16 Trillion Reasons Why We Should Occupy Wall Street
In July the Government Accountability Office released its first ever audit of the Federal Reserve. The report showed that $16 trillion dollars was given as part of Broad-Based Emergency Programs to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The distribution of these funds was not approved by Congress, even though 65% of the Term Auction Facility (TAF) funds and 59% of the Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF) funds were given to companies and organizations NOT based in the USA (p. 134).
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To put these numbers in perspective: 16 trillion dollars divided by the population of the USA (307 million) equals $52,117. That’s $52,117 dollars per person of financial assistance given out to some of the wealthiest organizations in the world via the Federal Reserve (CitiGroup - $2.5 trillion, Morgan Stanley - $2 trillion, Merrill Lynch - 1.9 trillion, Bank of America - 1.3 trillion). If you were to divide this total by each household in the USA the result would be $142,082 dollars per household.
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In 2009, the Median value of owner-occupied housing units was $185,400 and the median household income was $50,221. So essentially, without permission or authorization of the US government the Federal Reserve did the equivalent of buying every household in the USA a home, or giving every household in the US a welfare check equal to three times the median annual income. Of course this story has been completely ignored by mainstream media as of today (September 29th, 2011) with the exception of one lonely article on Forbes.com.
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All facts in this post came from the GAO-11-696 report released in July 2011 and the most recent US census. Read the press release from Senator Bernie Sanders. Read GAO-11-696. Read the Forbes article. Occupy Wall Street.
