How TARP Staved Off Disaster

October 14, 2010

Did the Troubled Assets Relief Program save the world? I think I can make a good case that this much-reviled government “bailout” did just that. Two years ago the banking system, and the world economy, stood on the brink of disaster. Nobody trusted that they knew the value of anything, rendering everyone effectively broke. It was a bad situation for all involved, but an impossible situation for banks, which responded …

Restoring Confidence In Europe’s Banks

June 25, 2010

The financial crisis that gripped the world in late 2008 was, most of all, a crisis of confidence. What we knew about the condition of America’s biggest financial institutions was bad enough, but what we didn’t know was terrifying. This is why the “stress tests” that financial regulators publicly performed on 19 of the country’s largest financial firms last year were so helpful. In some cases the news was good, …

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The TARP Shuffle

May 21, 2010

A few weeks ago, General Motors and the U.S. Treasury Department took the dance floor together for a turn at the “TARP money shuffle.” With much fanfare, the automaker’s chief executive officer Ed Whitacre announced that his company had fully repaid the bailout loans it received from the federal government. Five years ahead of schedule, no less. It was great news for GM, which has been struggling to compete with …

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Another Misdirected, Unproductive Subsidy

April 21, 2010

My parents did not own a house when I was growing up, but we were never homeless. Maybe that is why I don’t see the foreclosures sweeping America’s housing market as a humanitarian crisis, the way the Obama administration does. Memo to the White House: People can raise families in rented housing without hurting the children or the country. Last month the administration announced a new set of efforts to …

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Loose Change

December 8, 2009

You know that good feeling you get when you put on your warm jacket for the first time in the season, reach into the pocket and find a $20 bill you didn’t know you had? President Obama knows that feeling. Just when he was under pressure to do something — mainly, to spend money — to reduce unemployment, his administration reached into the pocket known as TARP and pulled out …

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