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It's time to call a spade a spade, if you pardon the term. It isn't clear that spreading the TARP, so to speak, last fall or now was ever necessary. It did allow Henry Paulsen, with the support of Democrat committee chairs like Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut) and Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts), to make whole (and beyond) their buddies in the investment banking, mortgage and commercial banking industries. We will never know where the money went or why it was really sent there. Someone on the inside will write one heck of a book someday (under an alias, of course) and we will be paying off this debt over decades.