TARP Blog

Brad here.

According to LeMons, this is the goal of the essay portion of the application: “Use this space to tell us why your team will be so much cooler than all those other lame-o’s who want the same spot on the grid.”

Working off of our TARP theme and everybody’s driving stories, I’ve come up with the following. Have at it. If you see a typo or an inaccuracy, tell me. If you think an example or turn of phrase is lame, say so. If you don’t like the whole thing, I can start over. But please fire away today, so we can send this in pronto.

Thanks! (ed.: essay text after the jump)

…………………………….

We’re an incompetent racing team, and that’s why you owe us a spot at the Houston Gator-O-Rama. Yep, owe us.

Let us explain. In normal times, incompetence limits your options. These are not normal times. Normally, companies that lend gazillions of dollars to homebuyers who couldn’t afford the mortgage on a lean-to would just go broke. Normally, credit-rating agencies that labeled high-risk mortgages as high-quality mortgages would go straight to Chapter 7 bankruptcy. But these days, companies like these don’t die; they get government bailouts. The bailouts even have a fancy acronym: TARP, for Toxic Assets Relief Program. If that sounds more like camping equipment for a Superfund site than a business failure of staggering proportions, it’s no accident. These days, incompetence is no bar to success. In fact, it’s a prerequisite.

So let’s just make this clear: Toxic Assets Racing Program—TARP, for short—is a chockablock with incompetent people. True stories:

1) One of our drivers got stranded halfway off a road because he was sure his Oldsmobile Toronado had rear-wheel drive. (It didn’t.)

2) For a couple of years, another driver mistakenly drove to Home Depot every time he got behind the wheel. (His 2-year-old daughter used to get in the car and say, “Home Depot, here we come!”)

3) Still another one can’t drive a stick. (And our TARP car is a standard.)

4) Yet another driver’s greatest claim to vehicular fame is destroying road construction signs in a Willys Wagon. (Road signs, it turns out, are no match for a 52 hp four-banger.)

5) And still another one once bought a VW with an “automatic stick shift.” (Enough said.)

To honor our fellow incompetents in the financial world, the TARP car will look like a NASCAR with logos of bailout companies tattooed on its skanky Toyota MR2 body. Our number? $700 billion, the amount of the federal bailout. When we lose, it won’t matter; we’re too big to fail. So we expect you to throw us a big party with champagne and caviar, hand us a bigger payout than you give the so-called winners, and award us pole position at the next race. What will we do in return? Look like we know what we’re doing and wear ties. That’s the wild world of TARP, and that theme is the only competent thing about our racing team.

Don’t hold that against us. We can give you many more reasons why you owe losers like us a spot in the race: 700 billion of them. And counting.

Logistics Author: Brad