{ Updated 8:45 am CT} Before I get to TARP:
       Hey, Dennis "What's the VIX" Kneale, your market knowledge is limited at best. That is why you are on CNBC and have no career. Your economic vision based on hope and fortitude is laughable. Despite the pumped up image you obviously have of yourself, in the field of finance you would not qualify as a pimple on the ass of Tyler Durden  http://www.zerohedge.com/ . And Denny, Karl Denninger has publicly called you out. Take him up on his offer, PLEASE! http://market-ticker.org/archives/1175-To-Dennis-Kneale-Youre-An-Idiot.html
New york residents: WTF did y'all do to deserve your detestable state gub'mint?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FK_DB36ivy0
U.S. mortgage applications fall to 7-month low
(Excerpt: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/US-mortgage-applications-fall-rb-4099573864.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=8&asset=&ccode=)
[Kenneth Rosen, chairman of the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, said mortgage rates are just one factor driving potential borrowers.
"Rising unemployment, concerns about job security, potential buyers' inability to sell their existing homes and problems with appraisals coming in too low are all weighing on demand," he said.
"The government needs to take more aggressive action to bring mortgage rates back down to below 5 percent as that seems to be a key level for the market," he said.]
Mr Rosen, Whaddya thinkin' and or smokin'? Government can do NOTHING to keep rates down. EXCEPT: Crash the equities market. It's the only tried and true method. Ya might want to check with Goldman Sachs since they are the executive branch of the United States Treasury, about the feasibility of them and their TARP sucking friends putting a halt to their insane Program Trading so the market indices would come down to realistic levels which would lead to lower treasury yields and VOILA! Lower Mortgage rates. Ahh, yeah, I'm sure they would be sympathetic to your plight. So you see Mr Rosen, your problem isn't that there is not enough government intervention in the mortgage market. It is a problem of day to day market manipulation and fraud.

InTARPtitude:
      Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana) is the guest this week on Will Profits "I ain't votin' for TARP unless billions of dollars are given away in willy nilly tax breaks." Remember dear reader, TARP was designed, legislated, AND SHOVED DOWN OUR THROATS as a means for the U.S. Government to purchase bad assets from the banks, thus relieving the banks of suffering from their self inflicted losses and putting these assets squarely on the back of every man, woman, and child in our nation.
    Not one dollar of TARP has been used for this stated purpose as of today. The tax break provisions contained in TARP have. And remember kids, Diageo, the parent of "Captain Morgans Rum" IS A NON U.S. COMPANY 
(Bloomberg: excerpted)
     [June 26 (Bloomberg) -- In June 2008, U.S. Virgin Islands Governor John deJongh Jr. agreed to give London-based Diageo Plc billions of dollars in tax incentives to move its production of Captain Morgan rum from one U.S. island -- Puerto Rico -- to another, namely St. Croix.
DeJongh says he had no idea his deal would help make the world’s largest liquor distiller the most unlikely beneficiary of the emergency Troubled Asset Relief Program approved by Congress just four months later.
Today, as two 56-foot-high (17-meter-high) tanks for holding fermenting molasses will soon rise from the ground on the Caribbean island of St. Croix, the extent to which dozens of nonbank companies benefited from last October’s emergency financial rescue plan is just beginning to come to light.
The hurried legislation adopted by a Congress voting under the threat of sudden global economic collapse led to hidden tax breaks for firms in dozens of industries. They included builders of Nascar auto-racing tracks, restaurant chains such as Burger King Holdings Inc., movie and television producers -- and London’s Diageo. ]
[The $2.7 billion Diageo tax break in the October bailout bill gives the most financial aid to a non-U.S. company.
“I don’t think that the taxpayers knew they were investing in Captain Morgan when the Congress was considering the first bailout bill,” says Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based government watchdog group.]
(source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=amp5wXx35fkc )