So.... it turns out that the "Thank God It Passed" proponents were correct after all...

The nation was brought back from the brink of a major depression, and now we find out that the Government has made an 8.5% return on its investment.

Just like the Resolution Trust that made money for the government cleaning up the S&L crisis of the early '90s.


http://www.cnbc.com/id/36178005



I know DU has a large contingent of "Let-It-Fail" folks who get disgusted every time that there is good economic news to report, but it is nice to see that the economists were correct in this case and that the TARP program has been proven to be a success.


Not only that, the Stimulus is starting to work its magic and unemployment is starting to turn around.

GM and Chrysler are becoming profitable again... and the DOW is about to go over 11,000 to boot.



Obamanomics.

It works.

Is no measure of success.

fixed considered raining on the cheerleading parade.

If you think people were upset with the bailouts because we might not make enough from it you weren't paying attention to the criticism or you are chosing to misrepresent that criticism.

of wishing for bad news about their country ~

want AMERICA to fail.

PUMAers, anarchists, who knows?

so what?

and haven't since long before he even took office.

it's not about "liking" or "not liking" a politician

it's never about the politician, qua person, except where someone falls victim to a cult of the personality syndrome

it's about the policies the person does or does not enact or fight for

you can disagree on opinion but you are creating a charicature based on what you think of the people that disagree with Obama. The overwhelming majority of people here that get upset at him do so for substantive policy reasons. I think he has run very far to the right on most issues and it has been to our detriment.

many on DU want someone actually left of center. but this is america so you'll never see it.

want Candidate Obama in the WH. They did not vote for expansion of war, for Republican policies which were rejected by the voters, such as mandated insurance and all the other 'republican ideas' Obama himself admits he included in the health care bill, while killing all progressive amendments.

They want an end to torture, and the closing, as promised, of our torture chambers, such as Guantanamo Bay.

They want equal rights for gays in the military and in civilian life.

They want war criminals brought to justice. In fact there were more hearings on war criminals BEFORE the last election than there are now.

They want the environment protected.

They want habeas corpus reinstated.

Iow, they wanted a Democratic President who acted like one, as Obama presented himself in the campaign.

I think HE can take the criticism directed at his many flip flops since then. Blindly accepting everything a politician does is a dangerous thing to do. It gives them the idea that the people have infinite patience with their betrayals. Politicians lie and betray their supporters all the time. Thinking that Obama was any different was our mistake.

i want a Democratic Party to the left of reality.

the sad fact is, the Democratic Party is a center-right party. the GOP is FAR-right. there is no center-left.

at the end of Obama's 2 terms (yes, he will serve 2 terms), i believe the good will outweigh the bad, but there will be plenty of bad. and it will take all 8 years for the balance to tip good.

but it won't EVER tip left, as money controls what Americans think, or will even allow themselves to contemplate. that severely limits what is within Obama's power to achieve in 8 years.

That doesn't include the American people. And it will remain that way if people do not let it be known that this is not what they want.

People want a health care system that is similar to those in other modern democracies. While they may chant talking points at teabagger rallies about 'socialist programs' no one is willing to give up Medicare or SS.

The OP suggests we should just keep following the parties to the right and that anyone who pushes back, hates the president.

I don't agree that we will never get what the American people want. Nor would I characterize what they want as 'left' or 'far left', I would say they want what is best for the country. And that crosses party lines, as many polls have revealed. On polls about spying on the American people eg, the overwhelming number of Americans opposed it, sometimes reaching 80%.

No one ever got what they thought was right by simply throwing up their hands and saying 'this is how it is'.

And those criticizing people who speak out, is an attempt to silence them, because those who control this government, unlawfully imo, with money, do not want those voices to be heard because they fear the people. If they thought their positions were safe, they would not have those fears. In fact, it is OPs like this, the attempt to manipulate opinion against those who speak out, that give me hope that things can change.

group who are closer to Republicans than actual Democrats. There is a difference.

That does not automatically conflate increases in the DOW Jones to being equivalent to recovery for the American people as a whole. In fact if the market is doing especially well it often means that some gutting of environmental regulations, destruction of labor protections, and the outsourcing of jobs.

To get excited about a stock market bump misses the point to my anger over Tarp.

:shrug:

of Obamonomics, how?

