(Yes as one if WDC judges I should know better than to use a question mark in a headline)
There seems to be a common misconception here, and elsewhere that Barack Obama took office the day after the election. Just to end the confusion he did not. He actually took office on January 20, '09 not November 4, '08.
Why do I bring this up? Well the constant berating of Obama for bailing out the big banks and Wall Street. Please follow the time line.
October 3rd, 2008: TARP bill gets passed - Obama votes for it, but he is still only a candidate. Paulson, not Geithner starts bailing. In fact, on the first day that money was distributed 10/28/2008 $115 billion goes out to B of A, Mellon, Citi, Goldman, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, State Street and Wells Fargo (Link)
December 19, 2008: Wiki
President Bush used his executive authority to declare that TARP funds may be spent on any program he personally deems necessary to avert the financial crisis, and declared Section 102 to be non-binding. This has allowed President Bush to extend the use of TARP funds to support the auto industry. . .
Again where was President Obama during all this? Well he wasn't President.
Ok now President Obama comes in and what happens.
January 2009 -Congress rather than relaxing the bailout it tightens the rules on reporting and who gets what is left of the money.
February: Pay scale and bonus rules for TARP recipients get passed as part of the Stimulus Bill. So again the rules are tightened.
So how much TARP money, since President Obama has been office, has gone to the Big Banks and Wall Street folks who caused this mess? Zip, nada, zero. All remaining TARP money has gone to regional and smaller banks to assist shoring up their balance sheets ( Feel free to double check )
OK let's move onto the Stimulus. How much of this money has found it way to Wall Street? ZERO. Again you can search the same resource I used at Recovery.gov Now we can all complain about the size of the stimulus, that it wasn't targeted enough to help home owners, create more jobs than it has or Main Street in general. What we cannot do is say it was helping Wall Street. However it might have indirectly by building confidence and thus drawing investors back into the market.
Now we can all complain that Geithner and Summers have too strong a tie Wall Street the folks that caused the problem I cannot argue this fact. You can argue Geithner mishandled the AIG negotiations when he was head of the NY Fed and gave them a sweetheart deal. Fine, however I would argue given only what we knew then I'm not sure the same thing wouldn't have happened if it had been someone else beside Geithner or if Congress had to approve what the NY Fed was doing. Given how fast they responded to Paulson on TARP. And I am sure some would argue that we should have just let AIG roll over and die. While this is a wet dream of many of us who feel they would have gotten exactly what they deserved. The rolling repercussions of this action would have inflicted a great deal of pain on folks who did not deserve it. If AIG is a cautionary tale it is about letting one company get so big and have so much systemic financial control that it can destroy the entire system. The failure here is not Obama's, but decades of lack oversight and weak to non existent regulations
Finally I am not trying to defend Geithner or Obama here I just trying to be sure we all have our history correct. Truth is I wish he hadn't appointed Geithner he is just to easy a lightening rod. Then again given the mess we started with I'm not sure anybody wouldn't be the object of our wrath.