akuma587 said:
Businesses cannot get capital unless the banks are lending. Without capital, businesses can't invest and can't hire more people. Consumers cannot buy houses and cars unless banks are lending. That's a fact. TARP has significantly increased how much banks are lending. Many of the banks wouldn't even have been able to lend if they would have gone under. To say that banks would be lending the same amount now that they would have been without TARP and aggressive monetary policy is contradicted by your very own claims. You said that many banks and financial firms would have gone into bankruptcy. I don't really think banks are just handing out loans when they are going through Chapter 11. How much money is Lehman Brothers handing out? Many of its assets are frozen. I don't see anywhere he is talking about it occurring directly. TARP allows banks to make loans. That is the direct effect. Obama talks about that throughout this speech. The banks making the loans allows businesses to raise capital to hire more people, invest in inventory, etc. The same applies to consumers getting money to buy products from banks. Those are both secondary effect s. But secondary effects are pretty damn important, and yes, Congress and the executive branch were worried about those effects. I never heard Obama say TARP was going to knock on your door and hand you a loan. That would be a direct effect. Frankly I think you are just pissing and moaning about semantics here. I mean that was a press conference, not exactly language codified in the United States Code which has legal force and effect. Your entire point is pretty much irrelevant, as it is more based on your ignorance and misunderstanding of the English language than anything substantive. Helping the economy was one of the goals of TARP. Yes, I agree. To acheive that goal, TARP was designed to keep the financial system from collapsing. That is almost entirely what the legislative language in TARP addresses. Just because we aren't seeing +6% quarterly GDP growth doesn't mean TARP didn't acheive its goals. That is what YOU claim should have happened. I don't recall anyone claiming that was going to happen. I recall Obama telling people that the recession was going to be long and hard, but that we are going to get through it. |
You make a lot of assumptions. Ones that of course can never be argued against because we can't go back in time and change things.
The OP's link is arguing against everything you state in here, and I think he argues a good point. The last 6 months seems to prove him right.
Keep talking though, someone might start thinking it's right.
