| TheRealMafoo said: Half the posts in this thread has data. I linked to the best source of data one can find, the economic statistics page that the government themselves releases. |
I went back and counted, and you posted one link in this entire thread. And all you did was just throw the link up there without discussing any of the data in it. While I may not always agree with Happy Squrriel and NJ5, they are at least supporting their arguments with facts and analysis. That's apparently more than you are capable of.
Its pretty simple Mafoo, TARP is called the Troubled Assets Relief Program. The piece of legislation had several different goals, the primary of which was to prevent systemic collapse of the financial system by buying up mortgage backed securities, dealing with credit default swaps, and other financial instruments that were causing problems by giving money to banks in need of it. That is what the bulk of the text of the bill addresses. You are correct that it was passed to help out the economy, but no one claimed that it would happen immediately. But you automatically assume that because things are still bad now, that they would have been exactly the same without TARP. Yet you just assume that without showing any information that supports that argument.
It goes like this. To have a healthy economy, it is necessary to have a healthy banking system. However, a healthy banking system is not sufficient by itself to create a healthy economy. But the fact remains that it is impossible to have a healthy economy without a healthy banking system. Bush knew that, Congress knew that, and Obama knows that.
I mean look at the preamble to the bill, its pretty clear it was designed to help out financial institutions and the economy. Apparently it is impossible for you to understand that one piece of legislation can have more than one purpose, or that there is a fundamental relationship between those two goals.
"To provide authority to the Federal Government to purchase and insure certain types of troubled assets for the purpose of providing stability to and preventing disruption in the economy and financial systemand protecting taxpayers, and other purposes."
http://issuu.com/johnwonderlich/docs/ayo08c04_xml515pm
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
