reason, think that businesses will do the right thing. in fact when they don't the right wing always blames the government instead (while claiming they want personal responsibility)

It bothers me that Obama allowed Goldman Sachs to pay a miniscule fine for fraud and NO jail time for Blankfein et al who committed fraud hedging against their own clients securities which they advised them to buy.

but I understand why. Because our fox news puppets would have thrown a hissy fit like they have about everything else simply because Obama advocated it. In fact THIS would be THE reason nothing has been done to Cheney for War crimes, bankers for fraud etc.

In other words you are saying that Obama is a coward? He cares more about public image than actually doing the job he was elected to do?

Then he doesn't deserve the office, or the responsbility the the job entails.

The Dems had better find themselves a new candidate fast.

er um,

A money market fund never matures.

And the bailout wasn't to rescue the banks, it was to rescue the underlying financial system. Unfortunately, to do that, the banks themselves (the ones entrusted with that financial system) had to be bailed out.

Jonathan, what do you make of this? MUMBAI: Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has warned of another financial crisis brewing, as global liquidity becomes a concern amidst central banks pegging their lending rates at near zero levels, leaving scope for another asset bubble to take down the global financial system."

I make of it that it is a warning of the monetary crisis in europe impacting the liquidity of the global financial system. This was in part caused by improper management of the global financial system (by both banks and the monetary authorities) and the idiocy of the people in charge pretending that just because we avoided a monetary seizure in 2008 doesn't mean we aren't going to have one now if we don't get our act together.

Putting the interest rate down to zero is and should always be a warning sign, because it means that there is no wiggle room on one side of the interest rate equation. We can't lower the rates once you hit zero.

What asset bubble though is even left except country's bonds? At least that's all I can think of right off the bat.

well there are two things, first the sovereign debt (the government bonds) but there is also corporate debt which is going to start maturing soon after the M&A craze that started in 02 & 03. These also have the equivalent of CDO's derivative instruments attached to them.

Most of it though is the sovereign debt, because a lot of the mortgage related debt was bought up by government entities, meaning that it was bought up by less than solvent governments.

mstanley

by the way, I have been scared of what has been happening for close to a decade, I had often stated that what happened in 2008 was going to happen (got a bunch of friends whom got might pissed off at me for predicting it, and then being even more pissed off at me when it happened because they lost a hell of a lot more money than me. They were gloating for the few years when they kept making higher returns than I was, but when I only lost about 200K total and most of them lost almost everything, they were super pissed off), but not only was I angry that nobody paid attention to me (or the actual economists who predicted it), but the reaction to it and most importantly the response to it is extremely frustrating. Everyone is just attacking the bankers or the government, but the reality is that nobody is responsible but at the same time, EVERYBODY is responsible. We all need to make sacrifices and change our ways or we are all just going to end up in the financial equivalent of hell in a hand basket.

I ran across another one that some consider an asset bubble, precious metals such as gold. But I haven't found too many saying that just yet. Though another one had a vague implication that Goldman Sachs was running up silver too.

and then there's the Student Loans that have topped a trillion dollars...which carries over into their post graduate spending.

gold is a scam, what you are buying in most cases are futures (basically an option to buy gold at some point in the future). The problem is that there is something like 25 times more futures out there than there is gold being dug out of the ground.

I haven't heard that student loans have gone that high, so can't comment. That figure alone sounds suspicious to me.

Silver (actually any precious metal) is sold just like gold. Gold and Silver get the most exposure, but there is also platinum and palladium.

Agreed on the gold scam...sighhh and people still buy into it.

On the student loans, that's what the Federal Reserve reported projecting for the end of 2011

well all the gold push does is increase the return for the speculators who make it their business to trade in these options. It really does need to be investigated because of the impact on the average person who is being taken in by the scam.

This is another area where Ron Paul is just totally clueless on.

I wonder if the student loan thing is because of the rise in the for profit schools, and the associates degree, which should be banned to me. The types of things that people with associates degree's are tending to do are more akin to trade school work, not academic work. We need both, but telling people that they need to get an associates degree when they really need to more appropriately be in some form of a trades program is a misuse of our resources.

I don't know but I think I'll do some research on the issue of student loans. Obviously, something is going on not counting the fact that graduates aren't finding jobs or aren't finding jobs that are enough for living expenses plus paying the loans off.

unless those numbers are broken down as to how it is allocated (vis a vis, how much is going to devry, ITT, etc...), you probably won't get very far in any of the research, though it would be interesting to see the growth in total outstanding loans over the last decade.

I'll get back to you on that. the average interest payment is 3 to 4%...I'll also check see if that interest cost is included in the loan amount. Probably is. sighhhh

It couldn't be because the payment terms for student loans are generally much more flexible, so it is probably just what is currently outstanding on an annualized basis.

I am more thinking about the makeup of the loans in terms of type of institution, but also what might be interesting is the growth rate over the last 10 or 15 years.

The debt level itself on its own isn't all that troubling unto itself, but an unsustainable growth is.

Another damned good reason to get rid of the Federal Reserve.

linda

there were NO bailouts of foreign banks by the US government or the Fed.

In order to be eligible for any programs from the fed/treasury (both had programs), even if it was just lower interest capital loans to inject liquidity, the bank must be based and operate in the United States. That however didn't prevent banks located in the United States that were owned by foreign entities from taking advantage of these programs. But they are part of the same system as the US owned banks, so they were just as entitled to take advantage of those programs.

