Everything you own is worth less than you think it is.
Though the $700 Billion TARP, Troubled Asset Relief Program, is supposed to protect those 'asset' values it is doing exactly the opposite. It is an excess of finance that created this problem and nationalizing the banks under the argument of them being 'too big to fail' will only make it worse.
Consider this, with the passage of the first round of the Obama stimulus, we will have spent $17,000 per household in 'rescue' funding since February of last year - money that will need to be paid back.
One argument for the TARP was that these financial institutions are 'too big to fail'. Well, the sad fact is the solution was to break up failed institutions into smaller ones that we could afford to fail. All that we have done is guarantee the continuance of the financial problems through the supporting of the asset prices (including houses) of the D.C. crew - including every corporation that has a lobbyist in that city.
Large chunks of the economy depend on their viability through predictable, slowly rising, asset prices. Artificially supporting those prices does nothing but prolong and deepen the economy. Resetting expectations and prices is what an economic downturn is about.
Though I was initially heartened by Obama's selection of Lawrence Summers and crew from the Clinton administration their bi-partisan, business 'friendly' approach is not going to work.
Many on the right will cite the Clinton's housing ownership programs as being the source of the problem. The sad fact it is the Republicans who took those same financial criteria and opened them up to everyone - while at the same time de-stabilizing the employment situation of those at the lower end of the ownership ladder.
What Summers, and Geitner, et al, have done is merely jump on board that same corruption train that they began with honesty and effectiveness.
Though the folks in DC and their Oligarchic friends in corporate America believe they are too important to fail, they are not. Let us hope that the Citizens of America are big enough to fail them, before they take down America.
