Thomas J. Mccool's Troubled Asset Relief Program

Our economy is a machine that is ran by humans. A machine can only be as good as the person who makes it. This makes our economy susceptible to human error. A couple years ago the United States faced one of the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression, which was the Great Recession. The Great Recession was a severe economic downturn that occurred in 2008 following the burst of the housing market. The government tried passing bills to see if anything would help it from becoming another Great Depression. Trying to aid the government was the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve went through a couple strategies in order to help the economy recover. The Federal Reserve provided three major strategies to start moving the economy in a better direction. The first strategy was primarily focused on the central bank’s role of the lender of last resort. The second strategy was meant to provide provision of liquidity directly to borrowers and investors in key credit markets. The last strategy was for the Federal Reserve to expand its open market operations to support the credit markets still working, as well as trying to push long term interest rates down. Since time has passed on since the Great Recession it has been a long road. In this essay we will take a time to reflect on these strategies to see how they helped.

During 1997-2006, house prices rose 85 percent. This led to an irresponsible consumer spending spree. Millions of people bought a house that they could not afford. Government regulatory agencies and mortgage lenders became less strict with credit restrictions so that people could buy homes without making any down payment. In 2007, however, the home values and sales began to decline. Due to the loss of trillions of dollars in home value, a record number of borrowers defaulted on their mortgage payments. America was put into a recession in 2008 because of the contraction of corporate spending and consumer purchased. The prices of consumer goods spiked, while employment declined. On October 3, 2008, former President Bush signed the Troubled Asset Relief Program; however, the bill did not restore the economy as a whole. By June 2009, America's economic recovery was at its weakest since the end of the Second World War. I chose this event in history because it had a major effect on America’s economy and changed the course of history. Historians need to study the Great Recession because America should learn from their mistakes. The Great Recession was due to different factors; however, if the regulations on credit restrictions were not tampered with, then the severity of the recession could have been

Scurlock presents the statement that the United States federal government defends the lending industry, which adds to their ability to have such high profits. He appeals a lot to logic when presenting this argument and supplies the audience with many facts that increase both the credibility and strength of the minor argument. For example, he gives information from when George Bush was president and how his second highest campaign contributor was a bank, and that same bank, MBNA, wrote a bill increasing the difficulty for middle-class families to have a second chance because they claimed that the option of bankruptcy was being abused; Bush passed this bill. Scurlock reveals the bias that the government has towards the lending industry with the use of this factual information. He also says that the Federal Governments top regulator rushed to the banks’ defense when there were complaints aimed at the credit industry, which is just another example broadcasting the bias of the government. Along with facts, Scurlock includes footage of consumer credit hearings that show how each bank was given the chance to discuss their

On October 3, 2008 President George W. Bush signed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, otherwise known as the “bailout.” The Purpose of this act was defined as to, “Provide authority for the Federal Government to purchase and insure certain types of trouble assets for the purpose of providing stability to and preventing disruption in the economy and financial system and protecting taxpayers, to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide incentives for energy production and conservation, to extend certain expiring provisions, to provide individual income tax relief, and for other purposes” (Emergency Economic Stabilization Act). In my paper I will explain and show the relationship between the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 and subprime lending, the collapse of the housing market, bundled mortgage securities, liquidity, and the Government 's efforts to bailout the nation 's banks.

The current financial crisis, which had its roots from subprime mortgage crisis, began to increase dramatically in September of 2008. There have been significant economic disorders in United States alone. Major banks and financial organizations around the world are going bankrupt and writing down billion dollars. Housing markets are falling not just in United States but all around the world. This crisis is truly global and it is spreading like fire. Because of these economic crises, the US Congress came up with a $700 billion bailout plan to buy troubled assets from financial institutions who are struggling financially. Nevertheless, another bailout was proposed and it's the homeowner bailout. It is known that the foreclosure

How does this apply to the ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act)? One connection is made to the ARRA based on the use of electronic medical records (EMRs) (Nash et al., 2012). The ARRA is trying to give support point to care information systems, which will aid doctors, nurses and other medical personnel to make the best medical decisions and circumvent making mistakes (Nash, Clarke, Skoufalos, & Horowitz, 2012). Furthermore, the ARRA HITECH agenda has encouraged many hospitals to put into place the computerized physician order entry or (CPOE) structures (Nash et al., 2012). The CPOE will “check a physician’s orders, alerting the user if a medication is ordered for a patient who is allergic, if a dosage is incorrect, if there are potential

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

All in all, I aim to assist in creating an illuminating understanding on American financial system and reforms through this public policy paper.

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

With the combination of unemployment, limited reserves, and large population in need, the relief that many Americans sought and used may never be able to satisfy or stabilize their financial crisis effectively. Since the sources of aid and assistance were only locally available to those had

The main goal the government should be focusing on is to reduce homeowner’s monthly payments, by enticing lenders to make concessions in interest rates that will make their payment affordable. This plan can keep families in their homes and would decrease the number of foreclosures. Providing a financial rescue plan without requiring

In 2008 America’s financial system was brought to a stand still as decades of negligence and financial decisions caused our economy to sink into the worst recession since the great depression. Cultivating a problem worse than America has seen in roughly a century points one finger not at a particular cause, but a string of events that finally gave way. Now, eight years later our economy is still recovering, and time has allowed us to look back at decades of mistakes to try and connect the dots of the perfect storm that collapsed our financial market in 2008. In 2009 Brookings Institution, one of Washington’s oldest think tanks, concluded there were three causes that resulted in the crisis. Economists Martin Baily and Douglas Elliot stated that the results of government intervention in the housing market, the influences Wall Street had on Washington, and global economic forces were the three main causes of the economic collapse. They believed that a housing bubble inflated when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government-sponsored enterprises, intervened in the housing market. The banking industry was called out to be blamed for years of manipulation of our political and financial systems. Lastly, Baily and Elliot cite the global economy and the existence of a credit boom throughout European and Asian nations. Low inflation and consistent growth throughout the world economy spiked investors’ interest in acquiring riskier investments, which encouraged

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Pub.L. 111–5) also known as the Obama stimulus nearly doubled the budget allocated for loan. It was in 2009 when Energy Secretary Steven Chu announces that Solyndra will receive the Energy Department’s first guarantee energy loan of $535 million, issued by the U.S. Treasury’s Federal Financing Bank even after the Department Of Energy staff warned that Solyndra would run out of money by September 2011. Making Solyndra one of several companies that received assistance from the government, attempting to push back China’s “strategic targeting of green-energy”. The loan was only 1.3% of the DOE portfolio (Johnson, 2012). Apparently, Solyndra received all this money so very soon because of the complaints

In this essay, I will briefly explain what happened during the financial crisis of 2007-09, and also discuss the contribution of the government to the financial crisis.

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.