Glad you asked. The latest major TARP report (October) from the Department of the Treasury is here. I can save you a lot of time. Start on page 3. The monthly report linked on that page is an old one. The most recent one is here. On page 4, Figure 2, the estimated cost to the Federal budget (taxpayer) is about $57 billion. To be sure, this number moves around in this range over time. That number includes housing and auto bailouts as well as banks and other financial industries.

I did not, and still do not, support such bailouts. It doesn’t matter if most of it is paid back or not, there are longer range principles involved here.

But it’s pretty obvious that $57 billion isn’t much of a dent in a $5 trillion $4.4 trillion debt increase. About one percent, if you’re doing the math.

(- Edited to slightly correct a number.)

How much of Obama’s debt has gone to the ultra-wealthy for bailing out hedge funds?

What are you complaining about. It was the fastest transfer of wealth from the country to the super-rich the world has ever seen, and you’re griping.

Go figure.

The Federal debt was about $5.7 trillion when Clinton left office, an increase of only $1.5 billion over Clinton’s eight years. When Bush left after eight years, it had ballooned to $10.6 trillion, or about $5 trillion more than when he came in. Today, after only four years of Obama, it’s hit about $15 trillion, and trillion-dollar deficits are the norm, not an outlandish number that would have gotten Bush keelhauled. (Source)

The secret to stopping the charging is to cut up the credit cards, not drastically increase the debt limit. Which side of that argument were you on?

Thanks — your metaphor is even clearer than my “blowing holes in the bottom of a leaking boat” one.

By the way, Greenspan was chairman of the Federal Reserve beginning way back in 1987 and ending in 2006.

Find the least financially responsible person you can, give him your credit cards for 8 years. Have him “give” billions upon billions to his Eastern European relatives for helping him with whatever he wants.

Cut your income, say, 10%, and give it to your rich uncle.

Now, try to pay off your credit cards in two or three years while not nitpicking or logic-chopping.

I’m hearing a lot of different things.

As for this incident, I’m curious what the real story is. This being a Pakistani checkpoint designed to stop taliban border crossings, my bet is the pakistanis were deliberately allowing a high value target through and the NATO copters took them out.

At some point those pants aren’t clean.

Then again, this may not be incompetence at all. Those Pakistanis may have been collaborating with the bad guys, or they may have even been the bad guys, you can’t believe anything the Pakis say. It’s not even inconceivable that the Pakis wanted these guys taken out and helped us do it, and this self-righteous outrage is only for their own domestic consumption.

My own personal opinion is Obama knows he has reached the point of diminishing returns in Pakistan and he is setting up the conditions for a quick and hasty withdrawal that will happen very quickly.
It will be set up so everyone will come off looking like a hero to his people, and so it will appear inevitable to everyone. Nobody will lose face.

And remember, once we “lose” Pakistan, it will be impossible to keep a large force in Afghanistan supplied by air. The pull-out there will become essential and it will be expedited. By the election, there will be no Americans in that part of the world except some training cadres in Iraq and a few Ranger and Seal Units on the ground in Afghanistan.

I personally believe we have very good reasons to have a strong presence in SW Asia, but if there’s no way we can pull it off, then we are better off cutting our losses and getting out while we can still say it was our idea.