How to Celebrate TARP’s One-Year Anniversary

It’s the one-year anniversary of TARP, and before you start thinking about how to celebrate its 10th anniversary, here are some ways ordinary taxpayers — and owners of the program — can mark this (less than) joyous occasion.

1. Go into Starbucks and take a few deep breaths. Yes, that’s the first way to cut your day-to-day expenses and still get your caffeine rush, crucial when you are doing the job 10 people did before your company fired them. Alternatively, you can find a place like the one near my office. Crazy cheap coffee tastes like dirt, but costs just slightly more than that.

2. Thank Your Boss for Your Job. Unless you lost your job today.

3. Give Your Banker Dandelions. After all, he’s a person, too, and it’s been a long year.

4. Write a Thank You Note to Hank. He’ll appreciate it. As long as you don’t call him a #$@!&* or a *&@#!+, even if you want to.

5. Hold a Halloween Party in a Foreclosed House. Just like the Wells guys. And dress up like Jimmy Cayne.

To the serious stuff, some interesting graphs on TARP: