Tarp

Almost three years after a series of government bailouts began, what many feared would be a deep black hole for taxpayer money isn't looking nearly so dark. The brighter picture is highlighted by the outlook for the bailouts' centerpiece ? the $700-billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. "It's turning out to cost one heck of a lot less than what we all thought at the beginning," said Ted Kaufman, a former U.S. senator from Delaware who heads the congressionally appointed panel overseeing TARP.

Saying the work was largely done, Neil M. Barofsky, the outspoken special inspector general and top watchdog of the $700-billion financial bailout fund, has submitted his resignation to President Obama. In his letter Monday, Barofsky said that he had accomplished his top goals and that it was time for him to leave government service. The goals included ensuring transparency in how the Troubled Asset Relief Program was run and cracking down on people trying to fraudulently profit from the program.

The Egyptian army moved into Tahrir Square on Sunday, tearing down tents and opening the artery to traffic nearly three weeks after the start of the protests that brought an end to the 30-year reign of Hosni Mubarak. The dozens of soldiers in olive fatigues and red berets surrounded the one remaining stage for protesters, while cars honked and drove around the city hub for the first time since Jan. 25, when people erupted in rage against Mubarak. It was a sign of the military's determination to restore normalcy to the nation's capital.

The projected cost of the $700-billion financial bailout fund ? initially feared to be a huge hit to taxpayers ? continues to drop, with the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimating Monday that losses would amount to just $25 billion. That's a sharp drop from the CBO's last estimate, in August, of a $66-billion loss for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, known as TARP. Going back to March, the budget office estimated that the program would cost taxpayers $109 billion. The new, more optimistic forecast largely reflects money the Treasury Department has received as banks have repaid their loans and repurchased stock warrants.

The U.S. Troubled Asset Relief Program, which risked up to $700 billion of government funds to bail out troubled banks and automakers, will cost taxpayers a mere $25 billion, according to an estimate released on Monday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. CBO's latest assessment of the widely reviled program is lower even than the Obama administration's own estimate of less than $50 billion, which was criticized as too rosy after it was issued at the end of September. "Clearly, it was not apparent when the TARP was created two years ago that the cost would turn out to be this low," CBO said in its report.

The Obama administration on Tuesday estimated that the $700-billion financial bailout fund would cost taxpayers $51 billion ? and possibly 43% less if the government succeeds in recouping the money it put into insurer American International Group Inc. In a report issued two days after the formal end of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the Treasury Department said that it still expected to incur "substantial losses" from the separate government seizure...

As one of the most controversial chapters in U.S. economic history draws to a close, the Obama administration and its critics are writing very different obituaries of the $700-billion fund that bailed out Wall Street and the domestic auto industry. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said the much-maligned Troubled Asset Relief Program "succeeded in ways that none of us could have imagined. " And Herbert M. Allison Jr., who resigned Wednesday as TARP's head, said the fund laid the foundation for the nation's recovery — "at a fraction of the cost that was originally anticipated.

For a soft-spoken, unfailingly polite university professor, Elizabeth Warren has a surprising knack for making people squirm — particularly on Wall Street. She's done it to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and other administration officials. As head of the watchdog panel monitoring the $700-billion federal bank bailout fund and a former high school debating champion, Warren often has put them on the defensive with pointed questions, such as: "Do you know where the money went?"

The Obama administration's pay czar on Friday came to the same conclusion about fat Wall Street bonuses that average Americans have already reached: There's no logic behind them, except greed. But he stopped short of demanding a refund of $1.6billion for the most egregious payments handed out to executives by banking firms bailed out by the government during the height of the financial crisis, saying that could invite lawsuits. Still, the findings sparked outrage from some in Congress, renewed calls for reining in Wall Street compensation and raised the prospect of re-energized efforts to impose hefty taxes on such bonuses.

The Treasury Department's push to have General Motors Corp. and Chrysler Group quickly shrink their dealership networks failed to properly consider economic issues such as lost jobs and lost auto sales and was based on false assumptions of cost savings, according to a report by a federal watchdog released Sunday. "Treasury made a series of decisions that may have substantially contributed to the accelerated shuttering of thousands of small businesses ... potentially adding tens of thousands of workers to the already lengthy unemployment rolls — all based on a theory and without sufficient consideration of the decisions' broader economic impact," said the audit by the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program.