TARP on course to cost less than 30 billion

Each month the U.S. Treasury department submits a report to Congress on the state of transactions connected to the deeply unpopular American government bailout program, Troubled assets relief Program. the original budgeted amount of 700 billion turned into a payout of 387 billion. Much of this money has now been paid back by the banks, car companies and financial institutions to whom it was originally loaned. The latest sales by the US government of the shares they owned in the various companies has actually yielded in a number of cases profits. Even the giant AIG insurance company is now on track to return most of the monies that the US invested in it over the coming year . In the end the TARP program is estimated to cost somewhere around 25 billion dollars , a far cry from the original 700 billion that was approved at the height of the crisis. As the Tarp reports make clear the program succeeded in preventing the collapse of the US economy. It did not, of course, work sufficiently to protect ordinary Americans from the scourge of prolonged unemployment which will continue to be a serious problem for many months ahead. For that to have happened there needed to be a much more massive stimulus focused on job creation than what was later passed by Congress.

Later today we will hear the latest unemployment numbers. Even if they fall as I hope they do the rate of unemployment needs to be driven much much lower. But for the moment it is worth remembering that TARP will cost a small fraction of its originally estimated cost, as unpopular as it is and with all of its obvious flaws, it is important to keep this in mind.