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The Washington Post reports [2]:
Big Wall Street firms have the most bruised public reputations, but it’s a collection of smaller banks that continues to plague the Treasury Department’s bank bailout program.
The latest report from the agency shows that more than 120 institutions – nearly all of them small banks – have missed their scheduled quarterly dividend payments, which is more than a sixth of the banks that received federal aid during the financial crisis.
In addition, five banks that received capital injections from the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program have failed altogether, making it highly unlikely that taxpayers will recover the nearly $3 billion poured into those institutions.
Here is my earlier worrying pos [3]t from when the Treasury reported that 90 banks had failed to make their payments.
Please remember that the cost of the TARP isn’t the cost to taxpayers. Even if banks paid back every single penny, the cost of the TARP is that it reduces current and future prudence.