I know TARP didn't cost anything monetarily[0]. I state that one of the observations you can make about TARP and its aftermath is that banks weren't forced to

I know TARP didn't cost anything monetarily[0]. I state that one of the observations you can make about TARP and its aftermath is that banks weren't forced to do business differently and the bulk of the TARP money didn't go to help average Americans. There were other paths than TARP. The fact it "didn't cost the government anything" is a red herring, in that it didn't produce the desired behavior or outcomes that were intended as the TARP money was suppose to have strings attached. All I see is reasons for strong regulation and breaking up the banks so that "main street" banking is wholly separated from "wall street" banking, so losses can't cascade the same way, even if is at the expense of some marginal profits. Why should deposits and traditional lending be exposed to wall street speculation? This what happens when you allow speculative finance, corporate investment banking[1] and (for lack of a better term) regular banking to co-exist in the same institution. Boring banks are good. We used to have a lot of them before the M&A sprees of the 1980s and 1990s, which was purely fueled by consolidation which in turn, those consolidated assets were invested in riskier and riskier financial markets and other endeavors. I will continue to argue it was not a benefit to the American public. [0]: Though not all costs are directly monetary, or even monetary at all. One outcome of TARP and that time period is everyone is now comfortable with the idea of "too big too fail" and seemingly, governments are willing to bailout risky financial speculation of N size[2] with no consequences for those who made the decisions to participate in that speculation in the first place. Keep in mind too, as noted elsewhere in this thread, its still up to debate whether that is strictly true or if the total cost has not been calculated correctly [1]: I don't know where to draw the line here because "investment banking" is a really broad term, that covers everything from M&A finance to market making to individual investment services under the umbrella term. For arguments sake, I'm sticking with "corporate investment banking" to hopefully add clarity [2]: N = whatever the minimum threshold is that financial institutions can convince the government to bail them out for while arguing not doing so will cause "a disproportional economic downturn"