10 thoughts on “Whaat?! TARP bailout money is being repaid – with profit?”

1. Is this a bad, nazi, communist, terrorist loving, America hating, grandma plug pulling, baby killing, slavery promoting bit of news or is it a good thing and all credit due to Bush and the GOP?  What does Rush say?

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   1. ….were set during GW’s administration.  

      Or was it Coolidge’s?

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      1. TARP I was passed by the Democratic Congress and signed by Bush. Whether they remember the fact that many Republicans were up in arms over it is one thing, but you can’t really claim that this was solely the Obama Administration’s doing. If anything, TARP II was a continuation of a Bush Admin. policy.

         So in a way, Bush did plant the seed of recovery. Of course, he also chopped down the tree of prosperity, so there’s always that.

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         1. Bush wasn’t getting a whole lot of support from his own.  They certainly have been trying their best to make people forget this all started while Bush was still in office but that was when they thought it was going to be a huge flop. And they’ve been so successful at putting it all on fascist-or-is-it-socialist-I-forget Obama, who remembers how it started?  They wanted Obama to own it completely so if it’s good news now, it’s bad news for the GOP.

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            1. Sometimes it’s hard for me to keep straight whether people are talking about what actually happened, and how some group is going to spin it.

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   1. That’s “profit” in my book.

      To the original diary, I don’t think we can really say that Bernanke/Geithner is much better than Bernanke/Paulson for TARP.  TARP was always supposed to be, at least in part, a loan and rescue program – it was designed to recover the money it invested, over time.  Saying that under Paulson it failed to recover that money is denying the fact that, timing-wise, the previous administration was never likely to see the money before it left town.

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   2. This specific program has turned a profit, but not for the totality of the economic rescue and recovery program.

      As to this specific program.  When the market went “no bid” (no buyers: from bid-ask concept) market prices cratered, everyone “knew” there was value out there, but everyone’s risk managers were pounding on them to get back in to their risk budgets so the pressure was to sell into a crap market even when they wanted to buy.

      Even the soveriegns and other big players could have played couldn’t find the liquidity to take advantage of the situation.

      The treasury with its very different priorities and liquidity was able to step in to a market that everyone knew had value and make a “profit” on this part of the program.

      That said the Return or Risk Adjusted Investement/Capital may have not made this a commercially viable play, and the most wounded assets will be the last to repay (or possibly not) so the program may not end up being profitable.  That said I remain convinced that inaction would have meant Armageddon (I am not speaking in Biblical term, but I am not speaking hyperbole either).

      Though there is little I like about Bush, I thank him for serving his country not his politics at the very end of his term.

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3. which it made losses.

   Seriously, the numbers being touted cherry pick in a way that excludes a lot of the deal that have led to nearly inevitable or even actually realized losses.  

   There is a lot of fuzzy book keeping involved.  TARP could make a profit in the long run, but it hasn’t yet.

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   1. No speculating- just which have shown losses?

      None.

      Yes- most need more time to attempt to save themselves.  ANd  – as someone else observed- surely the most stable and safe will be the earliest to redeem.

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