$23.7 Trillion Worth Of Bailouts?

Nassim Taleb spoke of definancialization as the main cure to the system.

However, his suggestion would be revolutionary since we cited that financialization is the heart of the US political economic system (and globally) which has operated around the central banking platform, particularly in the US, the US Federal Reserves.

Proof? This from Bloomberg,

U.S. taxpayers may be on the hook for as much as $23.7 trillion to bolster the economy and bail out financial companies, said Neil Barofsky, special inspector general for the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program.

The Treasury’s $700 billion bank-investment program represents a fraction of all federal support to resuscitate the U.S. financial system, including $6.8 trillion in aid offered by the Federal Reserve, Barofsky said in a report released today.

“TARP has evolved into a program of unprecedented scope, scale and complexity,” Barofsky said in testimony prepared for a hearing tomorrow before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Treasury spokesman Andrew Williams said the U.S. has spent less than $2 trillion so far and that Barofsky’s estimates are flawed because they don’t take into account assets that back those programs or fees charged to recoup some costs shouldered by taxpayers.

“These estimates of potential exposures do not provide a useful framework for evaluating the potential cost of these programs,” Williams said. “This estimate includes programs at their hypothetical maximum size, and it was never likely that the programs would be maxed out at the same time.”

Barofsky’s estimates include $2.3 trillion in programs offered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., $7.4 trillion in TARP and other aid from the Treasury and $7.2 trillion in federal money for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, credit unions, Veterans Affairs and other federal programs.

We shouldn’t forget that the US banking system has been plagued by toxic securities mostly from mortgage lenders, such as Fannie and Freddie and other private labels, thus the encompassing system wide rescue package.

This can clearly be seen in the Federal Reserve’s Balance sheet, where the bulk (brown) of the assets held comprise Federal Agency Debt Mortgage Backed Securities

This reminds us of President Woodrow Wilson who once wrote,

“A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men who, even if their action be honest and intended for the public interest, are necessarily concentrated upon the great undertakings in which their own money is involved and who necessarily, by very reason of their own limitations, chill and check and destroy genuine economic freedom.”