Good Morning on this gray and wet Monday. That is likely to be the report for most of this week. I guess we can't really complain since November has been, so far, so much better than October was.

I found this item on Huffington Post which provides links to the original Washington Post story. It should make everyone angry as hell. I am not talking just about the notion that much of the TARP money has probably been lost down some fiscal black hole. What I am pissed about is this:

"The Post profiles CIT's failure and bankruptcy despite $2.3 billion in investments from the federal government, money that US taxpayerswill likely never see (though Goldman Sachs, another CIT investor, stands to make $1 billion from the company's failure)." (my emphasis in red)

Question: Why should Goldman make $1 billion when the U.S. taxpayer will probably loose $2.3 billion? So they make another bad investment decision and come out with a profit?? The article doesn't name all 33 of the companies that are not going to pay the dividends required by the TARP loans. I wonder if any other source does.

By the way, The Washington Post story is even more nauseating. It indicates that 46 companies that had received TARP loans and were required to make dividend payments to the government failed to do so as of Sept. 30. I wonder if the remaining 13 are going to be able to pay the next installment or they have gone under and so aren't counted in the numbers of probable defaulters for the December payment. My bet is on the latter given that somewhere around 110 banks have failed this year.

If Dante were writing The Divine Comedy today, I wonder in which circle in hell he would place the drug company executives. This MSNBC story tells us that they are raising their prices at the 'fastest pace in years." They just had that nice bit of publicity--standing in the rose garden last summer getting praise from the President for their pledge to shave $8billion from drug costs over the next 10 years. Why doesn't the President call them out for the self-serving, self-centered bastards they are?

I was intrigued by this article just reading the title: Robbed Blind by a Pig Wearing Lipstick. He details three ways 'positive' statistics totally screw the average Joe. People used to urge us to 'look for the silver lining.' Now we have to look closely at the dark cloud we have been encouraged to ignore.

I need to correct my statement that 'around 110 banks have failed this year.' The latest count is 123 with the government's take over of three more last Friday night. Thanks to Americablog's Chris in Paris for the update.