The nation’s gross domestic product was $14.2 trillion in 2008.
The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or committed $12.8 trillion, an amount that approaches the value of everything produced in the country last year!
Every American household is on the hook for $109,887 for these bailouts.
Professor Nouriel Roubini, of New York University's Stern business school, believes that while such a major change is some way off, the Chinese government is laying the ground for the yuan's ascendance.
Roubini argues that China is better placed than the US to provide a reserve currency for the 21st century because it has a large current account surplus, focused government and few of the economic worries the US faces. He also predicts that Beijing will soon want to see the yuan included in the International Monetary Fund's special drawing rights "basket", as well as seeing it "used as a means of payment in bilateral trade."
Sen. Dick Durbin blurted out on a local Chicago radio station an obvious truth that is rarely spoken:
"The banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place."
The blunt acknowledgment that the same Wall Street banks that caused the financial crisis "own" the U.S. Congress -- according to one of that institution's most powerful members -- demonstrates just how extreme the institutional corruption is.
[Salon]
