Treasury announces GM exit strategy; automaker buying 200 million shares from U.S.

[bhikkhu]

3. And a little more on the banking side:

a total of $245 billion was loaned out to banks, mostly to bolster their balance sheets to comply with stricter capitalization rules. The goal was to allow them to continue operating as usual, with stronger backing, as they built up funds to repay the loans. The great majority of that worked as hoped for, and most was repaid with interest; so there is currently a profit showing to the government on the banking side of the program. If you remember the predictions and prognostications of absolute doom and collapse, this was a ballsy program that succeeded. There are many small banks that haven't paid their loans back yet, but the totals owing are around $7 billion, less that 3%.

The "trillions and trillions!" figure comes from another briefer and different effort, where the fed made short term (mostly overnight) loans to banks at low interest rates. All of these were repaid, and the beef there is that some millions more in profit should have been made if the interest rates charged were at-market. Hindsight is petty; again, if you look at the actual possibility of collapse, avoiding it successfully with unprecedented efforts was a risk that paid off - we've had steady economic growth since the day the stimulus was enacted, and it has cost much less than predicted.

on edit - link to some information: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/06/business/la-fi-banks-tarp-20120706