Troubled Assets Relief Program

The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) is a program of the United States government to purchase toxic assets and equity from financial institutions to strengthen its financial sector that was passed by Congress and signed into law by President George Bush. It was a component of the government's measures in 2009 to address the subprime mortgage crisis.

The TARP originally authorized expenditures of $700 billion. The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 created the TARP. The Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, signed into law in 2010, reduced the amount authorized to $475 billion. By October 11, 2012, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) stated that total disbursements would be $431 billion, and estimated the total cost, including grants for mortgage programs that have not yet been made, would be $24 billion.

On December 19, 2014, the U.S. Treasury sold its remaining holdings of Ally Financial, essentially ending the program.

Purpose

TARP allowed the United States Department of the Treasury to purchase or insure up to $700 billion of "troubled assets", defined as "(A) residential or commercial obligations will be bought, or other instruments that are based on or related to such mortgages, that in each case was originated or issued on or before March 14, 2008, the purchase of which the Secretary determines promotes financial market stability; and (B) any other financial instrument that the Secretary, after consultation with the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, determines the purchase of which is necessary to promote financial market stability, but only upon transmittal of such determination, in writing, to the appropriate committees of Congress".

In short, this allows the Treasury to purchase illiquid, difficult-to-value assets from banks and other financial institutions. The targeted assets can be collateralized debt obligations, which were sold in a booming market until 2007, when they were hit by widespread foreclosures on the underlying loans. TARP was intended to improve the liquidity of these assets by purchasing them using secondary market mechanisms, thus allowing participating institutions to stabilize their balance sheets and avoid further losses.

TARP does not allow banks to recoup losses already incurred on troubled assets, but officials expect that once trading of these assets resumes, their prices will stabilize and ultimately increase in value, resulting in gains to both participating banks and the Treasury itself. The concept of future gains from troubled assets comes from the hypothesis in the financial industry that these assets are oversold, as only a small percentage of all mortgages are in default, while the relative fall in prices represents losses from a much higher default rate.

The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (EESA) requires financial institutions selling assets to TARP to issue equity warrants (a type of security that entitles its holder to purchase shares in the company issuing the security for a specific price), or equity or senior debt securities (for non-publicly listed companies) to the Treasury. In the case of warrants, the Treasury will only receive warrants for non-voting shares, or will agree not to vote the stock. This measure was designed to protect the government by giving the Treasury the possibility of profiting through its new ownership stakes in these institutions. Ideally, if the financial institutions benefit from government assistance and recover their former strength, the government will also be able to profit from their recovery.

Another important goal of TARP was to encourage banks to resume lending again at levels seen before the crisis, both to each other and to consumers and businesses. If TARP can stabilize bank capital ratios, it should theoretically allow them to increase lending instead of hoarding cash to cushion against future unforeseen losses from troubled assets. Increased lending equates to "loosening" of credit, which the government hopes will restore order to the financial markets and improve investor confidence in financial institutions and the markets. As banks gain increased lending confidence, the interbank lending interest rates (the rates at which the banks lend to each other on a short-term basis) should decrease, further facilitating lending.

TARP will operate as a "revolving purchase facility". The Treasury will have a set spending limit, $250 billion at the start of the program, with which it will purchase the assets and then either sell them or hold the assets and collect the coupons. The money received from sales and coupons will go back into the pool, facilitating the purchase of more assets. The initial $250 billion could be increased to $350 billion upon the president's certification to Congress that such an increase was necessary.Summary of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008
United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. (Retrieved October 2, 2008)
The remaining $350 billion may be released to the Treasury upon a written report to Congress from the Treasury with details of its plan for the money. Congress then had 15 days to vote to disapprove the increase before the money will be automatically released. Privately held mortgages would be eligible for other incentives, including a favorable loan modification for five years.

The authority of the United States Department of the Treasury to establish and manage TARP under a newly created Office of Financial Stability became law October 3, 2008, the result of an initial proposal that ultimately was passed by Congress as H.R. 1424, enacting the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 and several other acts.

On October 8, the British announced their bank rescue package consisting of funding, debt guarantees and infusing capital into banks via preferred stock. This model was closely followed by the rest of Europe, as well as the U.S Government, who on the October 14 announced a $250bn (£143bn) Capital Purchase Program to buy stakes in a wide variety of banks in an effort to restore confidence in the sector. The money came from the $700bn Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Timeline of changes to the TARP

To qualify for this program, the Treasury required participating institutions to meet certain criteria, including: "(1) ensuring that incentive compensation for senior executives does not encourage unnecessary and excessive risks that threaten the value of the financial institution; (2) required clawback of any bonus or incentive compensation paid to a senior executive based on statements of earnings, gains or other criteria that are later proven to be materially inaccurate; (3) prohibition on the financial institution from making any golden parachute payment to a senior executive based on the Internal Revenue Code provision; and (4) agreement not to deduct for tax purposes executive compensation in excess of $500,000 for each senior executive". The Treasury also bought preferred stock and warrants from hundreds of smaller banks, using the first $250 billion allotted to the program.

