GM will be begin paying back the TARP money in December, the company announced this morning. It’s a statement in need of a little context. Basically, GM will be using a portion of its $50 billion in TARP bailout money it received to in turn repay another portion of the TARP loans.

The administration’s $75 billion mortgage modification program is meant to help 3 million to 4 million homeowners avoid foreclosures. The latest data, out Tuesday, shows mortgage servicers are making some progress toward this goal, but big questions remain about how effective the program will be.

Wall Street bankers are really mad these days -- in both senses of that word! You'd think these whizzes of speculative finance would be ecstatically happy and filled with gratitude, not anger. After all, having crashed our economy, they were allowed to keep their cushy jobs, get bailed out with trillions of our tax dollars, and permitted to go right back to playing the same old casino games that had previously enriched them at our expense. Once again, such powerhouse outfits as Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are raking-in tons of money -- and, as in the gilded days before Wall Street plunged Main Street into deep recession, bankers have promptly reverted to the selfish ethic of lavishing multimillion-dollar bonuses on themselves. Goldman, for example, has already set aside more than $16 billion to dole out as end-of-year bonuses for its bankers. That's a pace of self-enrichment that will siphon off nearly half of all the money that Goldman takes in this year! So, why are they mad? Because you and I are not showing them any love. Believe it or not, Wall Streeters actually expected that their return to grandiose banker bonuses would be greeted with huzzahs and "you the man" cheers from an admiring public, rather than another coast-to-coast explosion of anger.

CIT filed for bankruptcy protection on Sunday, and part of its plan to heal itself is wiping out the taxpayers’ $2.33 billion stake in the company.

Many readers here likely remember September 29, 2008. For a brief moment, the U.S. House extended a big middle finger at Wall Street - and then, quite predictably, the entire political, media and corporate Establishment went apeshit. Though it only lasted a few days, the standoff helped further controversialize the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and thus ultimately forced the addition of some (albeit mild) restrictions on its power. Most of us who opposed the TARP as written - and there were not many willing to take that position - were not against taking any action. We were against Congress trampling the Constitution and turning the Treasury Secretary into a king, and we were against simply handing away $700 billion with no strings attached. For this, we were attacked by the Punditburo, which preposterously likened a vote for the bill as a courageous - and necessary - vote for landmark civil rights legislation (I shit you not). And for the most part, the American public has remained opposed to writing blank checks to Wall Street, especially considering the news that these kinds of bailouts have put taxpayers on the hook for trillions of dollars. And yet, as I show in my new newspaper column out today, the Obama administration, far from backing off or restricting TARP, is quietly moving forward a plan to create an even bigger, more permanent TARP.

Celente answers the questions of how we can have a "jobless recovery." He also speaks to why the economic situation we find ourselves in versus what we are being told constitutes a "coverup."

Public must learn to 'tolerate the inequality' of bonuses, says Goldman Sachs vice-chairman --Goldman Sachs is currently on track to pay the biggest ever bonuses to its 31,700 employees after raking in profits at a rate of $35m (£21m) a day. 21 Oct 2009 One of the City's leading figures has suggested that inequality created by bankers' huge salaries is a price worth paying for greater prosperity. In remarks that will fuel the row around excessive pay, Lord Griffiths, vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs International and a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, said banks should not be ashamed of rewarding their staff. Speaking to an audience at St Paul's Cathedral in London about morality in the marketplace last night, Griffiths said the British public should "tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity for all". --Tolerate *this.* http://www.legitgov.org/essay_southwell_arming_the_left_is_the_time_now_102203.html

So the problem becomes this: What do you do when a major key to economic recovery (loans for small businesses) is still elusive, while the main sources for the key (TARP and banks) are strongly associated with fraud and abuse? Enter an elegant solution to this problem from Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA). TARP is a nearly universally-despised program because it symbolizes not only the initial mismanagement that got us into this mess but a fundamental inability to understand what will get us out. Warner's proposal, in the other hand, does not look to Wall Street for a recovery.

The Treasury Department failed to investigate adequately a massive and complex employee bonus program at American International Group before giving the faltering insurance company billions in taxpayer aid, according to a new report by Treasury's independent watchdog. The multibillion-dollar "executive" compensation program was so widespread that even kitchen workers and mail-room assistants benefited, says an audit released Tuesday by Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky.

The Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve lied to the American public last fall when they said that the first nine banks to receive government bailout funds were healthy, a government watchdog states in a new report released today. Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP), says that despite multiple statements on Oct. 14 of last year that these nine banks were healthy and only receiving government funds for the good of the country's economy, federal officials knew otherwise. "Contemporaneous reports and officials' statements to SIGTARP during this audit indicate that there were concerns about the health of several of the nine institutions at that time and, as detailed in this report, that their overall selection was far more a result of the officials' belief in their importance to a system that was viewed as being vulnerable to collapse than concerns about their individual health and viability," Barofsky says... Watchdog: Inaccurate Government Statements Will Damage American Trust

"The Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve lied to the American public last fall when they said that the first nine banks to receive government bailout funds were healthy, a government watchdog states in a new report released today. Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP), says that despite multiple statements on Oct. 14 of last year that these nine banks were healthy and only receiving government funds for the good of the country's economy, federal officials knew otherwise."

