  Looking Under the TARP Why They Call It Fall  So now it turns
out that the whole Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) was a
flop or more likely a scam. Remember Bush Treasury Secretary
Henry Paulson telling us last September that credit markets had
locked up, and then, after half of the $750 billion that he
extorted out of Congress was handed out to Wall Street firms,
new President Barack Obama justifying the spending of the second
half of the money because we needed to “get the banks lending
again”?  Well, now Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general
for TARP, is telling us that all that money, and another more
than $2 trillion in loans, accomplished nothing.  In an
interview with Lagan Sebert, published in Huffington Post,
Barofsky says, “We were told by Treasury that the purpose of the
TARP fund was to increase lending. But we haven’t increased
lending.”  Well yeah, that’s true. Just ask any ordinary working
stiff. My little bank, the Harleysville National Bank here in
eastern Pennsylvania, far from