Treasury Sees Returns on TARP Money
CHETRY: Well, it's almost 20 minutes past the hour right now. Welcome back to the Most News in the Morning. We have with us Christine Romans. She's minding your business this morning.</s>CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.</s>CHETRY: One of the things we always talk about is how much money the bailout cost us, how much money it cost the federal government. Could we be actually profiting from bailing out some of the companies?</s>ROMANS: There are dividends and interest payments that are going into the federal coffers right now into the treasury that are the interest on the investment the American taxpayers made into a bunch of these banks. That's indeed the case. Remember a year ago? Just rewind a second a year ago. It was in October when TARP was passed, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and many, many people saying give us our money back. We do not want our money going into the financial institutions. We do not want the government to become a banker. We just don't like it. Well now, you are starting to see some money going back into the federal coffers from this. By the Treasury's own estimates here, $7.2 billion in dividends has been paid, $208 million in interest. And we look at the "The New York Times," a nice pull out of all of this -- bailout profits from Goldman Sachs, $1.4 billion has gone back to the Treasury from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, $1.3 billion, American Express, $414 million. And remember that the big banks returned some $68.3 billion of their bailout money. So some of the banks, they took the money, now they have given it back with interest and dividends. And we're also watching, you know, investments in Bank of America, Citigroup, AIG, those, the stock investments are doing better. But let me just be clear, however. We could still, all of the dividends and interest we've made so far could be wiped out by one of these big ones going under. So there's still a lot of risk. But there is some money coming back to the treasury.</s>CHETRY: The other fascinating thing, though, is that, it's interesting, you said at the beginning of this that not every bank wanted a bailout, not every back needed a bailout.</s>ROMANS: No.</s>CHETRY: So was it a shake down in a way? Like I said, they were made to take the money and pay it back with interest. They didn't want it in the first place.</s>ROMANS: When we look at the documents prepared for that meeting in Washington last year when the big banks were summoned with Treasure Secretary, then Henry Paulson, and you read the documents, of my goodness, the banks were sort of summoned and given a little permission slip and said, here, sign this permission slip. We're giving you money. You are taking it no matter what. So in another way, people hated the banks for taking this money. Some of them were very happy to give it back and wanted to quite quickly. The small banks have paid back about $35 million, not quite as much. But there's money going back. I want to be clear here. The banking system still -- we have some issues. The FDIC is taking over banks pretty much every week now. But there is money coming back to Treasury.</s>ROBERTS: That's a good thing.</s>ROMANS: We'll take it. Keep it coming. It is our money.</s>CHETRY: Thanks, Christine.</s>ROMANS: Sure.</s>CHETRY: Still ahead, we're going to be talking to Carol Costello. All of us remember prepping for the SATs, stressing out, fingers sweating, number two pencils breaking right and left. Anyway, maybe now it's optional for kids. Well, Carol Costello kicking off our weeklong series "Educating America." It's 22 minutes past the hour.