RJ and Makay

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner stood before a recent town hall meeting and offered a eulogy for the government's $700 billion bank bailout program, which expired last week, two turbulent years after Congress approved it during the heat of the financial crisis in 2008.

Geithner noted that Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, had been called un-American and a deliberate departure from free market principles. Even though there is still a chasm between the perceptions of the program and its overwhelmingly favorable effect on the U.S. economy, economists largely agree that the massive federal bailouts beginning in 2008 saved the country from a financial abyss.