Smarty_Pants

The Banker: Not a Clue

They say the last gasp of a dying empire is to loot the treasury.

One could argue that the TARP was a defacto looting of the treasury. Could the reason for such secrecy surrounding all the TARPing by everyone involved be to disguise and deny the possibility that they are, in fact, simply looting the treasury when they saw an opportunity to do so?

Could this imply the end of the American empire is close at hand?

Trillion dollar deficits on top of trillion dollar debt can't continue forever. Eventually something has to give and we will see what happens when the debt based house of cards falls in on itself.


"The important thing that taxpayers should understand is that it is a capital infusion treated like preferred stock with a 5% dividend to the government with the requirement to pay it back within 5 years or pay substantially larger interest and fees." - dergman98

That's what they keep saying, but what happens if they CAN'T pay it back within those 5 years? Will piling on additional fees or penalties make it more likely that TARP money will be recovered? If not, what then? Do we simply tack another couple trillion onto the national debt and go have a beer?

I, for one, do not assume that statements claiming the money will be paid back with interest are equivalent to actually paying the money back with interest. It would seem prudent to consider the ramifications of the money not being paid back as well. What if the banks are still insolvent 5 years from now, for whatever reason?

After all, just days before Freddie and Fannie were nationalized the gub'mint officials responsible for monitoring them were claiming that they were in fine fiscal shape.