Last Sunday, my son asked me what I thought about the WaPo article “Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner tackles five myths about TARP.” Here’s my reply.

There’s a lot of truth to the specifics, but his overall evaluation is way off because he looks at it by cherry-picking specific points, and also restricting his evaluation to the bank situation alone, and assuming that the proper goal was to save the big banks at low cost rather than to save the economy. So here are things the Administration and Geithner could have done if they had ended TARP and taken a different course.

The Democratic Party, while not yet in denial, is not running on a platform to address any of nation’s critical problems. They’re silent. And without knowing what, if anything, they plan to do about the monstrous issues facing the country, they’ve given the voters no reason to vote for them.

Charles Ferguson has made a documentary that must be seen if you want to understand why the same people who let the housing bubble and the 2008 financial meltdown happen are still in charge. But if you can’t go out and see Inside Job right away (it opened in New York and Los Angeles Friday), read Ferguson’s article, “Larry Summers and the Subversion of Economics,” summarizing his case in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Foreclosure fraud is not just a disaster for homeowners who may be losing their houses to banks that lack standing. It’s a gigantic land mine as well, one that can blow up the entire world’s economy and send us all into the second “V” of a double-dip recession

With Friday’s appointment of Elizabeth Warren as an “adviser” to have input in the shaping and launch of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Tuesday’s rapidly-arranged announcement that Larry Summers will be stepping down as head of the White House National Economic Council and this morning’s suggestion that Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel could be resigning before the end of October to pursue the Chicago mayor’s seat, progressives have more reason to be optimistic this week than they have had in quite some time. But since this President was elected through the hard work of progressives who since then have been largely shut out of his administration and even ridiculed by him and other administration figures, it makes sense to look a little more closely at these events and how they are likely to lead to further disappointments.

Timothy Geithner doesn’t like Elizabeth Warren, she is mean to him. Who, then, can we get to head up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau?

If there’s a social program left standing in the moonscape Obama’s Hamilton Project masters inflicted on America, Greenstone and the Project are there to ensure Obama nukes it.

If someone you care deeply about depends on Social Security – or will depend on Social Security – call them up today and tell them you love them. Because Team Obama has targeted Social Security…and your loved ones are just the MOTU’s version of collateral damage.

Deaths you can believe in, right?

China and America decline to acknowledge what everyone else knows: China suppresses the value of its currency to gain a trade advantage over America. This is costing America untold numbers of manufacturers and millions of jobs. The U.S. Treasury Department, which is required by the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 to name foreign currency manipulators in bi-annual reports, must label China in its April 15 account, then sanction China if it doesn’t begin balancing its currency.

While Obama is campaigning in Ohio today as a faux populist, a real populist would fire Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers.

This isn’t working, can’t we just be friends?