49 million Americans are hungry

by Jay McDonough

Two stories from the same edition, yesterday's New York Times.  The first outlines the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's botched negotiations with later rescued insurance giant, AIG:

The Fed �refused to use its considerable leverage,�
Neil M. Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset
Relief Program, wrote in a report to be officially released on Tuesday,
examining the much-criticized decision to make A.I.G.�s trading
partners whole when people and businesses were taking painful losses in
the financial markets.

There have been suggestions that the Fed chose to negotiate weakly,
Mr. Barofsky said, to give a �backdoor bailout� to A.I.G.�s banks. He
said Mr. Geithner and the Fed�s lawyers had denied this, but added that
�irrespective of their stated intent,� there was no doubt about the
result: �Tens of billions of dollars of government money was funneled
inexorably and directly to A.I.G.�s counterparties.�

The second documents the rise of hunger in the United States:

The
number of Americans who lived in households that lacked consistent
access to adequate food soared last year, to 49 million, the highest
since the government began tracking what it calls �food insecurity� 14
years ago, the Department of Agriculture reported Monday.

The
increase, of 13 million Americans, was much larger than even the most
pessimistic observers of hunger trends had expected and cast an
alarming light on the daily hardships caused by the recession�s
punishing effect on jobs and wages.

About
a third of these struggling households had what the researchers called
�very low food security,� meaning lack of money forced members to skip
meals, cut portions or otherwise forgo food at some point in the year.

There's something terribly perverse about a government that cares more about
whether the bankers who fucked up the economy are kept whole than the
16% of the population that has to worry about whether they're going to
be able to get enough to eat.