Bush- not Obama- Enacted TARP and Signed the Bank Bailout into Law

President Bush- not President Obama- enacted TARP and signed the Bank bailout into law towards the end of his presidency. And yet a large percentage of Americans believe that Obama is responsible, according to the latest Pew survey:

Only a third of Americans (34%) correctly say the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was enacted by the Bush administration. Nearly half (47%) incorrectly believe TARP was passed under President Obama. Another 19% admit they do not know which president signed the bank bailout into law. Notably, there is no partisan divide on the question. Just 36% of Republicans, 35% of independents and 34% of Democrats know that the government bailout of banks and financial institutions was signed into law by former President Bush. And Democrats (46%) are just as likely as Republicans (50%) to say TARP was passed under Obama.

How are so many people misinformed about the TARP "bailout"? It's not just Fox-watching Republicans (who are often grossly misinformed by the channel) but Democrats as well. Doesn't anybody check their facts anymore? Or do people just choose the facts that support the narrative they want to believe? Bush bailed out the banks and fueled the greatest Recession in generations. Why blame it all on the guy trying to clean up his mess?

 

 

 

Comments

[aligatorhardt]

09:17 AM on 08/12/2010

Robbie Gennet reminds readers that the TARP bank bailout was designed by the Bush administration in 2007. There were very few constraints on the way banks could use the money. Many managers used the money to pay out bonuses to management. The later amounts of bail out funds under Obama had restrictions on the use of the money which led to the idea that Obama was controlling GM, and the banks. That seems to be the basis for the socialism charges.

[whyputaname]

01:14 AM on 09/04/2010

Well said, I remember it quite well. I didn't hear the socialism charges being waged until after Obama put the restrictions on the bailouts.

It's funny though, if a bailout comes without the restrictions that is ok by the Reich....Never hear a peep out of them until there are strings attached. Then ohhhh boy you would think the world came to an end!

[UnLocked]

09:38 PM on 08/11/2010

PART II: …We can blame the press only to an extent. Of course, journalists should hold themselves accountable. People must choose to be informed. Politicians and political powers need to hold themselves accountable too. Does anyone see that happening anytime soon? Frankly, politics in America has virtually never been that way. The pamphleteers of early American politics did exactly what spin doctors and think tanks do today. And presenting facts has nothing to do with it.

What really needs to happen is that progressives need to sell their ideas and attach them to core values in the same way the wealthy corporations and conservative think tanks do. We need to take back ownership of words like "freedom" and "fiscal responsibility" by associating progressive policies with the deep rooted fundamental values associated with these concepts. That is a fact!

[UnLocked]

09:38 PM on 08/11/2010

PART I: The truth is most people do not really look to the do research to find or verify "facts" when it comes to voting on the issues. Most people vote with their gut. They vote by how they are made to feel by propaganda and political advertising. Once they have strong emotional associations with an issue bound to their deep core values (Accurately or not), the factual reality of the issue really doesn't matter. It wouldn’t matter even if every media outlet were to report in an unbiased and factual manner. Even if they called out politicians and political party lies, misrepresentation and misinformation publically by providing strong, undeniable evidence and "proof." Think of how many times you may have presented the facts to someone during a debate and how little impact it usually had on their perspective on a "hot-button" issue. We have people saying things like "keep your government hands off my Medicare!" Huh? But sir, Medicare is a government program. It doesn't matter - the guy will never "see the light" no mater how much you explain it to him with facts. He has a strong mental and emotional attachment between his core values and the idea that the HCR bill was going to take Medicare away, not strengthen it....

[DCDave]

03:46 PM on 08/11/2010

What does it matter? Obama was involved in the meetings in the white house before the election and approved all of it. McCain was first for it, then against it, and then kind of for it again, lol. But yeah Obama wouldn't have done anything differently.

[jhNY]

02:09 PM on 08/11/2010

The mainstream press, most especially its teevee sector, is a wholly owned and operated branch of the corporatocracy, which is, except in cases of extreme crisis (see election 2008), a group that naturally aligns itself with the Republican Party, home of deregulation and always more tax cuts. The corporatocracy would like to do its business in its time-honored way--- supporting candidates and principles which benefit itself-- which is to say, Republicans, but in order to do that and win (and the winners set the legislative agenda), the corporatocarcy must first reframe reality. So that's what they've been doing, all over the airwaves, every network, except for 3 hours nightly on MSNBC (sorry Tweety, you didn't make the cut). And now the electorate is covered in the fruits of their labors: misinformation, massaged factoids, concerted misdirection. Most polled Democrats no longer know who signed TARP; most polled Democrats no longer know who bailed out the Banks That Cannot Fail. Know why so many billions yearly are spent on opinion-shaping? Because it works.

[whyputaname]

01:20 AM on 09/04/2010

Cable and Network stations work on Ratings, and Ratings = Money!!!! They don't care about whether or not the truth is told, only if the advertisers make their money so the stations can get paid. The more products you buy from that advertisment the better the station is.

[BachelorJohnnyCool]

01:59 PM on 08/11/2010

Not only that, but Bush's Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, wanted to hand the money over to his Wall Street pals with no strings attached and no oversight whatsover. President Obama was the one who insisted on strict accountability.

Thank you for reminding people about this!

[lgillooly]

01:56 PM on 08/11/2010

Talk radio and Fox are in the business of misinformation to protect the GOP and their Corporate sponsors. They scream about a liberal media, but a majority of Americans don't know if Obama is a Citizen. 26 percent of people still believe Saddam had something to do with 9/11. A majority still think Republicans are fiscal conservatives....hello!
Without an honest, accurate media that has some accountability we will continue to be misinformed by the corporate right media machine.