With the news that Bank of America hurried up a sale of securities in order to pay back their TARP loan, the story of the many billions loaned to the “big banks” has reached an interesting turning point: they’re now more than half paid back, 57% to be precise. Here’s the breakdown of the $165 billion loaned to the country’s biggest banks.
| Bank | $B Loaned | $B Repaid |
|---|---|---|
| Bank of NY Mellon Corp | 3.0 | 3.0 |
| Goldman Sachs | 10.0 | 10.0 |
| JP Morgan Chase | 25.0 | 25.0 |
| Morgan Stanley | 10.0 | 10.0 |
| State Street Corp | 2.0 | 2.0 |
| Bank of America | 45.0 | 45.0 |
| Citigroup | 45.0 | 0.0 |
| Wells Fargo | 25.0 | 0.0 |
This is not to say that the entire TARP program has been more than half repaid. For some reason, the first Reuters story I found listed only the “initial recipients”. If memory serves, these are the companies that needed immediate help in order to stave off an immediate collapse of the entire economy. That’s the story I heard, anyway. I certainly wasn’t there when Henry Paulson got down on his knees and begged Nancy Pelosi not to block the TARP program.
But a bit more research found a well-reputed (according to Google’s algorithms, anyway) site with a breakdown of all recipients, amounts repaid and even revenue generated through the program.
If I add up the amount repaid ($72,316,490,000), add in Bank of America ($45,000,000,000) and the revenue generated ($14,687,071,318, which should logically go toward paying down the debt, one hopes), and subtract that subtotal ($132,003,561,318) from the original amount actually loaned out ($491,950,683,115), I calculate that the TARP loans are still 73.17% unpaid.
This means that at the next “Tea Party”, they should spend roughly 27% of the time celebrating instead of protesting. But that might depend on whether the sponsoring organization is linked to the GOP, a PAC, a corporation, or who-knows-what-else.
But enough of my snark. Nobody is in favor of taxpayer dollars being loaned to private corporations, except of course the corporations that borrowed them, and because I’m an optimist, I’m glad to see the train keep rolling forward instead of backward. Hopefully this latest Bank of America news will prod even more recipients to make plans for repayment.
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Initial TARP Recipients are 57% Repaid
