With the unpopular bank bailout, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), coming to a close, policymakers should begin looking back at the program to glean lessons from its creation and execution. When TARP was created by an act of Congress in 2008, the imperative was speed, not transparency. Unfortunately, that lack of transparency and other problems plague the program nearly two years later.

A recent transparency survey of more than 5,000 Americans found that more than three-fourths gave the government low scores (59 or lower out of 100), and only seven percent rated the government as highly transparent (a score of 80 or higher). The White House received the highest transparency score in the study, and Congress received the worst score among government entities. However, limitations of the study make any final judgment on the success or failure of the government’s transparency efforts difficult.

Currently, it's hard to find a federal program more unpopular than the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the bank "bailout" passed in the waning days of the Bush administration. Poll after poll shows that the public does not support the bailout, and politicians, especially ones up for reelection, have picked up on this trend and frequently denounce the program. And yet, by many objective measures, the bailout could be considered a success: it helped avert financial calamity, it will cost a fraction of its original estimates, and TARP’s bank provisions will likely end up earning a profit for the government. While TARP could have done better, the public perception that TARP failed is not consistent with most data.