The TARP Money-Back Guarantee

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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The Treasury Department reported that in May TARP repayments to taxpayers have, for the first time, surpassed the total amount of TARP funds outstanding.

“Treasury’s report showed that, through the end of the May, TARP repayments had reached a total of $194 billion, which exceeded the total amount of TARP funds outstanding ($190 billion) by $4 billion.”

There has been a great deal of skepticism about whether American taxpayers will ever recover the entire sum invested in the financial system. A total of $700 billion was earmarked. Several large financial firms including Citigroup (NYSE C:), Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE: GS), and Bank of America Corporation (NYSE: BAC) have paid back their loans in full.

The government has, however, continued to lose money on investments in Fannie Mae (NYSE: FRE), Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE), and American International Group (NYSE: AIG)

The hole created by the initiate is not likely to ever be entirely filled.

The overall projected cost of the TARP program has declined dramatically as repayments to taxpayers continued to exceed expectations. In May, Treasury notified Congress that the projected lifetime cost of TARP has decreased by $11.4 billion to $105.4 billion since the FY 2011 President’s Budget.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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