Something I didn’t know about TARP was that it wound down in October 2010 with only $388 billion of the $700 billion available dispensed.

So when you hear about how “the stimulus didn’t work,” realize that we barely even tried it.

I learned that from reading this book. That work is what prompted a previous post about terrible academic writing. The book is indeed as dry and flavorless as the Atacama, but does contain good information throughout.

That said, I do not recommend that anyone else subject themselves to reading it. It very much only examines the crash through a confused mixture of laissez-faire capitalism and free market boosterism, even when its data and sometimes previous sentences directly contradict this line of thought. It is as interesting (if you can withstand the terrible writing, which I can) to read from this level of witnessing the cogntive dissonance as it is for the information therein. Nearly all of the writers get so close to understanding what occurred and why, but are never able to pull the pieces together, as doing so would threaten both their worldviews and their salaries. If you read this, do so for the information as the analysis is mostly useless and the writing is a tragedy.