I honestly can't tell from the posts I read here.

the news looks good, but there are outstanding questions for reasonable people. Who is SNL financial and are there other reports which might contradict this one?

And, that statistic, 8.5% return on investment, does that address all of the problems people had with the program?

So, spare us the trash talking and the end zone dancing please.

I will not soon forget being called a "corporatist" by MANY DUers for supporting the program. Taunting, trash talking, and end zone dancing are the least of what's justified.

for when the other shoe drops.

I wonder what the one year return on investment would be if calculated on the whole TARP pot.

Being right isn't rewarded around here.

Elizabeth Warren, the TARP overseer.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/16/elizabeth-warren-tarp-ove_n_151418.html

It's too bad she doesn't have enough authority to really fix stuff economically. She stated herself though that Washington was so overrun with corporate lobbyists that it's very hard to get Congress to do much of anything constructive.

On Tuesday night's Daily Show, bailout watchdog and financial reform advocate Elizabeth Warren told Jon Stewart that "this is really the moment" that will determine the future of America's middle class -- the system must be fixed or "the game really is over."

Warren, who chairs the Congressional Oversight Panel created to monitor TARP, said: "It is simple. This is America's middle class. We've hacked at it and chipped at it and pulled on it for 30 years now. And now there's no more to do. Either we fix this problem going forward or the game really is over."

Using her to prop up this "we won" tripe is a mistake. A band aid is not a cure.

running over the cliff and taking everything with them? I think she does. I'm glad she has a position of influence now.

Apologies, I took your other post to mean that she agreed with the sentiment in the OP, which she does not. I'd like to see her in a position of real power, she is the one that can get us out of this mess for real...

of their loot? A move which Congress and the White House have tacitly approved because they don't want to know, BTW.

The woman whom has told us several times that the institutional instability has not been addressed and that they are engaging in exactly the same practices that cause the first meltdown? The same woman that just last week told us that the commercial real estate collapse has begun and that half of the commercial real estate in the nation is "underwater"?

Yes, she has done her job and deserves great credit. But pretending that these crumbs have "paid-back" the money they stole is absurd. This release was a (to be charitable) half-truth that is presented so that the cheerleaders can tell the people that don't understand finance can feel safe in throwing their money back into the Big Swag Bag.

they will have to answer down the line. I hope she will be able to keep her position. It's obvious they gave her that position to get her out of the way, but I think it's a start.

Allow them to sink the economy, then use my tax dollars to bail them out so they can still keep their bonuses, high salaries and their jobs, because after all they are so good at them, and then make sure not to fix any of the deregulation and loophole laws so they can do it all over again next year. And why wouldn't they? I have plenty more money to give them for doing such a great job the first time around.

Yeah I bet all those people who lost their portfolios, their pensions, their life savings and their homes are dancing in the streets right now.

was a disaster. Even with the benefit of making money off a mountain full of problems, it's still a disaster.

Just which one of us little guys has TARP really helped?? Wake me up when the banks are giving our more credit to small-biz owners and people who want to start things up on their own, and stop shafting regular people.

I am curious to hear what Elizabeth Warren has to say on this but won't be surprised if she's not taken in by it either.

Isay lets go post in a popular right wing forum"WHAT YOU SAY THERE IS NO GOOD RIGHT WING FORUM!!!"
THATS WHY THE DRONES COME HERE!
I HUMBLY RESERVE THE RIGHT TO MY OPINION!

They need to give her some actual power. She's a pretty smart cookie, I think with her leading the way they could fix the economy for real.

You actually wrote:

"Just like the Resolution Trust that made money for the government cleaning up the S&L crisis of the early '90s."

Where did you get that little gem from?

Look, I don't take sides in a situation that is so emotionally charged and has yet to be proven to be effective as the TARP program, intiated by Bush and apparently continued by Obama. But to say what you did about the RTC and the S&L crisis is just mind boggling disinformation.

To wit:

While not part of the savings and loan crisis, many other banks failed. Between 1980 and 1994 more than 1,600 banks insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) were closed or received FDIC financial assistance.<17>

From 1986 to 1995, the number of US federally insured savings and loans in the United States declined from 3,234 to 1,645.<8> This was primarily, but not exclusively, due to unsound real estate lending.<18> The market share of S&Ls for single family mortgage loans went from 53% in 1975 to 30% in 1990.<2> US General Accounting Office estimated cost of the crisis to around USD $160.1 billion, about $124.6 billion of which was directly paid for by the US government from 1986 to 1996.<1> That figure does not include thrift insurance funds used before 1986 or after 1996. It also does not include state run thrift insurance funds or state bailouts.

