TARP Repayments Reach $181 Billion

The Treasury Department announced Friday that it has received a total of $181 billion from companies to repay their government bailouts.

The new figures were released after the Treasury collected full repayment on Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) money given to insurance and investment firm Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc. in the sum of $3.4 billion, as well as a final dividend payment of about $21 million. Automaker General Motors also repaid $1 billion of the $6.7 billion in loans it received as part of a $50 billion rescue package.

Treasury officials say the amount of TARP investments settled by bailed-out firms so far is “well ahead of last fall’s repayment projections for 2010.”

President Obama has been very vocal in his pledge to ensure big Wall Street banks pay back every last cent that’s been drained from taxpayers and the federal government over the past year and a half to fend off the financial system’s collapse, even proposing a tax on all financial institutions with more than $50 billion in assets, as recently as January.

Some critics of such a levy point out that many of the banks that would be hit with the financial crisis tax have already repaid their capital injections from TARP, and some never took the government hand-out. In fact, a large share of the losses expected on TARP funding will be from the auto industry.

Treasury currently estimates that its programs aimed at stabilizing the banking system will earn a profit, thanks to dividends, interest, early repayments, and the sale of warrants.

According to the latest information from the Treasury, total bank investments of $245 billion in fiscal year 2009 that were initially projected to cost $76 billion are now expected to bring a profit. Taxpayers have already received $14 billion through just interest and dividends and that number could be considerably higher by the end of this year, Treasury officials said

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