Bernanke: "We Have No Idea How Much Money We're Giving The Banks"

Bernanke on the benefits of being too big to fail.

"It's hard to calculate exactly how big of a subsidy we're giving the banks.  And I certainly never meant to imply to Senator Warren that the issue is solved and gone.  It is not solved and gone.  I agree with her 100 percent.  Too big to fail is still a major problem."

Highlight clip from Wednesday's press conference.

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Here's the Bloomberg story that Bernanke mentions:

Taxpayers Are GIVING Big Banks $83 Billion A Year!

More video from Bernanke's press conference:

BERNANKE: "Bank Account Seizure Unlikely In U.S."

Comments

[Cheyenne]

Ben's lying his ass off as usual. Chris Whalen reported his computation of the annual TBTF subsidy just last week:

"So far, we have identified about half a trillion dollars in subsidies for the US banking industry as a whole, several times more that the industry reports in profits each year..."

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-03-12/question-liz-warren-how-many-subsidies-does-zombie-bank-need

How huge is that welfare check in comparison to the banks' earnings?

"By my conservative reckoning, the subsidies for the zombie banks total more than $3 annually for every dollar in income reported by the industry in profit," says Whalen.

[DailyBail]

Chris emailed that story to me as a guest post last week and I hadn't taken the time to look at it until now. Need to get it posted.

[SKINFLINT]

A pernicious practice that gets little notice. Just a mess. Arizona sells the state house complex and a couple years later they buy it back for a huge amount. Awful.http://mobile.businessweek.com/articles/2012-03-28/baltimore-might-sell-historic-landmarks-to-raise-money

[SKINFLINT]

Science meets banking. http://tompride.wordpress.com/2012/07/04/scientists-claim-tiny-sub-atomic-traces-of-ethics-discovered-in-barclays/

[Josie]

He starting to sound like Fisher. Kinda. Now he just should say we need to break up the f'n TBTF, heavily subsidized banks. Period. Screw the other stuff, e.g., Dodd-Frank, orderly liquidation, Basel capital requirements, etc. Just noise. Break them up! End of story.

But The Fed does not have the authority to break them up, right? Just like The Fed and Treasury did not have the authority to alter the payouts on the AIG CDSs whereby GSuchs and others got 100 cents on the $, right?

Blah, blah, blah...

[TR]

I'm not for Big Govt. but there is a need to have an entity that can resolve insolvent banks, prior to TARP & now. I can't find anything about a body that has power over Bad Banks. Wait! Someone just mentioned something called the FDIC. I'm going to them interwebs & see what I can find. lmao

[Jack Lohman]

One way of solving it, short of execution, is a clawback.

[hp]

Golly, a person wouldn't even have to be a high school graduate to accomplish this! A blind inmate from San Quentin could do it. I'd bet my last euro.

[Virgil Lantie]

In the Old West, they used to catch and hang criminals when the people got fed up of being preyed upon. Maybe we need to revert back to simpler times.

[S. Gompers]

Ben knows to the last penny.

[Sagebrush]

Between Obama and Bernanke, it's hard to tell which one is the most prolific liar when it comes to the economy or the big banks.

[chiller]

I'm embarrassed to be from a country who's leadership is as deceitful, misleading and crooked as what we have here in the USA.

[TR]

http://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html

"The Federal government and Federal Reserve are trying to inflate another housing bubble to save the "too big to fail" banks from a richly deserved day of reckoning."

[JosephConrad]

Bernanke is a moron with powerful friends willing to indulge his ignorance because it serves their purpose of perpetual walth and control. I am appalled each day Americans let him serve in his postion!

[Jack Lohman]

Joseph, I don't think Americans have a say in his serving. But I'll check with Eric Holder.

[Howard T. Lewis III]

Bernanke is the tits out cheerleader waving the pom poms as Britannia reabsorbs the U.S.. See this white collar oriented pirate ship coming through the haze. What part did you play? What mistakes have you made? Complete strangers in the military have hunted me down to reassure me that those FEMA camps may have been made for people like me, but that is not the reason they were allowed to be built.

If you love your country and the freedoms provided for all socially considerate people by noble sacrifice, it is time to show that you DO love this country because you want to help, and not because it leaves so many people open for profitable cheap shots. This country is methodically being destroyed with the 9-11 attacks, HAARP, Wall Street looting, congress chosen by the Rothschild's Associated Press and the CFRtv, carpetbagging of HAARP weather distressed farm land, etc.. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Lazy slugs at the trough. Bad place to be when the grim reaper is about.

Hope I cheered you guys up a bit.