Beyond War Is Peace

There is at least Dylan Ratigan on MSNBC telling some hard truths about our economy and financial system. In Zero Hedge he cites a Barry Ritholtz article describing a Bloomberg poll: 

Almost four out of five Americans surveyed in a Bloomberg National Poll this month say they have just a little or no confidence that the measure being championed by congressional Democrats will prevent or significantly soften a future crisis. More than three-quarters say they don't have much or any confidence the proposal will make their savings and financial assets more secure.

A plurality -- 47 percent -- says the bill will do more to protect the financial industry than consumers; 38 percent say consumers would benefit more.

"Banks and the government are making out, not the ordinary person," says Lenore Critzer, a 70-year-old retiree and poll participant who lives in Nelson, Ohio, about 40 miles from Cleveland. "We're going to have another crisis and worse."

While skeptical about the bill's benefits, Americans don't want a return to the days before the financial markets suffered their biggest turmoil since the Great Depression: A plurality of respondents says they have become more supportive in recent months of tougher regulations. By a three-to-one margin, Americans have grown more favorable to stronger regulation rather than less.

Ratigan goes on to describe what the bankers have accomplished as "corporate communism" and asserts that they will "use what I call the Big Tarp Lie to pander for the vote of Senator Scott Brown and others." He continues:

This lie must be beaten back by all of us like whack-a-mole every time it rears its ugly head.  Please help me by sending this information to any Politician, Media Figure, Banker, Neighbor or Robot that you find repeating it - they can take our money, but they don't own the truth.

Let's break it down:

1. TARP itself hasn't even made money.  AIG alone still owes us $75.6 billion.  However, they always add the caveat "Other than AIG..." when they say that the bailouts were "profitable".  But the AIG money was DIRECTLY PAID to many of these same banks that "paid back their TARP" at an outrageous 100 cents on the dollar!  Mind you, this was done by government officials that were the former employees and current shareholders of the very banks they were helping.  Let's make the banks like Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Societe Generale pay back the $105 billion of stolen taxpayer money before we let anyone say "TARP was paid back."
2. TARP is a tiny little part of a massive amount of taxpayer support.  TARP is actually less than 10% of your tax dollars that have been handed to the banks.  And now the banks "paid back" the tiny slice that is TARP with OUR money and you are supposed cheer them for savvy.  At this very moment, the taxpayer is still owed $2.02 Trillion dollars for the bailout by our Politicians and Banksters, and that number is growing every day.

Never mind the money that these same banks make getting endless 0% interest loans from the Federal Reserve (aka You) while either they lend it back to you at 14% or just lend it right to back the government and pocket the yield.  Never mind the multitude of benefits they get from being Too Big Too Fail.  But you're not supposed to pay attention to that; you're only supposed to notice how fast they paid back TARP!