It gets even more crazy. Go to Drudge Report right now at the top of the page. Tried to post it, but Free Republic is not that free. It will not let me post it? Perhaps it’s a joke?
Why is this crazy? Fully collateralized short term loans are a joke why exactly?
Want to know what’s really crazy?
With all the indignant uproar and claims on FR and by many clueless conservative “leaders” that TARP (and its smaller foreign equivalents) was “illegal,” a “bailout” of the banks and bankers, and how it was the taxpayers money “given” to the fat-cat bankers, and the bashing that Bernanke and Paulson have, and still receive on FR and elsewhere for their role in TARP - this was the only article posted on FR on the subject of TARP and its [not unexpected] success... and in 3 days it garnered only about 20 replies from less than 10 people.
Wanna bet how many posts and replies and associated hue and cry you would see on FR if the headlines would state that TARP was losing more money than “expected”?
Most people on FR apparently still don’t understand how close the civilized world’s financial system was to collapsing and how necessary TARP was to inject liquidity into temporarily illiquid financial system, deflating and frozen credit markets, and instill confidence in the worldwide financial / banking system to stop the runs on the banks and then, for a time, help sustain the liquidity of commercial paper repo market.
Bernanke, being a student of Great Depression and the mistakes that were made by the Fed and the Congress at the time, was uniquely in the right place at the right time.
Hank Paulson used his credibility and energy to convince Bush and clueless lawmakers of the necessity of the immediate action and, instead of being credited and given their due as heroes, they somehow became the most reviled people among the economically illiterate or politically obstinate (sadly, including many conservatives).