A congressional analysis says the stock market decline has led to the loss of about $2 trillion in Americans’ retirement savings over the past fifteen months. The erasing of retirement savings could force many workers to retire later and cut back on personal spending. The losses amount to about 20 percent of overall retirement savings.
The Treasury Department is set to begin outsourcing the Wall Street bailout as early as this week. The Washington Post reports the government will invoke special authority to hire contractors and consultants without following standard procedures. Department officials say some of the same firms involved in the financial collapse may wind up helping steer the government bailout of their industry. According to the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense, a similar use of private firms during the savings and loans crisis of the late 1980s led to “untrammeled payouts to the private sector and reprimands from Congress and the Government Accountability Office.”
On Capitol Hill, the House Oversight Committee continued hearings into the financial crisis with testimony from executives of the trouble mortgage giant AIG. Investigators revealed AIG executives held a week-long retreat at a luxury resort just days after receiving an $85 billion taxpayer bailout last month. The $440,000 vacation included $200,000 for rooms, $150,000 for meals and $23,000 in spa charges. Democratic Congress member Elijah Cummings of Maryland took issue with the timing of the retreat.
Rep. Elijah Cummings said, “We contacted the resort where AIG held this week-long event, and we requested copies of AIG’s bills. We learned that AIG spent nearly half-a-million dollars in a single week at the—at this hotel. Now, this was right after the bailout.”
AIG has already used up $61 billion of its $85 billion government loan.
– from democracynow