ProPublica – GEORGE ROTHERT

Remembering 2008

We are occasionally reminded of the 2008 financial meltdown and its aftermath, and the taxpayer-funded bailouts of banks, insurance companies and an automobile manufacturer or two. The massive bailout, $633 billion approximately, was paid out to 982 entities. $633 billion went into TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program). Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac received $192 billion of that.

Of those recipients, 780 were obligated to pay back the money. The rest, totaling $29.9 billion, received direct subsidies for TARP’s housing programs.

But who’s keeping track?

Amazon, the New Domino’s?

In the mid 1960s, Tom Monaghan did some informal research among customers of his three-location pizza restaurant. He concluded that enough people wanted their order delivered and wouldn’t much care whether the pizza was any good, he changed the emphasis of his operation. Domino’s Pizza promised delivery within thirty minutes of taking the order or the pizza was free. He also began franchising and in less than a decade had two-hundred locations.