Technical bulletins: where horrible, no-good laws go to die

B-Daddy over at The Liberator Today did a fine job of covering that which we
are about to here, below.


Recall, back in September of last year at the height of shutdown fever, the
House passed a resolution that would've funded all government operations
while suspending the individual mandate for one year. At the time, we
thought that to be a very, very reasonable compromise. After all, there
was every indication that the rollout of the ObamaCare online exchange on
October 1st was not going to go smoothly so why not, legally, through the
legislative process, allow both the tragically flawed website and its
customers some more time to get up to speed?


Now, nearly six months after that, the individual mandate is about the only
aspect of the law that has not been delayed or waived or exempted by
executive fiat by the President himself. Yes, dear readers, it would
appear that it is not those House Republican "hostage-takers" and
"terrorists" rather President Barack Obama who is the biggest obstructionist
to his own signature piece of legislation.


But what now of the individual mandate? Since the individual mandate is
the lynchpin of the entire law (the mechanism by which to get young, healthy
people to pay for the healthcare needs of the old and infirm), there was no
way in hell anything was going to happen to it, right? Even if delaying the
individual mandate made the most practical sense for everyone involved,
there was no way that this administration was going to give in and thus give
tacit acknowledgement that the Republicans were right back last September.


Well, in the regulatory equivalent of a Friday evening news dump, the law
has once again been altered with dubious legality as an "out clause" of sorts
has been added to the regulations concerning the individual mandate.




From the Wall Street Journal... and we absolutely love the opening line:

ObamaCare's implementers continue to roam the battlefield and shoot their
own wounded, and the latest casualty is the core of the Affordable Care
Act-the individual mandate. To wit, last week the Administration quietly
excused millions of people from the requirement to purchase health insurance
or else pay a tax penalty.


This latest political reconstruction has received zero media notice, and the
Health and Human Services Department didn't think the details were worth
discussing in a conference call, press materials or fact sheet. Instead, the
mandate suspension was buried in an unrelated rule that was meant to
preserve some health plans that don't comply with ObamaCare benefit and
redistribution mandates. Our sources only noticed the change this week.


That seven-page technical bulletin includes a paragraph and footnote that
casually mention that a rule in a separate December 2013 bulletin would be
extended for two more years, until 2016. Lo and behold, it turns out this
second rule, which was supposed to last for only a year, allows Americans
whose coverage was cancelled to opt out of the mandate altogether.

You remember those cancellations, right? The
if-you-like-your-current-plan-you-can-keep-your-plan cancellations? But we
digress. Back in December, the administration, again by executive fiat,
allowed those with cancelled plans to go back to their old "bad apple" and
"sub-standard" plans from which they were to be saved by ObamaCare. Now,
with minimal administrative effort, those people with cancelled plans will
be exempted from the individual mandate.




Back to the article:

But amid the post-rollout political backlash, last week the agency created a
new category: Now all you need to do is fill out a form attesting that your
plan was cancelled and that you "believe that the plan options available in
the [ObamaCare] Marketplace in your area are more expensive than your
cancelled health insurance policy" or "you consider other available policies
unaffordable."


This lax standard-no formula or hard test beyond a person's belief-at least
ostensibly requires proof such as an insurer termination notice. But people
can also qualify for hardships for the unspecified nonreason that "you
experienced another hardship in obtaining health insurance," which only
requires "documentation if possible." And yet another waiver is available to
those who say they are merely unable to afford coverage, regardless of their
prior insurance. In a word, these shifting legal benchmarks offer an
exemption to everyone who conceivably wants one.

"documentation if possible" tells you all you need to know about how it is,
or more precisely, how this isn't going to be enforced. How fitting,
how perfect that this administration which treats with such pique and
disdain the purposely difficult parameters for governing a constitutional
republic would create something within their signature law that could aptly
be called the "it's, like, too haaaard", exemption.


To quote B-Daddy, “So, this is what victory over ObamaCare looks like”.

So, what now? The administration has effectively gutted the requirements for the individual mandate so how is it that the rest of the law is supposed to remain financially stable?


What else to do to save this wretched law than to bail it out with massive tax-payer lump sums and subsidies for the health insurance lobby? It’s what they do best, in fact, it’s pretty much all they do.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

Finger pointing aside, it's generally recognized that the Great Recession was caused in large part by an unsustainable housing bubble propped up by risky and/or exotic loans made to folks that probably should not have been in the housing market in the first place. Pressured by pols in D.C. who a)played the discrimination card and b) played politics with the everybody-deserves-a-shot-at-the-American-dream card for favorable poll ratings, banks made unwise decisions with respect to whom they made loans.

If you are wondering just how much our betters in D.C. learned from that whole experience and how much the lure of political expediency crushes wisdom and common sense, it very much appears we are heading down the very same path not 5 years on from when this whole thing went down.



From the Washington Post:

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The Obama administration is engaged in a broad push to make more home loans available to people with weaker credit, an effort that officials say will help power the economic recovery but that skeptics say could open the door to the risky lending that caused the housing crash in the first place.

President Obama’s economic advisers and outside experts say the nation’s much-celebrated housing rebound is leaving too many people behind, including young people looking to buy their first homes and individuals with credit records weakened by the recession.


In response, administration officials say they are working to get banks to lend to a wider range of borrowers by taking advantage of taxpayer-backed programs — including those offered by the Federal Housing Administration — that insure home loans against default.

Housing officials are urging the Justice Department to provide assurances to banks, which have become increasingly cautious, that they will not face legal or financial recriminations if they make loans to riskier borrowers who meet government standards but later default.

(italics, ours)


Not face legal or financial recriminations? The banks won't worry about getting sued for alleged discriminatory loan practices, as the government, by stepping into an area they don't belong, is distorting the market and essentially guaranteeing banks won't have to eat the losses of the bad loans they made. What could possibly go wrong?

The federal government is creating a moral hazard for the banks as the table is being set for a situation where the banks will suffer none of the consequences for the bad loans they made. Knowing this, what risk is there for the banks to not act in a responsible manner? There isn't any.

Again, and we cannot stress this enough: we have reached a point where the political class in this country will do what is in their best interest to the exclusion of anyone else's best interest and exclusive any any shred of common sense or even short-term memory. Consequences be damned as the results of this suicide plunge will, once again, be papered over by bailouts funded by a middle class that was asked to do the very same thing just 5 years ago.


