All TARP did is gift 1 billion to warren buffet- gift 500 million to hank paulson

[Csainvestor]

TARP gifted trillions of dollars to goldman sacs llyod and jamie dimon did very well.

Mitt romney took bailout funds and outsourced car part workers to mexico.

Yes TARP did very well by the rich.

[FSogol]

1. Oh noes, Warren Buffet. Did you forget George Soros?

Total RW tripe.

[Csainvestor]

3. did you make a few million off of TARP?

Did you know warren buffet owned utilities are trying to kill the solar industry in nevada?

buffet is trying to kill solar jobs in nevada in order to keep his power utility monopolies intact.

[FSogol]

7. Yes, I obviously built a new money vault to hold all my free TARP gifts!

[FreakinDJ]

4. you're spouting RW tripe

When has DU stood for enriching $Billionaires at the expense of the tax payers

[Adrahil]

9. A bailout of some sort was simply necessary.

If my financial institutions had failed, I would have been out of a great deal of money... like ALL my retirement.

TARP may not have been the best way to do a bailout, but a bailout was necessary.

[PoliticAverse]

26. Well you're on to the important issue here. Even if necessary Tarp wasn't necessarily the right way.

Did we have to give them bailout money in a way that ended up in bonuses given to some of the
people that caused the problem?

[Mufaddal]

8. Are you specifically concerned with Warren Buffet

or are you disputing the notion that the bailout overwhelmingly benefited the super-wealthy?

[revbones]

27. Is there anything negative to Hillary that you guys don't consider "RW tripe"?

It's somewhat childish at this point for everything and anything negative to be dismissed as right-wing smears or such.

[FSogol]

30. TARP has little to do with HRC. This is Obama (and Democratic Party) bashing.

Haven't the Repubs done anything worth bashing?

[revbones]

33. That doesn't make sense as an answer

I asked if there was anything negative about her you didn't consider right-wing smears. You replied would seem to indicate that there isn't and I think that speaks to the typical Hillary supporter's framing and willful ignorance in regards to her faults.

[FSogol]

34. Am I a HRC supporter? Did I mention her? Blah, blah, blah.

[revbones]

35. Oh sorry thought you understood everyone was talking about TARP because Hillary lied re Sanders vote

I understand your confusion now.

[Wilms]

2. If you have some links, that would be helpful. n/t

[Csainvestor]

6. this is how buffet made free money thanks to the tarp

http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/206852/warren-buffet-reaps-crony-capitalist-billions-gov-daniel-greenfield

[FBaggins]

10. Sorry... the logic there is lacking.

TARP didn't give him that money. The investors who sold him the stocks at ridiculously undervalued prices did that. Buffett has a history of buying when everyone else is panicking. He didn't need TARP to make a ton.

Perhaps on your next turn at the wheel... you should reconsider a user name with "investor" in it?

[Csainvestor]

11. you have no logic.

Buffet invested billions, and he made billions RISK FREE.

The government insured his investments at taxpayer expense. Buffet got to invest his money with a guarantee that the government would cover his losses, but he got to keep the gains.

[FBaggins]

13. So says the guy posting from a racist RW rag?

Yeah... that's reliable. Does "csa" stand for the Confederate States of America?

Buffet invested billions, and he made billions RISK FREE.

Laughable. It was in no sense risk-free... nor was the investment guaranteed by the government.

[BernieforPres2016]

21. Buffett made some sweetheart deals with TARP institutions

but it is overstating it to say those investments had no risk or that he had a government guarantee to cover his losses. Neither of those statements are factual.

[BernieforPres2016]

22. You are also overstating your position

Buffett said at the time that he would not have made the investments in companies like Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and GE if he hadn't thought there was going to be a government bailout of financial institutions.

[FBaggins]

25. Not really

Just about everyone knew that the government would do something to avoid a total financial collapse. Given that he has a long history of investing in companies that are badly oversold... it's entirely logical that he would invest in banks that he expected to survive.

Also - it's worth noting that his BofA investment was in 2011... but the bank bailout and TARP were in 2008. It's pretty hard to make the case that the OP tries to make.

[liberal_at_heart]

29. so we are now in a privatize profit-socialize loss capitalism economy. What happens

the next time this happens? because this will happen again.

[BernieforPres2016]

32. And contrary to current assurances, it could happen at any time

Deutsche Bank's stock is trading below its 2008-09 lows. DB is the 11th largest financial institution in the world in terms of assets and is a too big to fail institution. The 4 largest banks in the world in terms of assets are Chinese banks with balance sheets full of questionable loans. Oil prices have collapsed and taken junk bonds and to a lesser extent investment grade corporate bonds down with them. If one large financial institution is perceived to be on the edge of collapse, another contagion could spread quickly. Hillary pretends that regulators can watch the too big to fail institutions closely and step in before another collapse. It is nonsense.

[liberal_at_heart]

36. I've heard the Fed may delay an interest hike because of fears of another global slow down.

You're right. This could happen again at any time.

