Barofsky on TARP

"Essentially, TARP successfully stabilized markets and helped prevent another Great Depression, but it failed horrifically in meeting its equally important Main Street goals—including preserving home–ownership—and institutionalized Too Big to Fail and the moral hazard that accompanies it."

Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for TARP from 2008 until early 2011 and now a New York University law professor.

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The Fed's Secret Loans

Secret loans from the Fed to Wall Street totaled $1.2 trillion at the height of the 2008 panic.

That’s the conclusion of Bloomberg after analyzing 29,346 pages of documents released by the Fed only because Bloomberg went all the way to the US Supreme Court to obtain them.

The top 10 recipients alone account for 56% of the total. The $669 billion these 10 borrowed is, um, rather larger than the “official bailout figure” of $160 billion represented by the TARP program.

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Barry Ritholtz writes:

Imagine if the government and the Federal Reserve were run not by knaves and fools and Wall Street sycophants, but instead, were run honestly for the benefit of the taxpaying voter. Imagine the goal was saving the banking system (not the banks), and the financial rescue was for the benefit of the taxpayers, not the bondholders. Naive thoughts, I totally understand, but hear me out.

A person who truly understood what had happened and why would have considered the following actions. Note these are not ideas come about with the benefit of hindsight, but what a small band of insightful people were saying at the time.

An honest broker of the situation would have:

1. Fire the senior management of the banks (see this)

2. Banned all lobbying activity as a condition of any aid (see this)

3. Forced a Swedish style prepackaged bankruptcy (see this and this)

Instead, we bailed out the bondholders and management, choking off hope for a robust recovery. We are in fact slowly turning Japanese, awaiting the next recession (and the next and the next).

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TARP: One Year Later

Taxpayers stand to lose between $100 billion and $200 billion on TARP -- Treasury's $700 billion financial market bailout.

While that's nothing to sneeze at, many experts say that the Troubled Asset Relief Program helped rescue the economy from a second Great Depression.

But there are others who argue that the billions of dollars that taxpayers shelled out simply delayed an inevitable epic collapse of the financial sector.

A year ago, when the financial markets were in turmoil, the Bush administration and supporters in Congress said TARP would be used to buy banks' troubled assets, and would be an investment -- it could even turn a profit.

But TARP, which celebrates its first birthday on Oct. 3, has been used for many programs it was not initially intended for, like saving AIG, automakers and helping struggling homeowners.

read the CNN article

TARP: One Year Later

TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, is a year old now. On Sept. 19, 2008, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced the need for a $700 billion program to purchase toxic assets held by banks to prevent a financial meltdown, and after some modification Congress rapidly approved TARP on Oct. 3. Looking back after a year, was TARP necessary?

Did it work?

The answers are No, and No...

Instead of buying up toxic assets, the TARP money was used to partially nationalize the banking industry. It was also used for a federal takeover of AIG (after it was initially rescued by the Fed) and the bailout of Chrysler and General Motors...

Ultimately, what TARP did was provide funds for the government to take an ownership interest in private firms. Nationalizing our financial and industrial firms is not in the public interest. The federal government now owns 80 percent of AIG and 61 percent of GM. TARP was not necessary. It didn’t work. And what it actually did was undesirable.

read the entire essay

Big Banks: TARP and Bonuses

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