T.A.R.P.
ARRA, America Recovery and Reinvestment Act
Troubled Asset Relief Program
Did you read that? Banks that got in trouble for overspending, the government bailed them out at taxpayers expense. That is what the government wants you to believe.
What really happened was the government (FED) lowered the prime rate so far that the banks went on a spending spree that was out of control where they gave loans to practically anyone that asked for one, including South America. When the economy crashed, as it would, the banks were left with billions in bad loans.
October 2008: Lehman Brothers, AIG, Fanny Mae, Freddie Mac failed. So The Federal reserve started something they called Quantitative Easing. They started buying bonds and inject cash into the system in attempt to save us.. At the same time, October 8 of 2008 Bush and congress passed TARP - - - and the economy continued to crash.
The official word is they SAVED:
The Auto Industry
helped prevent the collapse of the American auto industry, saving more than a million American jobs.
e.g. They gave GM a hundred million which they like to say is a shining example of success saying how they paid it all back, but they didn't. They just shuffled some numbers around and the tax payer got stuck with the bill.
TARP [allegedly] helped restart the secondary credit markets which are essential to keeping credit flowing to households and businesses.
A credit crisis the government caused.
The Federal Reserve and Treasury [allegedly] took action to stabilize AIG because its failure during the financial crisis would have had a devastating impact on our financial system and the economy.
Big scandal with AIG executives taking 100 million dollar bonuses while the company was failing.
TARP [allegedly] helped stabilize America's banking system during the financial crisis but in reality bailed them out of making too many risky loans.
The government required banks to loosen their credit standards resulting in thousands of loans going to default. This is wrong, Alan Greenspan loosened the credit and banks went crazy making loans.
TARP [allegedly] helped prevent avoidable foreclosures and keeps families in their homes.
After people bought homes they could not afford.
Treasury issued standards governing executive compensation at financial institutions that received assistance under TARP. These standards are implemented and are overseen by the Office of the Special Master.
So now the taxpayer has to bail out the lending institutions.
Although Congress initially authorized $700 billion for TARP in October 2008, that authority was reduced to $475 billion by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act). Of that, the following amounts were committed through TARP's five program areas:
Approximately $250 billion was committed in programs to stabilize banking institutions ($5 billion of which was ultimately canceled).
Approximately $27 billion was committed through programs to restart credit markets.
Approximately $82 billion was committed to stabilize the U.S. auto industry ($2 billion of which was ultimately canceled).
Approximately $70 billion was committed to stabilize American International Group (AIG) ($2 billion of which was ultimately canceled).
Approximately $46 billion was committed for programs to help struggling families avoid foreclosure, with these expenditures being made over time.
The authority to make new financial commitments under TARP ended on October 3, 2010. As of October 31, 2016, cumulative collections under TARP, together with Treasury's additional proceeds from the sale of non-TARP shares of AIG, exceed total disbursements by more than $7.9 billion. Treasury is now winding down its remaining TARP investments and is also continuing to implement TARP initiatives to help struggling homeowners avoid foreclosure.
October 3, 2010. As of October 31, 2016, cumulative collections under TARP, together with Treasury's additional proceeds from the sale of non-TARP shares of AIG, exceed total disbursements by more than $7.9 billion. Treasury is now winding down its remaining TARP investments and is also continuing to implement TARP initiatives to help struggling homeowners avoid foreclosure.
787 Billion stolen from the American public
[File appended here]
Nothing like theft in plane sight
01-01-09
missing this file, (Hacked?) it had to be rebuilt
T.A.R.P. Troubled Asset Relief Program
Myths
The stimulus didn't create jobs. It was one more way to funnel money into the pockets of politicians and their friends in big business.
A year after Obama signed the bill, the percentage of the public that believed it had created jobs was lower than the percentage that believed Elvis was alive. But at its peak, (we are told) the Recovery Act directly employed more than 700,000 Americans on construction projects, research grants and other contracts. That number doesn't include the jobs saved or created through its unemployment benefits, food stamps and other aid to struggling families likely to spend it; its fiscal relief for cash-strapped state governments; or its tax cuts for more than 95 percent of workers. Top economic forecasters estimate that the stimulus produced about 2.5 million jobs and added between 2.1 percent and 3.8 percent to our gross domestic product.
The stimulus didn't keep unemployment below 8 percent, as the Obama team predicted in an ill-advised report designed to help pass the bill. Unemployment soared past 8 percent before the stimulus even kicked into gear. It later became clear that the economy was free-falling much faster than experts realized at the time; the initial GDP estimate for the fourth quarter of 2008 was a recession-level negative 4 percent, later revised to a depression-level negative 8.9 percent.
But the bill helped stop that free fall. Job losses peaked the month before it passed. The jobs numbers that spring, while grim, marked the biggest quarterly improvement in almost 30 years. The Recovery Act launched a weak recovery, but even a weak recovery beats a depression.
2. The stimulus was full of waste, pork and fraud.
Most of the Recovery Act consisted of straightforward aid to states and to the vulnerable, infrastructure spending, and tax cuts. Critics may call it “porkulus,” but the stimulus was also the first modern spending bill with no official legislative earmarks, the usual definition of “pork.” And after experts warned that 5 to 7 percent of the money could be lost to fraud, investigators documented only $7.2 million in losses through 2011, about 0.001 percent.
Of course, waste is in the eye of the beholder. But it's telling that most Republican examples of stimulus boondoggles were either removed from the bill (sod on the Mall, smoking cessation, mob museums, levitating trains to Disneyland), were never in the package. The new Department of Homeland Security headquarters is not “government furniture”.
Yes, there was Solyndra, but its $535 million default represented only about 1 percent of the Recovery Act's clean-energy loan portfolio, and independent reviewers have found that the overall portfolio is in fine shape. And Republican investigators have found no evidence that cronyism drove the Solyndra loan. <sic>
I'm having a little trouble with the time line here. Solyndra, was an Obama deal.DEC 25, 2011 Obama got them 100's of millions of government loans and they supported Obama's candidacy with millions in return. They went bankrupt and Obama and the head of Solyndra got away with millions. I don't think they ever were meant to be a viable company. This was a scam from the start...
You can read a dozen versions on how this bill worked or didn't work but without a doubt, its purpose to make politicians, their supporters [banks], and lawyers rich was fulfilled.
Congressional Legislation is passed for one or two reasons:
1)Money
2)Power
The fact is, TARP did nothing to help with the recession which deepened for several years. The worst part of the crisis happened after TARP was passed! The stock market fell 40%, financial companies stock fell 80%.
Brian S Wesbury
The government did not save us... An interesting fact is the free market does not have a press agent- - - - but the government does, the federal reserve does. e.g. Timothy Guitner, head of NY securities, wrote a book about the crisis (one of about 2000 books about the crisis) and according to it, "HE" saved us.
Market to market accounting was put into place Nov 2007 since being out of place, not enforced, since 1938. Market to market accounting took lots of banks out. If fact, it was such a bad law the FEC told Franklin Delnor Roosevelt that he should git rid of the law, and he did. It didn't come back until 2007.
Right at the very worst of the depression March 9, 2009 congressmen Barny Frank said we don't think this accounting is right. They changed the accounting rule and the rule was actually changed on April 2, and from that time on, the economy has grown.
What is market to market accounting? If you owned a $500,000 home in Galveston (TX) and had a $300,000 mortgage on it and a hurricane was coming. The Banker comes down and says we don't want to lose this money, can you pay off your loan? Well, of course you can't so with the hurricane coming the banks want to cut their losses so they sell your house to the guy on the street for $20,000. That is market to market accounting.