TARP: "I inherited..."

I can’t let go of TARP. Bush was shown a piece of paper that said if he didn’t immediately authorize the release of nearly a trillion dollars the world economy would collapse within 24 to 48 hours.

He was like a father who takes his kids to the movies. On the parking deck, a group of thugs jump out of the shadows and point their guns at the young ones. He is told that he can kiss them good-bye unless he goes down to the ATM in the lobby and withdraws a sum. He cannot tell if the guns are even loaded; or judge the resolve of the thieves. All that would have to come later. All he knows is that he must do what he can to protect the kids NOW!

What makes me suspicious of this episode is its timing. Having come just days before the election, it clearly knocked out the Republican candidate. Much was made of McCain’s panicking in the press. Obama, on the other hand, seemed aloof, almost as if he were in on the joke.

Nobody to this day (that I am aware of) has examined what actually happened: Who talked to Bush; who talked to those who talked to Bush, and so on down the line. If there actually was a problem, what were the metrics that defined it? If an actual run on the money markets was in progress, who started the stampede, and how did they start it?

All we have is the result: Obama got elected; and Bush continues to be vilified because of it, and labeled a spendthrift to give Obama cover for his own excesses.

What’s been happening since amounts to a cover-up. It’s Bush’s gift to Obama that keeps on giving. Who, nowadays, can avoid that clarion call of our current president, repeated over and over again: “Why, when I was elected, I inherited…”

Nobody's Talking

I’m not seeing a plan. All I’m seeing is BP blamed a lot – and Big Oil. How convenient! It’s the same as it was back just before Obama was elected, when we had our big brush with economic Armageddon. At that time the big banks were said to be at fault. And this still is the case. What I’m saying is, we never seem to get at the root of a problem. We never go back quite far enough to examine its cause.

Yet, something caused Bush to panic and start insisting on TARP. And something caused Deepwater Horizon to blow up. It was a huge structure (32,588 tons; 112 meters long; 78 meters wide; 97 meters high). We say it was an ‘accident’. But look at it this way: When the World Trade Towers collapsed, nobody could claim it was due to a mere 'accident' in the kitchen of its ‘Windows On the World’ restaurant. It took something much bigger to bring those buildings down.

The following is only a partial list of recent semi-successful news blackouts we have come to know of.

1. Operation Orchard
2. Specific documentation detailing the spark (and origin) that got TARP rolling.
3. Bhutto assassination
4. South Korean ship sinking

And now we can add the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon to our list. Somebody knows the answers to all of this. (I suspect that JB knows.) But nobody’s talking. Why? It's quite obvious. If we knew only half of what’s going on, we’d be out on the streets with our pitchforks. Perhaps Obama’s only crime is his sloppiness in keeping things covered up. Also, the blame game seems to still be going well. …and we’re still only up to the second letter of the alphabet after all.