TARP was the Trouble Asset Relief Program commonly known as the bank bailout or the subprime mortgage rescue. The original idea was to buy toxic mortgage-backed securities clogging bank balance sheets, but Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson quickly pivoted. Instead of purchasing bad assets, they injected capital directly into banks by buying preferred stock and warrants through the Capital Purchase Program. This gave banks quick cash to shore up regulatory capital without the messy process of the government valuing and buying complex securities. The funding cap was approved by Congress at just under $500 Billion, 40% of it made its way into the banks this way. What if the troubled asset this time around is a US Treasury bond, simply because there's a failure of bids submitted sufficient to buy the amount of that bond being offered at auction at any price? Such an event would be something so severe that the actual bad news would not be disclosed, at least until they managed to find a bid, if at all.