MEGAN MCARDLE: Devaluation, Chavez-Style. “One of the hallmarks of a regime in financial trouble is a complicated regime of ‘special’ exchange rates aimed at getting around the problems caused by financial mismanagement. The devaluation that Venezuela announced last week may have been a good idea, given the country’s recession, and the problems of declining oil revenues. But the way Chavez has gone about the thing is typically ham-fisted. By Sunday, he was threatening to deploy the military against . . . shopkeepers who raised prices in response to the devaluation, as if fiat were the main component of import prices.”

UPDATE: Uh oh: “The Treasury admits it’s losing more money from TARP than it’s gaining. The White House considers a bank tax to make up those losses.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Charlie Martin writes:

Oh bullshit. They’re already treating the TARP money as spent — when they *do* get some back they start planning how to spend it before it, my gawd, gets back to pay off deficit. What they *mean* is “here’s a way we can raise taxes and hope our High Dudgeon will make it palatable.”

Looters and moochers.