If you mean $700B of credit facilities authorized under TARP, then only about $450B maximum was loaned out maximum at any given time (though more in total as some loans were made after some earlier ones have been repaid), and everything has been repaid to the Treasury and Fed, with interest, though not every borrower repaid the money... i.e., TARP well paid for itself and helped save the economy from downward credit spiral.
By contrast, EU and ECB tried to do something similar in fits and starts, late and on the cheap, and they are still in much deeper trouble. Though they do not have the same centralized structural economic advantage that the US has.
The tide comes in and the tide goes out. Luckily, government chose the winners and the losers and saved us from a “downward credit spiral”.
1. Do downward credit spirals really happen?
2. If yes, are the caused or cured by government?