Of course then we could have had a mass of private investors to "bail out" anew, right? Not literally, of course, but my point is that there's no such thing as a free lunch. I don't see how its a material issue at all whether the government made a profit in this particular circumstance; the objective of government is to promote general welfare, not make a profit. That would just be the people collectively robbing themselves.
wow, so much to explain....
first, the responsiblity of the government is to taxpayer, not the investor, especially when it is using taxpayer money.
second, the investor make the individual choice to buy the stock or not
third, the government was sitting on a huge profit and was urged repeatedly to sell, for the sake of the taxpayer as well as for the sake of the investor (the overhang of those government shares is weighing on Citi's stock)
fourth, TARP was about stabilizing the banks, and in that regard it was a huge success and therefore the government would have sold
fifth, the purpose of TARP was NOT meant for the government to play the stock market. The TARP met its purpose and the government was sitting on HUGE gains and was asked repeatedly by the investor community to sell...the government refusef and now the taxpayer has a losing hand while the investors still have to deal with the overhang of the outstanding government shares.