We are straining to any longer comprehend the representative in our representative republic.

So, what can we learn from that little island country in the Mediterranean?

And all this time, you thought the money you made was yours. And all this time you thought, especially, that money you have sitting in the bank that you paid taxes on was yours as well.


For the good people of the island of Cypress, though, those days are long gone, baby, long gone.

The small country of Cyprus is giving the world a grave reality check today by reminding everyone that government money is simply the people's money redistributed as the European Union prepares to seize private bank account savings in order to bailout years of bad economic decisions.

The surprise decision by euro zone leaders to part-fund a bailout of Cyprus by taxing bank deposits sent shockwaves through financial markets on Monday, with shares and the bonds of struggling euro zone governments tumbling.

The bloc struck a deal on Saturday to hand Cyprus rescue loans worth 10 billion euros ($13 billion), but defied warnings - including from the European Central Bank - and imposed a levy that would see those with cash in the island's banks lose between 6.75 and 9.9 percent of their money.

The initial response of investors was unambiguous. Shares lurched lower, the euro fell to a new three-month low, while safe-haven assets such as gold and German government bonds jumped.

The cost of insuring the debt of even high-quality European banks against default also rose sharply with analysts citing fears the decision could spark contagion across peripheral regions with the potential for widespread outflows of deposits.

"If I were a saver, certainly in Spain or maybe Italy, I think I'd be looking askance at these measures and think this could yet happen to me," Peter Dixon, global financial economist at Commerzbank said.

France? Spain? Sure but what about here? No way, right?

3 years ago, we blogged precisely about that possibility and just how serious the law-makers up on Capitol Hill were taking the idea of raiding your 401(k).

From January of 2010 (please go to the link for the links contained in the original post for they are plentiful. Thanks):

So what’s the statist solution to a bankrupt Social Security? Of course, Social Security Pt. II.


Way, way back in ’08, KT turned us on to Argentina’s President, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s government seizing the nation’s private pension system under the guise of “shielding” it from the global economic downturn when in reality it was really just cash-grab to pay off debt… something we know nothing about here.

But in this great country of ours where the unlikely occurrence of a light-skinned, non-threatening black man being President becomes reality, the similarly heretofore unlikely occurrence of the federal government seizing your 401(k) is becoming more and more likely.

Back in 2008, we blogged about Congressional hearings whose aim was the feasibility of eliminating the pre-tax exemption of your 401(k) contribution which amounts to $80billion annually not in the government coffers. The amount of your individual tax break would be directed to a new system of guranteed retirment accounts to which all workers would be obliged to contribute.

We always love it when the government starts using authoritarian code-speak like, “obliged”.


Here’s what we blogged back in October of 2008:

But don’t worry, Teresa Ghilarducci of the New School for Social Research (that title alone has train wreck written all over it) has got a plan. In return for wacking our 401(k) tax deferment, we would receive a $600 annual inflation-adjusted subsidy (read: a, hey, no hard feelings, bub “government kickback”) in return for being “obliged” to “invest” 5 percent of our pay into a guaranteed retirement account administered by the Social Security Admin which would pay a whopping 3% a year, adjusted for inflation.

And here’s Ms. Ghilarducci, herself:

“I want to stop the federal subsidy of 401(k)s,” Ghilarducci said in an interview. “401(k)s can continue to exist, but they won’t have the benefit of the subsidy of the tax break.”

Under the current 401(k) system, investors are charged relatively high retail fees, Ghilarducci said. (ed.: what this statement has to do with anything relative to what she is proposing is lost on us)

“I want to spend our nation’s dollar for retirement security better. Everybody would now be covered” if the plan were adopted, Ghilarducci said.
She has been in contact with Miller and McDermott about her plan, and they are interested in pursuing it, she said.

We thought this was all just a bad dream and that people and ideas like that represented by Ghilarducci would go away once we got the new presidency cranked up and we would be worried about healthcare, cap and trade, the economy, etc.

But proving that you just can’t sleep on these guys…

The U.S. Treasury and Labor Departments will ask for public comment as soon as next week on ways to promote the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams, according to Assistant Labor Secretary Phyllis C. Borzi and Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Mark Iwry, who are spearheading the effort.

The article goes on to state the obvious:

Seven in 10 U.S. households object to the idea of the government requiring retirees to convert part of their savings into annuities guaranteeing a steady payment for life, according to an institute-funded report today.

Translation: No one. Repeat, no one likes this idea. That other 30% represent people who either do not have a 401(k) and/or are at an icome level by which they are not paying taxes of any kind so of course, they would think the further subsidization of their existence by the rest of us is a grand idea.

W.C. gives us a hint as to who is some of the politcal muscle behind this. Here is the webpage of a front group called RetirementUSA that is convened by the usual suspects among them the AFL-CIO and the purple people-beaters of the SEIU.

Here’s their opening salvo:

Retirement USA is a national initiative that is working for a new retirement system that, along with Social Security, will provide universal, secure, and adequate income for future retirees. The initiative has developed 12 Principles for a New Retirement System, which provide a framework for a future system in which employers, workers, and the government would share responsibility for the retirement security for all American workers.

That 12 principles for a New Retirement System is a cross between a description of the current Social Security set-up and a Leftist retirement Bill of Rights.

Well, since we already have Social Security then why do we need another nearly identical program?

Everyone knows that Social Security is insolvent. Everyone. So what the establishment of Social Security the Sequel and what this all represents is a Trojan Horse for the nationalization of your 401(k) and that, our friends, you can take to the bank.

With Social Security broke and our debt climbing out of control, the trillions and trillions of dollars setting in this country’s private pension accounts remain one of the last untapped sources of revenue for the government.

Back to the future:

Exit question: Is your money really yours?

Think about it for a moment: If you live in a country that has a massively generous social safety net and you live in a country with an electorate that constantly gives the government more and more power to bequeath “rights” out of thin air upon its citizens effectively stripping the sovereignty from the individual, what is “your money” but the tool by which the government will perform all that you have asked it to perform?

It seems to us, then, that the degree by which your money is truly yours is directly proportional to the sovereignty you possess and the freedoms and liberties you pursue not under the purview of the government.


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"Wait. We bailed out these guys, also?"

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Remember, gang, General Motor's sagging fortunes aren't just a result of weak sales here stateside; they've got an entire European operation that is an additional millstone around its neck.

Three years into their forced marriage with GM, the American taxpayers have seen the value of their investment in GM deteriorate by approximately $24 billion, largely due to continuing European losses. Exposure in Europe has contributed to crushing the value of GM's stock due to its chaotic and failing Opel unit in Germany. While government, journalists and Wall Street sympathizers have given the Obama Administration and GM leadership an almost incomprehensible pass on this value destruction and massive loss (presumably due to the macro-economic nature of the crisis), it's time to call for the accountability that this new Board was supposedly going to deliver.

At one time, General Motors had an opportunity to sell off GM Europe so they could consolidate, trim some non-essentials, focus on core competencies, you know, the stuff that corporations do when they are in bankruptcy. Didn't quite happen that way:

Overlooked is the value-destroying, cash-sucking disaster that is GM Europe was packaged and ready for sale to new European buyers in 2009 before the new Obama GM Board of Directors slammed the brakes on the deal, throwing GM into its current value free-fall. In fact, the decision to not sell the Opel operations (which has not been profitable for more than a decade) in 2009 after GM cleared bankruptcy was the very first major decision of the new Obama Board. Had Opel been sold, GM stock would be much higher than it is today.

So, we weren't merely content to bailout an under-performing U.S. manufacturer, we were going to bail out those of Europe as well.

But the "new and improved" Obama Board of Directors, working mostly at the persistent lobbying and urging of the UAW's appointee, Steve Girsky (in photo), were naively convinced that Opel was simply a rough jewel in need of some new leadership (Opel fired its third leader in as many years a few weeks ago) and TLC from the brain-trust in Detroit. With his persuasive lobbying, the union's man Girsky convinced all but two of the Board members to vote to ditch the planned sale and hold onto this "gem" that has now contributed to the loss of about $24 billion of the American taxpayers' forced investment. Beyond the sheer magnitude of the value losses, fixing Europe has become an all-consuming distraction that is draining GM of vital and scarce resources.

Linked article describes how GM CFO Dan Amman hemmed and hawed during last quarter's earnings coference call and never came clean with respect to how much American taxpayer money was going towards the failing Opel and Peugot operations.

Your anger would be totally understandable given that a public-private entity is mum on how much of your scratch is being thrown around an entirely different continent let alone here in our own backyard.



So, with such dismal news for General Motors, what's in the offing? Another bailout?

President Obama is proud of his bailout of General Motors. That’s good, because, if he wins a second term, he is probably going to have to bail GM out again. The company is once again losing market share, and it seems unable to develop products that are truly competitive in the U.S. market.

This wouldn't surprise us. If their bailout efforts failed the first time around, by their reckoning, a second bailout is fully warranted. We hate to say it, but contrary to what you may have been told, these aren't terribly smart people. They just aren't. Smart people learn from their mistakes and there has been nothing in these last 3-1/2 years that has demonstrated that they have learned anything from their miserable failures in the U.S. economy.

Tales from Bailout Nation (cont.)

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... or how green energy loans are like steak sauce.




The ranks of Department of Energy green loan failures continue to mount.

A geothermal energy company with a $98.5 million loan guarantee from the Obama administration for an alternative energy project in Nevada — which received hearty endorsements from Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid — faces financial problems, and the company’s auditors have questioned whether it can stay in business.

Much like Solyndra LLC, a California solar-panel manufacturer with a $535 million federal loan guarantee that went bankrupt, Nevada Geothermal Power (NGP) has incurred $98 million in net losses over the past several years, has substantial debts and does not generate enough cash from its current operations after debt-service costs, an internal audit said.

“The company’s ability to continue as a going concern is dependent on its available cash and its ability to continue to raise funds to support corporate operations and the development of other properties,” NGP auditors said in a financial statement for the period ending March 31.

“Consequently, material uncertainties exist which cast significant doubt upon the company’s ability to continue as a going concern,” the statement said.

(italics, ours)


So, we are being told that NGP's ability to continue as a going concern is dependent upon factors other than actually turning a profit. Good to know.

Mr. Reid, a Nevada Democrat who led passage of the $814 billion stimulus bill and worked to include the loan guarantee program to help finance clean-energy projects, predicted in 2010 that NGP would “put Nevadans to work” and declared that Nevada was the “Saudi Arabia of geothermal energy.”

Comparing your state to a country that hands out checks to its citizens because of all that oil they're sitting on begs the question of why NGP would need tax-payer assistance in the first place.



Cue the evil Republicans:

But Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on regulatory affairs, stimulus oversight and government spending, is concerned about NGP’s finances and the timing of the loan guarantee.

“The company was in danger of defaulting on its financial obligation, and the [Department of Energy‘s] assistance served as a de facto bailout,” Mr. Jordan said. “After receiving a taxpayer-backed $98.5 million loan guarantee, the company is still struggling.”

He said the loan guarantee “essentially served to prop up an already-faltering firm.”

We thought the following was of particular interest:

Mr. Jordan said the Energy Department handed out more than 20 loan guarantees to companies with an average credit rating of BB-, or “junk status,” meaning they were vulnerable to default if economic or business conditions changed. NPG was rated BB+, which is considered speculative or junk and a step below investment grade.

Mr. Jordan and Mr. Issa have questioned why taxpayer money was “put at such risk.”

That pretty much sums up why this DOE green loan program is such a disaster. Where you wouldn't waste a wooden nickel of your own scratch on junk-rated investments, the DOE, because it has no real skin in the game - it's not like it's coming out of their hide, is more than willing to pour billions of tax-payer dollars down the drain.


The next time you hear the President drone on about "investing" in the future with respect to clean/green energy, recall the rule our chow hall table captain laid down during our first year at Seminary regarding his ban on steak sauce: "Good steak don't need it and bad steak don't deserve it."


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You Lie! (UPDATED... Again!!!)

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(As promised, we are re-running this post from just over two years ago to remind everybody of just what an odious sham were the auto bailouts and in specific the manner in which the TARP funds (funds, by the way, that were never intended for the auto industry in the first place - remember, they were tabbed for the financial sector, only) were paid off. The thuggish history of this administration and its enablers needs to be recalled as often as possible prior to the November elections.)





(Please scroll to bottom for update)



So, General Motors and its folksy CEO, Ed Whitacre, have paid off GM's TARP bailout money? What an incredible turnaround. If by "turnaround", though, you mean paying off your Visa card debt with your Mastercard.

