Today marks the end of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, also known as TARP. It was where the Federal government dumped billions of dollars that they didn’t have into the banking system in a misguided effort to save banks they believed were too big to fail. The primary argument was that if these banks collapsed, then the whole economic system would collapse.
I admit I was beside myself with rage when they passed the bill in Congress. I seriously wished I could get a Death Note and just write their names down into it and have all of us start over. But there was nothing I could do as men and women, who presumed to know what was best for me, decided it was better to send this nation into deeper debt in order to take care of their pals.
So now that the program is over, here’s a quick rundown of what I’ve learned from the whole experience:
- No matter how serious the issue is, the Republicans and Democrats will always play partisan politics like it’s some kind of game. This was illustrated when Nancy Pelosi stood on the House floor and badmouthed Republicans for not passing this bill. I thanked God for her stupidity, because I felt that she had prevented its passage. But it turns out that the Republicans were just faking it in order to score political points.
- Barack Obama can thank his Presidency because of TARP. John McCain lost largely because he failed to rally the conservative base as much as George W. Bush had in the past. I remember Mark Levin, a moderately significant voice in the conservative movement, said that unless McCain picked a good Vice Presidential candidate, he wouldn’t vote for him. Then McCain picked Sarah Palin and the conservative base was largely on fire for him. Heck, I seriously considered voting for him (call it just getting caught up in Palin-fever, an affliction I have cured myself of). Then McCain voted for TARP and many conservatives remembered that he was a giant douchebag. So Barack Obama should be burning incense on the alter of Statism in praise of a fallen god.
- I learned that fear of the unknown is what really motivates many of the Congresspeople who rule over us all. This is because they literally didn’t know what would happen if TARP wasn’t passed, but that it would be bad. This morning some idiot by the name of Brian Neman on the Grandy Group stated that while you can’t prove a negative, unemployment would have been 30% or higher had TARP not passed. This is the same line of thinking that convinced politicians to vote for this. Fortunately, many conservative Americans realized that this is flawed logic and allowed the Republicans to be voted out. Progressives, on the other hand, continued to vote Democratic because they’re just stupid all around.
- There is no point in having a Constitution so long as there are politicians who seek power. And since politicians seem to enjoy seeking power, to a large degree, we should just scrap the whole thing and start over. It might do some good this time.
Apparently, these ‘loans’ made some return on their ‘investment’. Still, two years later we have higher unemployment, the market is looking like it is on the edge and about to fall again, and a bunch of idiots in Congress (both Republican and Democrat) who have no desire to scale back any spending that is destroying our nation. The day is coming, however, when our nation will have to declare bankruptcy and on that day I will pour some of my late grandfather’s wine and enjoy the resulting chaos. Only then will people like me, the average individual, have the power back from the political class.