If it weren't for his spouting off on irrelevant tangents what fun would Dymtri be?
I'm really not sure why there is so much disbelief concerning this bailout from anyone other than the right. The financial system needed and continues to need to be stabilized. Sure I would have preferred full nationalization over guaranteeing to buy illiquid assets but that wasn't going to be offered this month. People keep looking at TARP in isolation rather than as one part of a multi-step intervention. The US has pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into the world's inter-bank markets. They nationalized Fannie, Freddie, and AIG. They've saved Washington Mutual and offered no-strings-attached guarantees on almost three and one-half trillion dollars in mutual fund deposits. I haven't heard Dymtri moaning about saving peoples mutual funds even though it's potentially much more costly than TARP.
Letting these banks fail would be incredibly irresponsible. If the US had allowed banks to simply collapse and refused to guarantee the illiquid assets under TARP the world-wide faith in the US Treasury as ultimate guarantor of private property would be shattered. Without that faith the wave of bank collapses world-wide would be nearly unimaginable. To imagine that would bring about a socialist revolution is naive in my opinion. Everyday working people are currently captive to the daily functions of financial capitalism through their bank accounts whether we like it or not. If your bank fails tomorrow where will your next direct-deposit paycheck go? How will you get money for groceries and pay your rent or mortgage? If tomorrow no one honors your debit/credit cards and you have to wait for Uncle Sam to make good through the FDIC before you can access your funds how are you going to make ends meet? No one opposed to these state interventions has really addressed these issues.
John Thornton