I would have preferred a FDIC take-over of the banks or some other type of nationalization, but short of that, I support the bailout as a necessary evil.
I didn’t ‘like’ the bailout, but I felt it was a necessary evil. I felt that there were several market manipulations going on behind the scenes and part of why they occurred was that the SEC/Fed/Gov were collectively asleep at the wheel. What is nice about how it was structured is that most of the money is coming back to the government.. so it is almost net neutral if not net positive on the financial side.
Good grief, ucodegen, you sound like a wall street shill.
Ad Hominem attack…
The problem was and still is trillions in ASSETS. The total cost could range from 8 -24 trillion in bad banker BETS.
The problems are not ASSETS.. they are LIABILITIES.. opposite side of the balance sheet. Every loan out by a bank is countered by another loan that the bank took out to get the money. The bank makes money on the spread between what they loaned out at and what they borrowed at. If the mortgagee defaults, the bank is still on the hook for what they borrowed. CDS(s) were to insure the principal of the borrowings, but not all mortgages had CDS(s) backing the principal of the loan. By the way, where do you get the 8 to 24 trillion? Is this estimated total losses? mortgage principals involved? ref?
These bad banker bets are being absorbed in primarily 2 ways.
1) The Fed bought 1.2 trillion
2) The GSEs are buying up 100 of billions per quarter
Number 2 is the ongoing bank bailout because the private market almost completely dried up.
Actually #1 was also because the private market dried up. The Fed was trying to find all ways to increase liquidity (because we have made this a ‘credit’ based economy vs an ‘asset’ based). These actions are not ‘absorbing’ bad banker bets. Their primary action is to keep interest rates down during a down economy. The actions that were to ‘absorb’ the bets were where the Fed was to directly buy the assets off of the banks. So far, I have not seen this done. There was much argument as to whether they should be taken off at par or below par.
So really, Tarp being paid back is a nice sound bite but also meaningless.
You missed the point I was making, that TARP really didn’t cost the taxpayer that much and saved quite a bit. The media has overblown TARP and ignored just about everything else. That there still may be problems is not in dispute.
I don’t like the Fed operating as a quasi-independent body with close ties to the banking industry, but when I see how congress often acts, I can understand the need. As to the level of the Fed power and authority.. that is something that needs to be evaluated.
