The Truth About TARP

"The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing."

You owe it to yourself, your children, your retirement savings, your home and your sanity to take fifteen minutes to read the analysis from Bloomberg.com, which provides for the first time the details of the 2007-2009 financial bailout of the U.S. banks. Over 29,000 pages of documents were obtained using the Freedom of Information Act. The U.S. Federal Reserve resisted releasing these documents, the government clearly does not want you to know the truth about how much of the taxpayers money was used. Remember the $700 Billion dollar number - that was how much Congress approved for the Bush Bank Bailout in 2007. Want to know the real number for all the bailouts under both Bush and Obama including the secret monies that neither President approved - $7.77 Trillion. What the heck, it's only one more zero.

No more grumbling about Obama's spending or the Fed's 'Too Big to Fail' policies until you read this article.

Here's another little teaser:

“When you see the dollars the banks got, it’s hard to make the case these were successful institutions,” says Sherrod Brown, Democratic Senator from Ohio. “This is an issue that can unite the Tea Party and OccupyWall Street. There are lawmakers in both parties who would change their votes now [on bank regulation].”

The Attack on Occupy

I'll bet there are some Occupy campers who are a bit tired of having old hippies telling them stories about the Vietnam War protests. But there is a subtle distinction I have not heard voiced yet - here is it. When we were protesting against the war in the late 60s and early 70s most of our parents were not with us. For them the United States at war meant World War II, pretty hard to be against that war when on the other side was Adolf Hitler. My father's reasoning on Vietnam was - "our boys are fighting and dying over there and we need to support them." In my late teens I was protesting a war, at that same age he was in one, so was everyone else in the country.

But in the 60s the "adults" did not make a distinction between the fighting on the ground in Vietnam and the insane policy in Washington D.C. which was also based on WWII mentality. The flag waving obscured the questions of policy and any rational basis for what we were doing in Vietnam.

Flash forward to today, we are all part of the 99%. We are on your side, marching with you against some incredibly over the top reactions on the part of local police, mayors and governors. But listen carefully to your elders about this because it really has very little to do with what the local mayor wants. These marching orders are coming from Washington. The good news is that you have struck a nerve, they are afraid we will wake up too many of the 99% and it will cost them their places of privilege.

For anyone who doesn't believe Washington, the Department of Homeland Security and yes, Barack Obama are not behind the militant crackdown on Occupy. Here is an article from the Guardian for you. For those who believe as I do that this is an organized repression, the article is most enlightening.