I'm shocked.

Anyhow, the subject line rewrites this headline from the LA Times:

TARP funds are unlikely to be fully repaid, program's watchdog says

Can anyone spot the problem?

Lack of agency. That is, the original headline -- "TARP funds are unlikely to be fully repaid" fails to make it clear who's not repaying whom. My subject line remedies what some -- the taxpayers, for example -- would consider a flaw.

Or, to ask the question in a more sophisticated way, who are the "strategic defaulters"? The LA Times asked that question:

Who is more likely to walk away from a house and a mortgage -- a person with super-prime credit scores or someone with lower scores?

The answer may surprise you -- especially if this was your narrative:

[OBAMA] In the past, if you found yourself in a situation like this, you could have sold your home and bought a smaller one with more affordable payments. Or you could have refinanced your home at a lower rate. But today, home values have fallen so sharply that even if you made a large down payment, the current value of your mortgage may still be higher than the current value of your house. So no bank will return your calls, and no sale will return your investment.

"You can't afford to leave and you can't afford to stay. So you cut back on luxuries. Then you cut back on necessities. You spend down your savings to keep up with your payments. Then you open the retirement fund. Then you use the credit cards. And when you've gone through everything you have, and done everything you can, you have no choice but to default on your loan. And so your home joins the nearly six million others in foreclosure or at risk of foreclosure across the country, including roughly 150,000 right here in Arizona.

Except that's not what is happening. At all.