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[H805]How Much Is A Billion Dollars

by Michael Dappert, Mic

How much more suffering can be inflicted on the Iraqi people for another 50 billion? How many more American soldiers will be killed while spending that 50 billion? Who is going to get that 50 billion dollars? What is not being done in this country because another 50 billion is going to someone waiting in Iraq?

Do some reading online and you can find reports of the dismal conditions in Iraq. The infrastructure is so poor that in Baghdad the electricity is on about 8 hours per day. That is the capitol city and is the most developed city in the country. Other places are even worse with sewage in the streets and no drinking water. Forget about electricity.

Are we to disbelieve these reports are just liberal carping and fixation on the problems in Iraq? Or can we look at this and realize money is just being shoveled down a black hole? Companies have been paid billions for reconstruction work on infrastructure and the situation is still abysmal. About 20 billion dollars appropriated by Congress four years ago for reconstruction has been spent.

Take Bechtel for example. This company has been paid 1.3 billion dollars for sewer project work. Less than half of the projects have been completed. About 40 percent of their bills for work have been for "support" costs. Nearly 250 million dollars has been billed under the category "Other". I am sure this pattern is repeated over and over again with these "no bid contracts".

I was looking at a list of the top 200 contractors for the Federal Government. KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton, is number 6 on the list, you will recall the Vice President's relationship to Halliburton. Almost 6 billion dollars for KBR from the Department of Defense. The top 5 are a who's who of arms makers.

Verizon received over 200 million in Defense Contracts from the Department of Defense.And there is old Blackwater USA, the private mercenary contractor at just below 600 million dollars. Blackwater is the employer of former military people, White South African military, South American thugs, and Central American death squad members. Read Jeremy Scahill's book about Blackwater USA.

This is all published information and probably legal. But, it is interesting who gets what from the government. A tragic outcome, and also a pattern in the Bush Administration is, people who have blown the whistle on corruption in Iraq have actually been punished. For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.

Vance made his report to the FBI office in Chicago because there was no one in Iraq he could trust. He revealed an arms selling operation that was selling anything to anyone who had the money. These were the arms intended for use by the US military being sold to insurgents. Vance tried to expose it and wound up in prison being tortured.

Apparently, the unspoken word in Iraq is don't say anything about corruption or wrong doing because you will be destroyed for doing so. A very neat arrangement for any corporation who wants to make a buck.

Isn't it amazing that neither Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac provided subprime loans, but yet they are in financial trouble that requires a 200 billion dollar bailout. The truth of the matter Americans have been in a financial funk a long time while our political leaders have attempted to tell us we are in a mental recession.

Many of us built a solid retirement portfolio in the high flying 90's by guessing on the performance of a stock or mutual fund. Everything seemed to expand profitably through the roof. The Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed the 10,000 mark. We doubled, tripled or even quadrupled our portfolio only to lost two-thirds of our retirement portfolio in 2001 due to the Enron malaise and the World Trade Center bombing.

After 5 years of toiling to get control of our lives, the bottom falls out again. We thought we could recoup our investment loss with rising home equity. We were lured by low mortgage payments into buying palatial mansions, only to be stuck with a big house and earth shattering mortgage payments? We are not alone. Many well-educated financial astute individuals with good credit are in the same position.

The subprime mortgage crisis and its foreclosure cousin has affected more than the less than perfect credit borrowers the media has presented. Subprime lenders expanded their market base by offering products exclusively for borrowers with good to perfect credit. These mortgages - option arm, no money down, and 125% home equity were offered to improve families home ownership opportunities. They did. Homeownership peaked at an all time high of 69.2% in 2004 from 64%.

The subprime crisis has become national as it affecting 60% of the American population. People are losing their dream homes and their sanity. They are stressed, attempting to cover mortgage payments that are increasing wildly, they cannot afford. Property values nationally are dropping sharply trapping people into a negative situation. Their American dream of owning a home, a major investment in America, is being crushed. People are stressed, depressed, and frustrated. People are in a financial funk.

