TARP CRAP

I hated the TARP program, which Wall Street and Congress (but I repeat myself) jammed down the nation's throat weeks ago. 700 billion dollars could've been spent on renewable energy, or better health-care, or even a space program. But it went to the pigs on Wall Street.

Today, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson announced the TARP is no longer the TARP. TARP stands for 'Troubled Asset Relief Program'. The idea was to buy up the mortgage securities that are behaving like radioactive isotopes on banks' balance sheets. The government would take possession of these strange assets, the banks would be able to breathe, and we wouldn't see a Great Depression.

Well, forget all that. Paulson told us he won't be buying any securitized mortgages. Nevermind that this was the purpose of the TARP - the entire purpose. That's so over now.

The TARP was a money-laundering scheme. Paulson probably never wanted to buy mortgage-related assets in the first place. He and the Bush Administration wanted to abscond with 700 billion dollars, to direct the biggest swindle in financial history on the pretext of saving the nation. We'll never know what happened to this money, or to the 2 trillion and counting lent in separate programs; the Treasury refuses to tell us where the money has gone. But even if we do find out one day, the accounting will take up so many trillions of pages that nobody will get to the bottom of it for hundreds of years.

In any case, all government intervention has failed pathetically and the U.S. is going into Depression. I wish us well.