Taxpayers to make money on TARP, Treasury says

[cal04]

Source: MSNBC

The U.S. Treasury Department said on Friday that the many programs that it, the Federal Reserve and banking authorities implemented during the darkest hours of the 2007-2009 financial crisis likely will end up making a profit for taxpayers.

At a background presentation for reporters, a senior Treasury official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the department wanted to get word out about the success of the financial bailout before myths developed about it.

The senior official emphasized that rescue of the tottering financial system, which was on the verge of collapse in 2008, had been a bipartisan effort undertaken initially by the Bush administration and continued when President Barack Obama took office in 2009.

(snip)
Collectively, these programs—carried out by both a Republican and a Democratic administration—were effective in preventing the collapse of the financial system, in restarting economic growth, and in restoring access to credit and capital. They were well-designed and carefully managed. Because of this, we were able to limit the broader economic and financial damage.

Read more: http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/13/11186623-taxpayers-to-make-money-on-tarp-treasury-says?lite

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video at link

[mdmc]

1. more bailouts for the banks!

I want money!

[Politicalboi]

2. Good, so they won't need my taxes

[Gregorian]

3. Fuck the money. I want to follow Iceland's example.

[Ikonoklast]

4. No, you don't.

Iceland is in bad shape, still.

[JDPriestly]

6. So are we. And the worst is yet to come.

Embezzlers often repay what they have taken once they are discovered.

The question is: where did the banks find the money to "repay" the bail-outs?

The economy is still in a slump. People still can't pay their mortgages. Where did the banks get their money?

One possibility is that they did a lot of accounting tricks such as transferring debts to accounts in a way so that they can "repay" their debts from money that they should not be using for that purpose.

How in the world are banks making enough money in this economy to have repaid these debts so quickly?

I would like someone to explain that to me.

[pedex]

7. they are making money thru the

internal carry trade and not having to write down their losses is how banks are making $$

when they became insolvent the accounting rules were changed and enforcement of law suspended

[pedex]

8. are they?

they have already started forgiving and discharging debts which cannot be paid

last I checked they have recovered better than most

[Gregorian]

13. And by continuing to bail out, it's only going to get worse.

Iceland is the only way. Check out Max Keiser's financial discussions. He's one of the few who really understands markets.

[JDPriestly]

5. I'm not so sure. I was talking to an elderly person

who normally pays taxes on her interest earnings from her savings. She didn't have enough interest earnings to have to pay taxes this year for the first time. Hasn't spent a lot of money. Just didn't earn any interest.

So the banks have paid back a lot of the TARP money -- but they aren't paying interest on savings accounts. Money has been repaid, but tax revenues will be down to the extent that they are derived from interest on savings accounts.

This "good news" does not change the fact that the banks and their bail-out ruined the lives of many, many Americans and made the lives of many more Americans very difficult.

So, I am not rejoicing about this.

And I do not approve of the JOBS Act which will just lead to another bank crisis and bail-out.

[saras]

9. Only the corporate media could claim with a straight face that our economy HASN'T collapsed.

Perhaps the ivory tower room hasn't fallen yet, but two-thirds of it is dead and rotten. And restarting a few obsolete factories isn't going to fix it.

The economic crisis, globally (i.e. there's no more resources and continents to colonize, so capitalist expansion is coming to an end) is at least as big, and is going to take as much effort to repair, as the global environmental crisis.

[PoliticAverse]

10. "who spoke on condition of anonymity". Write the article when someone...

is willing to attach their name and reputation to the claims.

[pedex]

12. the other lending programs

ya they don't dare mention the other 20 some odd lending programs which dwarf TARP and have been used to pay off TARP loans nor the contents of the FED's balance sheet which is hiding all sorts of toxic waste

[PoliticAverse]

11. "Taxpayers to make money on TARP" - does that include all the costs of the 'moral hazard' ? n/t

[LetTimmySmoke]

14. Here's how the taxpayers made a "profit"

The taxpayers give the banking corporations $700 billion dollars cash. In return, the banking corporations give the taxpayers $750 billion dollars "worth" of toxic assets and nonperforming mortgages. What makes it worth $750 billion you say? The banks say so.

EDIT: Oh, and the cash they "repaid" the taxpayers with just came from money spawned by the Fed and given to the banks at zero percent interest.