TARP

How blessed we are to live next to Richmond Park. And still inside London.

So here's a go-figure for the Republicans: in spite of their sharp criticism of the bank bail-outs, the US Treasury has made serious money from the coupons payable under the troubled asset relief programme funding, most of which has been repaid. For instance, Uncle Sam has earned an annualised return of 23% from its $10B investment in Goldman Sachs under Tarp. It should be more. The US sits on a paper profit of almost $11B on its 34% sharholding in Citigroup, its only direct stake in a large financial institution - US authorities received more that 7 billion shares in Citi at $3.25 apiece, after converting $25B of preferred stock into common last month; since then, Citi's shares have gone to $4.70. This gain more than offsets the paper losses of all other significant state interventions in listed banks. All of this made possible by the FTSE World Banks index up 130% since its lows in March. Do not think for a moment, however, that bail-outs right or without risk: the last thing we need is an instituted bad debt insurance scheme, which could yet leave governments with vast deficits if loan losses end up worse then expected. Still, every little helps.