	The crisis might have never been induced if the financial markets had not been deregulated. Deregulation let financial corporations relax their lending standards, which as detailed in this paper, led to the subprime housing crisis and the failure of the economy and its financial infrastructure. Political decisions over the last thirty years have continually loosened restrictions. 20 years before Clinton, in 1980, Jimmy Carter introduced policies that removed many restrictions on the financial practices and lending practices of banking, while in 1982, Ronald Reagan helped to pass a law creating adjustable-rate mortgages. The market would soon sour in the Savings and Loan Crisis of the ‘80’s and ‘90’s, just after homeowners flooded the real estate market due to the president’s ill-fated policies, just as Clinton and US politics in general did in respect to the most recent crisis.
	To put an end to the financial crisis, many policies and programs have been adopted. One of these actions stand out as the largest and most influential: TARP. So, what method should be used to determine their relative effectiveness? Here, the guidelines are quite simple: if a program has shown a direct improvement on America’s financial situation, or has set the ground for future growth, then it can be classified as a success. 
	The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was created in October 2008, with an original mission to help lift failing and important American corportations through buying back bad loans. This proved to be too cumbersome, and TARP’s focus then shifted to buying equity and assets in these corportations. ThouThe operation exceeded predictions of failure and an expected taxpayer cost of $356 billion, and now projects to have a taxt cost of only $30 billion. In retrospect, TARP has proven to be very important in economic recovery, through greatly helping to prevent the important firms, and the important financial infrastructure, to collapse, while at the same time putting less of a strain on taxpayers- the people- than originally predicted.
	As the economy attempts to recover under the guidelines of the actions and plans that have been put in place, one must ask wonder if the results would have been different under a better plan. Specifically, would debt reduction be more effective than economic stimulus? No, it would not, as the economic stimulus in place creates mechanisms that recoup the money lost as best as possible, and for the most part, put it to work in the parts of our economy they need it. We are in this crisis because our economy and politics were immoral; to rescue ourselves from it, we need to work hard to work off our debt to set the precedent for a hospitable financial environment.
	The S&L crisis bears core similarities to the one we are currently experiencing. In both crises, “savings and loan associations” did not reserve enough capital to survive in the case of a recession, and failed when the unexpected actually occurred. 