TARP. The “Troubled Asset Relief Program” was supposed to be a program where the government would purchase mortgage backed securities and sit on them until the value went back up. President Bush stood on in front of television cameras and told the whole nation that the United States government had to do this, because no one else could afford to wait for the value to rise sufficiently.
For the record, I was against TARP since the get-go, but based on Bush’s comments, I could see a potential upside. After all, as home values increased the the future, the government might just make a little money off the whole mess and maybe someone, somewhere, would get the bright idea to cut our taxes. Of course, I was being an idiot. Uncle Sam is like a teenager with no-limit credit card and parents who don’t give a damn. They both just keep on spending no matter what.
Since it passed Congress, TARP funds were used to bail out the auto industry with billions of dollars. It was essential, we were told, that we save GM and Chrysler because if they went into bankruptcy it would be catastrophic. Sure enough though, both went into bankruptcy and civilization as we know it didn’t collapse. The government managed to screw plenty of people in the process, but civilization continued.
Politicians are known liars, as a whole. There are a few honest ones, but plenty of them have shown themselves to be less than trustworthy. Not only did they not do what they were supposed to with regard to TARP, but they just flat out blew the stimulus.
Unemployment, it was argued, would reach 8.5% without swift government action. We needed “shovel ready” projects to stimulate the economy right away. Unfortunately, we’re at 9.5% unemployment and the vast majority of the stimulus money is still sitting there unused. Of course, now we’re being told that it was a two year plan anyways so everything is going just fine. Then why was it so urgent to pass a $787 billion stimulus bill without anyone in Congress having actually read the bill? I mean, a couple of days couldn’t have hurt, could it?
Of course, we’re talking about the fabled transparency we were promised. I mean, things were supposed to be on the White House website for a week before the President signed it. So far, that seems to have gone out the window as well.
President Obama is hardly the first politician to promise things that never get delivered. He’s not even likely to being the last either unfortunately. And while it’s definitely a cliche, it’s very true: You just can’t trust a politician.
