It's 3PM. Do You Know Where Your TARP Money Is?

Now, MeanMesa completely accepts the essentially universal distaste our visitors have for grammatical nuances.  To a single soul, most of us have already endured endless hours on spring afternoons in school when our teacher forced endless sentence diagrams, parts of speech and incomprehensible differences between participles and gerundives down our throats.  

However, at this juncture examining our understanding of pronouns in general, once again ascends to the forefront, and, in this case, a very specific, certain pronoun which we may have "let slip through the cracks."  Yes, it has everything to do with the title of this MeanMesa post.

The point is fully contained within the phrase:

"YOUR TARP money."

Easily confused with the stimulus money of the American Recovery Act, the TARP money was promoted as responding to a significantly different focus.  The "barely retired" Smilin' Hank Paulsen, ex-CEO of Goldman-Sachs and  Secretary of the Treasury during the recent "looting festival," was able to sell the idea of TARP to the Senate during the swan song of the autocracy's last, terrifying days.

Another overly dramatic, MeanMesa exaggeration?

Hardly.  The entire wealth of our country mysteriously diminished by a full one third during the last 18 months of the W's carefully crafted "legalized crime" binge.  Of course, a bevvy of neo-con pundits anxiously repeats the explanation of this calamity.  Different specific explanations they have offered on the 95% of our nation's broadcast hours usually land somewhere among the following:

• It was an act of god. 
• It was a "natural" economic cycle -- a "correction"
• Obama caused it
• It's just one of those things...

Of course, all this blathering nonsense should be on its way to the compost pile along with the dog poop and steer manure, however, MeanMesa would like to take a little closer look at how everything, uh, turned out.

The fundamental idea of the TARP may require a "little common sense from the high desert" -- a MeanMesa specialty.

The Fed Chairman during the autocracy, Mr. Greenspan, worshipped at the altar of the "self-correcting market place," a mythical paradise of brokers and bankers who would innately avoid business practices which would inevitably lead to their own self-destruction.  However, once inebriated with the insatiable greed made "righteous" by the autocrat's insipid economic looting policy, emboldened by the dutiful service of the GOP's utterly corrupt Senators and deregulated to a point of "casino chaos," all these "pretend Capitalists" became "free range chickens."

We all know the sordid details of the story.  We're still living through the aftermath, today.

Well, the "Masters of the Universe" who were skulking around Wall Street made one mistake after another.  Of course, not all these miscreants considered them mistakes.  The very worst of the crooks made out like bandits.  In fact, the only folks who actually considered these "mistakes" to be "mistakes" were the "free range chickens" left holding the bag.( Source Yahoo Finance - Why Old Scool Traders Are Whining )  For example, the "free range chickens" who were enjoying their caviar and vodka in the first class cabin as Lehman Brothers Flight Number One re-entered the earth at full speed.

Bandits?  The 400 richest Americans saw their net worth expand by $630 BILLION dollars during the autocracy.  For the mathematically challenged, that represents the lion's share of a TRILLION dollars.  For the MeanMesa take on this matter refer to a previous post (January, 2009):

Astounding Republican Cosmic Physics Breakthrough!

Oh dear.  As the "free range chickens" who were left "holding the bag" scanned the economic horizon of the country, all they could see was a discouraging "wasteland" where all the good stuff had already been stolen.  Naturally, being bankers of sorts (MeanMesa prefers to call them "Banksters" -- half banker and half gangster.) they knew exactly what to do.

Step One:  Don't trust anyone.  Stop ALL Lending and CREDIT!  Who cares what happens to the economy?   The Great Republican Recession is in full swing!  Save yourselves!  Anyway, there isn't anybody out there who could possibly qualify for a loan. Source - MSN: Why Banks Aren't Lending

Step Two:  Use the TARP money to survive the idiotic investments you have made and start buying other, smaller banks in worse shape than you are.  The only refuge is to become TOO BIG TOO FAIL! 

Step Three:  Keep the TARP money you are getting from the Fed at .1% interest and try desperately to somehow "make ends meet" until the working class begins to once again fill the Treasury.

This post is all about "somehow, make ends meet."

How will all these poor banksters be able to continue to turn more of their "sacred profit" during such hard times?  Well, being neither particularly ethical nor timid, the Banksters have devised a new plan which will allow them to extract the "last tiny morsels" left in the national equity.

They have carefully removed all the TARP cash they were supposed to be lending to businesses to get us out of the collapsed economy to one of the "famous back rooms" in their brokerage houses for use in the very latest financial gizmo.  It is  a special process accessible only to Banksters called "millisecond trades."

See, slightly less ruthless traders seek out investment opportunities in the "free market."  When they "find" one, they invest some of their money in hopes of, later on, owning a "sweet piece" of some profitable, up and coming business.  The process usually takes a year or more, but traditionally, this is what is meant by making a "good, sound investment."

However, the "millisecond trading" Bankster of this modern day considers an investment which might require a year to become profitable far too risky.  Instead, they have perfected their "pirate programs" to a "gnat's tooth."  Using their computers, they are able to take the TARP money they were supposed to be lending to businesses to get us out of the Great Republican Recession and "invest" it -- for only milliseconds at a time -- in stocks and bonds which would have, in more normal times, been slowly increasing in value.

Source New York Times - Stock Traders Find that Speed Pays

The process has the effect of being a "dead short" in the normal operation of the "free market."  For the Bankster, it is very low risk and it dependably pays the "firm" a few million dollars a day. The "dead short" idea comes from the fact that more ethical investors who have placed their money in what they have considered a "long term" risk discover that the profits they were counting on have been "sucked out" day by day, in fact, millisecond by millisecond.

