It's a bit too soon to be saying TARP was a good piece of legislation. It's also a bit of fantasy to say what would have happened if TARP hadn't passed.
The thing is, TARP hasn't led to any reforms in the financial sector. It simply shoveled taxpayer money at private corporations with very few strings attached, which propped up the banks long enough to say "hey, thanks, we would have been fine anyway, really, now piss off".
I think we'd be a lot better off without TARP. Your smug "the protestors were wrong" is unjustified.
The Great Depression was not caused by a sudden catastrophe but rather a crawling plague of failures that was reinforced every time the snooty holier-than-thou politicians living in Congress and the Fed refused to lend a hand to banks, even ramping up regulatory requirements in mid-crisis.
Nobody knows what would have happened for the current crisis, but history suggests attitudes like yours are not a good idea. The last thing we need right now is a nation of Hoovers.
I agree that we don't need any more Hoovers but that's all we have. If you read about the scope of Hoover's interventions into the American economy in 1929 after the crash until he left office you wouldn't suggest that he left the economy alone or did too little.
> The last thing we need right now is a nation of Hoovers.
I suggest that you re-read your history. Hoover was a progressive and was ramping up deficit spending and production controls. FDR ran against those policies but did a 180 when he got into office and basically just did more of the same.
That war on production is what made the great depression great. It didn't really end until WWII made it untenable - you can't have an empty arsenal of democracy.
The thing is, TARP hasn't led to any reforms in the financial sector. It simply shoveled taxpayer money at private corporations with very few strings attached, which propped up the banks long enough to say "hey, thanks, we would have been fine anyway, really, now piss off".
I think we'd be a lot better off without TARP. Your smug "the protestors were wrong" is unjustified.