The New York Times reports this morning ("TARP Bailout to Cost Less Than Once Anticipated") that the true cost of TARP will be less than $50 billion. I find this type of reporting to be incredibly misleading and deceitful. Focusing solely on TARP and ignoring the other more costly portions of the government bailout of our biggest banks and corporations ignores the true cost of the government's (both the Bush and Obama administrations, the Fed and Congress) inept response to this crisis. One of the reasons that TARP did not cost more was because of the government's other more costly bailout policies, and to ignore them is to dramatically understate the true cost of the bailout.
By claiming a narrow TARP success, the Times attempts to invalidate citizen anger at the bailout by making it appear that the electorate is somehow misinformed about its costs or is just plain stupid. Nothing could be further from the truth. Claiming that TARP was successful, but ignoring the much larger and more relevant costs of other areas of the government bailout is like claiming the voyage of the Titanic was successful because many of the lifeboats were recovered. It is important to remember that the ship sunk.
Here are my estimates of some of the total costs to American consumers and taxpayers of the entire government bailout. Many of these costs could have been absorbed by creditors and lenders to these highly leveraged large banks and financial institutions without involving taxpayer funds, but both administrations instead chose to stick it to the electorate rather than risk alienating their biggest corporate and wealthy campaign donors.
Estimated Total Costs of Bailout
This is more than an entire year's economic output for the entire country. It is as if we Americans worked an entire year for free to pay for our government's inappropriate response to this crisis.
I am not saying that government caused the crisis by itself. I do believe that Wall Street and the big banks are mostly to blame. But government does have to accept responsibility for its inept response to the crisis and the fact that they burdened the US taxpayer with most of its cost rather than the debt and equity investors in these corrupt financial institutions.
John R. Talbott is the bestselling author of eight books on economics and politics that have accurately detailed and predicted the causes and devastating effects of this entire financial crisis including, in 2003, "The Coming Crash in the Housing Market", in January 2006, "Sell Now! The End of the Housing Bubble" and in 2008, "Contagion: The Financial Epidemic that is Sweeping the Global Economy".
Today the angry FDIC is all set to take the banks to court and ask for a paltry 1 Bill. Disgusting.
That's like saying that if I buy a big screen TV for $1000, and decide I don't want to eat out at a restaurant like I usually do, the real cost of that TV is actually the $1000 plus the $100 I would have spent to eat out. Also, maybe I would have gone to a bar and spent $50 on beers and snacks to watch the game, but then decide to stay home with the new TV instead. Total cost of TV is now $1150.
What specious logic. Might as well say that the true cost of having an electric car includes all the gas profits Exxon will be missing out on.
What about the offset? Higher interest rates would have helped retirees but would have hurt housing and related industries. How many people refinanced mortgages at these incredibly low current rates? How many millions of dollars did that save homeowners?
With refinanced mortgages putting additional money in peoples' pockets, would that not spur some modest consumer spending or potential market investment?
I find your "costs" hastily considered and less than thorough. But then again, I'm no expert.
bursting. However, TARP was the initial $700 billion and it is
certainly valid to analyze it on its own. Fannie and Freddie are
the result of really bad government policy which I don't think
should be lumped in with private banks and Wall St. Some,
myself included, don't believe the disaster could have materialized without Fannie/Freddie's misguided policies. The
final result of the Fed purchases has not been determined but
during the first year there was actually a profit. I don't dispute the
negative implications of its actions but I don't think the system
could have absorbed all of the bad paper without intervention.
The FDIC collects insurance premiums from financial companies
to cover losses so that doesn't come directly from the taxpayer.
In the continuing Wall St. vs. Main St. discussion, I don't think
adequate consideration is given to the increased disaster to Main St. had the banking system completely failed. Liquidifying
the banks at the time of the severe crunch was imperative. The
actions taken since are much less impressive, including the
continuation of the bad government policies. Propaganda
mainly from Obama & Co. has convinced the public to direct
all venom to the banks and Wall St. but when combining the
bad federal policy with the failure of 152 financial regulators
simultaneously, I place the blame 70 government/30 banks.
