Taxpayers Subsidize ‘Too Big to Fail’ Banks

$83 billion

Amount U.S. taxpayers pay to subsidize the top five banks — JPMorgan, Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. — according to the Bloomberg View Editorial Board. The board said the banks “would just about break even in the absence of corporate welfare. In large part, the profits they report are essentially transfers from taxpayers to their shareholders.”

Romney Praises Bailing out ‘Too Big to Fail’ Banks, Credits Bush with Saving U.S Economy

The teavangelical base of the Republican Party are going to love this latest assertion from their party’s putative nominee:

Mitt Romney offered an unprompted defense of the 2008 Wall Street bailout on Wednesday, crediting President George W. Bush and the preceding administration for averting an economic depression.

Answering a question during a campaign event in Maryland, Romney both condemned the 2009 bailout of troubled automakers engineered by President Obama while praising the Troubled Asset Relief Program authorized in fall of 2008 to prop up the financial services industry.

“There was a fear that the whole economic system of America would collapse — that all of our banks, or virtually all, would go out of business,” Romney said. “In that circumstance, President Bush and Hank Paulson said we’ve got to do something to show we’re not going to let the whole system go out of business. I think they were right. I know some people disagree with me. I think they were right to do that.”