Treasury loses on bailout investments
A report reviewing the bailout found taxpayers overpaid when they invested in troubled financial institutions. In contrast, private firms did very well. Dan Grech explores where the Treasury's losses varied.
Heading up the steps of the U.S. Treasury Department (Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images)
More on Investing, America's Financial Crisis
TEXT OF STORY
All right, in this environment it's not easy to tell a good investment from a bad investment. But what's the government's excuse? A congressional watchdog says taxpayers overpaid by the billions when they bailed out troubled financial institutions. The worst investments were . . . drumroll please:
[Sound of a drumroll]
Citigroup and AIG. Marketplace's Dan Grech reports.
Dan Grech: The report found that Treasury overpaid by $78 billion.
Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren chairs a panel that keeps tabs on the bailout. She says Treasury lost money on nearly all of its investments, but those losses varied.
Elizabeth Warren: For every $100 invested in Wells Fargo, for example, Treasury got back about $93. By contrast, with Citigroup, it got back about $62.
In the report, the independent firm Duff & Phelps compared government bailouts to investments made by the private sector. It found private firms made a killing, even as taxpayers got bilked.
Berkshire Hathaway's $5 billion investment in Goldman Sachs in September had an immediate return of 10 percent. That means Warren Buffett's firm made $500 million in one day -- if anyone's counting.
I'm Dan Grech for Marketplace.
Comments
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From San Antonio, TX, 02/06/2009
Thank you Marketplace for this report, however the title of your note should be: “Tax Payers' Treasury Department Loses on Bailout Investments” or “Our Treasury Department Loses on Bailout Investment.” Titling it just "Treasury" diminishes citizens’ ownership. Especially when we must think that are this generation and the ones to come who will have to pay for this bailout money, instead of the big corporations who got millions of dollars very easily, without any accountability.
From FL, 02/06/2009
Let's just give old Hank and break and other the other politicians who were ramming down the throats of their constituents. They aren't perfect after all. I'm sure Hank's connections at Goldman Sachs had nothing to do with his requests.
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