Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I have newspapers coming to me and saying, 'Can we get in on the TARP?'.
For many impoverished people, living under a tarp or in a cardboard box is a way of life.
Let's not forget, what TARP did allowed us to move overnight and put capital into hundreds of banks, and that money came back plus $32 billion.
If you were approaching the TARP investments from a pure investment standpoint, then there's no doubt in my mind the taxpayer lost, and probably lost big.
People forget... that we structured it so that the government, or the people, would be repaid with a really good rate of return. And as it turns out, that aspect of TARP, that's what happened.
Tea Party people know that I stood against the Wall Street scam from Day One, that I voted against TARP, that I voted against repealing Glass-Steagall Act that kept these guys under some control.
When Obama was inaugurated, he and his team had an insight - though whether the insight was conscious or not I don't know. But it was this: The TARP $700 billion price tag was a new kind of model.
Our earliest evidence of government, in the ruins of Babylon and Egypt, shows nothing but ziggurats and pyramids of wasted taxpayer money, the TARP funds and shovel-ready stimulus programs of their day.
So long as TARP money is wrapped up in GM, the company will never shake its 'Government Motors' image. That label, as competitors and GM employees are keenly aware, is code for one thing: 'GM is a failure.'
When I left the Treasury, there was a poll that showed - and I don't remember the numbers exactly right - something like 90% of the people were against TARP. It prevented a disaster, but you don't get credit for a disaster that people don't see.
On the board of a financial institution, especially one that took TARP money, it has changed radically because the regulators have been vocal about what they want boards to do and how involved they want boards to be in the management of a company.
When you stop and look at so much of the kind of activism that has been triggered, the Tea Party and the like, as a result of Obama's efforts - TARP, the stimulus package, and now the health care reform - there is a lot of sense this government is changing.
I think TARP was the most defining vote since I've been in Congress. It was wrong. You don't nationalize private - it was wrong. It desensitized people to what $700 billion was, which opened the door for a $900 million stimulus, for Obamacare, for all these things. It was wrong. It broke my heart.
TARP is funded by taxpayers, so there are many rules about how that money can and can't be used. The result: GM spends an awful lot of time checking in with the people who administer TARP over everything from hiring to executive compensation and management. For a global company, that adds up to a lot of distraction.
TARP became so politicized that having money from it was almost like a scarlet letter. There were debates over compensation, worry that the rules were going to get changed. All the banks were desperately rushing to get that money back as soon as possible - in part, so they could pay themselves bonuses without any government restrictions.
We have the idea of saying that put limitations on bailouts, so that the bailouts don't occur in the future, so that we don't have to do the - look to see AIG situations or Bear Stearns situations or the Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, which is probably going to be more money spent on those two institutions than the Congress spent on the TARP program.