All evidence points to the fact that GM is using a separate TARP line of credit to pay off its primary TARP debt.

During an April 20 hearing on Capital Hill, Sen. Tom Carper, (D-Del.) asked some pointed questions of Neil Barofsky, the “special watch dog” on the Wall Street Bailout, aka, TARP.

It’s good news in that they’re reducing their debt,” Barofsky said of the accelerated GM payments, “but they’re doing it by taking other available TARP money.”…

“It sounds like it’s kind of like taking money out of one pocket and putting in the other,” said Carper, who got a nod of agreement from Barofsky.

“The way that payment is going to be made is by drawing down on an equity facility of other TARP money.”

Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) went off on the Obama administration and the TARP shell game in a letter sent to two-time tax cheat and tax collector-in-chief, Tim Geithner using Barofsky's testimony to level the credible claim that GM was not using GM earnings to pay off TARP debt but rather TARP funds from an escrow account at Treasury to make the debt repayments.

From the letter:

When these criticisms were put to GM’s Vice Chairman Stephen Girsky in a television interview yesterday, he admitted that the criticisms were valid:

Question: Are you just paying the government back with government money?

Mr. Girsky: Well listen, that is in effect true, but a year ago nobody thought we’d be able to pay this back.

Unbelievable. Dude actually wants some sort of recognition that GM was able to pay off tax payer-funded debt with... tax payer funds.

This is the first acknowledgement that we are aware of a shadow TARP. As if the publicly-known TARP wasn't bad enough there is a subterranean TARP that is backing the initial TARP.

This simply re-enforces our sentiment that we will never in our lives purchase a GM or Chrysler product. These people are straight-up gangsters. There is no other word to describe them and their actions to deliberately deceive and forcibly misuse U.S. tax payer dollars.

We believe this instance provides sufficient cover to get your hate on.

H/T: Hot Air


(UPDATE #1): This time, we lie! Much like GM's false claim that they have paid off its TARP debt with actual earnings, there is no actual update.

We originally posted this over the weekend, when readership is down a bit but we wanted to resurrect it during the week to highlight the sheer audacity of General Motors. The federal government is entirely complicit in what we can only tag as gangster capitalism. The government takeover and bankruptcy proceedings that screwed over the secured creditors in favor of the labor unions was executed in a thuggish manner and now the GM/federal government partnership openly displays their contempt for the American public by running an ad during the NBA playoffs patting itself on the back for a job well done.

We may re-run this post again next week. And the week after that. Whatever we have to do to ensure that we never forget what little regard this administration has for your interests and your tax dollars.

Frank Rich, Paul Krugman and the rest of the intelligentsia of this country may disagree with the politics of those who have opposed the bailouts but that they cannot at least understand where this anger may be coming from, again, speaks to a widening disconnect in this country between the taste-makers and those who are actually footing the bill for this fiasco.


(UPDATE #2): Reason TV's Nick Gillespie takes about as much time to explain the shell game that is General Motor's "paying off" its TARP debt as the GM commercial.




Again, the sheer gall that Government Motors has in running this outright lie will compel us to update this regularly or repost from time to time whether or not there is an actual update.





(UPDATE #3): The nation's paper of record is now on the beat.

AS we inch closer to a clearer understanding of the products and practices that unleashed the credit crisis of 2008, it’s becoming apparent that those seeking the whole truth are still outnumbered by those aiming to obscure it. This is the case not only on Wall Street but also in Washington.

Truth seekers the nation over, therefore, are indebted to Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, who in recent days uncovered what he called a government-enabled “TARP money shuffle.” It relates to General Motors, which on April 21 paid the balance of its $6.7 billion loan under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

G.M. trumpeted its escape from the program as evidence that it had turned the corner in its operations. “G.M. is able to repay the taxpayers in full, with interest, ahead of schedule, because more customers are buying vehicles like the Chevrolet Malibu and Buick LaCrosse,” boasted Edward E. Whitacre Jr., its chief executive.

G.M. also crowed about its loan repayment in a national television ad and the United States Treasury also marked the moment with a press release: “We are encouraged that G.M. has repaid its debt well ahead of schedule and confident that the company is on a strong path to viability,” said Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary.

Taxpayers are naturally eager for news about bailout repayments. But what neither G.M. nor the Treasury disclosed was that the company simply used other funds held by the Treasury to pay off its original loan.

The CBO estimates we will lose about $30 billion on the GM bailout. And in the article, GM officials are outrageously outraged that anybody would suspect that they are doing anything untoward with taxpayer money. Not that they are specifically denying doing anything untoward.

Greg Martin, a G.M. spokesman, said the company had made no misrepresentations about its repayment. “The bottom line is, our strong business performance has put us in the position that we don’t need these funds,” he said, referring to the cash in the escrow account. “G.M. is performing much better than anyone expected and that does represent a significant milestone for the company.”

And Ron Bloom, senior adviser to Mr. Geithner, bristled at Mr. Grassley’s criticism. “The Treasury Department has tried to be as straight as humanly possible,” he said in an interview. “We have never not been clear about exactly what we paid, exactly the terms of the investment. I’m finding it hard to find anyone obfuscating about this.”

(italics, ours)

They don't need the (TARP) funds... except that they need the funds to pay off the TARP debt.

We'll spare you the righteous indignation this time around because it's all there in black and white. A nice big F-you from General Motors leadership to the U.S. taxpayers.

And you all thought Enron was bad.

Crony capitalism by the numbers

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Entrance question: Just how incompetent do they have to be that they cannot even make crony capitalism work?



Marc A. Thiessen in writing for the Washington Post helpfully explains that if Mitt Romney's private equity record is fair game then so should be Obama's public equity record. Through either the stimulus bill or the Department of Energy's loan program, the administration has invested billions of taxpayer dollars in private businesses. And how's that been working out?

By the numbers...

33 million: The amount of money given to Raser Technologies to build a power plant in Utah. The company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2012 and owes $1.5 million in back taxes.


126 million: The amount of tax-payer dollars given to ECOtality for the installation of 14,000 electric car chargers. ECOtality’s own SEC filings, the company has since incurred more than $45 million in losses and has told the federal government, “We may not achieve or sustain profitability on a quarterly or annual basis in the future.”


