The financial system bailout (Part 3) See...I Told You So!

Now's my time to gloat a little bit. 

In  my post on 9/24/08, I said "The proposal is not to give money to profligate investors. Most of these mortgages etc will be repaid in substantial part and considerably secured. The assets acquired will be later sold, many at a potential profit."

Looks like I was more right than wrong, after 2 years. From Daniel Gross, Yahoo! Finance, Tuesday, October 5, 2010:

The price to taxpayers of the bailouts and financial rescue of 2008 and 2009 continues to fall sharply. In figures to be released later today, the Treasury Department will report that the final net cost of the TARP is expected to be about $50 billion,Yahoo! Finance has learned. Add in expected returns from Treasury's interest in insurance company AIG, and the final net cost will be closer to $30 billion.

The news of the shrunken cost, which comes on the two-year anniversary of the legislation that created TARP, represents a dramatic improvement. It highlights the resilience of the markets, as well as the folly of short-term financial projections. In August 2009, the TARP cost was projected to be $341 billion. In its mid-session review, released in August of this year, the Office of Management and Budget projected the total cost would come to $91 billion.