TARP Is Going to Make Bernie Madoff Look Like a Piker

If the mess that is Hank Paulsen's TARP is ever unraveled it will go down in the annals of crime as the greatest theft in history. Nobody knows, least of all the banks, where the money went. Nobody cares, least of all the banks, less still the Federal Government, where it went.

It's a secret, you know (We don't want the terrorists to find out). We know, generally, which banks copped the biggest share of the pie (Citigroup and AIG got $90 billion between them).We know a hefty chunk of that money went to the bank's executives in the form of bonuses (and still more went into throwing lavish parties). We know that banks are using the money to buy up other banks (Because nothing helps Americans struggling to keep their businesses running than knowing that Bank of America used taxpayers money to buy a Chinese bank). We know the hedge fund millionaires conned by Madoff and a white middle-class suburban Cleveland school district wants some of the TARP money (Ya gotta have chutzpah).

What we don't know, and will never know, is whether a single penny of the TARP billions went to the intended goal of freeing up the credit markets for businesses and individuals. I could list the CEOs of every bank receiving money from TARP and feel confident that two-thirds are knowingly (and enthusiastically) defrauding the Federal Government through TARP. I am even more confident that not a single one of them will even be indicted for their crimes.

It is making me long for a revolution where we round up the bankers (and Hank Paulsen), line them up against a wall, and shoot the lot of them.

In a just nation, the last bonus for American bankers.