Too Big To Fail

'Too Big to Fail' – real story's not over


The HBO movie “Too Big To Fail” ends just after the early stages of the financial crisis in 2008, when Congress dramatically reversed course and passed the massive TARP program in the face of a cratering Dow Jones Industrial Average and fears of an economic apocalypse.

But of course, the real story didn’t end there. After the timeframe of the movie, TARP, which was originally sold as a way to buy “troubled assets”—hence the acronym "Troubled Asset Relief Program"—became much more than that. And before it was all over, the Federal Reserve would swell its balance sheet by epic amounts, dwarfing the TARP bailout itself.