David Stockman and his new book is critical of TARP, Henry Paulson, the Fed and "the most dangerous man in America," Ben Bernanke.

 David Stockman, former director of the OMB under President Reagan, former US Representative, and veteran financier is an insider's insider. Few people understand the ways in which both Washington DC and Wall Street work and intersect better than he does.

In his upcoming book, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America, Stockman lays out how we have devolved from a free market economy into a managed one that operates for the benefit of a privileged few. And when trouble arises, these few are bailed out at the expense of the public good.

By manipulating the price of money through sustained and historically low interest rates, Greenspan and Bernanke created an era of asset mis-pricing that inevitably would need to correct.  And when market forces attempted to do so in 2008, Paulson et al hoodwinked the world into believing the repercussions would be so calamitous for all that the institutions responsible for the bad actions that instigated the problem needed to be rescued -- in full -- at all costs. 

Of course, history shows that our markets and economy would have been better off had the system been allowed to correct. Most of the "too big to fail" institutions would have survived or been broken into smaller, more resilient, entities. For those that would have failed, smaller, more responsible banks would have stepped up to replace them - as happens as part of the natural course of a free market system  (All of the above came from PeakProsperity.com).

Editor's notes:  understand that the Fed's policy of cheap and new money,  is raping the retirement futures of this country.  If that money is in interest bearing accounts, the retirement investor is making next to nothing (often 2% or less). 

This Review blog has carried several stories over the years detailing the fact that TARP was used as cover to recharge the banking and big money investment entities to the tune of between 7 and 24 trillion dollars.  We have been told that the $700 billion set aside prevented the markets from crashing.  We remember the 700+ market crash in one 24 hour period in September of 2008.  We remember the panic.  We remember congress,  Bush,  McCain,  Obama, et all,  giving sole authority to deal with this "crisis" to a Democrat macro-economist named Henry Paulson.  What we don't remember is the fact that in the ensuing four months,  the markets lost 4,000 additional points in spite of the TARP "rescue."  

The Obama Administration uses the record setting pace of Wall Street to argue for its "recovery."  Never mind that the market is feeding from the Fed's practice of perpetual "quantitative easing,"Ben Bernanke printing 85 billion dollar bills per month.  The second he stops printing money,  the stock market will collapse.  

The inflation rate that is more commonly reported is a thing called the Core Inflation rate.   It does not include the rising costs of food and fuel.  Understand that the dollar has lost 26% of its value in the last 20 years.  The Fed intends to accelerate that rate of inflation.  

In a February,  2012, announcement,  the Fed decided to devalue the dollar to the tune of nearly 50% over the course of the next two decades.  This deliberate decision reduces the buying power of the dollar,  of course,  and further punishes the working Middle Class of this country,  whose pay check increases do not keep up with the devaluation of the dollar.  In 2033,  a 1993 dollar will be worth just 23 cents.