Will TARP Turn to Gold?

By TOBIN HARSHAW
NYT

“It wasn’t fair, but it was necessary.” That comment about the Troubled Asset Relief Program, from Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner in April, seemed about the best that anyone would ever say of it. But with the program officially coming to an end on Sunday, some folks are pushing a different description: profitable.

“Even as voters rage and candidates put up ads against government bailouts, the reviled mother of them all — the $700 billion lifeline to banks, insurance and auto companies — will expire after Sunday at a fraction of that cost, and could conceivably earn taxpayers a profit,” reports The Times’s Jackie Calmes. “A final accounting of the government’s full range of interventions in the economy, including the bailouts of the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is years off and will most likely remain controversial and potentially costly. But the once-unthinkable possibility that the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program could end up costing far less, or even nothing, became more likely on Thursday with the news that the government had negotiated a plan with the American International Group to begin repaying taxpayers.”

So, was this weed actually an unloved flower? Well, it was certainly unloved. Even though it was enacted by President Bush and had bipartisan support, its passage helped end the careers of Republican politicians like Senator Robert F. Bennett. And while President Obama had no problem furthering the Bush agenda on this count, many liberals called it little more than a give-away to the banks. And it may go to the grave spurned despite the administration’s rosy new predictions.

(More here.)