Is The Real Cost Of The Goldman Sachs Bailout Close To $200 Billion?

First off, we have remarked repeatedly the TARP money is a rounding error in this crisis. That the US government is backstopping about $20 trillion in assets and toxic trash created because of Wall Street. Without those actions, no firm on Wall Street would have survived their completely incompetent and possibly even fraudulent behavior. (We need an independent investigation! How about giving this investigation to an independent prosecutor with unlimited resources of the FBI.)

Now we see the specific bailout for Goldman Sachs may have been almost $200 billion dollars. Or, at least there is an argument to be made that this is the case. If the AIG bailout has cost American taxpayers $150 billion and this article is correct in its facts, then we could logically assign a substantial amount of AIG's bailout cost, if not all of it, to the largest benefactor of its toxic CDOs. That would be Goldman Sachs. In other words, AIG failed in large part because of Goldman Sachs. Therefore, Goldman Sach's direct bailout is really much more than discussed. Much larger than the payout of CDOs from AIG. But, instead is in fact the cost of the AIG bailout. All while Americans rot.

I'm sort of curious how many people would still be in their homes if the government had instead spent $200 billion bailing out homeowners?

Link here.