THE CORPORATE BAILOUT

People have been saying that Obama "shouldn't have given all that money to the banks and Chrysler."  Here's what really happened:

The corporate bailout that everyone’s talking about was begun by George W. Bush in 2008 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bailout), the last year he was in office.  These are some of the organizations that were given money:

• 2008 - The Bear Stearns Companies, Inc.
• 2008 - Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
• 2008 - The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. bailed out by the federal government and Berkshire Hathaway
• 2008 - Morgan Stanley bailed out by The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ
• 2008-2009 - American International Group, Inc. multiple times
• 2008 - Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008^[16]
• 2008 - 2008 United Kingdom bank rescue package
• 2008 - Citigroup Inc.
• 2008 - General Motors Corporation and Chrysler LLC- though not technically a bailout, a bridge loan was given to the auto manufacturers by the U.S. government, this is referred to by most as a bailout.

In addition, it wasn’t $150 billion that Bush gave to corporations; between the open bailout and several other federal loan programs, corporations actually benefitted by $1.2 trillion in taxpayer money:

“By 2008, the housing market’s collapse forced those companies to take more than six times as much, $669 billion, in emergency loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve. The loans dwarfed the $160 billion in public bailouts the top 10 got from the U.S. Treasury, yet until now, the full amounts have remained secret.”

(http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-21/wall-street-aristocracy-got-1-2-trillion-in-fed-s-secret-loans.html).

 Coming into office at this point, Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, otherwise known as “the stimulus package,” and launched recovery.gov, a website that allows taxpayers to track spending from the Act. http://1.usa.gov/ibiFSs http://1.usa.gov/e3BJMk

The Bush-led Great Recession was costing the economy nearly 800,000 jobs per month by the time President Obama took office. But by the end of his first year, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act created and sustained 2.1 million jobs and stimulated the economy by 3.5%. http://reut.rs/i46CEE

Obama took over the financial and banking rescue plan, and then he leaned on the banks and others, and recovered virtually all of the bail-out money. http://1.usa.gov/eA5jVS http://bit.ly/eCNrD6

The economy is improving, but it takes time.  Find out what's going on and VOTE! 

 For more information about what Obama has been doing since 2009, go to this site:

http://pleasecutthecrap.typepad.com/main/what-has-obama-done-since-january-20-2009.html