Revving up for the Feeding Frenzy

In a previous post, I showed an aquarium of piranha feeding as an analogy to the way the upcoming stimulus spending spree would be received by Washington lobbyists and contractors. Now dig this.

(T)he Treasury's TARP program has even managed to create a potentially illegal tax loophole that grants banks a tax-break windfall of as much as $140 billion. Lawmakers are furious - but possibly powerless, afraid that a full-scale assault on the tax change could cause already-done deals to unravel, which would cause investor confidence to do the same.

One could even argue that since this first bailout (the $700 billion TARP initiative) has fueled takeovers - and not lending - the government had no choice but to roll out the more-recent $800 billion stimulus plan, aimed at helping consumers and small businesses. It's a move that may spur lending and spending, but still adds more debt to the already-sagging federal government balance sheet.

Well that had to come as a surprise -- commercial entities outwitting the Federal government and using the money to make a profit. I'm sure once The One takes office and we have a president with no actual experience in running anything at all and no commercial experience plus a congress made up of similar types, we'll get the results we're looking for from loading a trillion dollars into a confetti cannon and blasting it all over the place.

Here, a wise, old Obama administration official oversees the expenditure of stimulus funds.