The Guide to Understanding TARP

Want to impress your colleagues and interviewers with how much you know about this $700 Billion (and counting) behemoth of legislation? Curious where all your tax dollars are going? Then this guide is for you. Check out the Free Sample Chapter.

In order to foster intelligent debate on the relative merits of TARP, it is first necessary to present an unbiased overview of the plan in plain English. To that end, we have endeavored to present the facts in an orderly, understandable format.

This guide is a primer on the genesis and execution of the Troubled Assets Relief Program as it is set forth in Public Law 110-343 approved on October 3, 2008. The program falls under the authority of the more commonly known Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. This guide will highlight the salient points of the plan, how it has been implemented thus far, and what can be expected from this authority in the future.

It is our hope that this guide will leave you with a greater understanding of the mechanisms of the government that were allowed to intervene when the mechanisms of the market appeared to be on the verge of failure. This guide was painstakingly researched over a period of almost five months, and it presents the facts, the hard figures, and the expert projections contained within the well over 1,000 pages of documentation and interviews that were compiled to produce it.

This 50+ page guide includes the following sections:
1. Introduction
2. Background on TARP
3. Housing Bubble
4. A TARP is Born
5. The Evolution of TARP
6. Participation
7. Repayment
8. Oversight
9. Stressed Out
10. Controversy
11. Who’s Who of TARP
12. Confessions of a TARP Intern
13. Appendix: TARP Recipient List