All Posts Tagged With: "TARP"
What Economic Freedom Indexes Leave Out
In a syndicated column last October, television journalist John Stossel lamented the downgrading from sixth to eighth place—“behind Canada!”—of the United States on the Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom. The Index is based on several metrics, including freedom of movement of capital, the degree of business regulation, and levels of taxes and [...]
24Feb2011 | Kevin A. Carson | 6 comments | ContinuedGM Repays Government, in a Manner of Speaking
It’s all over the news: GM repaid its loan to the federal government — early. The Obama-engineered bankruptcy worked. Did it? The story takes on a new aspect when we realize that Neil Barofsky, Treasury Special Inspector General of TARP, told both Rep. Thomas Carper of Delaware and Neil Cavuto of Fox Business News that [...]
22Apr2010 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedMr. Obama and the Bankers: “Doin’ What Comes Natur’lly”
Speaking to a very receptive Elyria, Ohio, crowd a few months ago, President Obama took off the gloves and promised that he was ready to fight to provide more jobs, improved education, and security from the threat of bankruptcy for homeowners. Turning his attention to the Wall Street bankers, who had just announced another round [...]
20Apr2010 | Bruce Yandle | 1 comment | ContinuedBoom and Bust: Crisis and Response
America has experienced a classic economic boom and bust, which I first chronicled in the November 2007 Freeman. Ill-conceived policies to encourage homeownership channeled cheap credit into housing markets. Land-use and zoning policies restricted the supply of housing in key desirable markets. In The Housing Boom and Bust, Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institution has [...]
24Feb2010 | Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr. | 2 comments | ContinuedThe Balance-of-Payments Deficit: Not to Worry
Quick. What’s the trade deficit between California and the rest of the world? Don’t try Googling it because you won’t find an answer. No government agency—or private entity—computes the dollar value of goods that people in the rest of the world sell to or buy from Californians. Why not? Because it doesn’t matter. Yet governments [...]
5Jan2010 | David R. Henderson | 7 comments | ContinuedGetting in Deeper
In what the Wall Street Journal calls “a watershed moment for government intervention in the private sector,” the Federal Reserve announced in October that it will regulate executive compensation at all banks so they will not have incentives to take on too much risk. Meanwhile, the Obama administration said it would cut by half (on [...]
5Jan2010 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedFrustrating Michael Moore
If Michael Moore would study a little political economy he might turn into a potent champion of individual liberty. As we see in Moore’s new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, Moore is offended by some truly offensive things: banks engaging in wild speculation without concern for the risk, taxpayer bailouts for banks and other businesses, [...]
1Jan2010 | Sheldon Richman | 6 comments | ContinuedTransfer Machine
“The government who robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul,” George Bernard Shaw once said. For a socialist Shaw demonstrated good sense with that quotation. Unfortunately, America has become a laboratory in which his hypothesis is being tested. The theory of government I was taught says that government provides [...]
1Jan2010 | John Stossel | 7 comments | ContinuedPresident Obama Urges Banks to Lend
“President Obama exhorted the nation’s biggest banks on Monday to make ‘extraordinary’ efforts to increase lending, even as some of those firms are racing to distance themselves from government control.” (Washington Post, Tuesday) This makes perfect sense. If banks don’t engage in risky lending again, how ever will the government be able continue “rescuing” them. [...]
15Dec2009 | Mike Van Winkle | 0 comments | ContinuedCitigroup to Repay $20 Billion
“Citigroup said Monday that it had reached an agreement to wean itself from the government bailout by the end of 2010, beginning with the repayment of $20 billion in federal aid. “The deal is the latest sign that both banks and the government are eager to end an extraordinary period of federal support for the [...]
14Dec2009 | Mike Van Winkle | 0 comments | ContinuedGovernment Windfall
TARP was expected to lose $300 billion plus change. Yesterday the government said it would lose “only” $100 billion plus change. (Story here.)In the government’s accounting, that’s a windfall of $200 billion, which is now available for new spending.Alice would have felt at home in Washington.
8Dec2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedExpected Bailout Losses Adjusted
“The Obama administration is planning to slash its estimate of the losses from the government’s bailout package by about $200 billion, a source familiar with the matter said Sunday. “The White House had projected in August that the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, would lose about $341 billion over the next 10 [...]
7Dec2009 | Mike Van Winkle | 0 comments | ContinuedPolitical Bankruptcies: How Chrysler and GM Have Changed the Rules of the Game
The topic of corporate bankruptcy law scarcely titillates the imagination of ordinary citizens, even those with a deep interest in constitutional and public affairs. Harried people treat bankruptcy almost dismissively as a useful way of winding up firms that cannot keep their financial heads above water. In practice they sense rightly that the corporate bankruptcy [...]
18Nov2009 | Richard A. Epstein | 12 comments | ContinuedTransforming America: The Bush-Obama Stimulus Programs
George W. Bush’s and Barack Obama’s “stimulus” programs will permanently transform the American economy. The market-based system that has produced unprecedented prosperity relies on profit and loss, which rewards individuals and firms that add value to the economy and penalizes those that detract value. The various stimulus programs undermine that system. My discussion will focus [...]
19Aug2009 | Randall G. Holcombe | 13 comments | ContinuedToo Big to Fail
“Once you lose your freedom to fail, you also lose your freedom to succeed and you cease to be a free society.” —U.S. Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas In March 2008 the investment banking firm Bear Sterns failed and the federal government quickly stepped in. The public was inundated with the phrase “too big to fail” [...]
2Mar2009 | Michael Heberling | 8 comments | ContinuedThe Financial Bailouts: “See the Needle and the Damage Done”
On Wednesday, September 17, 2008, according to the New York Times, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke used “a speaker phone from his ornate office” to tell Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson “that it was time to adopt a comprehensive strategy that Congress would have to approve” for dealing with the financial-market troubles. After a second call on [...]
27Feb2009 | Lawrence H. White | 13 comments | ContinuedTheory and Crisis
What might be even more distressing than the current buildup of the corporate state in response to the supposed economic crisis is the way some self-styled advocates of the free market are willing to cast aside the economic theory they once claimed to embrace. If you are a glutton for cable news-talk shows, you know [...]
20Jan2009 | Sheldon Richman | 2 comments | Continued-
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