Paulson is an imbecile. Yanking the TARPet out from under the banks when it was the last thing holding the banks up. Yanking the TARP put us right back to square one with lost confidence in banks and returned the problem of troubled assets. Even worse - this guy is supposedly a former GS genius, no wonder there was a mutiny at GS to get rid of him. Would you establish a long position and then turn around and announce something that would kill your position? ABSOLUTELY NOT. But this is exactly what was done with US tax dollars. Billions of $$$ were put in preferred stock in banks, then the TARP was announced to be to complicated, and revoked. The $billions that were placed in these banks as "investments" by the american people have already lost 25% in the best cases and 70% in the worst (citigroup). Pathetic. Our tax dollars would have been much better off used for TARP - even if 25% of the loans defaulted and homes sold at foreclosure we'd still be ahead of where our money is now. Does anyone really believe the TARP was revoked because it was "too complicated"? Hell no - it was revoked because all the $350 billion granted so far to the fed was already spent. Paulson was the same person lobbying for banks to get 40 - 1 leverage. So we put one of the main people in charge of causing the problem in charge of fixing it!?!??! And gave him a ton of money! It's like giving a crack addict a bag of rocks and telling him to clean his act up. I'm also not to fond of Paulson's instrumental part in destroying the specialist system at the NYSE. I've been screwed by specialist for a 1/4 point when making trades years ago - - no big deal compared to what is going on now. The specialists back then were required to be buyers of last resort and make markets - now its all computers and stocks keep plummeting plummeting plummeting. A computer doesn't know who or what C or GS is and that they can be propped at different levels they just keep selling. I'm a trader so volatility increase has benefited me - but this has not benefited your average investor.