We are getting a bargain on this TARP business.

“The cost of TARP is likely to be no greater than the amount spent on the program’s housing initiatives,” Geithner said in prepared testimony to the Congressional Oversight Panel. He said the direct financial cost of TARP was once estimated as high as $350 billion by the Congressional Budget Office but was now “likely to cost a fraction of that amount” as investments are sold off and interest and dividends collected. The latest estimate from the non-partisan CBO estimated that TARP’s net cost will be as low as $25 billion. The Treasury’s most recent all-in cost estimate for TARP, including expected gains from AIG investments, is about $30 billion.

Geithner said the 1 percent of GDP cost for all rescues — including capital support to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. and actions taken by the Federal Reserve — is “remarkably low” compared to other past banking crises.

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

As promised. If you’re looking for some lunchtime reading material, check them out here. Do feel free to share your favorite passages with the group.

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

2 thumbs way up.

“In short this may have been the most successful United States program ever,” he wrote in a note to clients. “Moreover, it was bipartisan in the sense that both the Republican Administration that created it and the Democratic Administration that fostered it were unified in their beliefs as to what should have been done—and they did it.” [NetNet]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Please, please, PLEASE say this means he’s working on another “Who Is Next” list. Please.

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Remember, back in the day, when Kenneth Feinberg was named Comp Cop and everyone working at a bailed out company, who were told their asses were about to be capped, threatened to leave if he so much as dared to take a penny of their hard-earned money away? Sure you did, they wouldn’t shut up about it, or the fact that this–this!– was going to be the death of their otherwise phenomenally profitable firms? Anyway, apparently most people were just messing.

Of the 104 senior executives whose pay was set by the federal pay regulator in the last two years, 88 executives, or nearly 85 percent, are still with the companies even though their pay was drastically cut back, according to people briefed on the government data. The relative stability, at least within the executive suite, suggests that a soft job market, corporate loyalty and personal pride helped deter the feared management exodus at the companies hardest hit by the pay rules.

Sure, or maybe it was this.

Mr. Feinberg’s actions did little to rein in the industry’s huge payouts. Most of Mr. Feinberg’s pay rulings, for example, were in effect only for the final few weeks of 2009 — and affected only a handful of the most troubled companies.

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Park Avenue Bank, and its former president and CEO, Charles J. Antonucci, were just the beginning. Barofksy’s got 75 investigations going, and all of you (LEWIS) have been warned. Let’s not forget, the TARP Inspector General “still has the knife from a foiled attempt on his life in a field outside Bogota.”

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker