Millions Of Americans Are Hungry: Boost Foodstamps Program

But if President Bush and President-elect Obama wished to truly help Americans there is one positive act that they can do. They could declare a special $10 per month increase in food stamps for every recipient. There are approximately 31 million individuals, who receive food stamps. This would result in an increase of $310 million per month.

[Financial Meltdown]

President George Bush and President-elect Barack Obama are in the forefront of bailing out corporate America; what about Main Street where even the demand for food stamps continues to soar.

Today the demand stands at 31 million Americans receiving food stamps, the most in history; just a week ago, it stood at 28 million.

Yet, most recently President Bush and President-elect Obama have agreed on the need to bail out Citibank, our favorite money laundering bank. The immediate cost of this bailout is $36 billion, or over $1,000 for every person in the United States, including illegal immigrants. The future bailout cost of Citibank’s bailout as I estimate it could be $500 billion.

The usual explanation for the bailout of Citibank is that Citibank, for all its sins, is too big to fail. Ironically, Robert Rubin, the mentor of President-elect Obama’s economic advisory team, was consigliore to Sandy Weill, Chuck Prince and Vikram Pandit the last three Chief Executive Officers of Citibank. Not bad for a list of failures.

And in case we forgot to mention, Rubin received in excess of $100 million for his bad advice on derivative contracts.

But if President Bush and President-elect Obama wished to truly help Americans there is one positive act that they can do. They could declare a special $10 per month increase in food stamps for every recipient. There are approximately 31 million individuals, who receive food stamps. This would result in an increase of $310 million per month.

This program could be instituted as a temporary measure for two years; the time estimated for the present recession to last. Those who benefit from this program, would not be the executives of Citibank; these now fly corporate jets; they have their own executive dining room where they can be served; they do not wait on line and have steaks for lunch; they fly first class if not on their corporate jets; and they have corporate boxes at athletic events. In other words the program would help decent Americans and not the corporate titans, who are feasting on the blood and sweat of ordinary Americans.

Most importantly, we should thank China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore for lending us the money to bail out Citibank. After all, it was American hedge funds that increased the price of rice when the hedge funds decided that they should invest in commodities and caused the price to increase; commodities that people need to survive—food.

Americans must understand that America survives because Asia purchases our depreciating currency.


 

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