98.5 million: The size of a loan guarantee to Nevada Geothermal Power (NGP) in 2010. The New York Times reported last October that the company is in “financial turmoil” and that “[a]fter a series of technical missteps that are draining Nevada Geothermal’s cash reserves, its own auditor concluded in a filing released last week that there was ‘significant doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.’ ”


3 billion (yes, that's billion with a "b"): the amount of tax-payer dollars given to First Solar in the form of a loan guarantee for power plants in Arizona and California. According to a Bloomberg Businessweek report last week, the company “fell to a record low in Nasdaq Stock Market trading May 4 after reporting $401 million in restructuring costs tied to firing 30 percent of its workforce.”


400 million: the amount of a loan guarantee given to Abound Solar, Inc. to build solar panel factories. Currently, the company has halted production and laid off 180 employees.



43 million: the size of the loan guarantee given to green-energy storage company Beacon Power. According to CBS News, at the time of the loan, “Standard and Poor’s had confidentially given the project a dismal outlook of ‘CCC-plus.’ ” In the fall of 2011, Beacon received a delisting notice from Nasdaq and filed for bankruptcy.

From linked article:

This is just the tip of the iceberg. A company called SunPower got a $1.2 billion loan guarantee from the Obama administration, and as of January, the company owed more than it was worth. Brightsource got a $1.6 billion loan guarantee and posted a string of net losses totaling $177 million. And, of course, let’s not forget Solyndra — the solar panel manufacturer that received $535 million in taxpayer-funded loan guarantees and went bankrupt, leaving taxpayers on the hook.

And our favorite numbers from this article:

71: the percentage of DOE grants and loans that went to “individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party.” This according to Peter Schweizer's book, "Throw Them All Out".

100: the number of criminal investigations that have been launched by the DOE's inspector general related to the department's green-energy program.




Here's some more on private equity firms from Democrat Lanny Davis:

Private equity firms often invest in distressed companies by putting in cash and cutting expenses in order to save a company that is already close to bankruptcy. Sometimes the investment works and the company and jobs are saved. And sometimes, to save the company, jobs need to be cut or wages and benefits reduced.

Does that sound familiar? It should. It’s called the General Motors bailout, widely touted by President Obama and Democrats as a success story, which it was.

Except that it wasn't. GM stock is currently trading at $22/share, down from the $33/share at its IPO. And that price will have to get up to $50/share in order to break even on the bailout. As it stands right now, we have lost billions to General Motors and we, most likely, will never get it back.




And one last thing regarding public equity and Obama's miserable track record regarding the same, next time you hear a Team O water carrier or someone from the administration itself pop-off about the people Romney laid off, remember this:

The Treasury Department encouraged automakers seeking TARP funds to rapidly close their dealerships, even though the plan contributed no specific savings to the companies and caused job losses at a time of mounting unemployment, according to a scathing new audit published Monday.

The report focuses on the plans by Chrysler LLC and General Motors Corp. to rapidly reduce their number of dealerships by about 25 percent each, and the role that Treasury played in encouraging the automakers to do so quickly instead of over the course of five years.

The audit was prepared by Neil Barofsky, a former federal prosecutor who now serves as special inspector general for the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program.
Chrysler eliminated 789 dealerships in June 2009, and GM plans to wind down 1,454 dealerships by October of this year. The rationale behind those moves was that the old dealership network was too big, and that by closing some of the dealerships, the remaining ones would be more profitable and better positioned to re-invest in their businesses.

Wow. Kind of sounds like something Bain would've done.

Heh.


.

Your Occupy San Diego update (UPDATED)

(please scroll to bottom of blog post for update)



Here's some more of that new civility we've been hearing so much about.

A pair of Southland street cart vendors who were forced to shut down their businesses after “Occupy” protesters vandalized their carts are hoping to get some help from local residents.

KNX 1070′s Tom Reopelle reports a fundraiser in the Gas Lamp district in San Diego on Monday night is aimed at helping two vendors get back on their feet.

The coffee and hot dog carts were located in Civic Center Plaza, the same location as the Occupy San Diego protesters.

That group first settled in to the plaza Oct. 7 and set up a tent city which has since twice been taken down by police.

Coffee cart owner Linda Jenson and hot dog cart operators Letty and Pete Soto said they initially provided free food and drink to demonstrators, but when they stopped, the protesters became violent.

And according to one city councilman, bodily fluids were used in the attacks.

“Both carts have had items stolen, have had their covers vandalized with markings and graffiti, as well as one of the carts had urine and blood splattered on it,” said Councilman Carl DeMaio.

Another real-life lesson learned the hard way for the #OWS set: That "free" food and drink wasn't free. The cart operators had to pay someone in exchange for that food and drink so it shouldn't have come as any big surprise to the economically illiterate malcontents here in San Diego that the "free" food and drink the cart operators were kind enough to supply them was going to be on a temporary basis only.

Also, please note the sense of entitlement that is required as a mindset in order to trash someone's place of work when they are no longer hooking it up for "free".

The #OWS set may share a sense of anger and frustration with the tea party regarding corporate bailouts and subsidies but there is an addendum to that with #OWS and that is, "... where's my bailout?" that is absent the tea party message.

We are reaping the benefits of a generation of young men and women that received a trophy in sports regardless of how bad their team was. We are seeing first hand what emphasizing self-esteem over actual accomplishment in our public education system is getting us.

Trashing food and beverage carts because they could no longer provide "free" food and drink is the perfect metaphor for the #OWS movement.


Yep, kind of like the tea party.




(ed. note: It should be noted that the linked news piece came from a media outlet up in L.A. The local paper of record, the San Diego Union-Tribune, seems content to run feel-good articles about veterans joining the #OWS movement.)



(UPDATE #1): Yet, even more of that new civility we keep hearing about.

Zuccotti Park has become so overrun by sexual predators attacking women in the night that organizers felt compelled to set up a female-only sleeping tent yesterday to keep the sickos away.

The large, metal-framed “safety tent” -- which will be guarded by an all-female patrol -- can accommodate as many as 18 people and will be used during the day for women-only meetings, said Occupy Wall Street organizers.

“This is all about safety in numbers,” said Becky Wartell, 24, a protester from Portland, Maine.

“When you’re in a large group of people sleeping, you will, of course, feel a lot safer than if you were by yourself,” she added.

“It will also keep away people that might feel more inclined to prey on two- and three-people tents.”

