The Tea Party Is Wrong

[caethan]

So, ostensibly, I should be behind the Tea Party movement. I have Republican leanings, I'm strongly conservative, anti-federalist, etc., etc. My general political leanings align with their claimed ideals. So why can't I support them?

It's one issue: TARPThe Tea Party have been systematically driving out TARP supporters from the Republican

Comments

[ferventsquirrel]

TARP may have been necessary to save the financial industry, but there are a number of legitimate reasons to dislike TARP that I think you haven't addressed.

1. The use of TARP funds for the auto-industry bailout. One can argue about whether that industry should or should not have been bailed out, but doing so had nothing to do with saving the financial system. Totally unacceptable.
2. The use of TARP money to rescue banks that didn't need to be rescued. I'm thinking of Wells Fargo in particular (sorry I couldn't find a more detailed link. The intertubes seem to have swallowed the original story). It's one thing to provide emergency financial relief to troubled banks, but quite another to demand banks take loans they don't want and then meddle in their affairs on the grounds that they're TARP beneficiaries. Not acceptable.
3. The more general philosophical question of rewarding bad behavior. On this point, I'm inclined to agree that the absence of a bailout would have been disastrous. But I also think there's merit to the argument that TARP will encourage financial institutions to make overly risky investments in the future and just set us up for a bigger credit crisis down the line. I don't know how to have TARP and prevent that from happening at the same time. Nor do I expect new government regulations will resolve this as people will still find a way to make high-risk investments that are potentially lucrative but, on balance, stupid. Any idea what the right approach is here? The government could pass laws or make pronouncements that they'll never do it again and so banks better manage their finances responsibly, but no one would ever believe them until they actually allow a crisis. Which brings us back to TARP. So what to do?