Administering Crisis: The Success of Alternative Accountability Mechanisms in the Capital Purchase Program

The recent financial crisis is the worst the United States has faced since the Great Depression. As the crisis gradually evolved from a mere housing bubble into a severe recession, the government's response evolved as, well, culminating in the well-known Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Established by the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (EESA), this unprecedented program authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to purchase up to $70o billion in assets and securities from financial institutions in order to stabilize the nation's financial markets. But however necessary it may have been to avert a crisis, EESA's extremely broad delegation of authority, vague statutory commands, and weak provisions on judicial review raised the possibility of unaccountable administrative governance on a massive scale.