The safety measure comes amid a terrifying spree of sexual assaults -- including an alleged rape -- in the Zuccotti Park camp.

The article notes that these incidents very rarely get reported to the police as they are matters that are handleded internally.

We will restate our desire to see the victims of these assaults and rapes sue the pants off the cities as the cities refuse to enforce the law and refuse to see after the safety of the people.

Word around the campfire is that the cities, by initially backing down to the Occupiers, painted themselves into a corner and are now terrified that any efforts to move in the police to clear out and shut down the drug-infested and rape-y Occupy tent slums would result in full scale riots.

Cry us a river. This is what happens when you give in to terrorists. Oh, think we're being a little too harsh with that terminology? Think we're not employing the proper amount of civility? What, then, do you call people who either explicitly or implicitly promise violence if their demands are not met?

Nice car company you got there... shame if anything happened to it

About a week and a half ago we posted a Ford Motor Co. commercial that took a not-too-veiled swipe at the bailouts received by Ford's domestic competition, General Motors and Chrysler.

Ford driver "Chris":

“I wasn’t going to buy another car that was bailed out by our government. I was going to buy from a manufacturer that’s standing on their own: win, lose, or draw. That’s what America is about is taking the chance to succeed and understanding when you fail that you gotta’ pick yourself up and go back to work. Ford is that company for me.”

If you clicked on the link, you would've found that the video has been removed by the user.



Hmmmm....

As part of a campaign featuring "real people" explaining their decision to buy the Blue Oval, a guy named "Chris" says he "wasn't going to buy another car that was bailed out by our government," according the text of the ad, launched in early September.

"I was going to buy from a manufacturer that's standing on their own: win, lose, or draw. That's what America is about is taking the chance to succeed and understanding when you fail that you gotta' pick yourself up and go back to work."

That's what some of America is about, evidently. Because Ford pulled the ad after individuals inside the White House questioned whether the copy was publicly denigrating the controversial bailout policy CEO Alan Mulally repeatedly supported in the dark days of late 2008, in early '09 and again when the ad flap arose. And more.

With President Barack Obama tuning his re-election campaign amid dismal economic conditions and simmering antipathy toward his stimulus spending and associated bailouts, the Ford ad carried the makings of a political liability when Team Obama can least afford yet another one. Can't have that.

The ad, pulled in response to White House questions (and, presumably, carping from rival GM), threatened to rekindle the negative (if accurate) association just when the president wants credit for their positive results (GM and Chrysler are moving forward, making money and selling vehicles) and to distance himself from any public downside of his decision.

In other words, where presidential politics and automotive marketing collide — clean, green, politically correct vehicles not included — the president wins and the automaker loses because the benefit of the battle isn't worth the cost of waging it.

Whether or not Ford supported and/or still supports the bailouts with respect to this situation is completely irrelevant. This represents yet another danger of corporatism/crony capitalism: the inherent thuggish nature of cronyism when the competition starts making you and your "winner", in the "picking winners and losers" schemes, look like a loser.

If you want just one more reason why the government should stay the hell out of private sector matters, count altering the business practices of the "competition" with innuendo and/or outright threats as that reason.


And we did warn driver Chris of his imminent proctology exam by the IRS. We would not want to be this guy, right now.

Video smack of the day

We had seen other commercials in these Ford "press conference" series of ad spots but not this specific one.

Smack

“I wasn’t going to buy another car that was bailed out by our government. I was going to buy from a manufacturer that’s standing on their own: win, lose, or draw. That’s what America is about is taking the chance to succeed and understanding when you fail that you gotta’ pick yourself up and go back to work. Ford is that company for me.”

Smack


Hope ol' Chris there is ready for his proctology exam by the IRS at the behest of the Team O. Seriously, that takes some major cajones to essentially call out the administration on the controversial and unpopular bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler via a platform backed by a brand like Ford.

Tales from Bailout Nation (cont.)

*

Recall how Team O wants to make the General Motors bailout, the one that will cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars when all said and done, a centerpiece of their re-election campaign and how GM isn't, for obvious reasons, thinking that is not such a hot idea? Well, chalk up yet another reason why bringing attention to such a smashing success may backfire.

New emails obtained by The Daily Caller contradict claims by the Obama administration that the Treasury Department would avoid “intervening in the day-to-day management” of General Motors post-auto bailout.

These messages reveal that Treasury officials were involved in decision-making that led to more than 20,000 non-union workers losing their pensions.

Republican Reps. Dan Burton and Mike Turner say that during the GM bailout, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner decided to cut pensions for salaried non-union employees at Delphi, a GM spinoff, to expedite GM’s emergence from bankruptcy.

At a Wednesday hearing, the House Oversight Committee’s Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs, Stimulus Oversight and Government Spending started pushing the Treasury Department for answers on the effects of the bailout and on how much of a role the department played in picking winners and losers.

The key point of the Wednesday hearing was to show that the Obama administration advised GM on how to eliminate the Delphi workers’ pensions. The evidence suggests Geithner’s team played a significant role in that process, despite claims to the contrary.

In 2009 congressional testimony, senior Obama administration official Ron Bloom said the president told the Treasury Department to stay out of the management of these companies and downplayed any administration intervention.

“From the beginning of this process, the President gave the Auto Task Force two clear directions regarding its approach to the auto restructurings,” Bloom said then. “The first was to behave in a commercial manner by ensuring that all stakeholders were treated fairly and received neither more nor less than they would have simply because the government was involved. The second was to refrain from intervening in the day-to-day management of these companies.”

We know that first directive was a crock as the unions were shoved to the head of the line ahead of secured creditors in the bankruptcy divvy-up and now it looks like the second was not adhered to either as that noted captain of industry and business tycoon, Timothy Geithner, was wacking pensions in order to hasten an exit from bankruptcy.

The exchanges go on to clearly demonstrate that the administration had a controlling stake in GM’s management timeline.

Borst replied that GM had not “begun conversations with the UAW pending hearing back from you and the PBGC. We can begin that dialogue but our reading of the benefit guarantee is clear that it’s for the benefit of the retirees and not the PBGC. The UAW may not be available to us this week as GM is in the summer shutdown.”

Feldman responded by reminding Borst the steps required to eliminate Delphi’s pension plans.

“Keep in mind we need the PBGC’s help to terminate this plan so we will have to deal with the PBGC,” wrote Feldman. “If you think there is a way to cause its unilateral termination (outside of Delphi going down an 1113 process) let me know.”

