They have to pay the money back. Some of the banks have already paid back close to $70 billion. And banks want to pay the rest back because it makes the company look bad when they still have TARP funds. In fact, Timothy Geithner had to tell them they had to wait to pay back the money, because they wanted to pay back even more than that.
And the alternative you are suggesting would have involved the government getting even more heavily involved in the banks than they already are. Not to mention it would have taken thousands of people to oversee.
And you are also assuming that people knew what was going on at the time, which they really didn't. Hindsight is 20/20. Even smart people and people in very powerful positions had about as much idea of what was going on as an average person on the street. Nobody had perfect information. And there really wasn't much time to just sit around. Given the circumstances, the Bush Administration pretty much made the smartest decision it could have.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
