Thank You For The Stimulating Stimulus

Well, we have now moved past the critical first 100 days of the new administration. It has certainly been full of exciting and stimulating activities. Many of these are either old beat to death stories ... how many "which dog will it be?" can anyone handle or how many dresses will Michelle wear today or in the next hour? or my favorite ... count the number of times the Obama team uses the words "hope and change".

One story which I am not sure gets enough press because its important not to make anyone feel bad. No its not the stories about Democrats being all up in arms over torture. Democrats and by Democrats I mean ... all politicians ... seemed shocked to learn that the CIA with the legal approval of the Attorney General's staff tortured captured enemy combatants to gather intelligence about potential attacks.

Now the fact that the Democratic leadership was clearly informed (documented in public interviews back then) from day one about the practice, and but of course that was back when nobody cared what the Democratic leadership cared about ... to now when the Democratic leadership has lots of free time to hold hearings about what happened with their approval and now disapproval.

The story that has me up in arms or just laughing or who cares.

When the banks and brokerage houses were about to close their doors and go out of business last fall ... the Government or you might say the Republican administration convinced the Democratic Congress to give an initial $350 Billion Dollars to these needy institutions. But what you say ... some of the major banks did not need the money, they were working out their problems without government intervention. Correct, but the politicians insisted that all major banks and brokerage firms needed to take the money. Reason? You would not want the bad banks and brokerage firms to feel bad by clearly identifying to the public who the biggest fools had been. See, it was important to the government officials that all banks and brokerage firms look bad. So, forced to do so ... the good banks took the money.

Now of course you have said to yourself ... see those Republicans are evil and of course you would be right because who could be so stupid to want to avoid the public from knowing who the good banks and who were the stupid banks?

Well, recently some of the banks who did not need the money decided they would like to pay the money they did not need back to the government. Good idea? Of course.

Well, the Democratic administration has told those banks that they can not pay the money back. Why? Well, the public would then be able to identify the bad banks from the good banks and might change from bad bank to good bank.

Both Democrats and Republicans agree that you can not do that because then the bad banks would be punished by the public for being bad. Don't worry the government is working hard to determine who is good and who is bad and they will tell you it wasn't them.

It so nice to see that it does not matter who is office.