Team O will want to take credit for saving a couple of heartland American institutions and the domestic auto industry along the way but the record will show that this was a hostile take-over with the government wielding unprecedented powers in a private sector business to curry favor with the unions and where that government-GM partnership will lose billions of dollars while pushing a heavily-subsidized technology that nobody's buying right now and which may not even be any good for the environment and then turn around and lie about how it is they paid off the loan they received from the Feds. For that you are to be thankful.

Yeah, sounds like a record to run on.



* The dreariness of this post demanded we do something to cheer it up. So we did.

Lemonade vs. Lemonaid

Via Secular Apostate:





We're unclear of the object lesson here.... but the music sure was cool.

Hey, whaddya want from me, huh?

Possibly the most important event of the vice president's day Tuesday is to meet at 2:15 with Earl Devaney. Everyone knows him as chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board -- the top guy monitoring the gazillion-dollar stimulus and the overdue economic recovery, and ensuring that the taxpayers financing same know all about it.

However, no one outside the room will know what goes on in that Biden-Devaney meeting. That's because the government meeting on government transparency has been closed.

We know, we know. Way too easy.

Video clip of the day

Len Britton, who is running for Senate in Vermont against Pat "Leaky" Leahy, captures, in this 30 second spot, the essence of Bailout Nation.

Hit'em with the stimulus.

Another vetting FAIL

Look, if you're going to populate the cabinet with tax cheats, why is it such a stretch to have a criminal as one of your White House props?

Charlottesville resident Leslie Macko was once employed at ACAC in the Albemarle Square Shopping Center. In April 2009, she lost her job as an aesthetician in the spa at ACAC.

President Barack Obama called on Congress last week to extend unemployment insurance. Macko stood next to the President of the United States as his example of the need to extend jobless benefits.

CBS19's Jessica Jaglois has learned that Macko was found guilty of prescription drug fraud in March 2009, one month before Macko lost her job at ACAC. She served a one year probationary sentence.

Macko joined two other unemployed people and President Obama at the podium for a speech designed to encourage lawmakers to extend jobless benefits.

And in other competency-related news today...

President Obama's choice to be the government's chief budget officer received a bonus of more than $900,000 from Citigroup Inc. last year -- after the Wall Street firm for which he worked received a massive taxpayer bailout.

The money was paid to Jacob Lew in January 2009, about two weeks before he joined the State Department as deputy secretary of state, according to a newly filed ethics form. The payout came on top of the already hefty $1.1 million Citigroup compensation package for 2008 that he reported last year.

Administration officials and members of Congress last year expressed outrage that executives at other bailed-out firms, such as American International Group Inc., awarded bonuses to top executives. State Department officials at the time steadfastly refused to say if Mr. Lew received a post-bailout bonus from Citigroup in response to inquiries from The Washington Times.

But Mr. Lew's latest financial disclosure report, provided by the State Department on Wednesday, makes clear that he did receive a significant windfall.

We suppose this is evidence of the strategy of flogging and demonizing the evil ways of Wall St. fat cats by employing.... Wall St. fat cats.

The Friday evening dump... and quote of the day

(one in a (semi)weekly series intended to shine some light on unsavory news being jettisoned from the White House or Capitol Hill right before the weekend)

"I would assume he would be someone we would want to hear from because he would have firsthand knowledge."

That from Iowa Democrat, Bruce Braley, in reference to Dept. of Treasury HMFIC, Timothy Geithner and the revelation made this past Friday regarding just what Goldman Sachs did with their share of the U.S. tax-payer funded TARP bailout.

Goldman Sachs sent $4.3 billion in federal tax money to 32 entities, including many overseas banks, hedge funds and pensions, according to information made public Friday night.
Goldman Sachs disclosed the list of companies to the Senate Finance Committee after a threat of subpoena from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Ia.

Asked the significance of the list, Grassley said, "I hope it's as simple as taxpayers deserve to know what happened to their money."

He added, "We thought originally we were bailing out AIG. Then later on ... we learned that the money flowed through AIG to a few big banks, and now we know that the money went from these few big banks to dozens of financial institutions all around the world."

Grassley said he was reserving judgment on the appropriateness of U.S. taxpayer money ending up overseas until he learns more about the 32 entities.

All told Goldman Sachs received $12.9 billion in bailout money to protect itself from the worthless AIG securities it held. But before it received the bailout, it had secured protection from outfits like Citibank, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley should AIG go under and lawmakers and regulators want to know why, if Goldman Sachs had private money lined up to stay afloat, was tax payer money being spent instead?

Shouldn't Goldman Sachs be expected to collect from those institutions "before they collect the taxpayers' dollars?" Grassley asked. "It's a little bit like a farmer, if you got crop insurance, you shouldn't be getting disaster aid."

Goldman had not disclosed the names of the counterparties it paid in late 2008 until Friday, despite repeated requests from Elizabeth Warren, chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel.

To date, AIG has received over $133 billion in tax-payer assistance.

Warren, in testimony Wednesday, said that the rescue of AIG "distorted the marketplace by turning AIG's risky bets into fully guaranteed transactions. Instead of forcing AIG and its counterparties to bear the costs of the company's failure, the government shifted those costs in full onto taxpayers."

Indeed. If the Wall St. big boys had each others' back then what was the need for the panic that set Bailout Nation into motion?

Somebody got played here and Grassley, Braley and Warren want to know what did Geithner, who was head of the New York Federal Reserve at the time the bailouts were structured in the fall of '08, know and when did he know it.

An attempt, made Friday, to contact Geithner through the White House's public information office was unsuccessful. Natch.

Welcome to the Party, boys!

Reading the Times editorial "Greece's Lessons for Us", you'd a thunk that they were regular readers of BwD. Listen to some of this stuff:

Greece's financial crisis recalls the folly of American home buyers who took out subprime loans to buy houses they couldn't afford, only to be stuck with a crushing debt when the real estate market collapsed. Thanks to a $146-billion bailout from other European countries and the International Monetary Fund, Greece won't be defaulting — at least not right away. But the aid package may just be the first in a series to bring the Eurozone back to financial health. And although the details differ, the outlines of Greece's woes are troublingly familiar.

