The bailout plan is affecting everyone in Europe too. Governments are having to step in to guarantee bank deposits and banks are being nationalised to save them.
Here is a recent clip about America’s next year’s budget even without the $700bn
“WASHINGTON (AP) -- A huge spending bill that combines help for Gulf Coast disaster victims and loans for U.S. automakers with record spending for the Pentagon and veterans is poised to clear a key hurdle in the Senate.
The year-end budget measure also would lift a quarter-century ban on oil drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. That's a key victory for Republicans.
Saturday's vote on a procedural motion would set a final vote for no later than Sunday. [This bit is now out of date of course]
After hard lobbying, automakers won up to $25 billion in low-interest loans to help them develop technologies and retool factories to meet new standards for cleaner, more fuel-efficient cars.
The measure is fueled by a need to pass stopgap funding to keep the government running past the current budget year ending Sept. 30. The stopgap measure is needed because of a breakdown in the budget process this year, and under it, domestic agencies would be funded through March 6 or until their regular budgets pass.
The measure is dominated by $488 billion for the Pentagon [I presume that this includes the estimated annual $75bn for the cost of the Iraq war], $40 billion for the Homeland Security Department and $73 billion for veterans' programs and military base construction projects -- amounting to about 60 percent of the budget work Congress must pass each year.
The budget legislation is the result of months of wrangling between Democrats who control Congress and the lame-duck Bush administration and its allies on Capitol Hill. The administration won approval of the defense budget while Democrats wrested concessions from the White House on disaster aid, heating subsidies for the poor and smaller spending items.
The lifting of the offshore oil drilling moratorium does not mean drilling is imminent. But it could set the stage for the government to offer leases in some Atlantic federal waters as early as 2011.
The legislation also contains 2,322 pet projects totaling $6.6 billion, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group. That included 2,025 in the defense portion alone that cost a total of $4.9 billion.”
This below is from a speech in 2003 from Dr. Priscilla Elworthy of the Oxford Research Group in accepting the Niwano Peace prize. It also puts the $700bn into perspective.
“In the year 2000 world leaders estimated that it would require$25bn to $35bn annually to raise the levels of health and welfare in Africa to Western standards.
Unesco estimate that all the world’s children could be educated if we were to spend $7bn per year for ten years.
Clear water and sanitation could be provided for everyone in the world for $9bn annually.
HIV and Aids now claims 5,500 lives a day around the world – more than the Black Death, and twelve million children in Africa have been orphaned by the disease. Kofu Annan has called for $10bn annually to address the Aids epidemic.”
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