More than two years have passed since the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (“EESA”) authorized the creation of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (“TARP”). On October 3, 2010, Treasury’s authority to initiate new TARP investments expired, marking a significant milestone in TARP’s history but also leading to the widespread, but mistaken, belief that TARP is at or near its end. As of October 3, $178.4 billion in TARP funds were still outstanding, and although no new TARP obligations can be made, money already obligated to existing programs may still be expended. Indeed, with more than $80 billion still obligated and available for spending, it is likely that far more TARP funds will be expended after October 3, 2010, than in the year since last October when U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (“Treasury Secretary”) extended TARP’s authority by one year. In short, it is still far too early to write TARP’s obituary.
Tag Archive for TARP
Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program
SIGTARP October 2009 Quarterly Report to Congress
Systemically Significant Failing Institutions (“SSFI”) Program. Under the stated terms of the SSFI program, Treasury invests in systemically significant institutions to prevent their failure and the market disruption that would follow. As of September 30, 2009, Treasury, through SSFI, had made and is committed to make further investments in one institution — American International Group, Inc. (“AIG”). This support was provided through two transactions — $40 billion for the purchase of preferred stock from AIG to repay debt owed to the Federal Reserve and approximately $29.8 billion for an equity capital facility that AIG can draw on as needed. As of September 30, 2009, AIG had drawn down $3.2 billion in equity from the capital facility. See the “Systemically Significant Failing Institutions” portion of this section for a more detailed discussion of the AIG transactions.
Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program
Maiden Lane III and Factors Affecting Efforts to Limit Payments to AIG Counterparties
In the fall of 2008, the Federal Reserve and Treasury faced several key decisions about the future of AIG. After attempts to find private-sector financing failed, they chose to provide assistance to AIG rather than allow the company to file for bankruptcy. FRBNY officials believed that an AIG failure would pose considerable risk to the entire financial system and would have significantly intensified an already severe financial crisis. FRBNY was concerned about the effect of an AIG bankruptcy on key sectors of the market, such as retirement accounts and the credit markets. FRBNY adopted in substantial part the economic terms of a draft term sheet under consideration by a consortium of private banks, the terms of which included a very high interest rate.
Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program
SIGTARP Quarterly Report
By itself, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (“TARP”) is a huge program at $700 billion. As discussed in SIGTARP’s April Quarterly Report, the total financial exposure of TARP and TARP-related programs may reach approximately $3 trillion. Although large in its own right, TARP is only a part of the combined efforts of the Federal Government to address the financial crisis.
Government Accountability Office
Troubled Asset Relief Program: Status of Efforts to Address Transparency and Accountability Issues
As of March 27, 2009, Treasury had disbursed $303.4 billion of the $700 billion in TARP funds. Most of the funds (about $199 billion) went to purchase preferred shares of 532 financial institutions under the Capital Purchase Program (CPP)—Treasury’s primary vehicle under TARP for stabilizing financial markets. Treasury has continued to take significant steps to address all of the recommendations from our December 2008 and January 2009 reports. In particular, Treasury has recently expanded the scope of the monthly CPP surveys of the largest institutions to include all institutions participating in the program, which is intended to provide Treasury with information necessary to begin to track the effectiveness of the program. Treasury also continued to make progress in several other areas, including requiring firms participating in certain new programs to show how assistance will expand lending. These requirements will better enable Treasury to determine what institutions plan to do with any capital infusions and to track the resulting lending activity of participating institutions on a regular basis. In addition, we specifically found that though Treasury is now receiving dividends from the investments it has made in CPP and certain other programs, it has not publicly reported these receipts, which totaled almost $2.9 billion through March 20, 2009. We recommended that Treasury could improve transparency pertaining to TARP program activities by reporting publicly the monies, such as dividends, paid to Treasury by TARP participants.