wallstreetonparade.com / By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 12, 2015
Landing in our inbox this week was an 86 page report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on the current status of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The GAO is among a growing octopus of taxpayer-funded bodies attempting to reassure the American people that their tax dollars that were used to bail out Wall Street during the financial crash are being properly tallied up. The GAO report found the following:
“While the total disbursed for TARP programs was $430.1 billion, OFS [Office of Financial Stability, an office in the U.S. Treasury Department] has collected $424.9 billion (or $442.4 billion if including the $17.5 billion in proceeds from the additional Treasury AIG shares) through repayments, sales, dividends, interest, and other income. As of September 30, 2015, only $714 million in bank investments remain outstanding.”
Lumping dividends, interests and other income together with the repayment of principal borrowed is not really fair since money has a time-value and any investor expects to earn a return on money loaned or invested.
SIGTARP, the Office of the Special Inspector General for TARP released its most recent report on October 28, 2015. According to SIGTARP, as of September 30, 2015, TARP “had $35.1 billion in write-offs and realized losses…” SIGTARP adds this for good measure: “Treasury’s write-offs and realized losses are money that taxpayers will never get back.”
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