This afternoon President Barack Obama announced that his administration would shift TARP’s $700 billion bailout fund away from big financial institutions and toward small businesses through small banks.Specifically, the Treasury Department will offer capital from TARP, at a 3% rate, to viable banks with less than $1 billion in assets. These small banks must first submit a plan explaining how the capital will allow them to increase lending to small businesses. But remember that TARP was originally sold to the American people as a way to protect the economy from …
This Saturday, tens of thousands of Americans marched on Washington to protest the unprecedented amount of power being concentrated in Washington, DC under the Obama administration. And even the New York Times admits they have a point: “The government is the nation’s biggest lender, insurer, automaker and guarantor against risk for investors large and small. Between financial rescue missions and the economic stimulus program, government spending accounts for a bigger share of the nation’s economy — 26 percent — than at any time since World War II.” And on the …
