patrick.net

The key crime of TARP:

So Paulson came up with a more convincing lie. On paper, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 was simple: Treasury would buy $700 billion of troubled mortgages from the banks and then modify them to help struggling homeowners. Section 109 of the act, in fact, specifically empowered the Treasury secretary to "facilitate loan modifications to prevent avoidable foreclosures." With that promise on the table, wary Democrats finally approved the bailout on October 3rd, 2008. "That provision," says Barofsky, "is what got the bill passed."

But within days of passage, the Fed and the Treasury unilaterally decided to abandon the planned purchase of toxic assets in favor of direct injections of billions in cash into companies like Goldman and Citigroup. Overnight, Section 109 was unceremoniously ditched, and what was pitched as a bailout of both banks and homeowners instantly became a bank-only operation – marking the first in a long series of moves in which bailout officials either casually ignored or openly defied their own promises with regard to TARP.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/secret-and-lies-of-the-bailout-20130104#ixzz2HFeG3YF8
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Isn't Rolling Stone the Zap comix of journalism?

Need to smoke lots of skunk and and douse a bottle of jack to appreciate the succulent paranoia.

I wouldn't completely dismiss the article solely because it appears in a pop-media rag. Matt Taibbi is a very good writer, and he does check his facts with this thing called reality (SHOCKING!). His book Griftopia was a very good read, and while it is certainly written in his own style (think Hunter S. Thompson), it also has real facts in it that back his assertions.