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So, what's the government doing about the economy?  The Fed has set interest rates at near 0% for more than a year and a half.  The economy is not taking off.  According to a recent article from financial writer Jim Willie, who has a PhD in Statistics, "Never in US history has a recession struck after several extended months of emergency ultra-low interest rates. This will be the first such occurrence. The policy response from the USFed must therefore be limited. They cannot reduce the official interest rate, unless below 0% (which did happen briefly in Japan). The nation stands on the doorstep of hyper-inflation.  The only available tool within the USFed tool bag is Printing Pre$$ activity, pure monetization of both USTreasurys and USAgency Mortgage Bonds."  (For the complete Willie article click here.)   

excerpt:  Democrats, watch out. The Republican Party and especially its Tea Party wing have just acquired a new weapon of mass destruction - and it has nothing to do with any of Congressman Wiener's rogue body parts.  If they deploy this weapon effectively in the next election cycle - a big if - then they have the biggest opportunity to move the country rightward since Ronald Reagan took the oath of office back in 1981. The Tea Party WMD stockpile is currently stored in book form:  Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon. By Gretchen Morgenson, one of America's best business journalists who is currently at The New York Times, and noted financial analyst Joshua Rosner, Reckless Endangerment gives the best available account of how the growing chaos in the mortgage and personal finance markets and the rampant bundling of dubious loans into exotically toxic securities plunged the world, and millions of American families, into the gravest financial crisis since World War Two. It is gripping reading as well, and its explanations are clear enough that readers without any background in finance will have no trouble following the plot.  The villains?  An unholy alliance between Wall Street, the Democratic establishment, community organizing groups like ACORN and La Raza, and politicians like Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi and Henry Cisneros.  (Frank got a cushy job for a lover, Pelosi got a job and layoff protection for a son, Cisneros apparently got a license to mint money bilking Mexican-Americans of their life savings in cheesy housing developments.)

Neil M. Barofsky was the special inspector general for the TARP program form 2008 until today, March 30th, 2011.  In this article he explains why TARP failed, even identifying the specific areas where the promises to Congress were outrageously circumvented by Federal Treasury Department.  Incredible indictment of Treasury, and how the big banks looted the taxpayers.  The banks foreclosure on the American Dream had the US Treasury Department serving taxpayers up on a silver platter.