Hell in a Handbasket

I was perusing the news channels, as my new career as an unemployed propellerhead allows for, and I ran across a news report, It seems a former judge alleges the federal government initiated a requirement to take Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funding regardless of bank viability. The money, proposed under the Bush administration, was demanded to be taken by the bank, or else suffer a multi-year public audit. This act, according to the Judge, amounts to extortion by the federal government. I did a little checking and it seems extortion (more commonly known as blackmail) involves the coercion of a legal entity's free choice by means of the threat of a legal act. In this case, threatening the audit, in the absence of any negative issues with the bank was used as leverage to make them take the funding they obviously did not want.

In the news report previously mentioned, the FDIC and the Federal Reserve both told a healthy bank with some 250 Billion in assets and no sub-prime mortgages or other maladies, that they would be subject to a long public audit if they did not take the TARP money. Administration officials went on to state that such an audit would be very public and embarrassing. The bank president said no, but could not convince his board to reject the threat from FDIC and they subsequently took billions in aid dollars they did not need. The bank was forced to issue a special class of stock which was given to the federal government and now the government under President Obama seeks to impose lending guidelines on who they can lend to and under what conditions.

How much control will the American people cede to an increasingly autocratic regime. There used to be a time where we were self sufficient and were expected to do whatever needed to be done to get our collective house in order. The federal government is out of control and the horizon is getting increasingly darker. The Chinese Government is currently the largest holder of US debt. They are using this money and the interest we are paying to finance their military operations. These operations, among other things, include the development of special weapons systems that are designed to take out aircraft carrier sized ships. We are selling not just our prosperity, but our very freedoms little by little. All the while, President Obama, as did President Bush before, and too busy tuning their fiddle to notice how much damage they have done, and how much he plans to do.

I wonder if Queen Elizabeth gave Barak Obama a guide to building savings in exchange for the lovely engraved iPod he presented her on Wednesday this week.