1. I love the equity option for TARP. I just about pissed myself when I heard that somehow that provision was snuck back into the Senate bill that was passed, turned back to the house and signed by the President (after the bank lobby fought tooth and nail to have it removed twice). Nobody noticed it was there until two days later.
On the down-side, it's been used unequally to take equity stakes; some equity stakes (in stronger banks) were bought for near book value, some equity stakes (in weak banks) were bought at well above value. The numbers I've heard vary from $100 in equity for $100 of TARP for strong banks to $60 or less in equity for $100 TARP. Remember also, though, that the mere idea of government buying equity stakes is equal to socialism in many tax protesters' eyes.
The actual "toxic assets" handling? That I've got concerns about. Remember how long Resolution Trust's handling of toxic assets from the S&L meltdown depressed real-estate values. I'd rather not see that happen again; the value of my house has dropped enough already, thankyouverymuch.
2. Those are all great programs (well, except nanotech, K works in nanotech and it's not what a lot of people wish it was). They're also "big government" and "government intrusion" and "hippie environmentalist agendas."
It all still comes down to pork, and what pork is. To a lot of people, pork is spending money somewhere else, on any agenda they don't agree with. Let's say the administration had gone forward with the ideas you like. These protests still would have been inevitable; you just wouldn't have been there.
As to what Bush inherited when he took office?
The dive in the stock market right after Bush's election was just a pothole in the dot-com deflation, a big one, but just the middle of a greater process. No argument there (although it was a sadly amusing punctuation). He inherited the beginnings of a bear market. Ugly? yes. Necessarily resulting in the conversion of a series of budget surpluses to madcap deficit spending? Hardly.
The economic fallout from the WTC attacks isn't Bush's fault, but it did happen entirely on his watch, so it's not something he "inherited."
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Date: 2009-04-17 01:16 am (UTC)1. I love the equity option for TARP. I just about pissed myself when I heard that somehow that provision was snuck back into the Senate bill that was passed, turned back to the house and signed by the President (after the bank lobby fought tooth and nail to have it removed twice). Nobody noticed it was there until two days later.
On the down-side, it's been used unequally to take equity stakes; some equity stakes (in stronger banks) were bought for near book value, some equity stakes (in weak banks) were bought at well above value. The numbers I've heard vary from $100 in equity for $100 of TARP for strong banks to $60 or less in equity for $100 TARP. Remember also, though, that the mere idea of government buying equity stakes is equal to socialism in many tax protesters' eyes.
The actual "toxic assets" handling? That I've got concerns about. Remember how long Resolution Trust's handling of toxic assets from the S&L meltdown depressed real-estate values. I'd rather not see that happen again; the value of my house has dropped enough already, thankyouverymuch.
2. Those are all great programs (well, except nanotech, K works in nanotech and it's not what a lot of people wish it was). They're also "big government" and "government intrusion" and "hippie environmentalist agendas."
It all still comes down to pork, and what pork is. To a lot of people, pork is spending money somewhere else, on any agenda they don't agree with. Let's say the administration had gone forward with the ideas you like. These protests still would have been inevitable; you just wouldn't have been there.
As to what Bush inherited when he took office?
The dive in the stock market right after Bush's election was just a pothole in the dot-com deflation, a big one, but just the middle of a greater process. No argument there (although it was a sadly amusing punctuation). He inherited the beginnings of a bear market. Ugly? yes. Necessarily resulting in the conversion of a series of budget surpluses to madcap deficit spending? Hardly.
The economic fallout from the WTC attacks isn't Bush's fault, but it did happen entirely on his watch, so it's not something he "inherited."