TARP Bailouts Costs Taxpayers 27 Billion : More To Come?

I wonder if there is anyone left in this country, other then progressive socialist democrats that are fully invested in "fundamental" change, that believes bailing out the big banks was nothing more then 'crony capitalism'. It was the progressive democrats that got the banks in trouble in the first place, primary with the housing act and auto bailouts started by president Carter and accelerated by Clinton.

The jury is still out on if there really was a crisis in 2008 for bank failures. Questions remain what roll the democrats played and how the banks were willing participants in getting this going just before the election in 2008.

The fact that millions of dollars were directed into the campaigns of the Mr Obama and other  democrats from big banks  had anything to do with the billions of tax dollars going to bail them out? 

Bailout on Track to Cost Government $27 Billion
Source: Joseph Lawler, "Congressional Budget Office: TARP on Track to Cost Government $27 Billion," Washington Examiner, April 17, 2014.

April 21, 2014

The enormous bailout of the U.S. financial system at the height of the financial crisis in fall 2008 is on track to cost the federal government $27 billion, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated in a recent report, says the Washington Examiner.

• TARP (the Troubled Asset Relief Program) is on pace to have disbursed $438 billion of the $700 billion authorized by Congress in October 2008, when panic threatened to bring down the entire banking system.
• The total estimate of the budgetary cost of TARP is up $6 billion from last year's mandated report, because of higher anticipated spending on housing programs.

In fall 2008, when Congress passed the bailout package and President George W. Bush signed it into law, the federal government was taking on an enormous amount of risk. A total bill of $27 billion, according to the CBO, would be "near the low end of the range of possible outcomes anticipated when the program was launched." Other assistance to failing companies, including emergency loans from the Federal Reserve, helped limit the costs to taxpayers stemming from TARP.

• Most of the $27 billion bill comes from the bailouts of AIG and the automakers, which together will end up costing taxpayers $29 billion, along with the Home Affordable Mortgage Program, which was meant to help loan servicers modify homeowners' mortgages to avoid foreclosures.
• CBO expects the bailouts of banks and other financial institutions, on the other hand, to return $24 billion to the Treasury.

During the crisis, banks relied not just on TARP, but also on lending from the Federal Reserve, which is tasked with being the "lender of last resort" to troubled banks. Bloomberg reported in 2011 that the Fed, through a variety of programs, lent as much as $1.5 trillion daily at the peak of the crisis, and provided guarantees worth up to $7.77 trillion in potential loans.