GAO: Almost Half of Bailed Banks Repaid the Government With Money “From Other Federal Programs”

By Matt Stoller, former Senior Policy Advisor to Rep. Alan Grayson and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. You can reach him at stoller (at) gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at@matthewstoller

The Government Accountability Office continues its subtle war on the talking point used by Treasury that “TARP made money”.

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Auerback: TARP Was Not a Success – It Simply Institutionalized Fraud

By Marshall Auerback, a portfolio analyst, hedge fund manager, and Roosevelt Institute fellow There’s a good reason why the Troubled Asset Relief Program (aka “TARP”) is “a success none dare mention”, to use the title of Ben Smith’s latest post at Politico. Put simply, it’s not a success. Calling the TARP a success is like […]

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Geithner Yet Again Misrepresents TARP “Performance”

The problem with propaganda is that it is generally effective. Utter the Big Lie often enough and most people will come to believe it. The Obama Administration has engaged in persistent misrepresentation of the outcome of the TARP equity injections, which is a manifestation of its early decision to reconstitute as much as possible, the […]

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Will big banks now free of TARP’s shackles reach for yield?

By Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns. When I read Yves Smith’s recent comments on Bank of America’s repayment of its TARP funds, I couldn’t help but think of a post I wrote six months ago called "Asymmetric information and corporate governance in bank bailouts." The gist is of the post is about the same as […]

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Guest post: Ten big banks receive approval to repay TARP funds

Submitted by Edward Harrison of the site Credit Writedowns. If you thought the bailout of too big to fail institutions was a massive gift from taxpayers to captains of Wall Street, the news that TARP funds are being repaid should confirm your beliefs.  Just today the U.S. Treasury has agreed to allow 10 financial institutions […]

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Fed Setting Higher-Than-Stress-Test Bar for Exiting From TARP

Well, once in a while the authorities exceed my low expectations, and this is one of those instances. The Fed is insisting that the bank recipients of TARP fund meet a higher standard, in terms of balance sheet strength, than set in the stress tests. The banks are grumbling that this is not what they […]

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Is Treasury About to Give Banks Yet Another Subsidy By Letting Them Repay TARP Warrants Too Cheaply?

The very fact that it took such a long headline to explain the latest (possible) Treasury bouquet to the TARP recipients says the odds are high the troubling scenario will come to pass. With the Fed a combo hedge fund/SIV and the Treasury actively engaged in regulatory arbitrage (evading budgetary restrictions by making clever use […]

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Is the Public/Private Plan Inferior to TARP?

Dear readers, this is a bit of an experiment (think of it as the econblog analogy to open source). When Geithner presented his bank plan, such as it was, I was particularly disgusted by the “public/private partnership plan rubbish. It struck me as a costly way to paper over the irresolvable conundrum with Paulson’s two […]

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GAO Report Debunks Fair Value Accounting, Protecting Students and Homeowners

By David Dayen, a freelance writer (Salon, The Intercept, The New Republic, etc.) and author of Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud, which releases May 17, 2016 (available for pre-order now). Follow him on Twitter @ddayen. A couple of weeks ago, the Government Accountability Office saved the country’s […]

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Michael Hudson on Parasitic Financial Capitalism

An interview with Michael Hudson on his latest book, Killing the Host, which focuses on the destruction wrought by financial capitalism.

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