Property values increased double and triple fold. Americans were baited into the false sense this boom would continue forever. People secured adjustable rate option arm, no money down and 125% home equity mortgages, not realizing greedy mortgage companies would increase their rates astronomically even when interest rates remained low.

Affluent well-educated people have been bamboozled by the trusted financial industry. Affluent well-educated people were baited into low mortgage payments with option arm mortgages. Option arm mortgages is the street term for the negative amortization loan which promised start interest rates as low as 1.25% to 4% compared to 5.25% to 8%. See the difference in the table below.

$500,000 Loan Amount

Rate Payment Rate Payment
1.25% $1666.26 5.25% $2761.02
2.25% $1911.23 6.25% $3078.59
3.25% $2176.03 7.25% $3410.88
4.00% $2387.08 8.00% $3668.82

People trusted mortgage companies when they should not have been trusted. Adjustable rate mortgages once adjusted annually. Along the way, mortgage companies slipped in semiannual interest rate adjustment. Instead of a maximum rate increase of 2% annually, people are realizing a 4% rate increase annually. If your rate began at 3.25% and every year the interest rate is increased 4% a year, in three years, a person will reach the maximum legally allowable interest rate of 13.99 %. For a $500,000 mortgage, the payment in three years would jump to $5920.40 almost triple the original payment of $2176.03. Most people cannot handle an adjustment of that magnitude especially not over 3 years. The interest rate cap was once 9% but the mortgage companies lobbied Congress to increase it to make more money.

Option arm mortgages were designed for the super wealthy, who understood there would be a balance of interest left over from paying only 5 percent of the interest due. The super wealthy gambled that their property value would increase faster than this interest balance increase and they would generate a sizable profit from this real estate transaction. The common individual would not be so lucky. Property values nationally have rapidly declined. People can not even refinance themselves out of this situation as their mortgage balance is higher than the worth of their house. Hence, they are stuck with a big house, a declining investment, earth shattering payment and an increasing mortgage balance.

Even when the foreclosures began to mount, mortgage companies could have renegotiated mortgages to readjust the rate annually rather than semiannually, yet they were not going to cut into their profits to save Americans.

We are suffering in silence too embarrassed to discuss our plight. We now seek remedies such as filing bankruptcy protection, credit counseling, debt consolidation loans, but we have been afraid these remedies will make our personal economic depression get even worse as you really need to make more income. Many of us are racking our brains and health working 60 hours a week or more just to stay afloat?

Our affluent lifestyles are no longer fun. They have become downright disastrous. This new panic in the economy is a good time to examine the priorities in our lives and possibly make some serious changes.

Ida Byrd-Hill, a fifteen year financial advisor/ mortgage loan officer, said a year ago this Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailout was inevitable, She knew the mortgage mess had more to due with the Banks' greed rather than subprime - bad credit - loans.

Anticipating the financial funk we would eventually fall prey to, she wrote Breakin' Out of Your Financial Funk! to help us ease our minds and create new ideas to generate money even in a tough economy. She states “Tough economies wipe out competition across most industries and create opportunities for new entrants.” If you are feeling a sense of panic and stress with this latest news, join Ida Byrd- Hill as she releases her newest book Breakin' Out of Your Financial Funk! You can purchase books www.upliftinc.org, Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble and Target.

Article Source : democracy resources

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Both Michael Dappert & Ida Byrd-hill are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

Michael Dappert has sinced written about articles on various topics from Gardening, Pets and How to Transfer Money. Michael Dappert is a co-founder of Winco, Inc., a provider of wireless internet access to small communities in West Central Illinois. More articles and discussion can be found at. Michael Dappert's top article generates over 8100 views. to your Favourites.

Ida Byrd-hill has sinced written about articles on various topics from Politics, Mortgage and Education. Ida Byrd-Hill is the author of Breakin' Out of Your Financial Funk! and President of Uplift, Inc., a 501(c)3 Idea Incubator. She can be reached at .. Ida Byrd-hill's top article generates over 1000 views. to your Favourites.