Um.

I am a consultant in the banking industry, advising community banks.

TARP was intended to prevent an utter collapse of the financial foundations of America, which was a real possibility due to the ridiculous amount of worthless paper backed by squatters not just allowed but encouraged by Barney Frank and his boyfriend, Herb Moses, at FNMA.

Say 12 of the 20 largest financial institutions in America had failed, accross brokerage houses, big banks, mutual fund firms, the works.
It could have caused a ripple that would simply eliminate essentially ALL financial institutions, at least for the short term.
Then what? What do you do when your ATM card no longer works because your bank, who was doing just fine, cannot get cash because there is none available in the system.
Or even scarier, what does your neighbor do? And if you happen to have cash, well prices just went WAY up!

Did that happen?
No. IT WORKED!

And before TARP is completely done, it will at the very least be close to break even, and I would bet it shows a profit.
And that's just counting it against what the same amount of money would have made in bonds or other reasonably safe market instruments.
It does not consider the potential negatives that were averted.
All told, TARP may well be the most successfull, effective governemt program ever!
Assuming Obama does not try to tax his sheeple more to "pay" for something that is actually showing a profit.
Well, OK there may be a small problem there.

And banks that were smart enough to do their research and buy SELECTED mortgage securities two years ago are making a KILLING now!
As usual, the market over-reacted, and painted everything with a broad brush that should have applied to only a small portion.

From Wiki. The truth.


The Troubled Asset Relief Program, commonly referred to as TARP, is a program of the United States government to purchase assets and equity from financial institutions to strengthen its financial sector which was signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush on October 3, 2008. It is the largest component of the government's measures in 2008 to address the subprime mortgage crisis.

Originally expected to cost the U.S. Government $356 billion, the most recent final net estimate of the cost, as of October 5, 2010, will be close to $30 billion, including expected returns from interest in AIG.[1] This is significantly less than the taxpayers' cost of the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s. The cost of that crisis amounted to 3.2% of GDP during the Reagan/Bush era, while the GDP percentage of the current crisis' cost is estimated at less than 1%.[2] While it was once feared the government would be holding companies like GM, AIG and Citigroup for several years, those companies are preparing to buy back the Treasury's stake and emerge from TARP within a year.[3] Of the $245 billion invested in U.S. banks, over $169 billion has been paid back, including $13.7 billion in dividends, interest and other income, along with $4 billion in warrant proceeds as of April 2010. AIG is considered "on track" to pay back $51 billion from divestitures of two units and another $32 billion in securities.[2] In March 2010, GM repaid more than $2 billion to the U.S. and Canadian governments and on April 21 GM announced the entire loan portion of the U.S. and Canadian governments' investments had been paid back in full, with interest, for a total of $8.1 billion.[4] This was, however, subject to contention because it was argued that the automaker simply shuffled federal bailout funds to pay back taxpayers.[5]




TARP. OK. Stimulus bill. Not OK.

You can argue for eternity whether TARP should have been done or not. But the fact remains it will be break-even or showing a profit sooner than later. A drop in the bucket compared to El Presidente Bobblehead's Porkulus Stimulus monster for the mythical "shovel ready" projects. A black hole of earmarks where they can't even track where all the money went. And no return on investment for the taxpayer money squandered.

#-o

If the shoe fits...



...by the way, want a banana?