Taxpayers Make 23% On Goldman TARP Repayment
So yeah…what was all that talk about never seeing any of the TARP money again?
Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s repayments to the government of last year’s bailout money, including an agreement today to repay warrants, generated a 23 percent annualized return for U.S. taxpayers.
Goldman Sachs agreed to the Treasury’s request for $1.1 billion to repay warrants the government received when it invested $10 billion in the New York-based firm last October. The payment is in addition to $318 million in preferred dividends.
That 23 percent return compares with the 42 percent surge in Goldman Sachs’s share price since October, and the 5.1 percent gain in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. Goldman’s decision follows criticism of the bank by lawmakers who questioned its decision to set aside a record $11.4 billion to pay employees in the first half of the year.
This is after 10 banks said last month they’d be paying back $68B worth of TARP money. Goldman was one of them. And the American taxpayer turned a tidy profit on the deal.
Here’s the question: Will the TARP program end up making the taxpayers money overall?
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It is difficult to muster enthusiasm for this headline. In spite of Goldman’s apparently mind-boggling profits (in only three months) and now its announced expectation of repaying the US government a grand sum for the bailout, the rest of us, the taxpayers, or whoever, are just barely making it. Many are still drowning in the wake of the economic crisis. What if, while people were still on their rooftops in New Orleans during Katrina, the government announced that the company that built the levees (I know that was a govt. agency but just substitute a private one for purposes of this point) just made a huge profit and would pay its employees incredible bonuses for their work and plan to pay the government some money too? Would that make those going down, go with a smile on their faces, content with knowing that those who built the very thing that destroyed their way of life are making huge profits off the crisis-generated government handouts? It seems fairly comparable to allowing the infamous Madoff pay a huge fine and continue business as usual.
What crisis are we in again?? I just read an article that we are paying the Palestines $200 Million tomorrow ,out of the $900 million they/we promised at the convention because of their budget shortfalls. Another article was about the stimulis money. Only $12million was paid out so far in the 6 mos that the Dems been in office. Thats way less than 1% they promissed to pay us. SHOW ME THE MONEY.
It’s hard to say if TARP will actually make money, or if it was a best-use case for existing funds. After all, we don’t know the opportunity costs — what else might that trillion have been spent on? — or what the consequences of letting the system collapse might have been. But the Goldman repayment — and, I hope, many subsequent repayments — proves that it wasn’t simply a handout, another way to permanently transfer wealth to the rich. And that’s what I found so heartening about the payback — and why I don’t begrudge Goldman its profitable quarter
Who can criticize a company for paying back what it owes? But there is something intrinsically, ethically questionable about our government paying over these huge sums of money to these favored entities. The US government made the deal without letting anyone vote, they took this extraordinary action of the historic bailouts. We will not know the true consequences of this anytime soon. And, even though GS paid back the money plus the 23%, is that all it takes to clear itself of the self-dealing, for the insiders of their firm embedded in our government, for creating, at least in part, the very crisis that required the huge bailout. And no answer for AIG or the sums GS received at the discount window of the Fed. These people at GS are receiving special treatment that no ordinary citizen ever receives, why is that right? How is this capitalism, if we buy them out of their failures? If Bernard Madoff paid everything back with some interest would we think he should not be punished for his criminal acts, his scam? I don’t think this is a success story for those who are still out of their homes, perhaps their jobs, and who must struggle onward with little to no hope that in their lifetime they will ever see the sums of money that the employees of GS will receive. What in the world have they done to deserve a 900k bonus? That we accept that level for a one-time pay as reasonable compensation (for three months work?) is another problem here. Do we want to perpetuate the image we are developing or may already have established: America-the land of Greed and Cruelty?
In response to another comment. See in context »This is honestly besides the point. Goldman never needed TARP, and of course they know how to make money on capital. There are plenty of other banks out there who need the funds and won’t be able to repay for years. This is like the bare minimum Goldman could’ve done, but it look so great compared to all the other screwups that it’s impossible to fault them for it.
Any word on when Goldman plans on paying back all the money they got outside of TARP? Or when they plan on hittin’ the rest of the country back for, you know, playing a major role in bringing down the national economy?
Weak… read, learn, and think more before you blog. You must dig a bit more to gain any credibility. Anybody can regurgitate mainstream media and blurt out its merely obvious conclusion.
Sell all GS stock shares quickly… It will be worthless by the end of the year.
I appreciate this “sharkdb” comment and I am ready to dig a bit more, but where? I don’t know about regurgitating, sounds unpleasant, but I, as are others, am limited by the info that is made available to those of us who do not receive any quarterly statements from any entity on the market. Should I read Bloomberg? Or, TrueSlant? Or, the New York Times? . . .point me in the direction and I will gladly read. That doesn’t mean that I will comprehend but I will try. I think most of us are deficient in our knowledge of the market and especially just exactly what is going on. Now, this comment is intriguing to me. I am thinking that sharkdb is someone who is really in the know and willing to tell us the truth – that we are all in a slow motion total crash.
Meh, we should have ditched all the Goldman alums from treasury and the fed, and had Warren Buffett negotiate terms instead, he seems to have driven a much harder bargain with these thieves…