I agree with the Judge.  I saw this earlier on FOX, and was already aware of the Wells Fargo fiasco and their hesitance to accept a bailout they didn't ask for.

Regardless of the Administration (this time Bush) it seemed to me at the time Paulsen didn't want one giant having bragging rights over the others.

That's why I'm still proud of Ford for being a truly American Company up until this point.

LYDSEXICS UNTIE!

I have come to believe that the original TARP program, and the way that it was pushed on the financial institutions was totally unnecessary and very destructful.  I think it changed what should have been a normal recession into a full blown stock market panic and a very severe recession and near depression.  The government created a panic!  If we don't get TARP then the whole financial system will blow up!  No wonder the stock market crashed.

Changing the mark-to-market/fair value accounting rules was the only thing that should have been done.  But then our government could not have undertaken the huge power grab that it then proceeded to implement.

"When will Barack Obama apologize to the American people for destroying their once great nation?" - MSM 2012

He doesn't come out and say it but it sounds like the Wells-Fargo case. It's long past time that one of these banks simply refuses and challenges the federal government's actions in court. If a court accepts the case and issues a likely injunction stopping the government from moving any further, simply doing that will slow the momentum of Obammy's socialist takeover. And yes, unfortunately President George W. Bush played a part in the beginning of this travesty. Was he rolled by Paulson, or did he understand what was going on and what it could lead to?

But what happens if the federal government ignores a court order? The federal government has the guns and the manpower. What happens if the US Supreme Court issues an order and Obammy ignores them? Will anyone care? Will Obammy send his ACORN thugs to protest at the Supreme Court justices' homes?

This is just insane.  The federal government of the United States is using our tax dollars to extort banks.  We all know that the MSM won't touch this, so I hope that Bill O'Reilly is all over this story. 

Jeff Poor and Napolitano...thank you for getting the word out about this...it has been out there...but nobody pays attention to it.

Sadly.

It should have been of utmost attention back then, it should be now...and stay that way until people realize what all is/has happened....and still is ongoing. 

Doubling down on stupid is not a particularly good idea. ~Andrew Breitbart

I believe the Bush administration pushed TARP through because there was an outcry for the government to "do something!!" and he was afraid he would be blamed for the meltdown if he did nothing. 

So they pushed it through and got blamed anyway.  Surprise, surprise!! 

Did Napolitano have a problem with President Obama virtually taking over GM, and granting Geithner carte blanche to  take over just about any other company that he deems to be in excessive trouble?

As for the media's coverage of this mess, it is a disgrace.  Just like they call all Obama's  policies and decisions "centrist" even  as he lurches farther and farther left, they allow him to say that GM must stand on its own, and not be a ward of the state, even as he proceeds to make it exactly that. 

They are all too busy gushing over his visit to Europe as if he were the Second Coming of Christ, and predicting that he will save the entire world economy!

They seriously need to get a grip!

<sound of duct tape ripping off roll>

I didn't think it was physically possible, but this both sucks and blows. -Bart Simpson

TARP was wrong from the beginning. Conservatives never should have fallen for it. The past couple of years are just too spooky on too many levels. Paulsen practically gave Bush and the rest of the country a heart attack. It was a socialist's dream. It couldn't have turned out better for the socialists in Congress if they planned every step themselves.
I think Napolitano is pretty sharp. If he is worried we should be worried. But now what do we do with this monstrosity and the new socialist president? Obama and Congress would have worked for a couple of years to get the power that was given to them freely without breaking a sweat or holding a debate, given to them by a Republican administration.
TSF Protests!

Kinda off topic a little bit, but is this true, and if so, what??

By MEGHAN CLYNE

Last updated: 2:59 am
March 30, 2009
Posted: 1:23 am
March 30, 2009

JUDGES should interpret the Constitution according to other nations' legal "norms." Sharia law could apply to disputes in US courts. The United States constitutes an "axis of disobedience" along with North Korea and Saddam-era Iraq.

Those are the views of the man on track to become one of the US government's top lawyers: Harold Koh.

