TARP - An Unfortunate Acronym

Like most people, I first heard of the plan to spend $700B to bail out US financial institutions when it was a three-page memo. At the time, we all called it "The Bailout" because that's what we expected it to be - a massive cash infusion into the US financial system from the blood bank of the US Taxpayers (well, actually, the children of the current US taxpayers, due to the fact that we're already spending more than we're taking in without the bailout, but I digress.) But even after we managed to turn the three-page carte blanche into the kind of complex bureaucratic document that Washington specializes in, we still called it "The Bailout". Because that was the idea. The boat is full of water, and will sink, unless we bail it out so that is what we are going to do.

So what does a "bailout" mean? First, there is a vessel, a thing in a body of water that's in trouble. We "bailed out" Chrysler, and Lee Iacocca famously paid back the debt ahead of schedule and gave the American consumer the Dodge Aries (fail) and the Dodge Colt Vista (visionary). But I digress. The problem we have now is that we're really trying to bail out an entire system. There's a techie interview question that asks - if my boat is swamped and I bail out the boat so that it rises in the lake, what happens to the lake's waterline at the water's edge? And that's the problem we face now - are we bailing out entities (boats) or the system (the lake)? I won't beat the metaphor to death, but we could go on about how the boats are connected, how the lake is really a reservoir, and so on.

But what's bothering me more is the name that we have now chosen for this program: Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). A lot of editorial writers and bloggers are saying that it's no longer technically correct, since the government is considering plans that don't involve acquiring the "toxic" assets of the financial institutions. In fact, despite the fact that the three page memo grew to hundreds of pages, in action, the plan essentially resembles the second half of From Dusk Till Dawn, in which our trapped heroes spend their limited weaponry to kill the most immediate threats, and cut loose those from their own crew those who cannot be saved. Some of AIG's "safe" assets are morphing into toxic obligations? Quick! Get the holy water crossbow and shoot more money at them!

Which brings me to the acronym itself. A tarp is a cover. When I was a boy scout, the tarp was the open air meeting space in the wilderness, artfully suspended from nearby trees that provided shelter from rain, shade from sun, and space for all. This was when we camped in places whose "facilities" consisted of access via dirt road. In those places, a big tarp was a good thing. Under the tarp, you were still outside, but somewhat sheltered. I remember the secure feeling of being dry under a tarp with my troop as the rest of the world was soaked. In the morning when we woke and emerged groggy from our tents, the adult leaders were already awake, sipping coffee under the tarp.

But these days, I think my image of a tarp as a shield against the storm is not the right one. Today, if I were to think of a phrase using the word "tarp" I wouldn't think of "gather the troops under the tarp." Rather, I would think of "throw a tarp over this." And the "this" wouldn't just be some firewood I wanted to keep dry. These days, a tarp is thrown over the scene of an accident. To hide it from view. Until the experts are done with their investigation. Then they will tell you what happened and why, and when the tarp is removed, there will be little more than a stain left to show what really took place.

But hiding the scene of a crime is not the only thing a tarp is used for. These days, we almost never use the old-fashioned word "tarplaulin" which - despite its odd spelling - reminds us of where these things came from. Instead we have the word "tarp", in which we can simply switch the middle letters to create the word "trap". Now I don't want to get caught in a debate over subliminal meanings, but if you want to convince someone that you've filled a hole when in fact you haven't - and you've just thrown a "tarp" over the thing, then you have created a "trap", haven't you? Whoever trusts your tarp will fall into that deep, deep hole. That trap.

So, on the bright side, a tarp might be a shelter against storms known and unknown, a place where leaders gather the troops. On the negative side, a tarp might be a deception, even a potentially deadly one. But there is another occasion of "tarp" in my memory, and that is perhaps the worst of all. I am thinking of the blue tarps of New Orleans. I have known blue tarps (also known as "poly-tarps") for years. We have a big one in our earthquake kit (hey, I live in California...). But after Katrina hit New Orleans, a few contractors rushed in to put blue tarps over damaged homes. Because of the urgency and the bureaucracy involved, stapling blue tarps onto the tops of damaged homes cost as much as replacing the roofs would have cost. From the air, one could see thousands of blue tarps on New Orleans homes. The famous "blue tarps" are mostly gone now, but for many they symbolized our country's inability to see a looming threat and implement appropriate safeguards, then once the disaster had struck - our willingness to spend far too much money on temporary measures carried out by insiders. And yet, years later, the real job of rebuilding the city is still going on.

So I guess, on balance, TARP wasn't just a bad name because it was inaccurate. It was a bad name because it brings to mind our most sinister suspicions of the government's actions in the financial "bailout". So if it's not a "bailout" and it's not a "tarp" then what is it? I sure don't know.