#1 [url]

27-Jul-09 02:38

This is a quote from the same article, farther down on the page:

"I'm not sure how you could come up with a number like [$23.7 trillion] without lots of assumptions involved," said Kevin Petrasic, a private financial services lawyer with broad government experience.

"Throwing out a number you can't provide a tremendous amount of insight about: what's in that? You just get a headline. Why do we even need to know that this number, in a worst case scenario, is the number? What is gained from that?"

In his appearance before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee today, Barofsky insisted his report provides a valuable accounting of taxpayer dollars.

"We take offense to [Treasury's] comments," he said. "These numbers are from the government."

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Jim, maybe the fact that homeowners DO borrow money that is supposed to be used for home improvements, thus home equity, and then they don't use it for home improvements SHOULD be at issue here. The banks are (well, were) lending money so that people's homes would be worth something in the common marketplace no matter what the market is doing, unless the entire bottom were to fall out. Then they find out that the homes they've loaned money on aren't worth 3ยข on the dollar because the money was spent elsewhere. There really IS something wrong with that picture.

Our bank is a local, homeowned jobbie. If we borrow money to do home repairs or improvements, we have to provide estimates from contractors, etc., before the money is lent. There is no running in there and using your home as collateral to borrow money to go gambling in Vegas or some stupid thing. Our bank is accountable, and apparently feels it should be, to it's client base.

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Shoot for the Moon. Even if you miss, you'll land amongst the stars. - Anonymous