As expected, the government bailout (i.e., your bailout; the bailout financed with taxpayer money) of the financial sector will reach costs as high a one trillion dollars. Fun, fun. Best explanation I could find for this mess is contained in this interview with Robert Scheer. Mr. Scheer lays out the basis for the current problems and corrects my earlier post in which I mistakenly call the current U.S. policies  “corporate socialism”. A better term for what is currently going on is fascism, i.e., the unification of government and cooperate power. I think calling our government fascist is in fact pretty accurate if you consider the encyclopedic definition of the term “Fascism”, it has the following elements: Nationalism, corporativism, militarism, authoritarianism, populism, collectivism, statism, dictatorship, and economic planning.  All of these (except for good economic planning, obviously) can be found to some level in the developments of the last 8 years. Nice going everyone.

Here’s the usual 4th grade math example: Lets assume that the bailout of the financial sector comes to 1 Trillion U.S. Dollars, as some economists expect. What is the financial burden imposed on YOUR family of 4 that pays for bonuses for wall-street bankers, stock brokers and investor profits?

(1 Trillion Dollars) divided by  (75 Million Households of 4 in the U.S)  = 13,300 dollars per household.

Hey, your government just increase your family’s debt by 13,000 Dollars. Thanks, Uncle Sam. Don’t know about you, but if I was voting my financial interests in the next election, I’d consider putting another team at the helm.