Secondly, TARP money is not equally dished out over 3 years -- how many payments were made lately? I used the figure of $350 billion as that is what I heard had been spent in the first year or so.
From Wikipedia:
As of February 9, 2009, $388 billion had been allotted, and $296 billion spent, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
On a side note, you can't just look at it as a percentage of GDP. You need someone to finance all these borrowings -- I could say (and I have) that compared to the rest of the world, the American debt is actually quite low. But you have to remember that it is much easier for Australia to have a debt that is 100% of its GDP than for the U.S. to have such a debt.
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As I said again, TARP is TARP. It's been passed as the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, to deal with the subprime mortgage lending crisis with a ceiling of 700 billion.
You seem to suggest TARP is a term encompassing everything but that's not the case. It does not include other recovery measures. For example, there's ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) which is for infrastructure spending, funding for states, help for the needy and tax cuts for individuals and businesses to stimulate the economy. That is NOT part of TARP. There's also the cash for clunkers program, which is again, not part of TARP. There's a host of other measures that's NOT TARP.
On a side note, you can't just look at it as a percentage of GDP. You need someone to finance all these borrowings -- I could say (and I have) that compared to the rest of the world, the American debt is actually quite low. But you have to remember that it is much easier for Australia to have a debt that is 100% of its GDP than for the U.S. to have such a debt.
Right, and you were the one who tied TARP spending to GDP. Not me. I quote:
this may be a language thing. When someone I say with X, he I mean something as well as X. You referred to stuff as a percentage of GDP, and I remarked that if you add TARP to the recovery measures (which you had referred to, saying it is only a 'drop in a very large bucket') it reaches nearly 10% of GDP.
Look at the EU countries, China, and a host of other nations which also injected money into their economies. As a proportion of GDP, what Obama put into the economy is but a drop in a very large bucket. He can argue all he wants that "he did it". But I seriously doubt what the democrats or the government did had any effect at all.