Tharp Crisis

On November 4, 2008, candidate Barack Obama was elected for the first term of his presidency. The following February, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009—or the ARRA—was signed into effect by congress, and made into law by President Obama on February 17, 2009. This stimulus package was originally proposed to be 816 billion dollars, but was eventually raised to be 840 billion dollars in 2012. The purpose of this bill was to inspire confidence in the American people that the economy would be up and running again. The ARRA was intended to give money back to small businesses as well as the American families who ran and worked at these businesses. This varies from TARP, or the Troubled Asset Recovery Program, which was a bill that was aimed at bailing out banks in October 2008. TARP worked to allow banks in danger to participate in reverse auction, in order to sell their assets.

Additionally, when America’s economy was melting in 2008, the Federal Reserve played a big role to stabilize it. Besides the Great Depression during the years 1929 through 1939 the worst economic time for the United States, 2008 was unmistakable one of the worst years of America’s economy history. When this economic recession was taking place, the Fed had to take action to avoid another depression and to stop a fall from the financial system. With the help of the Federal Reserve J.P. Morgan Chase and Co.’s they planned to help Bear Stearns (an investment bank) with financial assistance to help the government to buyout AIG, a well-known insurance company. This helped to produce a strategy targeting to stabilize the credit market and also the short-term interest rate from 45% to almost 0 from the benchmark (Coste). Thanks to the Federal Reserve and their well design plan to avoid another recession they prevented the economy of the world or better known as Macroeconomic system from falling and getting it

During the Obama administration it’s been used to sustain the financial system after the Wall Street meltdown in 2008; it also gave the economy extraordinarily methods of support during the recession such as

In 2009, the Obama Administration bailed out the General Motors and Chrysler automobile companies. Having begun their decent into bankruptcy in 2008, losing thousands of jobs, sales plummeting forty percent, with a high threat of liquidation, General Motors and Chrysler finally reached government-assisted chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009. Obama allocated eighty five billion dollars in TARP funds to the auto industry, close to fifty billion dollars of it going to General Motors. The allocated funds were successful in keeping two of the Big Three auto companies afloat, keeping taxes from sky rocketing and saving millions of jobs.

In 2007, the financial crisis began. It was the most intense period of global financial strains since the Great Depression. It had led to a prolonged global economic downturn. The Federal Reserve took exceptional actions in response to the financial crisis to help stabilize the United

In the midst of the current economic downturn, dubbed the “Great Recession”, it is natural to look for one, singular entity or person to blame. Managers of large banks, professional investors and federal regulators have all been named as potential creators of the recession, with varying degrees of guilt. No matter who is to blame, the fallout from the mistakes that were made that led to the current crisis is clear. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the current unemployment rate is 9.7%, with 9.3 million Americans out of work (Bureau of Labor Statistics). Compared to a normal economic rate of two or three percent, it is clear that the decisions of one group of people have had a profound affect on the lives of millions of

Government help was seen as the only way to avoid a total economic collapse in the United States, although many thought it could result in a worldwide economic recession. On September 18, 2008 the 700 dollar bailout plan was proposed to congress. Fed Chairman Ben Bernake is quoted telling congress, “If we don’t do this, we may not have an economy on Monday” (The Housing Market Crash of 2007, 2011). This is when it became apparent that the government had a stake in this situation. When people begin questioning whether the United States economy will still exist, the government then has a huge role in the survival of not just the economy, but the entire country. The government is in a situation where it must decide how to protect the American economy, the citizens, the businesses, and the future of the United States of America. On October 3, 2008 congress passed “Emergency Economic Stablization Act” (H.R. 1424- 110th Congress, 2008) which led to the lending of 700 billion dollars’ to

The government also acknowledged that companies were failing and that some larger companies may cause huge ripple effects, further destabilizing the economy. Bush passed the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to purchase the assets of struggling businesses so that they could survive during this economic downturn. Nearing the end of the Great Recession, a new administration came into office and the final action was another stimulus package from the new president, Barack Obama. Obama also acknowledged that there was more to be done by further regulating the markets with the Dodd-Frank Act. Between the Great Depression and the Great Recession the Glass-Steagall Act had been repealed and this left the market vulnerable to large companies, such as the ones that were bailed out.

