Greets and saluts from the NYC metro area. I see that the right wing is busy engaged in outrageous outrage with President Obama shaking hands with Raul Castro and Robert Mugabe.

Would have preferred had he not done the latter, but the former needs to be seen in a different light considering that Obama’s eulogy castigated those who oppress their people - including Castro’s Cuba.

Mugabe’s a murderous dictator and thug who’s destroyed Zimbabwe’s economy and spirit.

Of course, the right wing is also busy complaining that the US Treasury Department has finally sold off the remaining shares in GM. The US lost about $10b on GM stock (all part of the deal to keep the company alive and workers employed as the company imploded.

Here’s the thing about the auto bailout. The government could have stayed in the stock and eventually sold back at a profit, but these same folks would complain that the government was still owning the stock. So, the Treasury made the political decision to sell in as fast and deliberate manner as possible. That meant that the losses would be locked in, but the company would be publicly owned without the government owning shares. It’s a tradeoff. These people complaining hate the whole idea of the bailout and TARP in general, but they’d probably hate to learn that the program did more good than bad.

The TARP actually made money on the bank bailout and even from the AIG portion and credit portion of the bailout. It made about enough to offset the losses with the auto industry.

That’s right - despite the worst economic mess since the Great Depression, a program designed to prop up the economy and keep it from cratering as major industrial employers imploded while the credit markets dried up, actually made money over the life of the program for the Treasury.

The housing portion of TARP was never meant to be recovered, which is why the overall figure is below the appropriated amount. Even then, it’s pretty close to a breakeven. So, while $456 billion was obligated and $421 billion was disbursed, the total amount Treasury received back in repayments was $431 billion.