I'm going to split one hair with your blame numbers, and add a few of my own.
Blame for the housing bubble and the inevitable collapse I blame 90 govt./10 banks
On blame for the magnitude of the financial crisis that followed I blame 90 AIG, Lehman/10 banks, GM, Chrysler. Blame Goldman Sachs for knowing the bubble was going to burst, and for betting against AIG and Lehman that it would and making a profit on that bet. Legal? Yes. Ethical? No.
The only number we really need concern ourselves with is the $2 trillion the Fed printed up to buy...well, we aren't allowed to know what. Regardless, this $2 trillion is now base money currently sitting on deposit at the Fed because the Fed is paying the banks a small, but greater than zero, interest rate on what the banks deposit with the Fed. In other words, the Fed is paying the banks not to lend all that bailout money supposedly necessary to prevent economic collapse.
But here's the thing: Once the banks all start lending that money out, through the magic of fractional-reserve banking, it will become $200 trillion dollars. That's when the purchasing power of the dollar collapses. That's when prices and interest rates skyrocket. That's when the true cost of the Fed's actions will be felt.
Fannie and Freddie are still difficult to ascertain at this time, but are likely going to be the princilpe cost to taxpayers. This problem is one of mis-management by HUD, the principle regulator of Fannie and Freddie, which incentivised subprime lending by providing a secondary market for subprime derivatives to enable the origination of many new mortgages. HUD's excuse was they could not have predicted the consequences of their actions. YIKES!
FDIC losses also do not cost the taxpayers; FDIC losses are fully funded by banks, and the TARP program that temporarily bolstered bank reserves is likely to cost a small fraction of the original $700 billion allocation; and the two primary outstanding beneficiaries of TARP aren't even banks-- General Motors and American Insurance Group (AIG).
Loss of real estate values is not a consequence of bailouts, so including it in this list is ridiculous to say the least. Obviously, taxpayers will not be bailing out losses in real estate values. Similarly, lost income to retirees is not a taxpayer burden, and does not belong on this list. Furthermore, the policy of low interest rates is not set by government, it is set by the Federal Reserve, and there would be a lot more unemployment if the Fed had not adopted its current low interest rate policy-- that policy has saved jobs.
Similarly, lost income due to unemployment is not a consequence of bailouts; if anything, government and Federal Reserve policies in response to the recession have saved jobs. 1.5 million new jobs were added to the economy this year through August.
So, by removing all these red herrings from Talbot's 15 trillion cost estimate we are left with substantially less than 10% of this problem, and that cost (primarily Fannie and Freddie) is not yet determinable and will be spread out over a great many years.
The Obama administration has done a remarkably good job on saving the economy from a repeat of the Great Depression. Most economists agree that TARP has been and will ultimately be a success, either at a cost of less than 10% of the original funding, and quite possibly at a profit to the US government.
You make too many mistakes to count.
1- The Fed does cost citizens money by printing money and causing inflation.
2-HUD has nothing to do with the regulation of Fannie and Freddie.
3-HUD did not cause the banks to create CDO's and CDS's which was where all this worthless mortgage paper was stuffed and was the reason people were given too much money to buy homes with.
4- FDIC is out of money and looking to congress and the taxpayer to give it to them.
5- Real estate losses were suffered by 70% of our citizens who own homes who are the taxpayers.
6-Lost interest income to seniors and other savers is a cost to many of our citizens who indeed do save. Think about cost to citizens, not just taxpayers.
7- The Fed is the government.
8- You can't prove that lower rates have saved jobs, all it has done for sure is cause banks to earn hundreds of billions by borrowing at 0% and buying risk free Treasuries.
9- The lost income due to unemployment I am referring to in the article is the unemployment that might have been lessened if government had focused on helping average Americans get back to work instead of enrich the managements and shareholders of our biggest banks.
