George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

of the new Resolution Trust Corporation. By August, 1989, when Bush's legislation had
been passed, the estimated cost of the S&L bailout had increased to $164 billion over a
period of ten years, with $20 billion of that scheduled to be spent by the end of
September, 1989.
Within a few months, Bush was forced to increase his estimates once again. "It's a whale
of a mess, and we'll see where we go," Bush told a group of newspaper editorial writers at
the White House in mid-December. "We've had this one refinancing. I am told that that
might not be enough." By this time, academic experts were suggesting that the bailout
might exceed the administration's $164 billion by as much as $100 billion more. Every
new estimate was swiftly overtaken by the ghastly spectacle of a real estate market in free
fall, with no bottom in sight. The growing public awareness of theis situation,
compounded by the ongoing bankruptcy of the commercial banking system as well,
would lead in July, 1990 to a very ugly public relations crisis for the Bush regime around
the role of the president's son (and Scott Hinckley's old friend) Neil Bush in the
insolvency of the Silverado Savings and Loan of Denver, Colorado. As we will see, one
of the obvious reasons for Bush's enthusiastic choice of war in the Persian Gulf was the
need to get Neil Bush off the front page. But even the Gulf war bought no respite in the
collapse of the real estate markets and the chain-reaction bankruptcies of the savings
banks: by the summer of 1991, federal regulators were seizing S&Ls at the rate of just
under one every business day, and the estimates of the total price tag of the bailout had
skyrocketed to over $500 billion, with every certainty that this figure would also be
surpassed. [fn 9]
The carnage among the S&Ls did not prevent Bush from seeking an increase in the US
contribution to the International Monetary Fund, the main agency of a world austerity
that claims upwards of 50 million human lives each year as the needless victims of its
Malthusian conditionalities. The members of the IMF had been debating an increase in
the funds each member must pay into the IMF (which has been bankrupt for years as a
matter of reality), with Managing Director Michel Camdessus proposing a 100%
increase, and Britain and Saudi Arabia arguing for a much smaller 25% hike. Bush
attempted to mediate and resolve the dispute with a proposal for a 35% increase, equal to
an $8 billion additional payment by the US. This sum was equal to more than three times
the yearly expenditure for the highly successful, but tragically underfunded Women,
Infants and Children (WIC) program of the US Department of Agriculture, which
attempted to provide a high-protein and balanced food supplement to mothers and their
offspring. WIC underwent savage cuts during the first year of the Bush regime, causing
many needy women who sought its benefits to be turned away and denied even such
modest quantities of surplus cheese, powdered milk, and orange juice as the program
provides. [fn 10]
As the depression deepened, Bush had only one idea: to reduce the capital gains tax rate
from 28% to 15%. This was a proposal for a direct public subsidy to the vulture legions
of Kravis, Liedtke, Pickens, Milken, Brady, Mosbacher, and the rest of Bush's apostles of
greed. The Bushmen estimated that a capital gains tax reduction in this magnitude would
cost the Treasury some $25 billion in lost receipts over 6 years, a crass underestimate.