President Obama has nominated Koh -- until last week the dean of Yale Law School -- to be the State Department's legal adviser. In that job, Koh would forge a wide range of international agreements on issues from trade to arms control, and help represent our country in such places as the United Nations and the International Court of Justice.

It's a job where you want a strong defender of America's sovereignty. But that's not Koh. He's a fan of "transnational legal process," arguing that the distinctions between US and international law should vanish.

What would this look like in a practical sense? Well, California voters have overruled their courts, which had imposed same-sex marriage on the state. Koh would like to see such matters go up the chain through federal courts -- which, in turn, should look to the rest of the world. If Canada, the European Human Rights Commission and the United Nations all say gay marriage should be legal -- well, then, it should be legal in California too, regardless of what the state's voters and elected representatives might say.

He even believes judges should use this "logic" to strike down the death penalty, which is clearly permitted in the US Constitution.

The primacy of international legal "norms" applies even to treaties we reject. For example, Koh believes that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child -- a problematic document that we haven't ratified -- should dictate the age at which individual US states can execute criminals. Got that? On issues ranging from affirmative action to the interrogation of terrorists, what the rest of the world says, goes.

Including, apparently, the world of radical imams. A New York lawyer, Steven Stein, says that, in addressing the Yale Club of Greenwich in 2007, Koh claimed that "in an appropriate case, he didn't see any reason why sharia law would not be applied to govern a case in the United States."

A spokeswoman for Koh said she couldn't confirm the incident, responding: "I had heard that some guy . . . had asked a question about sharia law, and that Dean Koh had said something about that while there are obvious differences among the many different legal systems, they also share some common legal concepts."

Score one for America's enemies and hostile international bureaucrats, zero for American democracy.

Koh has called America's focus on the War on Terror "obsessive." In 2004, he listed countries that flagrantly disregard international law -- "most prominently, North Korea, Iraq, and our own country, the United States of America," which he branded "the axis of disobedience."

He has also accused President George Bush of abusing international law to justify the invasion of Iraq, comparing his "advocacy of unfettered presidential power" to President Richard Nixon's. And that was the first Bush -- Koh was attacking the 1991 operation to liberate Kuwait, four days after fighting began in Operation Desert Storm.

Koh has also praised the Nicaraguan Sandinistas' use in the 1980s of the International Court of Justice to get Congress to stop funding the Contras. Imagine such international lawyering by rogue nations like Iran, Syria, North Korea and Venezuela today, and you can see the danger in Koh's theories.

Koh, a self-described "activist," would plainly promote his views aggressively once at State. He's not likely to feel limited by the letter of the law -- in 1994, he told The New Republic: "I'd rather have [former Supreme Court Justice Harry] Blackmun, who uses the wrong reasoning in Roe [v. Wade] to get the right results, and let other people figure out the right reasoning."

Worse, the State job might be a launching pad for a Supreme Court nomination. (He's on many liberals' short lists for the high court.) Since this job requires Senate confirmation, it's certainly a useful trial run.

What happens to Koh in the Senate will send an important signal. If he sails through to State, he's a far better bet to make it onto the Supreme Court. So Senate Republicans have a duty to expose and confront his radical views.

Even though he's up for a State Department job, Koh is a key test case in the "judicial wars." If he makes it through (which he will if he gets even a single GOP vote) the message to the Obama team will be: You can pick 'em as radical as you like.

Meghan Clyne is a DC-based writer.

Remember, only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you, Jesus Christ and the American Soldier

But, then again, he was a REAL president.

-Dave

I saw the program and he's right. What the government did is extortion. It's still continuing even now. Bush didn't stick the free market principles and started this ball of wax. Now it's out of control.

Sorry newsbusters but things have changed and the last days of Bush amounts to the first days of Obama. We have a huge task ahead of us. The republic is on the verge of being lost forever. The fascist have taken over. It's time to get our government back.

Alexander Hamilton: "We are a Republican government. Real liberty is
never found in the despotism or in the extremes of a Democracy."