2. You’re wrong about HUD. From the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/09/AR2008060902626.html
3. CDOs and CDSs didn’t cause the mortgages to default, nor the housing bubble to burst. They contributed to the housing bubble along with HUD over-leveraging Fannie and Freddie. CDSs made a bad situation worse. We can agree on that.
4. FDIC is under duress from small bank failures, but it still has cash. If FDIC needs more, it may borrow from the Treasury, but like TARP it would be repaid with interest, paid for by its member banks.
5. Losses in home values aren’t out of pocket expense for the vast majority of homeowners. The losses for most were a natural correction of the artificial gains of the housing bubble. Real losses occurred for those defaulting, not nearly 70% of homeowners.
6. Lost interest income for some is real, but a consequence of the recession, not any "bailout." If retirees were holding long-term fixed-income investments they lost nothing when rates fell. If they held laddered fixed income portfolios, they lost nothing. If they sold their fixed income portfolios they made capital gains.
7. The Fed is not the government, even though it was created by government, it remains an independent instrumentality. It doesn’t print currency. The money it puts into circulation is a function of supply and demand, not taxpayer money.
8. Two points: (a) Economists widely agree that higher rates would cost more jobs. (b) Banks borrowing cheap and reinvesting in Treasuries aren't going to make money. Treasury rates short term are about as low as Fed Funds and Fed discount rates, and longer term Treasuries will lose value when the anticipated increases in interest rates occur.
9. Lost income from unemployment is not a cost of the bailout. And Obama’s stimulus program is showing some success. The 1.5 million jobs created this year reduced unemployment from 10% to 9.6%. It's not nearly enough to make up for the 9 million jobs lost due to the last two years of Bush policies in effect (2008 and 2009), but it’s definitely improvement. Your glass is half empty. Stimulus spending will be choked off if GOP regains control. Is that your objective? If so, from the looks of the comments posted here, you're doing a good job.
Lorianne 22 hours ago (8:56 PM)
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A majority of Democrats in a dem majority Congress voted for TARP (including Obama as senator)
A minority of Republicans voted for TARP
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This is so indicative of how the GOP operates. They don't take responsibility for the disaster they created and in order to undermine government they first deregulate Wall Street, have plans to bail them out and cause the finacial markets to crash (Greenspan BUBBLE) then pretends that they didn't vote for the bailouts- which if they didn't the country would be in a worse situation. The country is continually being attacked and undermined by the corporate GOP party and that is why we are in stagnation, because this way they are trying bring down government completely.
Incidentally, Greenspan warned Congress against adopting the Bush tax cuts, saying they would not pay for themselves, and Greenspan was right. The economy was stagnating throughout the Bush administration (almost no jobs growth in the beginning, and ultimately net job losses under his policies), so the Federal Reserve did what it is supposed to do when the economy is slowing down-- lower interest rates. This was an indirect factor in the housing bubble, but not the cause. Most of the blame for the housing bubble belongs to aggressive home-ownership policies of HUD, and a failure of Congressional oversight.
Nationalize banks? ROFLMAO! What planet did you just arrive from?
The only sensible financial reform was one that made it clear - the price of extraordinary government assistance is loss of 100% of the equity. You wouldn't need the remaining thousands of pages because the banks would make sure that they wouldn't need to come to the government.
Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP):
Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF):
Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program (TGLP):
Capital Assistance Program (CAP):
Targeted Investment Program (TIP):
Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan:
Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF):
Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility (AMLF):
Money Market Investor Funding Facility (MMIFF):
Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP)
Federal deposit Insurane Corp (FDIC)
Maiden Lane I & II
Qualifying holding companies & resulting access to dicount window
CDS transparency and regulatory requirements (lack thereof)
Bilking ill-informed local government and retirement funds w/no bid swaps
Flash Trading/High Frequency trading Schemes
Non transparent Dark Pools synthetic CDO markets
Casino like bets with massive leverage and an implicit government or tax payer backed gaurantee (not to fail)