NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Two years after the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program was launched, the Congressional Budget Office now estimates the government's economic rescue package will cost taxpayers $25 billion.
In its fourth statutory report on TARP, the CBO said the remaining costs mainly stem from the bailout of insurance giant AIG and the auto industry, as well as efforts to prevent foreclosures. Those programs cost about $45 billion, while other transactions resulted in a net gain of $20 billion for taxpayers.
http://money.cnn.com/...
This is down from an estimate of $113B in cost from just May. Now, it's just about the cost of a month of the Iraq war.
This was the way that we hoped TARP would work.
I don't know exactly what happened to Ireland. But our banking crisis got fixed, with some movement towards reform. Our auto industry was saved, hopefully in a longer run.
Compared to the tax cut for the upper incomes insisted on by the GOP, which, coincidentally, would be $700B for ten years, it's an economic and equity success story.