A specific example of a policy that helped the economic activity was the Recovery Act and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) in 2009. The short-term gain was evident by keeping jobs and corporations afloat as indicated the by 13% increase in GDP. The slope of the GDP growth after the ARRA money started to flow increased (CDN, 2012). The $787 billion dollar bill ultimately comes back to burden the taxpayers and hinders new economic growth. Perhaps, if the government did not bail out the financial institutions, new smaller and more innovative institutions would have emerged. After all, a good market place has many players, which helps the supply and demand reach equilibrium.

The financial crisis that happened during 2007-09 was considered the worst financial crisis in the world since the great depression in the 1930s. It leads to a series of banking failures and also prolonged recession, which have affected millions of Americans and paralyzed the whole financial system. Although it was happened a long time ago, the side effects are still having implications for the economy now. This has become an enormously common topic among economists, hence it plays an extremely important role in the economy. There are many questions that were asked about the financial crisis, one of the most common question that dragged attention was ’’How did the government (Federal Reserve) contributed to the financial crisis?’’

Fiscal policy: Given the breadth and depth of this recession, it was clear that the Treasury and the entire Obama administration had to take bold actions. In fact, right at the beginning, they were committed to a fiscal stimulus policy package which would be “substantial” enough to pull the economy out of the recession. The final stimulus package signed into law in 2009, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, was totaled $787 billion including about one-third tax cuts and one-third aid for states and the unemployed. Of the rest, labor health and education investment got 8%, and infrastructure investment got about 7%. It also included a large amount of government money to

The unprecedented government intervention during the massive economic crisis of the late 2000’s was met with varied sentiment of economists (Lee, 2009). For example, economist Marci Rossell felt that government intervention was arbitrary and lacked clarity as to which firms would receive government aid (Lee, 2009). She furthered her argument by stating that if the government bailed out homeowners and banks that were borrowing and lending “over their heads,” they were creating a dangerous precedent to set (Lee, 2009, p.40). However, Rossell praised the Obama administration for having a clear grasp on the economic situation and trusted in this administration’s guidance to recover from the economic crisis. Conversely, economist Steven Schwarcz said that though the government bailout in 2008 would cost more than it would have if the government had reacted more swiftly to early signs of recession, these institutions would collapse and fail without government aid (“How Three Economists,” 2008). If these institutions failed, the ripple effect of this failure to the U.S. economy would be irreparable.

President Obama's stimulus package, the American Recovery and Investment Act of 2009, consisted of nearly $800 billion in funding. The package consisted of a consortium of thousands of federal tax reductions, and expenditures on infrastructure, education, health care, energy and other projects. The purpose of the stimulus package was to jumpstart the U.S. economy out of recession mainly by generating two to three million new jobs and replacing decreased consumer spending. In my opinion, I believe the U.S. stimulus package was effective in reducing the severity of the downturn. However, the one major issue I find concerning the package was that the stimulus package was only intended to quickly stimulate a rapidly weakening economy and never

This was to help good banks from collapsing because lenders were panicking. The government eventually came up with a program called tarp also known as the troubled assets relief program. This program gave 700 billion dollars to help sure up banks. White, L. H. (2009, August 1). Housing Finance and the 2008 Financial Crisis. Retrieved November 3, 2016, from https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/hud/housing-finance-2008-financial-crisis. This helped stop all the panicking in the financial system. Congress later on incorporated a stimulus package which gave the economy over 800 billion dollars from new spending and tax cuts. Amadeo, Kimberly Subprime mortgage crises: Effect and Timeline. (2016, September 8) Retrieved from: https://www.thebalance.com/treasury-yields-3305741)) This helped slow down the fall in the economy. In 2010 congress also passed a law named the DODD Frank law which basically stopped banks from taking big

There has been a debate for years on what caused the Financial Crisis in 2008 and if there was one main cause, or a series of unfortunate events that led to the crisis. The crisis began when the market was no longer funding many financial entities. The Federal Reserve then lowered the federal funds rate from 5.25% to almost zero percent in December 2008. The Federal Government realized that this was not enough and decided to bail out Bear Stearns, which inhibited JP Morgan Chase to buy Bear Stearns. Unfortunately Bear Stearns was not the only financial entity that needed saving, Lehman Brothers needed help as well. Lehman Brothers was twice the size of Bear Stearns and the government could not bail them out. Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy on September 15, 2008. Lehman Brothers bankruptcy caused the market tensions to become disastrous. The Fed then had to bail out American International Group the day after Lehman Brothers failed (Poole, 2010). Some blame poor policy making and others blame the government. The main causes of the financial crisis are the deregulation of banks and bank corruption.