Friday, September 19, 2008

The new acronym

TARP: Troubled Asset Relief Program. A lot of US taxpayer money to buy bad mortgages. At what point does George Bush explain how he will raise the revenue needed to pay for it?

It gets worse. Paulson is going to have Fannie and Freddie along with the Treasury itself buy more mortgage-backed securities (and the Fed is buying more FM stuff too). And place any assets they can't buy into the TARP or some other toxic waste dump.

One other thing. Bush this morning gave Paulson another $50 billion --

I approve the use of funds from the Exchange Stabilization Fund to provide up to $50 billion as a guaranty facility for certain money market mutual funds

That is a Great Depression fund that is supposed to be used for exchange rate purposes. When Bill Clinton used it in 1995 to give loans to Mexico -- loans which at least did have an international financial stability purpose -- conservatives screamed in outrage.

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