1) yes, but was TARP worth the governments risk? Given the riskiness of the debt, perhaps the government should have taken a lot more profit. A dime less in profit given the massive risk profile is de-facto a subsidy for the bank.
2) The 'big whale' you didn't mention is the trillion dollars in crap mortgages that are sitting on the Fed's balance sheet at face value. That more than doubled the Fed's assets, and those assets were way overvalued ... basically making the USD backed by crap. Which is a 'cost' to anyone using USD, esp. those issuing debt in USD, like the Government, i.e. taxpayer.
So while it's fine and good some of the bailouts were above board, there's too much of it that wasn't.
The government should have eaten all those banks, turfed the execs, and the sold them later for a massive profit a few years later basically wiping out most shareholder value and taking the profit into public coffers. That would actually be closer to capitalism than the bailout program.
> The government should have eaten all those banks, turfed the execs, and the sold them later for a massive profit a few years later basically wiping out most shareholder value and taking the profit into public coffers. That would actually be closer to capitalism than the bailout program.
The closest thing to capitalism that would have also massively benefited people - not major corporations - would be to let capitalism do its thing, aka punish those who overleveraged via market-based mechanisms.... like bankruptcy and liquidation. Those who didn't do stupid shit would benefit from the flood of assets.
We controlled variance - how well we did this is arguable - at a massive cost. Maybe it was worth it, but let's not act like there wasn't a huge cost to bear.
2) The 'big whale' you didn't mention is the trillion dollars in crap mortgages that are sitting on the Fed's balance sheet at face value. That more than doubled the Fed's assets, and those assets were way overvalued ... basically making the USD backed by crap. Which is a 'cost' to anyone using USD, esp. those issuing debt in USD, like the Government, i.e. taxpayer.
So while it's fine and good some of the bailouts were above board, there's too much of it that wasn't.
The government should have eaten all those banks, turfed the execs, and the sold them later for a massive profit a few years later basically wiping out most shareholder value and taking the profit into public coffers. That would actually be closer to capitalism than the bailout program.