I wasn't aware the European Central Bank (the Euro Zone equivalent of the Fed, the bank where the banks keep their reserve accounts) had any base of operations in the United States. Yet, the Federal Reserve has been creating new dollars out of nothing and loaning them at attractive rates to the European Central Bank. Here's a story: "Federal Reserve boosts flow of dollars to European Central Bank" from the Washington Post.

Are you sure about this, Jonathan-2055273?

In order to be eligible for any programs from the fed/treasury (both had programs), even if it was just lower interest capital loans to inject liquidity, the bank must be based and operate in the United States. That however didn't prevent banks located in the United States that were owned by foreign entities from taking advantage of these programs.

The Fed has been participating in the global system by pumping dollar liquidity around the world. No US Base of operations has been required.

¢ommon ¢ents

duplicate comment deleted (NewsVine errors)

common.

wasn't specifically aware of this particular program, but the world has been pumping money into the US for several decades (propping up its economy), now a little turnaround to stabilize things are getting people are worked up.

Maybe the world should remove the US dollar as the global reserve currency. See how you like the 50% drop in the dollar.

The second paragraph is actually the key to it. If the US dollar wasn't the global reserve currency, then there would be no practical need for that.

Therese,

Funny you should mention Solyndra...look at my comment in #3.3.

The banks did not steal the Federal Tax Dollars.

No, they instead held everyone's life savings hostage. thats SOOO much better.

The banks did not write the bill and how it was to be distributed or the accountability to US.

Actually they did.

This is who Paulson et al worked with to decide how they should cover the trillions in value Wall Street had created in their bubble (over valuing everyone's house for their own profit)

Oh sure, great ideas. (/sarc) By the way - ever hear of the Constitution?

Peter - you're kidding, right? Since the Mortgage meltdown there have been THOUSANDS of new regulations - many of which put tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of mortgage professionals OUT OF BUSINESS. Many are on the unemployment lines through no fault of their own. and NO, BROKERS WERE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE MORTGAGE CRISIS!

so it nothing to do with high unemployment

nothing to do with the surplus of existing homes

nothing to do with a tightening of money that is available

and nothing to do with fraudulent underwriting

amazing how you keep on proving your inability to understand and comprehend complex issues relating to the destruction of this economy, such a very very young girl, no business whatsoever...

where is your link for thousands of new @!$%#ing regulations? jesus christ

There is one, The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protect Act. Otherwise, none, just the lawsuits by the Department of Justice.

All the rest are hung up in subcommittee's or committee's, otherwise known as the Kiss of Death to legislation.

As for mortgage brokers, if they were committed to making 'good' loans those people aren't out of business. On the other hand the ones that made a loan no matter what income, well they're out of business.

hugh

why don't you read what I wrote instead of putting @!$%#ing words in my mouth! You want to talk about new regulations? I'm in the @!$%#ing business and there are new ones every damned day! Do some damned homework before you start insulting people about stuff YOU DON'T KNOW!

There are licensing requirements, continuing education requirements, requirements about advertising, background check requirements, FBI check reqirements, requirements about business cards, requirements about phone calls, requirements about compensation, requirements about @!$%#ing EMAILING something! requirements about record keeping, requirements about audits, requirements about disclosures need I @!$%#ing go on?

And for your information, mstanley, LAWS don't have to be passed by congress for new mortgage reqirements - THEY are set by the Federal Reserve.

So all you friggin rocket scientists who know every damned thing maybe don't know so friggin much after all!

hugh b:

Considering your own contributions, you ought to be impressed by the fact that no one cares what your opinion is.

Carry on!

well you see, LKessler, what I care about are people, society, and the legacy of America, not what other people think of my opinions

I'm only too sure your life revolves around anonymous validation, mine doesn't, I come here for sport, to try and get people to think, and to write things I think are interesting, fun, and inciteful, insightful, and frightful.

My sense of self comes from giving, not from taking, you're Right Wing Core is showing

and i don't just seek out like minded posts to get any satisfaction

i will get in the sewer where the turds are when necessary

How sad for you that you're so wrong--after all, you seem to think as if tax dollars ought to be capriciously spent, without accountability to "WE THE PEOPLE." It seems at least I and most posters agree that someone has to be accountable to us. And if they're not going to, we'll vote 'em off.

As indicated, your delightful personality shows as described above in your own words. Carry on!

Peter - the problem is that the only "regulations" that government has come up with are the ones that the banks themselves instituted after the meltdown. For instance, the banks said "Oh, we better not do any more Stated Income loans" - then the States passed laws that outlawed Stated Income loans. That kind of thing.

It's sort of like locking the barn door after the horse is gone. Nothing of any substance really changed - just a bunch of feel-good regulations that put small mortgage companies completely out of business. On the other hand, States have hired a multitude of new regulators and auditors so I guess it has had SOME impact. More government employees

yes, where did all the bush bailout money go? moronic

We don't do personal attacks here, hugh. Do it again and you'll get suspended, got it? Therese, just got the good news-the Brit is gone!!

hugh b

Obama is supposed to be better than Bush. He stated his administration would be "transparent", and "The buck stops here".

Neither is innocent when it comes to accountability of the funds spent. Bush is no longer in office, so outside of chastising him verbally there is nothing we can do. Obama is up for re-election, so there is something we can still do. Even if it is giving him a rebuke at the voting booth by cutting his margin of victory, or turning the senate so he really does have to work with the other side- instead of just giving lip service to it.

Assuming any candidate can pull themselves together long enough to put together a cohesive plan on how to run the country.