The Wonk Room

Government’s TARP Losses Since October: $86.5 Billion

Earlier this month, we noted that investments made under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) are “in the money” just 4.6 percent of the time.

Today, The Hill points to a new study showing that the monetary losses of these investments since October total $86.5 billion:

The U.S. government has lost $86.5 billion in the stock market since the end of October courtesy of the Wall Street bailout, according to the nonpartisan research think tank Ethisphere. The worst performer for the government was U.S. Bancorp; the U.S. lost $3.7 billion in the preferred stock that company gave it in exchange for an injection of $6.6 billion through the Capital Purchase Program (CPP). That’s a loss of 56.1 percent, according to Ethisphere.

Clearly, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s TARP plan has not worked, as the investments have tanked and the largest banks actually “reduced the availability of money for consumers and businesses during the final months of 2008.” Hopefully the new plan being crafted by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner provides something more tangible in return for taxpayer investments.