The first allocation of the TARP money was primarily used to buy preferred stock, which was similar to debt in that it gets paid before common equity shareholders. This had led some economists to argue that the plan may be ineffective in inducing banks to lend efficiently.

In the original plan, the government would buy troubled (also known as 'toxic') assets in insolvent banks and then sell them at auction to private investor and/or companies. This plan was scratched when United Kingdom's Prime Minister Gordon Brown came to the White House for an international summit on the global credit crisis. Prime Minister Brown, in an attempt to mitigate the credit squeeze in England, planned a package of three measures consisting of funding, debt guarantees and infusing capital into banks via preferred stock. The objective was to directly support banks' solvency and funding; in some economists' view, effectively nationalizing many banks. This plan seemed attractive to the Treasury Secretary in that it was relatively easier and seemingly boosted lending more quickly. The first half of the asset purchases may not be effective in getting banks to lend again because they were reluctant to risk lending as before with low lending standards. To make matters worse, overnight lending to other banks came to a relative halt because banks did not trust each other to be prudent with their money.

On November 12, 2008, Paulson indicated that reviving the securitization market for consumer credit would be a new priority in the second allotment.

On December 19, 2008, President Bush used his executive authority to declare that TARP funds could be spent on any program that Paulson, deemed necessary to alleviate the financial crisis. On December 31, 2008, the Treasury issued a report reviewing Section 102, the Troubled Assets Insurance Financing Fund, also known as the "Asset Guarantee Program". The report indicated that the program would likely not be made "widely available".

On January 15, 2009, the Treasury issued interim final rules for reporting and record keeping requirements under the executive compensation standards of the Capital Purchase Program (CPP). Six days later, the Treasury announced new regulations regarding disclosure and mitigation of conflicts of interest in its TARP contracting.

On February 5, 2009, the Senate approved changes to the TARP that prohibited firms receiving TARP funds from paying bonuses to their 25 highest-paid employees. The measure was proposed by Christopher Dodd of Connecticut as an amendment to the $900 billion economic stimulus act then waiting to be passed.

On February 10, the newly confirmed Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner outlined his plan to use the remaining $300 billion or so in TARP funds. He intended to direct $50 billion towards foreclosure mitigation and use the rest to help fund private investors to buy toxic assets from banks. Nevertheless, this highly anticipated speech coincided with a nearly 5 percent drop in the S&P 500 and was criticized for lacking details.

Geithner announced on March 23, 2009 a Public-Private Investment Program (P-PIP) to buy toxic assets from banks' balance sheets. The major stock market indexes in the United States rallied on the day of the announcement rising by over six percent with the shares of bank stocks leading the way. P-PIP has two primary programs. The Legacy Loans Program will attempt to buy residential loans from bank's balance sheets. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) will provide non-recourse loan guarantees for up to 85 percent of the purchase price of legacy loans. Private sector asset managers and the U.S. Treasury will provide the remaining assets. The second program was called the legacy securities program, which would buy residential mortgage backed securities (RMBS) that were originally rated AAA and commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) and asset-backed securities (ABS) which were rated AAA. The funds would come in many instances in equal parts from the U.S. Treasury's TARP monies, private investors, and from loans from the Federal Reserve's Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF). The initial size of the Public Private Investment Partnership was projected to be $500 billion. Economist and Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman had been very critical of this program arguing the non-recourse loans lead to a hidden subsidy that will be split by asset managers, banks' shareholders and creditors. Banking analyst Meredith Whitney argued that banks will not sell bad assets at fair market values because they are reluctant to take asset write downs.
Economist Linus Wilson, a frequent commenter on TARP related issues, also pointed to excessive misinformation and erroneous analysis surrounding the U.S. toxic asset auction plan. Removing toxic assets would also reduce the volatility of banks' stock prices. This lost volatility would hurt the stock price of distressed banks. Therefore, such banks would only sell toxic assets at above market prices.

On April 19, 2009, the Obama administration outlined the conversion of the TARP loans to common stock.

Administrative structure

The program was run by the Treasury's new Office of Financial Stability. According to a speech made by Neel Kashkari

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