Dec07

Compiled By

Raquel Benson is a Senior Contributor to TDA, a journalism student, humanist, and artist with issues of chronic imagination. She may be brash, but it stems from a deeper concern for the world around her.

All About the Money

The $7.7 Trillion Question

Social Issues – Let’s make this into a word problem: In 2008, congress was debating whether or not to bailout Wall Street with a blank check for $700 billion dollars. While Congress was sorting all that out, Elizabeth Duke, Donald Kohn and Kevin Warsh snuck $7.7 trillion into the banks. What is wrong with this picture? Identify and evaluate the problem.

How was this able to happen? Well, Duke, Kohn, and Warsh all belong to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors – a group who cannot be voted into office, but, by the blunder of some careless lawmaker, possess the power to completely dictate monetary policy in America. But do not confuse these people with politicians – they’re not. They have power, and they have control of the one thing that controls the world… Cash. They’re technocrats. They dwell only on fiscal matters and have no business with democracy.

When it came to the droning debates of Congress, the technocrats waited for no one as they went ahead and bailed out the banks themselves. According to the documents, the Fed funneled $7.7 trillion into super-low interest loans to Wall Street’s elite.

The figure is impossible to digest: $7.7 trillion equals more than half the total value of everything produced in America. Everything. So when they forced the bailout, they were essentially flushing $7.7 trillion dollars down the toilet.

By no means is the Federal Reserve the rightful property of the banking corporations. It is not their crutch.