Occupy protests simplistic, misguided

The Occupy Wall Street gaggle of protesters who honk “Banks got bailed out! We got sold out!” ought to get their facts straight. The $245 billion lent — not given — to banks in 2008 under the misnamed Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP, aka “the bank bailout”) successfully unfroze liquidity and spared the world an economic cataclysm. To date, all but about 10 percent has been repaid with interest.

The U.S. Treasury Department, furthermore, estimates that the government will make an overall $12 billion to $15 billion profit on TARP when the books are finally closed. The bank bailout, in other words, will have succeeded while costing nothing at all — unlike, say, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 that will cost taxpayers way over $800 billion (including debt service), but fail to keep its promises to hold unemployment under 8 percent and to stimulate economic recovery.

As to the “got sold out” charge, how many of these protesters have been helped through school by Pell Grants that taxpayers will fund to the tune of $36.6 billion this year? How many have been additionally helped by the government-guaranteed student loan program which is approaching $1 trillion in outstanding debt with a current default rate of 8.8 percent? Are any of them collecting some of the taxpayer funded $134 billion in unemployment insurance that will be paid this year? Did any take advantage of the Cash for Clunkers $3 billion boondoggle?

These protesters are right. Something is very wrong for us to keep wallowing in this recessionary mire. Their diagnosis — blame the banks — and their solution — eat the rich — are as misguided and simplistic, however, as their grasp of the facts.

Bob Foys

Inverness