I want my shares - Part II

In my last post I suggested that the government create a retail brokerage to issue securities to the taxpayers equal to their “investment” in the TARP. Good idea, bad implementation. I’m not sure what I was thinking, or drinking, because I generally believe that the less the government does the better off we are.

Enter the NASDAQ that thoughtfully launched the TARP index on January 5th. The index has an equal weighted representation of all public firms that have received TARP money and options trading against the index will begin on January 26th. I suppose that’s a start because you can at least place a bet on whether your money was truly invested or simply tossed down the throat of John Thain’s $35k commode.

Where this really gets interesting though is that several firms may offer Exchange Traded Funds (ETF) against the index. Hmmmm, interesting notion. It’s not often you get the opportunity to buy something you already own, now is it? How about, gee I dunno, the government picking one or all of these firms to act as their agent to distribute ETF shares to the taxpayers. The true sentiment of America would be reflected in what they do with them.

Not sure what you’d do? To quickly assess where you stand, take a second to consider potential ticker symbols and forget TARP, its just too easy. CNBC’s Mark Haines likes STNKY but I’m a 4 character or less kind of guy and like FAIL but that doesn’t scream buy me, does it?