Via green mover / shaker / party-maker, Rob Thomas:
“Good news for a Friday. Government program smooths out possible financial calamity and costs a fraction of original $700 billion, about $50 billion at worst. This is great news—let’s celebrate it, not tear it down.
Think our conservative and Libertarian friends will be happy? Me, neither.
Let’s hear it for doing the right thing—making a deeply unpopular move in an effort to pull a troubled economy back from the cliff—rather than merely the popular thing. ~ ed.
…The reviled mother of all bailouts — $700 billion to banks, insurance and auto companies — will expire at a fraction of that cost and may even turn a profit.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.The rescue of the troubled insurer included $70 billion from the bailout program that was enacted two years ago, at the height of the global financial crisis late in the Bush administration, initially to prop up big banks.At the White House on Thursday, the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, briefed President Obama about A.I.G. and about the broader outlook for the expiring rescue program, putting the projected losses at less than $50 billion, at most. Yet neither the White House nor Congressional Democrats are likely to boast much in the month remaining before midterm elections. For most voters, TARP remains a four-letter word…read the rest.
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