Hated Bank Bailout about to turn a profit - USA Today

[JohnWxy]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2011-02-09-editorial09_ST_N.htm

A year and a half ago, had someone said that by early 2011 the bank bailout would be on target to make a profit, the laughter would have been audible. Had he or she gone on to say that the unemployment rate would be 9%, it would have become deafening.

But here we are. The Treasury Department now estimates that the $245 billion that bought shares in banks is likely to return a profit in the range of $20 billion. An additional $165 billion that went to non-bank institutions, or was used more generally to encourage lending, might yet keep the overall effort from turning a profit. But don't count on it. Each report on these programs seems to get progressively better.

Even more eye-catching are the economic numbers. The unemployment rate topped out at 10.1% in late 2009. That's remarkable. The biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression apparently won't produce an unemployment rate as high as the 10.8% mark hit during a garden-variety recession in 1982. It's also remarkable that the unemployment rate has already fallen to 9%, even if it might still rise.

The unavoidable fact is that the bailout, aka the TARP (for Troubled Asset Relief Program) has been an astonishing success, and its once-noisy critics are suddenly silent, as well they should be. Combined with a number of actions taken by the Federal Reserve, the bailout —distasteful as it was —kept the economy from falling into depression.
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[doc03]

1. If it turned a profit where hell did the money go? Shouldn't it

have reduced the deficit?

[OnlinePoker]

2. Unemployment is down because of BLS numbers manipulation.

If you look at the seasonally adjusted statistics released last week, unemployment went down because they reduced the population and labor force and increased the numbers of people employed by 120k. But if you look at the not seasonally adjusted statistics, while the first 2 stats are about the same, employed people actually went down by 1.5 million and unemployment rate went up from 9.1% to 9.8%. Don't believe anything the government tells you, no matter who's in charge.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm

[FBaggins]

3. BLS can only manipulate numbers

(ignoring whether or not I agree that this is happening).

In this case, the government has the ability to "manipulate" reality. They can ensure that their "investment" makes a profit by changing the rules of the game so that the companies that they own are more profitable.

The problem there is that the profits don't exist in a vacuum... they represent business that would have gone to other companies... and now their shareholders get a smaller return so that our "investment" will pay off.

[ThomCat]

4. "Don't believe anything the government tells you,"

That is very good advice when they have a huge incentive to feed the public a line of bullshit. If they can convince us that everything is getting better, and that the improvements should reach us soon, it will keep the public optimistic and passive.

That is what they want. A passive public.

They do not want the public up in arms demanding any real changes or reforms that would benefit the public, poor people, and real citizens in any substantial way.

That would force them to have to act like real representatives of the people, which they are not able to do without the permission of lobbyists. And they will never get that permission from the lobbyists.

The lobbyists own and control them, because too much money has crossed too many hands too often. We all know this. Everyone knows this. So government does what Wall Street wants, and that means feeding us lies to keep us calm while they do more to funnel more and more of our nationally generated wealth upward into Wall Street's vaults.

[JohnWxy]

5. Firms Added 187,000 Workers In January, ADP Says

I think the numbers from the payroll processor ADP are more reliable than the numbers from BLS

http://www.npr.org/2011/02/02/133428351/firms-added-187-000-workers-in-january-adp-says


"Private employers added a seasonally adjusted 187,000 workers in January, payroll processor ADP said Wednesday."

[FBaggins]

7. You can't decide that something is more reliable...

... Just because you like their results better.

This ADP series has an awful track record.

[pinqy]

9. The population controls apply to the not seasonally adjusted numbers, too

And if you ignore the population controls for the adjusted numbers, the UE rate is still 9.0%

Yes, a lot of that comes from people leaving the labor force (the labor force participation rate is its lowest since the early 80's), but employment (from both household and establishment surveys) has been (slowly) going up. Not great, but better than last year.

[westerebus]

6. Is there a joke of the day forum?

Because that's where this OP belongs.

Thanks for the laugh.

[AnneD]

8. Sounds like the attempt...

to sway opinion in the base is not going well.