Scott S. Powell and Ron Laurent, in "Obama's Policies Risk Another Depression" for The Detroit News, ask:
Light at the end of the tunnel or an oncoming train wreck?
In the panic following the insolvency of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Lehman Brothers in September 2008, the American taxpayer was stampeded into bailing out AIG and Wall Street. We were told that $700 billion was needed to establish the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) because the country faced nothing less than a collapse of its financial system.
Inexplicably after Congress passed it -- almost like a bait and switch -- TARP was directed at banks rather than troubled assets. A little more than a year later, TARP Inspector Neil Barofsky reports that AIG's $1.5 trillion in credit fault swaps did not, after all, pose systemic risk. So if we were misled about the TARP bailout, it seems appropriate to question other aspects of government intervention since unemployment, foreclosures and bank failures have risen. ...
Scott S. Powell is managing director of AlphaQuest LLC and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. Ron Laurent is the managing partner and chief investment strategist of Veritas Partners LLC.
There's much more at the link.
There's much more at the link.