Of course, a few million a day is little more than "soggy peanuts in a swamp" compared to the big loads these same crooks were extracting from everything of value during the autocracy.  However, the Banksters are willing to suffer through this wretched, low return extraction labor until their neo-con lackies manage to take over again.

With the recent outrage from the Supreme Court, MeanMesa visitors should expect a hefty bite of this "looting trickle" to appear in the November mid-term elections as "informative and educational material" sponsored by "un-named  corporate sources."

If you were, indeed, wondering where your TARP money had gone, it will re-appear in these television "specials" carefully crafted to destroy the candidate you were supporting. 


Maybe you should consider shopping for some nice "wage slave" outfits.

Republicans Oppose Stopping No More Bail Outs

Hummm, is your mind still teetering a little after reading this post's title?  If so, you have been infected with the latest salvo of 1984 style "war is peace," "wealth is poverty, "happiness is sadness" contagion from the Right Wing Talking Points Factory.

The logically perplexing and incomprehensible "elephant in the living room" in this case is just the latest GOP political tactic.  Although the gambit might seem frighteningly zany for such a bunch of cranky old neo-cons, a closer examination reveals just enough actual fact to make sense of the whole matter.

Let's "fact check" a little recent history.  MeanMesa, with the advantage of just a few facts, will be able to painlessly walk you right through this maze.

Senator Dodd has proposed a banking regulation reform bill, one which generally pursues goals set out by President Obama.  One central feature of the legislation was to be the creation of a bank financed $50 billion dollar fund which could be used INSTEAD OF MASSIVE FEDERAL BAIL OUTS to more gracefully buffer our economy from the failure of giant banks.

The money in the fund would allow Federal Bank Regulators to avoid the necessity of nationalizing gigantic financial institutions (which we, of course, did last time) when their crooked investment practices finally grew so nasty that they were faced with going bankrupt.  The last time this happened was in the fall of 2008.  Then, the banksters hid behind the ruse of being "too big too fail."

This claim, craftily nestled in among all the other lies they were promoting through their wholly owned media frauds at the time, was just credible enough to provide the necessary justification for the TARP.  The whole affair was so stinky that there would simply be no other way to "ram" the $875 Billion idea though the Senate short of scaring the living hell out of everyone who might oppose it.

No problem.  "Ramming" and Scaring" were among the autocracy's most accomplished talents.

By the way, it may be important to interject yet another fact at this point.  By carefully utilizing the fraudulent corporate media, the neo-cons have now convinced the "hill billies and bigots" comprising their political base that the TARP was an Obama plan, even though it was already firmly in place -- gobbling up tax money like a giant neo-con dragon -- when he was inaugurated.

Now, however, the neo-cons in the Senate were left in a bit of a pinch.  

A larger, and perhaps more generous, view of the economic disaster eight years of unbridled looting had left for the country was the feverish hope that there would simply not be enough money left for any sort of economic recovery plan, let alone any tangible progress in the other areas of our national culture which were also reeling from the looting.

It was a neo-con wet dream.  Unemployment would sky rocket.  Wages would collapse.  Social programs would be gutted to resuscitate the banks and hedge funds.  Teachers, firemen, police would be fired or face salary and benefit cuts.  Most importantly, the whole thing would unfold under the new administration's watch.

On the "bad side" -- at least "on the bad side" as seen by power hungry neo-cons who were eagerly willing to sacrifice the entire country for a win in the next election -- the Obama administration was still armed with a powerful Democratic majority in the Congress.  Consequently, even though we were essentially broke, without friends and over-committed to the Bush Oil Wars, the neo-cons were horrified when international conditions improved,  health care was passed and, even though there were only the barest scraps of the treasury left after the looting, the Obama administration was successfully resurrecting the economy.

The Republicans had to move on.  They quietly dumped all the old talking points and plunged into a new set.

Their first stop on this new "Destroy America at Any Cost to Win the Next Election" program was the banking regulation reform bill.  Their first target was to dislodge the Obama idea that Wall Street should start paying for its own bail outs with a fund full of their own money -- not ours.  Their approach?  Convince their base that avoiding future bail outs meant having more future bailouts.

Hence, the title of this blog posting.

Okee-dokee.  If the banksters and the hedge hogs had to put the $50 Billion into this new fund, that meant that they would have $50 Billion less.  Because they had already invested so heavily in the purchase of Republican Senators, that idea had to go.

And, it looks like it may have, in fact, gone.  The "fund" provision in the new legislation is either gone or wandering blind folded along the edge of a cliff, a precarious dilemma bound to please the Wall Street "owners of the Senate."

Further, because the neo-cons continued to entertain the idea that voting "NO" on every piece of legislation proposed by the Democrats would eventually win the next election, voting against one more thing wouldn't really matter that much.

The neo-cons second target was a Consumer Protection part of the reform bill.  Still inebriated from their success at squelching the "fund" idea, they, once again, dug in their corrupt little "wholly owned" heels and threw yet another tantrum.  Unhappily for them, this one ran squarely into the face of the new President.

Although we don't know exactly how this will finally turn out, MeanMesa visitors have a serious stake in the outcome.  If the neo-cons, emboldened by the success of a campaign of deceptions and other lies, are finally able to emasculate the Dodd bill, we should patiently plan for another Great Republican Recession in about four to five years.

Is it worth a quick email to your Congressmen?

The drama continues to unfold.

For more reading on this topic:


from Reuters News Service
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6430I920100505

and, from Bloomberg Business Week
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-06/fed-s-plosser-says-dodd-bill-would-encourage-excessive-risk.html