Posted on 02/11/2014 12:14:43 PM PST by FreeAtlanta
As Ramesh points out below, Kentucky Senate candidate Matt Bevin's campaign is claiming that he has consistently opposed the Troubled Asset Relief Program, drawing a contrast with Mitch McConnell, who has defended his role in passing the emergency bailout legislation. This is despite the fact that, as president of an investment firm in 2008, he signed a letter along with the firm's chief investment officer that says the following:
Most of the positive developments have been government led, such as the effective nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the passage of the $700 billion TARP (don't call it a bailout) and the Federal Reserve's intention to invest in commercial paper. These moves should help to stabilize asset prices and help to ease liquidity constraints in the financial system. The government actions to date have been reasonably swift and substantial. The Federal Reserve seems to understand the magnitude of the problem and the underlying issues involved.
Bevin told The Blaze that he "didn't actually write the letter." ....
Bevin is a man.
NR and McConnell are girly men.
Actually, they admitted that he claimed he did not write the letter.
Which wasn’t the issue. A letter was sent from his firm, with his signature, telling people investing in his firm that the TARP was a great thing.
Was he lying to his investors? Or is he misleading now when claiming he did not support TARP?
I wish the TARP supporters would have the courage to just admit it. It was a solid concept, and mostly worked, and we got back almost all the money spent. As government programs go, and as originally intended, it was a “success”.
The biggest flaw was the ability for the president to spend the money returned from TARP on other “tarp-like” things, allowing Obama a slush fund to send money to his buddies.
Your list does not quite fit the facts of federal regulations. No man can be forced by the government to mislead investors.
Which does not explain why he did not issue his own letter as President saying he did not personally support TARP; it just explains his reasoning regarding the letter.
I’m not sure I believe that he actually thought that much about the letter at the time.
I remember that Rick Perry fell into a similar problem with TARP because of a letter he wrote. I remember a lot of people here at this site who took quite the opposite position about his explanations of what his letter actually meant.
One thing I’m sure of — the democrats will be quite pleased if we make this election about the opposition to TARP, given that TARP was one of the only things we did in 2008 that actually worked at all. Much better than fighting Obamacare, I’m sure they will agree.
He explained this. As CEO, he is required by law to sign every financial disclosure and he is prohibited from interfering and imposing his opinion. IOW, he had no choice but to sign what an underling wrote.
TARP was a disaster.
Educate me as to what, in particular, was misleading in the document for the hedge fund’s investors? You have basically inferred that crimes were committed by Bevin. Please, name them for me.
The Government cannot force a signature on a document? Please tell the IRS, my bank’s regulator, and now my Health Insurance company that. Too funny.
“So National Review is the hit man for the GOPe. “
Just when you think that National Review has sunk as low as it can get they find a way to dig a deeper hole.
What a pathetic rag, a disgrace to the great men who wrote for it in the past.
It is such a relief not to subscribe to this progessive-leaning rag anymore. They have become what they set out to defeat under WFB. Bob
Why would there be an inference of a crime? I actually said I thought he was being truthful in the prospectus, and that his signature was not placed on a document for which he thought there was factual errors.
According to the interpretation here of what he is NOW saying, HE is saying that the paper he signed was misleading, in that in had opinions in it that he strongly disagreed with, but that he did not think it was appropriate to make any corrections to, or to say anything anywhere about.
It that is true, then I would argue that he was misleading back when, knowing his fund managers were saying positive things about TARP, and if he strongly disagreed, by not issuing his own public statement stating his opinion about TARP and how it could impact people who were investing in things his company was selling.
His position seems to be that he had no obligation, and in fact was ethically constrained, from stating an opinion that was different from the opinion of the people he or his board hired to run the funds for which he, as the man in charge, was required to affix his signature to.
I find it somewhat odd (this is not specific to this case, just in general) that there would be a requirement to sign something that wasn’t supposed to mean that you had reviewed what you were signing and had no factual objections.
