On August 31, 2009
Too Early to Know if Taxpayers Will Benefit From Bank Bailout
A piece in today’s New York Times says that U.S. taxpayers are profiting from the billions of dollars in federal loans made to big banks during the height of the financial crisis. It’s worth noting, however, that this calculation focuses on those banks that have repaid their TARP obligations and omits institutions that still owe money. As economist Dean Baker says: The government has not yet recorded any losses from the zombies, most notably Citigroup and Bank of America. It is important to note that in the case of these two banks, the government has kept them afloat, after issuing its initial loans through the TARP program, by guaranteeing hundreds of billions of dollars of bad assets. If these banks…
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