The US government ultimately appropriated 105 billion dollars to resolve the crisis. After banks repaid loans through various procedures, there was a net loss to taxpayers of approximately $124 billion dollars by the end of 1999.<19> The concomitant slowdown in the finance industry and the real estate market may have been a contributing cause of the 1990–1991 economic recession. Between 1986 and 1991, the number of new homes constructed dropped from 1.8 to 1 million, the lowest rate since World War II. <2>

Some commentators believe that a taxpayer-funded government bailout related to mortgages during the savings and loan crisis may have created a moral hazard and acted as encouragement to lenders to make similar higher risk loans during the 2007 subprime mortgage financial crisis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis


Having worked for the RTC in the early 90s I call that statement you wrote complete bullshit. There was a "Net loss to taxpayers of approximately $124 bullion dollars...." as cited in the above-excerpt. That does not mention losses by individual states that also bailed out some institutions. What are you thinking?

The Obama proponents just lose all credibility with stuff like that. I voted for him while holding my nose on Afghanistan, etc. It may work for some low information demographic, but don't assume that is what you are preaching to here. I support his efforts in the main, but he needs to pick other players to perform his magic, not the same old snake oil salesmen from Wall St.

Please try to frame your propaganda in more believable terms. It is more effective that way.




Just my dos centavos


robdogbucky

makes it clear just how badly we've been robbed.

They conveniently ignore the shell-game. The fact that we gave the only sector in the nation that has the "right" to create money the billions it needed to create enough money to cover their bad bets and give the appearance of solvency has resulted in dramatic devaluation of our dollar (Trillions lost right there that we'll never see again) and that this dilution has been spread among the other nations that have actually addressed the failures of their financial systems.

All to give the lie that we are making money on this bankster hold-up.

nt

Quoting CNBC now, are we?

Lets talk about how it is that these still insolvent firms have managed to pay out of TARP, shall we? Where did the money come from? You want to explain that to people, too..?

the ROI is between weak and bogus. We are still at risk for tens of trillions of dollars and the problem is just as likely, if not more so to be repeated.

TARP is only the tip of the iceberg and anyone who pushes the fallacy that it is all good is misinformed or attempting to misinform. We haven't even begun to resolve this. The TARP is a fig leaf of epic proportions for nationalizing risk and socializing gains. We are every bit as fucked as we were a couple years ago and it is almost surely worse because too big to fail is even bigger and more tied into the economy and their is no will to shut down the casino.

Please lets deal with what is rather than what we would like it to be. SNAFU is very much in play.

or the Bankers, Brokers, Corporations etc. and I so hated Bush and still do.

"Still, more than 600 smaller banks are left in the program, and owe roughly $130 billion to taxpayers."

So it appears that all the numbers aren't in yet. In fact it appears that corporations like AIG are going to be unable to pay back part or all of that money.
<http://money.cnn.com/2010/03/08/news/companies/aig_payback/index.htm?postversion=2010030813>

Meanwhile most experts don't think that GM is ever going to pay back all of the money we gave it. Both GM and Chrysler are still hemorrhaging red ink, with most experts disbelieving GM's prediction of a rosy and profitable future, and even Fiat saying that Chrysler isn't going to be profitable for another two years at least.

But hey, the numbers are up at the big Wall St. casino:woohoo: The same actors who helped get us into this mess are still doing well. Better yet, they're still unregulated, and whatever paltry regulation Obama and Democrats are going to put on them will be easily gotten around, especially since the big one, re instituting Glas-Steagal isn't going to happen.

Meanwhile we're looking at a collapse of the commercial real estate sector, and would could be a massive hedge fund tsunami.

I wouldn't say that we're on the way up, I would say that we have temporarily reached a leveling out point, a place where we can take a breath and make what preparations we can before this roller coaster of an economy plunges even further down into the depths. This isn't done, not by a long shot.

how do you expect this robbery to be spun as an accomplishment?

Silly peasant.

ETA: And linking to them should be banned just as linking to anything Alex Jones is banned.

So how come so many people are still losing their homes?