GAO: We'll Never Know if TARP Is Working, Or Has Worked

From the sidebar, posted by an Open Blogger, tipped by Krakatoa:

We may never know whether the government's $700 billion bailout of the financial industry worked, according to a new report from congressional auditors. That's because it will be impossible to sort out which of the government's spending and other tinkering has made a difference, according to the report released Friday by the Government Accountability Office.

The report covers Treasury's administration of the bailout, called the Troubled Asset Relief Program, through Jan. 23. Nearly $294 billion had been released by that date — almost $200 billion of it through a program to inject capital directly into financial institutions.

The roughly $200 billion in capital injections doesn't include any of the separate money authorized to guarantee losses for Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc., or about $20 billion to stabilize automakers Chrysler and General Motors Corp.

This being AP, they completely forgot about the huge amount of additional money Bernacke poured into the system. They also fail to consider that no government intervention at all will help; that the market might just need to sef-correct. I discount that possibility myself, I should admit; but it just never even occurs to the AP as a possibility at al.

"Even with more time and better data, it will remain difficult to separate the impact of TARP activities from the effect of other economic forces," the report said.

posted by Ace at 05:28 PM

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