Whether or not a series of bailouts will bring the Eurozone back to health is dubious but that first part about American homebuyers taking out subprime loans they couldn't afford? Double-checking to see if this really is our beloved L.A. Times.

Greece dug itself into a deep hole over the past decade, abetted by low interest rates and willing lenders. The government provided jobs and generous pensions to about one-quarter of the workforce, sacrificing productivity for social stability. After a recession sent the country's deficit soaring, lenders started to balk at the government's demand for credit, pushing Greece toward default.

We hardly knew ye.

The U.S. budget deficit and debt aren't up to Athenian levels. But like Greece, the U.S. government has committed to providing benefits that it cannot afford over the long term. Policymakers have seen the problems in Social Security and Medicare coming for years, but Congress has done little about them. If anything, lawmakers made the task more difficult with this year's healthcare reform law, which trimmed Medicare spending but dedicated the savings to a new healthcare insurance program for the working class.

Article finishes off with a screed about unsustainable public employee union pensions and some rantings about revenue not matching out-of-control spending.

We sincerely wish there was some gracious way the Times could walk back what could rightly be construed as an unseemly association with the unwashed mob but as you have just read, the West's paper of record has let the horse out of the barn and must now suffer the charges of "un-patriotic", "un-civil" and, of course, "racist" along with the rest of us.

Compassion happens

Since the onset of the great recession in 2008 we've been nagged by the statists of the liberal-left on how it all represented a failure of capitalism. How the greed and inherently corrupt nature of unbridled free markets plunged us into the fiscal mess we are struggling to emerge from.

So, does what is happening in Greece and the greater Eurozone represent a failure of socialism?

Free healthcare, free housing, mandatory employment are all wonderful things because they are "rights", correct? They're all rights, because a truly compassionate society would view them as nothing less, correct?

But the money to fund all those rights has to come from somewhere. Someone in that society that is a creator of wealth is footing the bill for those rights enjoyed by everybody else.

And here is the theoretical problem with that arrangement. That compassion becomes confiscatory meaning the more rights you willy-freaking-nilly start making up, the more of a burden you put on the wealth-creators in your society to fund those rights. Since those rights come in the form of mandatory goods and services, so to does the obtaining of the money to fund those rights becomes mandatory. In short, this is the slavery of socialism.

And the practical problem with this arrangement is that the more "rights" you start granting the people, the quicker the money runs out. Margaret Thatcher was right: the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money. In a nutshell, this is what is happening in Greece and the greater Eurozone.

Against our nature, we've been pessimistic with regard to our economy fearing a double-dip recession as a result of the Obama regime's horribly misguided demand-side Keynesian gimmickry. Perhaps, though, we've been looking at this the wrong way. Maybe we, as an electorate, might look at the situation in Greece and take some heartfelt lessons-learned.

•The entitlement society is D-E-A-D, dead, dead, dead. It may thrash around a bit more, but it is dead. Here in the US, we'll continue to get Obama and Waxman and Frank and Pelosi pitching for more and more entitlements, but as wreckage and ruin spreads across Europe from demographic decay and socialist entitlements, only those who believe in compassion™ with religious faith will continue demanding more.

Read the rest of KT's post, here. We're still chewing on it but we dig the optimism and the implied faith in this country, though we stray off path from time to time, to eventually get things right.

Tales from Bailout Nation Pt. XXI

(scheduled post warning: author not responsible for stale content or fishy aroma)


The President has given access to his “ideas that stink” generator to Barney Frank and you just know that combination will yield something stupendous.

The concept Frank is working on would be to shield us taxpayers from pouring any more of our tax dollars into the financial institution bailout black hole. Sounds good so far, right? You are probably thinking that Frank is crafting legislation for stricter oversight of these institutions or possibly a tweak to bankruptcy laws that would allow for a softer landing for investors of failed financial institutions. If you thought any of that you would be wrong.

You see, the bailout gravy train is going to continue but the bailouts will be propped up by… wait for it, the other financial institutions.

Under the proposal, future rescues of large institutions would be paid for by other big firms. The proposal says that any financial company with assets of more than $10 billion would have to contribute to the rescue of a failed firm. The legislation emerged after community banks lobbied to ensure that small institutions would not have to pay for future bailouts.

You read that correctly. The outfits that are making money and are on sound financial footing will be forced at the butt of Barney’s gun to fork over cash to their under-performing competition.

In one fell swoop, Barney has simultaneously encouraged further risky behavior by the bad actors in the financial world as he is effectively eliminating the punishment for poor performance and has dis-incentivized strong performance by penalizing it.

We cannot imagine anything actually being more counter-productive to a healthy banking/finance industry.

We’re scouring our thesaurus to come up with language that would adequately describe what a complete ignoramus Frank is and we are failing… miserably.

Tales from Bailout Nation Pt. XVI

Troubled assets tied to the housing market remain frozen on banks' balance sheets and pose a continued threat to economic recovery, according to a new oversight report.

Elizabeth Warren, chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel charged with ensuring that bailout funds are used properly and efficiently, said in her report that efforts to move housing-related derivatives off banks' books have mostly failed.

"The nation's banks continue to hold on their books billions of dollars in assets about whose proper valuation there is a dispute and that are very difficult to sell," Warren wrote.

The panel pointed to setbacks in implementing the Public Private Investment Program, a government program to help banks unload the assets, as a leading contributing factor.

The segment of it administered by the Treasury has only recently got off the ground, the panel noted, while the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has postponed its own effort, citing improved liquidity in the credit markets.

Perhaps one of the reasons the TARP program isn’t working is that the Treasury Dept. doesn’t know what the hell they are doing.

Recall that the original intent of the TARP program when it was initiated under the Bush administration last year was to buy up these very toxic assets only for that goal to be dropped earlier this year in favor of recapitalizing the financial institutions in order to get them to start lending to one another.

So, it really should come as no surprise to anyone that the original intent of the program which has since been dropped isn’t quite as effective as hoped.

And to buttress the rudderless ship of fools approach being taken by Treasury here’s Warren on the TARP program back in June:

There's no discussion of the overall policy. Instead, there are specific programs that are announced, and from that, it's necessary to reason backwards to figure out what the goal must have been. It's like a "Jeopardy!" game. If this is the answer, what was the question? It's frustrating because without a clearly articulated goal and identified metrics to determine whether the goal is being accomplished, it's almost impossible to tell if a program is successful.

We’re in the very best of hands.