This Saturday, the $700 billion TARP will be a year old. In total, $389.6 billion remains outstanding to 655 recipients ($294 billion under the TARP and $95.6 billion that’s gone to Fannie and Freddie). That total doesn’t include the 39 companies that have returned a total of $71.9 billion. Money continues to flow out. In September, the Treasury invested $141 million in 14 banks (see our timeline for more details). Meanwhile, dollars are just beginning to flow for one major program: the government’s mortgage modification program. The Treasury has set aside $22.3 billion for 60 different servicers, but since funds are not released until homeowners have completed a three-month trial modification, only about $276,000 had been paid out as of last week.

So now it turns out that the whole Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) was a flop or more likely a scam. Remember Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson telling us last September that credit markets had locked up, and then, after half of the $750 billion that he extorted out of Congress was handed out to Wall Street firms, new President Barack Obama justifying the spending of the second half of the money because we needed to "get the banks lending again"? Well, now Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for TARP, is telling us that all that money, and another more than $2 trillion in loans, accomplished nothing. In an interview with Lagan Sebert, published in Huffington Post, Barofsky says, "We were told by Treasury that the purpose of the TARP fund was to increase lending. But we haven't increased lending."

In an audit released in July, Barofsky made clear that he was intent on demanding transparency from all quarters -- including the U.S. Treasury. His next audit is due in October. During an interview with the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, Barofsky made some striking observations. Among them were:.... 1. He found hundreds of banks capable of tracking their use of the TARP money - despite claims by the U.S. Treasury that the task was impossible......2. If the purpose of the TARP rescue was to increase lending, it has failed......3. The U.S. financial system, now dependent on bigger and fewer banks, is shakier than ever.

Looks like at least one bank was left out of the TARP bonanza. Colonial Bank, which is based in Alabama, will close its doors and be bought by BB&T, another major regional bank. CNN reports that Colonial "is the sixth largest bank failure in U.S. history and by far the largest failure of 2009." The bank's failure will not affect most people with accounts there (all balances up to $250,000 are guaranteed by the government). However, mortgage rates may go up, as Colonial was heavily involved in providing "financing needed by mortgage brokers and non-bank lenders to make home loans." Colonial offices in Orlando were recently raided by government regulators in relation to accusations of "bad accounting practice and recognition of losses."

To support his line of questioning, he cited a Bloomberg report which noted that “banks’ excess reserves at the Fed rose to a record $877.1 billion daily average in the two weeks ended May 20, from $2 billion a year earlier. "Excess reserves — money available for lending that banks choose to leave with the Fed instead — averaged $743.9 billion in the first two weeks of this month,” the report continued. “First, Congress was told that TARP was for the purchase of toxic assets, to help keep people in their homes,” the Congressman said. “Then the Bush Administration switched the program. Next, Congress was told that the TARP funds were instead needed to bail out the banks, in the form of a direct capital infusion, to keep credit markets alive.”

As Bank of America faces intensifying congressional oversight during the nation's worst economy since the Great Depression, the company has spent more than $1.5 million lobbying on Capitol Hill. Bank of America. the recipient of $45 billion in taxpayer bailout money from the federal Troubled Asset Relief Program, has worked to sway lawmakers on more than two dozen pieces of legislation in both the House and Senate. The Charlotte, N.C., company wants flexibility on spending the bailout funds and also wants to fend off restrictions on executive compensation, home mortgage lending and credit card fees. The bank also is lobbying on a consumer rights bill, on student lending issues, on a bill that would've allowed bankruptcy judges to alter mortgages and on a proposed federal regulatory oversight agency.

Hillbilly recently did a video series on "Who do you believe", Bernie Sanders or Mitch McConnell. In it Sen. Sanders spelled out the huge problems with fraud, waste, and downright criminal activitiy in the healthcare industry that has helped push prices so high. And of course in it Mitch McConnell continually claims we have the "best healthcare system in the world" because himself and his rich buddies get to pick the American taxpayer and consumer clean.

The government's maximum exposure to financial institutions since 2007 could total nearly $24 trillion, or about $80,000 for every American, the watchdog overseeing the federal government financial bailout said Monday. The whopping amount compiled by the inspector general for the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program takes into account about 50 initiatives and programs set up by the Bush and Obama administrations as well as by the Federal Reserve. Many of the programs are backed by collateral and the $23.7 trillion represents the gross, not net, exposure that the government could face. No one has suggested that the full amount, in fact, will be used. The watchdog also said the Treasury Department has repeatedly failed to adopt recommendations aimed at making the TARP program more accountable and transparent. Neil Barofsky, the inspector general for the TARP, said in a report to Congress that Treasury's inaction means taxpayers have not been told what the financial institutions that have received assistance are doing with the money.

Alas, through it all, the experts predict that the recession, unemployment and misuse of funds will all be over soon, and we will hopefully be able to survive one of the worst situations in America's economic history with some ease.