When Hank Paulson scared Congress into passing the Troubled Asset Relief Plan (TARP) last fall, he said that it would be used to buy toxic waste from banks. That never happened. All we know is that $350 billion of our taxpayer money is gone and that most of it went to banks and a bit to the auto industry. What are they doing with our money? How is the government measuring the success of TARP? Is it helping? Until we get those answers, we should not allow more good money to be thrown after bad.
What we have now is a bunch of talk. Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) said "Without the first TARP, we may have a Dow at 4,000 right now and the economy in an absolutely free fall." Thanks Kent -- I'd like to see your proof for that claim. Why not Dow 400? Progress on finding out what happened to the money is coming from Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) who got Treasury to cough up contracts between the government and 10 financial institutions -- by threatening a subpoena.
Before the bell: Stocks ready to climb on hopes of continued low rates
Why do we have a weak dollar?
Holiday hiring slow for retailers
