Wall Street, Financial Crisis | featured news

The 2008 financial crisis roiled the banking system and swamped the global economy, leaving millions of Americans jobless, underemployed or facing foreclosure. In its wake, Congress set out to overhaul how the government oversees Wall Street. The result was a sprawling law, the Dodd-Frank Act, which aims to prevent future crises by giving the government new tools and restricting banks' activities. The law may make future crises less likely, but it increases costs for companies, especially banks, and their customers.

Investors fled Wall Street in the worst stock-market selloff since the middle of the financial crisis in early 2009 in what has turned into a full-fledged correction. The Dow and the S&P tumbled more than 4 percent on Thursday and the Nasdaq lost 5 percent on fear the United States is staring at another recession and that Europe's sovereign debt crisis is swallowing two of its largest economies.

But you know what? The bailout, by the numbers, clearly did work. Not only did it forestall a worldwide financial meltdown, but a Fortune analysis shows that U.S. taxpayers are also coming out ahead on it — by at least $40 billion, and possibly by as much as $100 billion eventually. This is our count for the entire bailout, not just the 3 percent represented by the massively unpopular Troubled Assets Relief Program. Yes, that’s right — TARP is only 3 percent of the bailout, even though it gets 97 percent of the attention.