The End of TARP

Last week, the Treasury Department announced that it was in the process of unwinding the billions of dollars it had loaned AIG, the insurance giant at the center of the financial meltdown, and that the government might actually turn a profit on that aspect of the TARP program. TARP is in many ways officially over, so the New York Times yesterday provided a bit of a postmortem on the program. Some highlights:

* Although the bailout fund was initially funded with $700 billion, and is often described that way, it was actually reduced to $475 billion by the financial reform act passed last summer.

* Banks received $250 billion, of which $158 billion has been paid back. The government projects that this aspect of the program will eventually result in a profit of $5 billion to $20 billion for the Feds.

* The Big Three automakers got $82 billion, including money for lenders like Chrysler Financial and GMAC. Of that, about $15 billion has been paid back. For this part of the program, the government expects to eventually lose from $15 billion to $34 billion.

* A fund of $46 billion was created to help troubled homeowners modify their mortgages, but this has been a failure. Only 15 percent of eligible loans have been modified, and all the money is expected to be lost.