U.S. gov't recovers 70% of TARP disbursements

With receiving a 6.9-billion-U. S.-dollar repayment Tuesday from American International Group, Inc. (AIG), the U.S. government has recovered 70 percent of total Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) disbursements, said the U.S. Treasury Department on Tuesday.


The Treasury said that Tuesday's repayment from AIG brought total TARP repayments and income to 287 billion U.S. dollars, which accounted for 70 percent of the 411 billion dollars disbursed to date for that program.


"We are optimistic that as we continue to wind down TARP, our temporary investments in private companies will ultimately result in little or no cost to taxpayers taken as a whole," said Tim Massad, acting assistant secretary for financial stability. "While cost isn't the primary measure of TARP's success, the fact that we 've already recovered more than two-thirds of the money disbursed for the program is an important milestone for taxpayers."


Moreover, the lifetime cost of TARP is likely to be limited to funds disbursed for Treasury's foreclosure prevention programs, which were not expected to be recovered, said the Treasury. In President Barack Obama's FY2012 Budget, the U.S. government estimated that the lifetime cost of the overall TARP program would be approximately 48 billion dollars.
(Source:http://news.xinhuanet.com)