life-unscripted

Another lesson on economics from my brilliant sibling. This initially an email to a mutual friend and college classmate sent on October 3, 2012.
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My good Doctor,
I was getting a little sick of the rhetoric on the bank bail outs and how this administration saved Wall Street so I decided to do a little research. First off, TARP’s enabling legislation was passed four years ago today, so happy Birthday TARP. In honor of TARP, here is a website that everyone in America should visit.
http://www.treasury.gov/initiatives/financial-stability/Pages/default.aspx
This is the website for the US Treasury and, in particular, a link to the section on the Troubled Asset Recovery Program – more commonly known as TARP. After poking around the website for a while and reading the monthly reports to Congress, a few things are obvious.

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My brother wrote and sent the following out to some friends via email. I’m re-posting with his permission. For the record, he’s brilliant and not overly political. This was originally sent on Sept 6, 2012.
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I never do this (hit reply to all) but, in this instance, I can’t resist.
First off, the facts about the federal budget. As you can see from the attached spreadsheet (provided courtesy of the US Office of Management and Budget), federal tax receipts have averaged 17.8% of GDP from 1950 – 2011. Yes it has fluctuated from a high of 20.6% to the recent lows of 15.1% (the effect of the stimulus checks the government sent out 2008 and again in 2009), but across ALL tax regimes, the feds seem to take about 18% of GDP as their “revenue.”

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