It’s not rocket science, it was common sense....of course that’s in short supply in Washington DC.
Yet there were people here on FR saying Iceland was a “deadbeat” for not bailing out the banks.
In the case of the USA, Federal bank regulators essentially threatened banks if they didn’t take the TARP bailouts, which resulted in hundreds of banks around the country taking tax dollars they didn’t need.
Then once those bailouts were in place the Obama administration began using them as leverage to control the banks.
TARP, at least under Obama, was never about economic rescue and always about expanding federal control over the financial sector.
TARP was a well-intentioned boondoggle started by Bush and then seized upon by Obama.