From time to time, you will find the media reporting that TARP and/or bailout funds have been paid back - sometimes even with a profit. Propublica tells a different story:
As of this moment:
Chart: http://projects.propublica.org/bailout/listWe're tracking where taxpayer money has gone in the ongoing bailout of the financial system. Our database accounts for both the broader $700 billion bill and the separate bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (go here for the Federal Reserve’s emergency loans to banks).
As of this moment:
More fun reading (from Dec. 2010):Recipients: 926
Total Committed: $633,575,722,738
Total Disbursed: $579,952,314,483
Total Returned: $277,816,965,263
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2010/12/totally-busted-truth-about-goldmans.htmlRecent disclosures from the Federal Reserve reveal that honesty was one of the earliest casualties of the 2008 financial crisis. These disclosures contain a number of juicy tidbits, like the fact that Goldman Sachs received tens of billions of dollars in direct and indirect succor from the Fed.
Thanks to these spectacularly large taxpayer-funded bailouts, Goldman was able to continue “doing God’s Work” – as CEO Lloyd Blankfein infamously remarked – like the work of producing billion-dollar trading profits without ever suffering a single day of losses.
Thanks to the Fed’s massive, undisclosed assistance, Goldman Sachs managed to project an image of financial well-being, even while accessing tens of billions of dollars of direct assistance from the Federal Reserve.
By repaying its TARP loan, for example, Goldman wriggled out from under the nettlesome compensation limits imposed by TARP, while also conveying an image of financial strength. But this “strength” was illusory. Goldman repaid the TARP loans with funds it procured days earlier from the Federal Reserve. Then, over the ensuing months, Goldman recapitalized its balance sheet by selling tens of billions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities to the Fed.
And the public never knew anything about these activities until two weeks ago, when the Fed was forced to reveal them....
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