TARP O' The Mornin' To Ya

Turns out all those banks that took TARP money?  A fair number are going to fail anyway.

On Nov. 6, United Commercial Bank of San Francisco failed, becoming the first recipient of the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, to collapse. The cost to taxpayers: $299 million.

Analysts expect more bailed-out firms to fail in the months ahead. Others may survive but will struggle to repay the government. Steven Rattner, the former head of the government's efforts to bail out the auto industry, said recently that the full public investment in GM is unlikely to be repaid. Meanwhile, AIG is dismantling itself, selling healthy subsidiaries at what critics say are bargain prices in an all-out effort to get cash to repay the government.

About $400 billion of federal investments remain in the corporate sector, much of it channeled through TARP. Critics of the program say losses were inevitable, in many cases.

Bankers, lawmakers, state banking regulators and oversight committees have faulted federal officials for providing funds to firms that were so sick that they couldn't recover and for failing to be open about how recipients were chosen. Some critics have also attacked the government for the types of investments they made.

Gosh, you mean we should have taken over and nationalized the sick banks instead of pretending they were solvent and having to take them over now, having wasted hundreds of billions in propping up banks for short-term political gain in the process?

Gee, I wonder who was advocating that position in early 2009.