The Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) worked a lot better, and at a much lower cost, than is commonly recognized.
TARP and related interventions by the Federal Reserve helped reactivate credit markets long before they would have recovered on their own, helped to stabilize the housing market, helped save the U.S. auto industry and helped prevent recession from morphing into something worse. And they did so for far less than early estimates and prior rescues had suggested were possible.
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