To the Treasury, it ultimately didn't much matter whether it resorted to boutique auctions or capital injections: to be sure, Paulson and his staff might lose face through their reversal, but Paulson had been considering such action well before the TARP passed. What mattered was political efficacy, not austere academic notions of “efficiency.” The main policy objective was to stop the market free fall without succumbing to bank “nationalization,” and the capital injection program basically accomplished that. But to the economist market designers, it made all the difference in the world.

Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis …, loc. 861