[muzz]

With TARP the government owned assets. For every dollar they invested, they could receive less, equal, or more than a dollar. Overall, they received more.

Tan is proposing the backstop deposits. In this case, the govt can receive AT MOST a dollar for every one of its dollars. The absolute best case is a break-even on the investment (and the government eating the cost of administering the program)

[nmhancoc]

How are you getting to an at best break-even?

Looking at the most recent 10-K (12/21), if you have more recent figures I’d be happy to use those:

  Total deposits: 173.109B
  Total assets: 211.793B

Of the assets, those that the government would actually care about in a takeover:

  13.8B cash
  26.1B available-for-sale (presumably marked to market, so that’s supposed to represent today’s sale price)
  91.3B held to maturity securities (these aren’t marked to market AFAIK, so this represents the value if they’re held to maturity not sold today)
  73.6B in loans net of loss allowances
  Total: 204.8B

There are also a few billion of non marketable securities and “other” which I left out.

Granted, some of this has already been liquidated, but if the government paid out depositors one-for-one, and held the rest of the book to maturity they’d make 31B. That’s basically the same argument employed when stating the government “made” money with TARP.

[muzz]

Good points

> presumably marked to market

This is the key-- not sure if we really know what is marked to market at what isn't

> held the rest of the book to maturity

That's like 8 years? and a gain in nominal terms but to real terms ie inflation-adjusted since a 2031 dollar is worth less than a 2023 dollar