Which actually brings up the real question — factually, was TARP a bad thing? He seems to be saying that the issue of TARP being good or bad was entirely a matter of opinion, and therefore he had no place substituting his opinion for that of the manager. That is a reasonable position, unless he now wants to insist that TARP was factually bad and that he factually knew it to be bad at the time.
I guess you could claim that the government “forces” you to put your signature on your taxes. But you do know that when you do, the IRS then expects that you agree with everything said on the form, and could prosecute you for perjury for anything that turns out to be false.
Note that in one sense, the fight of the Catholic Sisters over the Obamacare abortion mandate is precisely one of whether the government can force a person to sign something they disagree with, and it looks like the government will lose that one. So yes, I will stand by my statement, that the government cannot force you to sign something that you believe to be false, when your signature is supposed to signify agreement.
(note that you have to sign a speeding ticket, but it expressly says that the signature is not an agreement to the charge, but just an acknowledgement that you read the ticket).
I disagree, but if you want to make a specific claim about something in TARP that was particularly disastrous, we can certainly discuss it. I do believe that as it was implemented and then re-implemented, it turned into something bad. But TARP as originally passed was not intended to be used, for example, to take over the car industry.
And while I can imagine there was another way to accomplish what they did, TARP pretty much single-handedly stopped the collapse of our economy, simply by providing a temporary backstop for valuable assets that had to be sold but for which there were no investors because of a combination of abject fear and the lack of available cash caused by further fear.
And for most everything TARP was used for in the first few months, and pretty much everything except the auto industry bailout, the government was able to sell off the assets in short order, and generally for profit.
Proper regulation ahead of time could have circumvented the need for TARP, but I believe TARP or something like TARP was necessary.
But I so dislike the government intervening, that I do not fault anybody for opposing TARP, and I don’t make my decision on who to support based on whether they supported TARP or not. I think TARP is just something that happened, that hopefully will never happen again, and for which I think we learn little about a candidate.
I do not want to disagree with you because your response is so well written, well thought out, and reasonable. I apologize, I may have been a little snarky in my own initial response.
However - hindsight is so unfortunate for Bevin. Bevin could not have known whether his opinion at the time (anti-TARP) was correct. And, very importantly, if I understand correctly, he was not “permitted” to convey an opinion in the first place.
Now, he looks back on it and wishes he had made different choices. Maybe at times he feels like he should have acted or should have spoken out.
Regret is something that I am unable to condemn a man for if he is truly apologetic. Especially in a matter of opinion when, at the time, the future was unknown.
As you write, one could make compelling arguments that Bevin was wrong then and now and that TARP was helpful both to the banking system and profitable for the American citizen. I do not know.
You wrote, “I find it somewhat odd (this is not specific to this case, just in general) that there would be a requirement to sign something that wasn’t supposed to mean that you had reviewed what you were signing and had no factual objections.”
Regarding the above: I can only say that it is possible you have never had the singular opportunity to work in politics on financial regulatory procedure. I have not. I have friends who have, however. What you describe above - though I agree it is absolutely nonsensical - seems to be just the sort of thing they often complain about.
We are governed by the most foolish of us.
TARP was nothing ore than a bailout. As a constitutional conservative, I oppose all subsidies and bailouts.
No, it didn't. All it did was bail out financial firms that made bad decisions. Let them fail.
What was bailed out? Of the initial “investments” and loans, the payback was more than the payout. They were certainly something you wish the private sector could have done, and many would have, except nobody had any money.
I think people forget how bad the monetary situation was. Banks were giving investors 5% interest on long-term CDs, not because of inflation, but simply because they needed cash.
If banks were unable to make it, then they should have been allowed to make it or not. It’s not for the government to determine.
Whenever the government interferes to keep a company solvent that otherwise would not be, whether it’s a banking firm, an automaker, or any other business, that’s a bailout. They do it time after time after time, with our money.
If banks had to reduce their payouts to stay in business, then that’s what they had to do.
Government has no money unless it takes the money from someone (you and me.) Who was harmed to bail out the big banks?
But perhaps the worst aspect of TARP was allowing the Secretary of the Treasury sole discretion to determine whether firms shall stay in business or go out of business, with no possibility of appeal to anyone by anyone.
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