Interesting article on TARP I saw yesterday. Toxic politics aside, some think it may have worked:

TARP Cost Less Than Expected

Interesting that TARP was the creation of both parties (or maybe just the brains at the Fed and both parties went along with) and everyone has to run for their lives.



“This is the best federal program of any real size to be despised by the public like this,” said Douglas J. Elliott, a former investment banker now associated with the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

“It was probably the only effective method available to us to keep from having a financial meltdown much worse than we actually had. Had that happened, unemployment would be substantially higher than it is now, the deficit would have gone up even more than it has,” Mr. Elliott added. “But it really cuts against the grain for a public that is so angry at banks to think that something that so plainly helped the banks could also be good for the public.”