DISTASTEFUL as it may seem, we need to prepare for the next financial crisis, which, of course, will arrive eventually. Right now, though, people are so angry about the recent bailouts of Wall Street that the government may not be able to use the same playbook again.
The criticism has emphasized the trillions of taxpayer dollars that the bailouts put at risk. But, in fact, the realized losses were minuscule when compared with the widespread suffering they averted. The net losses of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, for example, which ran from October 2008 to October 2010, amounted to only $30 billion by the latest estimate. Yet TARP may have prevented many trillions of dollars of losses in gross domestic product.
Our principal hope for dealing with the next big crisis is the Dodd-Frank Act, signed by President Obama in July. It calls for bailouts of a sort, but has reframed them so they may look better to taxpayers. Now they will be called “orderly resolutions.”
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