[BernieforPres2016]

31. I said the OP overstated his case

I think the truth is somewhere between you. I think you are understating the extent to which Buffett capitalized on his knowledge of and connections inside of the government. I would be very surprised if senior government officials weren't in conversation with him asking for advice during the 2008 meltdown. You are correct about the Bank of America investment coming later. B of A and Citi were both messes well beyond TARP. Buffett got 6% plus 10 year warrants at a time when the 10 year treasury bond was yielding in the neighborhood of 2%. That says B of A, a too big to fail financial institution, was junk bond quality based on the expected rate of return Buffett required to invest in them.

[FBaggins]

5. That's ALL it did?

Who knew?

Enjoy your stay.

[BernieforPres2016]

12. Buffett likely made quite a bit more than $1 billion from TARP

The article at the link below says $10 billion and counting. I think there are several flaws in it though. It includes both TARP related investments and other investments he made around the same period. The investments were made by Berkshire Hathaway, which Buffett owned about 40% of at that time, so only about 40% of the returns went to him personally.

http://theweek.com/articles/459166/how-warren-buffett-made-10-billion-during-financial-crisis

My recollection, reinforced by an article I read recently, is that Buffett invested about $13 billion on behalf of Berkshire Hathaway (his share of that would have been about $5 billion) at extremely favorable terms to TARP recipients like Goldman Sachs ($5 billion investment at 10% interest plus 5 year warrants on Goldman common stock), General Electric and Bank of America.

As another linked article in this thread notes, Buffett said he would not have made these investments if he had not believed that the U.S. government would bail out the too big to fail financial institutions. With his political connections I'm sure he had a pretty high degree of confidence in a bailout.

And while Buffett was investing in these companies for expected returns of 15-20% annually, the U.S. taxpayer was backstopping his investments for 1% to 2% annual rates of return IF everything worked out.

Without going through all the numbers, I would guess that these TARP related investments returned at least 15% annually for 5 years in aggregate. So that would be about $2 billion annually for Berkshire, $800 million annually to Buffett or $4 billion to Buffett for 5 years. Subtract the perhaps 2% annual rate he could have earned on 5 year treasury bonds at that time and that would bring Buffett's TARP reward down to maybe $3.5 billion.

It is also worth recalling that Buffett wrote a letter to Hank Paulson championing a "Public-Private" investment concept that would provide large and cheap loans from taxpayers to investors like Berkshire and hedge funds to allow them to leverage their own funds and buy distressed mortgage securities off the balance sheets of too big to fail financial institutions. Thankfully that attempted further ripoff of the U.S. taxpayers did not go through.

[liberal_at_heart]

14. oh, these capitalists just love the concept of public private investments.

The new definition of capitalism: privatize profit, socialize loss.

[BernieforPres2016]

16. Yes, Buffett wanted taxpayer loans at 1% to 2% because the "risk takers"

wouldn't invest in all that risky stuff unless they could leverage it to the kind of 20%+ returns they and their investors expected. But the question was, rather than selling that stuff to you and your investors for high returns and loaning you the money to buy it, why shouldn't the taxpayers just hold it themselves so they would have not just the risk, but the potential return?

Did you hear Hillary mention her public private infrastructure bank proposal in the debate on Sunday night with a $25 billion taxpayer investment that her Wall Street and hedge fund buddies will bring another $250 billion to?

[liberal_at_heart]

20. I did hear that. She of course used language most people wouldn't understand which is exactly

what bankers and politicians who support bankers do. If we only knew the truth. There is no way we would let them do what they do.

[BernieforPres2016]

23. I'll make an OP on that topic later today

It has flown under the radar. I had never heard about that from Hillary but when I researched it after hearing it in the debate it has been part of her platform without much in the way of specifics. I found an article from last October on it.

It's a pretty big issue to have received virtually no attention.

[FBaggins]

18. Returns from their BAC investment

Starts with the 6% (annual) return on $5Billion in preferred shares.

Their 700 million warrants were at one point worth as much as ~$8 Billion (when the stock price hit 18-1/2), but are now "only" worth about $4.2B

[BernieforPres2016]

24. Too bad for Warren. The good news is that he has until 2021 to exercise his warrants. n/t

[Travis_0004]

15. The government made a profit on TARP

I dont see why everybody hates on it so much. It was an effective process, and the government turned a small profit. It want perfect, but it was decent for something thrown together.

[liberal_at_heart]

17. Then why didn't the American people get a check in the mail? Just because the government

made a profit does not mean the tax payers saw any of that money.

[BernieforPres2016]

19. Yes, taking on an enormous amount of risk for 1% to 2% returns is a great deal for taxpayers.

Even if private investors like Warren Buffett piggybacked on the taxpayers and made 15-20% returns. Even if the too big to fail banks went right back to paying their executives and other top employees tens of millions.

The price for bailing out the too big to fail banks should have been wiping out the shareholders, replacing the executives, putting the banks into receivership, then after getting them on sounder footing, breaking them up and selling the smaller institutions back to the public markets with all proceeds going to the U.S. Treasury, i.e. the taxpayers.

[WDIM]

28. It was a bonus to all their wealthy donors

A big thank you from the Bush regime to Wall Street for all their support and dedication to ripping off the people of this country.

[whatchamacallit]

37. As if we had something better to do with our tax dollars than make those guys richer

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

38. But..but..you got screwed because it was good for you. Not to mention you had to pay for it.

[yellowcanine]

39. Was that a blue tarp?