2016 Postmortem

The plan was to save the economy. And it worked, the economy was saved. Paying less for TARP assets wouldn't have blocked the bonuses, which were a very small fraction of the TARP money, and anyway the valuation wasn't done by Obama it was done by bureaucrats using some combination of valuation models and auctions (I don't know the details, but I'm sure they're on the internet).

Haven't read Geithner's book but I'm pretty sure what he was referring there is the AIG bonuses, which where tricky because AIG had a pre-existing contractual obligation. At best you are talking about one specific instance where Geithner thought it was necessary to honor legally binding bonus contracts totalling about $200M (which is nothing in the scheme of things), and as you said his purpose was not to reward or enrich bankers, his purpose was to ensure that the people who would be able to unwind the trades would stay around rather than quit and sue AIG for contract violations. Maybe he was right in that, maybe he was wrong, who knows. Who cares.

Nobody, including Obama, thinks its a good thing that bankers paid themselves bonuses with TARP money. In fact Obama imposed rules to prevent that. Yeah, maybe he could have put in more effective rules, but your description of "save the bonuses" as being the objective of TARP as opposed to an unfortunate side effect is patently absurd.

As far as language evolving, sure, that happens. But the definition of "corporatist" has not evolved. It's just that the far left has decided to redefine the term for its own purposes. And even that might be OK if they actually gave some kind of definition of the word, but they don't. They just use it as an empty attack on Democrats, insinuating that people like Obama care more about businesses than people, which is ridiculous.