It is very possible that without Tarp and other Stimulus in late 2008/early 2009, we would have entered a Great depression.
No one has mentioned the purging of bad debt that would have had to happen had the banksters not been bailed out. IMHO this is nothing more than a form of “kicking the can down the road”, as it is still bad debt that will never be paid, except now on our books instead of the banksters. I know of no healthy economy that has allowed exorbitant amounts of such garbage debt to simply decompose on the public balance sheet. This is why bankruptcy, re-organizations etc. are “necessary evils” – they allow entities to clear bad debt in some form or fashion. To “face up to the truth” and handle it in a most straight forward and transparent manner. It is never the easiest thing to do, and is often painful and costly in the short term. Sometimes excruciatingly so. But it also gives the greatest chance for a workable outcome and sustainable path going forward. I think we missed our chance on that.The big problem with determining the effectiveness of Tarp (or lack thereof) is that most of the money for it is untrackable.However, that only shows who the money went to and how much was paid back. It does not explain what was done with the money. See the difference? The way I was given to undestand it early on, a good portion of that Tarp money simply went into a bank’s ‘general fund’ and mixed with existing funds to such an extent there was no way to tell what the institution actually used the Tarp money for. There were no constraints upon an institution to keep a separate accounting of the Tarp money.
While I am sure this is an exaggeration, how do we know that the money did not go to ‘golden parachutes’ and the paybacks come from funds borrowed elsewhere?
Going to the park, it’s a beautiful day, but I may check in later.
The point I get at concerning the interest rates is not only that it was manufactured by the Federal Reserve at the time, but also that monetary policy was effective. By reducing rates, stimulus resulted. Right now we up against the lower 0 bound. Interest rates literally can not get any lower and people still aren’t borrowing. Monetary policy is now useless as a demand stimulant. Additional money out as growing monetary base isn’t transforming into comparable growth in M2. Most is hanging out in excess reserves waiting for someone to borrow it. Without willing, qualified borrowers who aren’t showing up even at 0 rates, monetary policy can’t do anything to help except not make things worse by tightening money.
. It was written and distributed in such a way that no one knows for sure where the dollars were spent and how they were otherwise applied. I had to agree with the theory when it came to helping out the financial institutions because the collapse of large banks would have had a detrimental effect on a lot of little people. That is something a lot of people who were (and still are) against helping the banks forget. They act as if Tarp were only helping the CEOs. Getting back to my first sentence, the only problem with Tarp was the lack of accountability. Tarp should have been made available to those who applied for it and provided a plan of how it was to be applied, followed by an accounting to show that the money was spent accordingly. The threat of penalties could have been put in place to ensure the money got spent as planned. Then we would be in far better position to say whether or not the money from Tarp helped or hindered the economic process.