The TARP Has Failed

Predictably, the bailout has failed.

The Cutting Edge lays out the promises made, none of which have been kept. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who should be held accountable for the fiasco he has needlessly piled onto the fiasco that this government’s economic policy has helped create, is apparently, as the site says “winging it.”

By any reasonable assessment, the Troubled Asset Relief Program has been a miserable failure and a complete waste of taxpayer money. The basis used to ram the bill through Congress was the purchase of the toxic assets off of bank’s books. Not one dollar has been used for this purpose. The main purpose for passing the $700 billion bailout was to restore confidence in the markets.

On October 3 when the TARP was signed into law, the S&P 500 was at 1,114. Today, it is 887. The 20 percent decline in the markets in six weeks doesn’t show much confidence in Paulson’s acts. Paulson changing course every few days has shown the world that he is “winging it.” He has floundered from buying toxic assets to jamming capital down the throats of banks to his current plan to support consumer debt. Did Paulson lie to Congress about buying toxic assets?

Paulson has handed out a grand total of $310 billion of the initial $350 billion tranche. He would have to go back to Congress for the 2nd $350 billion tranche. Congress was supposed to create a five-member congressional oversight panel, but hasn’t. The White House was supposed to nominate, and the Senate was supposed to confirm a special inspector general to audit and investigate where the funds are going. After six weeks, President Bush hasn’t proffered a nomination.

Poorly run automakers (GM, Ford, Chrysler), poorly run cities (Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Phoenix), and poorly run states (California) are begging for a piece of the pie. The banks that received the first $179 billion have not made any loans with the special money. Indeed, some are using the money to buy other banks. It appears their goal is to become “too big to fail.” Others, like Citigroup, are using the money to buy back bad assets from off the balance sheet SIVs they created. SIVs are the “structured investment vehicle” instruments that Citibank invented in 1988 to become part of its so-called “shadow banking” system. The solvency of the SIV world is now in question.

Hence, TARP has failed.

But then again, maybe not. The TARP has obviously failed to do what we were told it would do, but were we told the truth about its purpose?

I don’t think so.

I believe the TARP may have been intended to provide a huge pile of cash to do two things:

1. Rescue the Wall Street gamblers who created this mess and who are in bed with the regulators. Remember, Paulson worked on Wall Street, so his buddies are his “skin in the game.” Also, remember the corruption that runs rampant through Washington, DC, like Christopher Dodd’s sweetheart loans from Countryside – he’s the head regulator of that industry in Congress now.

2. Keep the stock market bouncing around, and up occasionally, while the Bush Administration is still in the White House. Many think a group funded by Paulson’s TARP money is the entity creating these end of day rallies that in the last half hour of trading, prop up the DOW. Once the money (and the Bush Administration) is gone, these “economic commandos” will disburse, and a massive crash could occur.

At least that’s the theory.

Posted in Economy
Tags: Bailouot, Bernanke, Depression, Paulson, TARP

We Were Hosed

—WCN Warning: Economic/Terrorist event possible—

The House of Mis-Representatives have stolen $700 Billion of yours, mine, and our children’s money. Not to “rescue Main Street,” as this breakers of faith state, but rather to bailout Wall Street gamblers bankers and foreign banks that gambled, trying to get in on the mortgage game. The sad thing is these foreign banks will reportedly be able to offload their bad foreign debt on to us as well. In essence, we’re paying for mortages in Europe and China that those consumers couldn’t pay for. The mortgage fiasco isn’t an exclusively American problem.

Michael Panzer of Financial Armageddon on the disasterous bill.

From Jim Sinclair of JSMineset:

Dear International Friends,

Maybe you should consider a visit to your local bank for their abbreviated Saturday hours.. What do you have to lose? That all depends on how much you have deposited there…

I have no doubt that $1650 will come. My concern is not that it will not happen, but that I am much too conservative in my long-term price objective held since 2000.

If major banks can be torn apart how can we have faith in the small local institutions that hold most of your ready cash?

When I said “This is IT,” it is not something that I take lightly. Never in 49 years in finance have I seen a set of circumstances so challenging to the man in the street.

What I am getting at is a simple question. Are you prepared? You have heard us talk repeatedly on removing financial intermediaries between you and your assets, but the time has come for us to recommend going one step further:

Hold enough cash at your household to last you a month or two. It may be largely unnecessary for the majority, but what do you have to lose? If your bank should fail this will save you a lot of grief in the short term. If they do not, you still have all your cash that can easily be deposited back into your account.

Good advice.

Scott Simon, of NPR’s Weekend Edition had a great interview with Libertarian Presidential Candidate Bob Barr. It’s such a shame that our Republic has been hijacked by this “two parties who are really one” as many people believe.

In a way, it’s like our country has liver disease. Your liver acts as a filter that detoxifies the blood. If not for the service of that essential organ, we would (and do, when we do enough damage to it) die. The toxins, infiltered, kill us. The media in our Republic could, and pretends to, act as a liver, showing the toxins for what they are, and allowing the body (you and me) to remove those toxins from influence, by voting them out of office, charging them with crimes and misdemeanors, etc.

Unfortunately, our mainstream media doesn’t do it’s job of unmasking these opportunistic “infections” and “toxins” in the form of career politicians, crooks and liars who take up residence in Washington, DC and pass law after law that enriches them and their friends and allies (on both sides of the political aisle, by the way) and hands us the bill. You got a $700B bill yesterday, and I guarantee you, it won’t be the last. But we’re on the hook, and the next looming catastrophe if the ransom isn’t paid will be much bigger. Bet on it. Sadly, our Republic’s “liver” has gone rogue, and is filtering out the antibodies we need (the Ron Pauls and Bob Barrs) and opening the gates to the true toxins, the Barack Hussein Obamas and Joe Bidens of our world.

As of today, the America I was born into, in which I was raised and fairly well educated, is gone. The world, aided by the very people we elect and trust to protect and govern us, has found a way to dump its financial toxins here, in a bizarre twist on what we’re often accused of doing to other countries and regions in more physical ways. We’ve been accused of dumping tons of depleted uranium in Iraq through the Bush (Sr. and Jr.) wars. Friday’s vote by the House of Representatives does the financial equivalent of dumping $700B of “depleted mortgages” on these shores. These mortgages will be on London flats, French commercial buildings, German multiplexs and probably Chinese high-rises.

What history has to say about all this, we’ll have to wait a few decades to read. But, barring drastic and dramatic political action, the America I grew up in is on life support, suffering greatly from acute liver failure, in dire need of a transplant. What I fear, is that our nation and society’s medical history, so full of unhealthy lifestyle, overconsumption of the very toxins killing us, is keeping us off the transplant list.

Plus, our medical insurance is at best, bad and at worst, bankrupt.

Posted in Economy, Politics
Tags: $700 Billion Bailout, Economy, Financial Crisis, Financial Rescue, Paulson, Wallstreet Bailout