Admit it: TARP worked

[Rhyfelwyr]

ever heard of self-loathing? Take Amsterdam, it may be in Dutchland but it's really a jewish city at heart, always have been, it's also the last city where you want to be jewish after maybe Brussels

Heh, I heard Ajax are proud of their Jewish heritage and style themselves as antifascists, kind of funny since now most people that call themselves antifascists and hate Israel openly protest with Muslims that do Nazi salutes, funny how things come round like that.

[Xiahou]

Define "worked".
It certainly succeeded in ushering in a new era of crony capitalism. It was great for lobbyists.
Was the Troubled Asset Relief Program successful at buying up troubled assets? No, not at all- that was left for the Federal Reserve to do.
Did it succeed in stimulating more lending? Nope.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Aren't they defining "worked" as "only cost the taxpayer a little bit and prevented economic collapse"? Regardless of lobbyist's and lending etc...

[Xiahou]

Aren't they defining "worked" as "only cost the taxpayer a little bit and prevented economic collapse"?

Did it though? Again, TARP didn't accomplish any of it's stated aims. The Fed injecting over a trillion dollars into the economy (and you know, actually providing troubled asset relief) had more effect than TARP. I guess "a little bit" is subjective too. TARP funds were poured into AIG and GM- we'll never recoup all the billions spent on those.

[Vladimir]

Too big to fail is an oxymoron. If a private organization grows so large and powerful that we cannot do without it, break it up.

I don't care if TARP worked; I don't think it should ever be needed.

[gaelic cowboy]

Too big to fail is an oxymoron.

Take it from me "Too Big to Fail" is old hat round here our banks were so large they sank our state basically. The Banksters must now be smashed there temples destroyed we should keep cattle in there branch offices.

[Vladimir]

Take it from me "Too Big to Fail" is old hat round here our banks were so large they sank our state basically. The Banksters must now be smashed there temples destroyed we should keep cattle in there branch offices.

The same laws used to breakup monopolies should be used against these organizations. I'm surprised that so few people argued for it.

[Ironside]

Too big to fail is an oxymoron. If a private organization grows so large and powerful that we cannot do without it, break it up.

I don't care if TARP worked; I don't think it should ever be needed.

Too big to fail is about a chain reaction crippling the banking system, not individual banks. Compare to that the top 10 oil companies went simultainously bankrupt. It would probably take a year or two for the company cannibalism to be done, thus crashing production during this time.

What you did lack was a goverment with the guts to go. "You blew it (and they really did, since they bypassed laws inserted to prevent this). So now we own your companies. Bye." You can then sell off the banks after the market has stabilized itself.

Free-markets don't work properly in the oligopolic markets that form in long time, money investive markets, in particular when it's quite essential that it functions properly.

[HoreTore]

the company cannibalism

Hah! Consider that term stolen!

[Vladimir]

Too big to fail is about a chain reaction crippling the banking system, not individual banks. Compare to that the top 10 oil companies went simultainously bankrupt. It would probably take a year or two for the company cannibalism to be done, thus crashing production during this time.

What you did lack was a goverment with the guts to go. "You blew it (and they really did, since they bypassed laws inserted to prevent this). So now we own your companies. Bye." You can then sell off the banks after the market has stabilized itself.

Free-markets don't work properly in the oligopolic markets that form in long time, money investive markets, in particular when it's quite essential that it functions properly.

Nope. The term was applied to individual institutions (e.g. General Motors), not to a system as a whole. That's kinda silly. About as silly as exploiting a recession to forcibly take over a business. If hostile takeovers are evil in the business world, how much worse is it if the government itself is the robber baron?

[Fragony]

Heh, I heard Ajax are proud of their Jewish heritage and style themselves as antifascists, kind of funny since now most people that call themselves antifascists and hate Israel openly protest with Muslims that do Nazi salutes, funny how things come round like that.

The antifacists don't get me started on them they are the most intolerant and violent lot you will ever see, anything that doesn't please them is a target, the extreme left is sickingly dangerous. Rediculously violent and uncompromising, activists my

[Hosakawa Tito]

The big promise of TARP was supposed to keep the unemployment under 8%, epic failure there. Taxpayers are going to lose at least $10 billion on GM, not counting the loans GM still owes, cash for clunkers and the Chevy Volt subsidies.
The remaining taxpayer shares would have to jump from $33/share to $51/share just to break even on the loan, not gonna happen.

The Frank-Dodd financial reform bill codifies into law future bailouts. It creates a permanent new bailout authority that undermines our bankruptcy system and rule of law. Too big to fail is alive and well. This administration will trumpet how well Bailout Nation "worked" to justify future bailouts of other firms.

The chief economic case against the bailout was not that huge infusions of taxpayer funds and special exemptions from bankruptcy rules could not make G.M. and Chrysler profitable. Of course they could. Instead, the heart of the case against the bailout is that it saps the life-blood of entrepreneurial capitalism. The bailout reinforces the debilitating precedent of protecting firms deemed “too big to fail.” Capital and other resources are thus kept glued by politics to familiar lines of production, thus impeding entrepreneurial initiative that would have otherwise redeployed these resources into newer, more-dynamic, and more productive industries. The “success” of the bailout is all too easy to engineer and to see. The cost of the bailout—the industries, the jobs, and the outputs that are never created—is impossible to see, but nevertheless real. George Mason University economist Don Boudreaux

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Interesting. But kind of uncomfortably theoretical or "impossible to see" as he puts it.

[Banquo's Ghost]

Can we drop the endlessly amusing Socialism=Nazism=Whatever-I'm-Not debate for once and address Lemur's original post and the implications of TARP.

Thank you kindly.



Has anyone seen a thoughtful analysis of what would have happened if banks had been allowed to fail? Frankly, offloading all the costs of the bail-out onto taxpayers for the next several decades seems to have done wonders for those with banking interests, and very little for ordinary people. The economists who regularly offer the received wisdom that everything would have gone to Hell without the bail-out are, in the main, dependent on that very ecosystem.

[Fragony]

Wasn't my intention to do so, thought I made that clear. TARP and libertarism is a conflict of ideas on government, don't think it was all that off-topic, didn't want to derail sorry if I did

[Hosakawa Tito]

If there has been any such analysis, BG, I have not read it. However, one of the primary causes, Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae programs still exist and need to be wound down and abolished. Real estate is still a huge problem, and banks are still weak due to bad loans on their balance sheets according to this article: What's Really Behind Bernake's Easing?