| TheRealMafoo said: So I guess when Obama talks about TARP creating jobs, helping people buy cars, and fixing the housing problem, he was just talking about Bank Employee's? To say that TARP was not supposed to help fix these problems directly, is to just bold face lie. Own up to the fact that you expected this to happen, and it did none of it, and people will have a lot more respect for you.
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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 effects. 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.
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
