Looks Like TARP Will Be Profitable!

[Parsad]

Unlike many other government bailouts, it looks like TARP will be profitable.  Cheers!

 

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/tarp-profit-at-least-16-bln-so-far-treasury-2009-12-23?reflink=MW_news_stmp

[shalab]

Looks like Munger was right afterall  ;D

 

My congressman ran on the platform to oppose TARP and won. I am going to send him this article  ::)

[Guest ValueCarl]

I can only wonder how some of the foreign investors who dwell amongst us on this board, feel for having been the PATSIES in this US TREASURY, DEBT GONE WILD, PONZI SCHEME "market" aided and abetted by certain lying banks tethered to their US GOVERNMENT PARTNER.  :-X

[Hoodlum]

Losses from AIG could easily offset any gains they get from TARP.

[Packer16]

They may have made money on some deals but we have lost it all in spending the President and crew want to make by spending money to create more gov't jobs.

 

Packer

[JAllen]

Yeah,

 

Let's not even consider Freddie and Fannie.  They make AIG look like fun.  Purportedly they are upping the support or I don't even know what you call it to about 800 big ones. 

 

WOW! 

 

I think that dwarves any potential profitability from the other bailouts.  I wonder what Freddie/Fannie is going to do with all of that money?  It should be more than enough for the two, no?

[Guest dealraker]

One group of people that loves TARP is your small bank managments.  Most of them should have gone out of business---- but not with TARP.  They've got life!  Life to sit on their fat asses collecting resonably large salaries with tons of bad loans made and TARP to pay them for a few more years.  The well run small banks just sit and watch as the crappy ones just sit and soak.  All that competition that should have vanished is still lounging around and now will sell stock at less than half of tangible book so they can pay themselves for the next 20 years.

[KFRCanuk]

Looks like Munger was right afterall  ;D

 

My congressman ran on the platform to oppose TARP and won. I am going to send him this article  ::)

 

I was watching a PBS documentary a couple of months back. I found it fascinating to watch Paulson progression from inflexible conservative at the beginning of the subprime mortgage crisis to his total reversal and capitulation to bailouts.

 

I wonder what would have happened to society in the USA when all credit remained frozen. Would there be riots or a revolution? How would Canada have been affected? What steps would the Canadian government have taken? We will never know.

[rmitz]

They may have made money on some deals but we have lost it all in spending the President and crew want to make by spending money to create more gov't jobs.

 

Packer

 

Yeah, this is the really infuriating part.  I always expected the main part of TARP to eventually be profitable, although of course they're trying to screw that up too.  That was part of why I supported it at the time (along with the consequences of not doing it), but to then take and spend this "found" money, it makes me sick.  Politicians are not idiots but they have perverse short-term incentives.

[Hoodlum]

Looks like Fannie and Freddie have been given further leaway.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091224/bs_nm/us_fanniemae_freddiemac_credit

 

The Obama administration pledged on Thursday to back beleaguered mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae (FNM.N) and Freddie Mac (FRE.N) no matter how big their losses may be in the next three years.

 

Treasury also said it would not require the two agencies to reduce their portfolio size next year, in a move that would allow them provide even greater support for the housing market as it begins to recover from its worst slump in decades.

 

The Treasury Department said it made the changes to assure markets it was fully behind both Fannie and Freddie and to give the agencies more time to reduce the size of the portfolios.

 

The two agencies each had a credit line of $200 billion. Combined, the two have thus far tapped about $111 billion.