Yeah I don't understand the problem either...the #1 objective is to rescucitate these banks and the economy. The taxpayers can tax what they need later; a buck is a buck. If the government had held on to the corporations longer hack jmfcst would be complaining about TARP crowding out capital investors.
what? do you have any idea how TARP was handed out in Citi's case? The government is STILL holding billions of Citi stock at $3.25/share basis, which it should have sold when Citi was near $5/share and made the U.S. taxpayers a handsome profit. Instead, the government held onto the stock and then attempted to limit the pay of Citi employees, which caused Citi then to turn around and sell stock to pay back the TARP money, which diluted the shares the government owned in Citi....now the government is UNDER WATER on the Citi deal.
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.
