Obama pirating the US economy with Bail Outs for 6 Ins Co and getting billions more for War..

Obama Says U.S. Long-Term Debt Load ‘Unsustainable’ warns of skyrocketing interest rates for consumers if the U.S. continues to finance government by borrowing from other countries.

As the Corporate Front Man, Obama is financing 19 Banks and 6 Insurance Companies with Public Funds while appointing himself CEO of major Car Makers taking the United States further down the rabbit hole with War Funding.

In the same breath, Obama is warning us: “We can’t keep on just borrowing from China,” Obama said at a town-hall meeting in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, outside Albuquerque. “We have to pay interest on that debt, and that means we are mortgaging our children’s future with more and more debt.”

Holders of U.S. debt will eventually “get tired” of buying it, causing interest rates on everything from auto loans to home mortgages to increase, Obama said. “It will have a dampening effect on our economy.”

Earlier this week, the Obama administration revised its own budget estimates and raised the projected deficit for this year to a record $1.84 trillion, up 5 percent from the February estimate. The revision for the 2010 fiscal year estimated the deficit at $1.26 trillion, up 7.4 percent from the February figure. The White House Office of Management and Budget also projected next year’s budget will end up at $3.59 trillion, compared with the $3.55 trillion it estimated previously.

Bloomberg

Six Insurers Named to Get U.S. Taxpayer Aid

By ERIC DASH and DIANA B. HENRIQUES
Published: May 14, 2009

Six major insurance companies have received preliminary approval to get billions of dollars in fresh capital as part of the government’s financial rescue program, a Treasury Department spokesman confirmed on Thursday.

The department said the Hartford Financial Services Group, Prudential Financial, Lincoln National, Allstate, Ameriprise and Principal Financial Group have all received approval for capital infusions, subject to terms still to be negotiated.

The Hartford, in a statement released late Thursday, said it was told it could receive $3.4 billion under the program.

Applying for the additional capital “was a prudent step for the Hartford, particularly given the continued economic uncertainty,” said Ramani Ayer, the company’s chairman and chief executive.

“These funds would further fortify our capital resources and provide us with additional financial flexibility during one of the most volatile market climates in our nation’s history,” Mr. Ayer continued. The other companies did not immediately provide details about the status of their application.

Under the program, each company is eligible to receive investments worth up to 3 percent of its total assets. Based on the Treasury formula, the amount of capital available to the other companies would be at least several billion dollars each.

While the extension of additional capital to insurers had been widely expected, these are the first companies that have been identified to receive aid after the near-collapse of American International Group. According to the Treasury spokesman, Andrew Williams, these insurers qualified for capital infusions under the department’s Capital Purchase Program because each had restructured itself as a bank holding company and met the November deadline for the program.

Hundreds of other financial institutions are still in the pipeline for review and will be approved on a rolling basis, the Treasury Department said.

As the financial crisis erupted last fall, A.I.G. became the first insurer to receive substantial government aid before a broad-based program to help financial firms was established. Its problems stemmed from complex derivatives that greatly increased its obligations to its trading partners.

This recent group of insurers is far less troubled than A.I.G., but they still have been hurt by the collapse in real estate prices. Amid the housing boom, many insurers invested in complex mortgage-related securities that have since turned sour, weakening their balance sheets.

Indeed, several insurance companies took extraordinary steps to qualify for taxpayer money, which has become even more attractive as the economic environment has worsened.

For example, Lincoln National and the Hartford both bought up smaller banks to qualify as savings banks, which made them eligible for government support.

The insurers followed investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, which received emergency waivers from the Federal Reserve to become bank holding companies last fall.

GMAC, the auto lender, and American Express, the credit card company, also have transformed themselves into banks to qualify for government support.

“You want the regulatory program to be as broad as possible,” said Scott E. Talbott, a lobbyist for the Financial Roundtable, a group of the nation’s biggest financial services companies. “If all it took was regulatory gymnastics, that expands the program.”

The Capital Purchase Program is part of the sweeping bailout of financial institutions that grew out of the panic that hit in mid-September.

At that time, the Treasury Department, with the backing of the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, asked Congress for $700 billion to buy up mortgage-backed securities whose value had dropped sharply or had become impossible to sell, in what he called the Troubled Asset Rescue Plan, or TARP.

As the financial crisis worsened, the TARP plan was modified and expanded to include various support programs set up by the Treasury and the Federal Reserve, ranging from an ad hoc temporary guarantee program for money market funds to the purchase of preferred shares in various financial institutions.

NYT

House approves $96.7 billion to fund wars

Money to transfer Gitmo prisoners not included in war funds.

The US House of Representatives on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a 96.7-billion-dollar measure to pay for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars through October 1 as well as aid ally Pakistan.

Lawmakers passed the bill, which also included two billion dollars to prepare for fighting an influenza pandemic, by a lopsided 368-60 margin.

The measure did not include President Barack Obama’s request for 80 million dollars to close the prison for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, amid congressional concerns about what to do with the detainees there.

The Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday approved a 91.3 billion dollar version of the measure that includes the monies, but with tight restrictions forbidding their use to transfer or free any detainees on US soil.

After the full Senate votes, the two chambers will reconcile their rival versions to send a final bill to Obama.

The House bill includes 400 million dollars to help build up the Pakistani security forces’ ability to wage counterinsurgency warfare at a time when US lawmakers worry about the nuclear-armed ally’s stability.

And it includes another 600 million dollars in economic development aid to Pakistan and to improve education and democratic reforms there.

The spending measure includes 47.7 billion dollars to cover the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through October 1, and another 23 billion dollars to replace equipment damaged or worn out in the two conflicts.

Afghanistan would get about 980 million dollars for economic development and agriculture programs, to bolster national and provincial governments and democratic reforms.

Those monies would help Obama’s new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, which he announced March 27.

But the committee also attached a provision calling for a progress report in one year’s time on those two governments’ cooperation with US goals under the new approach.

“The president cannot wave a magic wand and end that war,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey, a Democratic critic of the two wars.

“I have a profound doubt that he can succeed, not because of any problem with his policy but because I am dubious that there are the tools available in that region for us to succeed using any policy,” said Obey.

The supplemental measure also includes two billion dollars to prepare for fighting an influenza pandemic.

In addition, it includes 151 million dollars for economic and security assistance for Kenya, Somalia, southern Sudan and Zimbabwe, and 470 million to help Mexico in its war with illegal drug trafficking.

Raw Story

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