What We Know Today

On Wednesday afternoon, Harry Reid, Democratic Senate Majority Leader, spoke the first truthful word from a politician during this entire crisis: "No one knows what to do. We are in new territory here. This is a different game."

I respect him for that. We’ve been listening to Hank Paulson tell us that our banking system was sound for over a year. He was the CEO of Goldman Sachs. He knew the extreme risk taking that was going on. Today, Hank Paulson -- who committed our future generations to trillions in obligations for the sins of his buddies on Wall Street -- is being hailed as a hero. Hank Paulson is no hero.

Nicolas Taleb poses the following questions:

"Why don't we realize that we are not that capable of predicting? Why don't we notice the bias that causes us not to realize that we're not learning from our experiences? Why do we still keep going as if we understand them?"

Wall Street, Alan Greenspan, George Bush’s administration and Congress attempted to put off the pain of recession by encouraging more risk-taking by companies and citizens. We’re now reaping what they have sown.

This has been a remarkable year. The United States has taken actions that will change our country forever - actions taken behind closed doors and in conjunction with the bank CEOs who caused the problems. At least one trillion of our future tax dollars have been committed to bailing out greedy, incompetent, criminal investment bankers:

Bear Stearns rescue : $29 billion

Tax rebates to Americans: $168 billion

Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) nationalization : $300 billion

AIG (AIG) nationalization : $58 billion

Government taking bad debt off the books:  $700 billion

Future Generations' Bill : $1,255,000,000,000

Let’s be perfectly clear: The US government has no money. We entered this week with a national debt of $9.65 trillion. The deficit for next year will surpass $600 billion; the annual interest charge will exceed $60 billion per year, $164 million per day, $6.8 million per hour.