Occupied by Wall Street – The Latest TARP Taxpayer Screw-Job is Revealed
The Treasury-created market has benefited a few savvy investors, while saddling taxpayers with a loss. Three private funds, which the report didn’t name, have won almost half the shares available at auction, often netting either a profit on paper or on the resale, according to the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The Treasury, which has held 185 auctions to date, said it has raised about $3 billion on TARP investments that were originally valued at $3.8 billion, for a loss of $800 million at the auctions.
The Treasury “set up this market where investors could come in quickly and flip and profit,” said Christy Romero, TARP’s special inspector general, in an interview.
– From the Wall Street Journal article: Hedge Funds, Private Equity Win Big at TARP Auctions
One story that I’ve told several times on this site has to do with the day TARP passed. How I got into work extremely early and starting irately yelling about how TARP represented the end of America as we knew it. There weren’t many people on the trading floor at the time, but my boss was there and he told me to take a “walk around the block.” I politely declined, but continued to seethe at my desk.
It’s almost shocking to see the horrific transformation that has occurred in the subsequent six years. It’s so bad, that many people now take things that would’ve been considered unconscionable just a few years ago as part of the “new normal.” There will be a horrible price to pay for this perspective.
The latest scam unveiled by the Wall Street Journal is just the latest example of how and why all the income during the oligarch recovery has gone to, well, oligarchs.
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