Congress passes risky bill on spending says writer

To the Editor:

Your readers can thank Congress for the expensive Christmas gift it gave to Wall Street corporations and banksters in the new federal spending bill passed earlier this month.

Wall Street can go back to business as usual now and invest the regular FDIC-insured deposits that you, and I and others like us have for even riskier bets.

Does the 2008 bailout ring a bell for you? Total cost to the taxpayers to bail out Wall Street on those risky bets amounted to at least $1.2 TRILLION, the latest estimate by Bloomberg News from examining

government documents concerning the bailouts to hundreds of corporations. Yes, trillion!

Currently, the derivatives market in the United States is valued around $12 trillion. If Wall Street crashes the economy again (we all know how greed works), then the taxpayer will once again have to pick up that tab

because Congress says we have to in the new bill so Wall Street can gamble at our expense.

America’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as of the second quarter of 2014 stands at $17 trillion. That was the value of all goods and services in this country at that time. It is probably about the same or a bit more

now in the fourth quarter of 2014.

And we thought paying $1.2 trillion was difficult enough when the 2008 GDP stood at almost $15 trillion – well, try a $12 trillion debt to pay off if Wall Street greed compromises the American taxpayer on the altar of

corporate profit.

Thank Congress for putting us in this position, again.

Duane Pitts

Moses Lake