Troubled Asset Relief Program: A Case Study

Bush on October 3rd, 2008. Some of the recipients of this bail out were and continue to be large financial institutions including Wells Fargo & Co., JP Morgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and Morgan Stanley. In this situation the banks are not only able to continue risky behavior, but take little to no responsibility for their actions in causing such a situation. Fundamentally, if the financial institutions were bailed out once it has set a precedent for other financial institutions to view and believe that taking part in risky behavior will not affect them in the long run.

The bursting of the housing bubble, known more colloquially as the 2008 mortgage crisis, was preceded by a series of ill-fated circumstances that culminated in what has been considered to be the worst financial downfall since the Great Depression. After experiencing a near-unprecedented increase in housing prices from January 2002 until mid-2006, a phenomenon that was steadily fed by unregulated mortgage practices, the market steadily declined and the prior housing boom subsided as well. When housing prices dropped to about 25 percent below the peak level achieved in 2006 toward the close of 2008, liquidity and capital disappeared from the market.

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.

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.

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

Since the Great Depression, our economy has not seen such devastating downturns. As a result, many of us have lost our jobs and subsequently, our homes. The current foreclosure crisis is affecting 1 out of every 5 Americans, Jonathan Lain (How to Solve the Foreclosure Crisis). So now the focus is on finding ways to solve the growing epidemic of foreclosures. I propose that the government fund a non-profit organization, whose mission is to reduce the number of foreclosures among the American people. Furthermore, although the initial funding would come from the government, as a non-profit, the agency would be able to obtain grants and hold fundraising events in

These losses necessitated governmental action in the financial markets. Companies such as Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns lost all of their stock’s value and were forced into bankruptcy. This risk spread throughout the American banks, forcing the American government to step in and buy all of the securitized, troubled assets from the balance sheets of

All the firms turn to the hedge funds but failed and to bail the banks, Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke asked the congress for 700 billion dollars.

It is difficult to perform a cost benefit analysis of TARP because it is difficult to evaluate the risk taken on by taxpayers in these bailouts, the moral hazard costs that could lead to future risk taking, and the social costs such as perceived unfairness of the bailouts and the corruption of the TARP administration. There have been some cost benefit analyses done on TARP, however they generally each have limitations. One of them for example had outlined that the only cost to taxpayers through TARP were the outlays under the Capital Purchase program, which was inadequate since it didn’t fully cover the extent of the cost of the bailouts for Citigroup, AIG, Bank of America, and others. When covering gross benefits, it is difficult to isolate the benefits of TARP from other actions done by the FED, FDIC, and other financial regulatory institutions. It is also difficult to distinguish the benefits from other

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

The EHR/EMR was mandated in 2009 it was a provision of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, they are encouraging the providers to start using the EHR. A of January 1, 2014 all public and private healthcare groups must have adopted and be demonstrating a meaningful use of the EHR so that they can collect the reimbursement from Medicaid and Medicare. The EHR/EMR have to be in facility in working order at the beginning of 2015. The definition of meaningful users to improve quality, safety, efficiency, and reduce health disparities. There is 3 stages of meaningful use, to meet the first deadline of stage one is October 2012. Stage two and three go over the health information that you exchange with the providers, in these stages you will

Citigroup had received funds in the past not as a bailout but more like financial assistance to promote a healthy economy but in 2008 after a series of decline investment opportunities and stock purchases, they were in dire need of financial backing. The government provided $45 billion in loans and a safety net for future investment of $300 billion dollars from TARP. Eventually, Citigroup will sell their stock to repay the funds received through bailout The FDIC and Fed provided an limited loss from assets.

The Treasury Department purchased $40 billion in AIG preferred shares from its Capital Repurchase Plan. The Fed will purchase $52.5 billion in mortgage-backed securities. The funds are allowing AIG to retire its credit default swaps.” The case of AIG demonstrates a specific illustration of the “too big to fail” problem.

On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. With $639 billion in assets and $619 billion in debt, Lehman 's bankruptcy filing was the largest in history, as its assets far surpassed those of previous bankrupt giants such as WorldCom and Enron. Lehman was the fourth-largest U.S. investment bank at the time of its collapse, with 25,000 employees worldwide. The consequences for the world economy were extreme. Lehman’s ' fall contributed to a loss of confidence in other banks, a worldwide financial crisis and a deep recession in many countries. Lehman 's collapse roiled global financial markets for weeks, given the size of the company and its status as a major player in the U.S. and internationally. Many questioned the U.S. government 's decision to let Lehman fail, as compared to its tacit support for Bear Stearns, which was acquired by JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) in March 2008. Lehman 's bankruptcy led to more than $46 billion of its market value being wiped out. Its collapse also served as the catalyst for the purchase of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America in an emergency deal that was also announced on September 15.

Congress is continuously attempting to decide if Fannie Mae should be privatized or owned by the government. One thing the government should focus on is reducing the monopoly characteristics in Fannie Mae. With government intervention, Fannie Mae should be broken up into many smaller companies. This would spread the risk among the financial market and Fannie Mae would have to compete against other companies to stay in business. If unfortunate events lead to another economic crisis, the financial pressure would be placed on more than one company and investors would not have to rely on Fannie Mae to stay afloat (Reiss, David, 951-952). This idea was recently discussed among two senators, Bob Corker and Mark Warner who consider splitting Fannie’s single-family business from their multifamily business. They think the single-family businesses could then be split again into smaller companies (www.money.cnn.com).