[fragsworth]

You are correct. Additionally, the size of the bank(s) are not really what matters.

I want to see the scale (sum) of what was actually lost when they went bankrupt, and how much we (the public) have to put up to keep the system from collapsing. Does anyone have an actual visualization of how much we ponied up to keep our banking system from collapsing?

Did the public just provide a reasonable interest rate loan for a few months to a year? Or was it a sweet 0% loan for...ever? The important details are lost in the media reports and it would be nice to get a sense for what really happened.

[jeremyjh]

There were winners and losers, but the government made money on TARP. That doesn't fit anyone's narrative very well, so you don't hear that much about it, but its a fact. So far not a public dollar has been lost in the current crisis. FDIC, like other insurance, is paid for by the insured. Every FDIC bank in the country is paying the cost of this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program

[haldujai]

Nominally yes, but not when you consider borrowing cost and effects on deficit. The CBO has TARP costing 31 billion. [0]

FDIC is paid by the banks but it seems probable it will be passed down to customers in banking fees at the end of the day.

[0] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59062

[DSMan195276]

The problem with those numbers is that TARP lost money if you account for inflation over that period. That said the point wasn't to make the government money anyway, so whether that matters is up to you.

[than3]

Generally speaking, it turns into free assets. The people involved usually don't acquire the assets/associated debt without some kind of guarantee.

OneWest Bank for example after 2008 had a guarantee where if the assets defaulted above a certain amount they would receive full value of the loans in a payout from the government. They were actively foreclosing on people to justify catastrophic losses to get the bailout. Not sure how that ended up since I was only marginally aware of the start of that and everything went silent once the news got wind of the perverse incentives.

In terms of trends, the bailout game has been played consistently since the the dollar went off the gold standard (1971 iirc).

The ponzi is starting to unwind now that inflationary pressures are out of control. I expect concentration to eventually lead to nationalization followed by a new currency which will fail because they lost all credibility from their mismanagement as a private entity.

That's what's happened historically with every country that debases its store of value above the point macro effects become noticable which are around 3:1 ratio).

[TheSpiceIsLife]

There's argument to be made that approximately any cost to keep the system from collapsing is a trade-off worth making if the alternative is the system collapsing.