Friday, May 22, 2009

TARP: "Duct tape and fishing wire"

From U.S. News & World Report, an insider's look at how TARP began. An excerpt:

But TARP morphed into an über-bailout that included direct cash injections into banks, the auto rescue, the AIG intervention, and other government efforts to revive the economy. If it sounds like a trial-and-error experiment, well, that's how it felt to the policymakers who designed it, too. "When we looked for easy solutions, we kept coming up empty," says David Nason, who was a senior Treasury Department official during the Bush administration. "Hank used to say all the time, 'We're going to have to do this with duct tape and fishing wire.' "

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